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Title: Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2) - or, A History of the Working of the American Government - for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850
Author: Benton, Thomas Hart, 1782-1858
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2) - or, A History of the Working of the American Government - for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850" ***
Transcriber's note:
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Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
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* * * * *
[Illustration: titlepage]
[Illustration: _J. Rodgers, sc._
_View of the Senate of the United States in Session._
M^{R.} BENTON ON THE FLOOR.
_from a large Engraving Published by E. Anthony_
New York, D Appleton & C^{o.}]
THIRTY YEARS' VIEW;
OR,
A HISTORY OF THE WORKING OF THE AMERICAN
GOVERNMENT FOR THIRTY YEARS,
FROM 1820 TO 1850.
CHIEFLY TAKEN
FROM THE CONGRESS DEBATES, THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF GENERAL JACKSON,
AND THE SPEECHES OF EX-SENATOR BENTON, WITH HIS
ACTUAL VIEW OF MEN AND AFFAIRS:
WITH
HISTORICAL NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS, AND SOME NOTICES OF EMINENT
DECEASED COTEMPORARIES.
BY A SENATOR OF THIRTY YEARS.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET.
LONDON: 16 LITTLE BRITAIN.
1883.
Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1856, by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New York.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.
CHAP. PAGE
I. Inauguration of Mr. Van Buren 7
II. Financial and Monetary Crisis--General Suspension
of Specie Payments by the Banks 9
III. Preparation for the Distress and Suspension 11
IV. Progress of the Distress, and Preliminaries
for the Suspension 16
V. Actual Suspension of the Banks--Propagation
of the Alarm 20
VI. Transmigration of the Bank of the United
States from a Federal to a State Institution 23
VII. Effects of the Suspension--General Derangement
of Business--Suppression and Ridicule
of the Specie Currency--Submission
of the People--Call of Congress 26
VIII. Extra Session--Message, and Recommendations 28
IX. Attacks on the Message--Treasury Notes 32
X. Retention of the Fourth Deposit Instalment 36
XI. Independent Treasury and Hard Money Payments 39
XII. Attempted Resumption of Specie Payments 42
XIII. Bankrupt Act against Banks 43
XIV. Bankrupt Act for Banks--Mr. Benton's
Speech 45
XV. Divorce of Bank and State--Mr. Benton's
Speech 56
XVI. First Regular Session under Mr. Van Buren's
Administration--His Message 65
XVII. Pennsylvania Bank of the United States--Its
Use of the Defunct Notes of the expired
Institution 67
XVIII. Florida Indian War--Its Origin and Conduct 70
XIX. Florida Indian War--Historical Speech of
Mr. Benton 72
XX. Resumption of Specie Payments by the New
York Banks 83
XXI. Resumption of Specie Payments--Historical
Notices--Mr. Benton's Speech--Extracts 85
XXII. Mr. Clay's Resolution in Favor of Resuming
Banks, and Mr. Benton's Remarks
upon it 91
XXIII. Resumption by the Pennsylvania United
States Bank; and others which followed
her lead 94
XXIV. Proposed Annexation of Texas--Mr. Preston's
Motion and Speech--Extracts 94
XXV. Debate between Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun,
Personal and Political, and leading
to Expositions and Vindications of
Public Conduct which belong to History 97
XXVI. Debate between Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun--Mr.
Clay's Speech--Extracts 101
XXVII. Debate between Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun--Mr.
Calhoun's Speech--Extracts 103
XXVIII. Debate between Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun--Rejoinders
by each 112
XXIX. Independent Treasury, or, Divorce of
Bank and State--Passed in the Senate--Lost
in the House of Representatives 124
XXX. Public Lands--Graduation of Price--Pre-emption
System--Taxation when Sold 125
XXXI. Specie Basis for Banks--One-third of the
Amount of Liabilities the Lowest Safe
Proportion--Speech of Mr. Benton on
the Recharter of the District Banks 128
XXXII. The North and the South--Comparative
Prosperity--Southern Discontent--Its
True Cause 130
XXXIII. Progress of the Slavery Agitation--Mr. Calhoun's
Approval of the Missouri Compromise 134
XXXIV. Death of Commodore Rodgers, and Notice
of his Life and Character 144
XXXV. Anti-duelling Act 148
XXXVI. Slavery Agitation in the House of Representatives,
and Retiring of Southern
Members from the Hall 150
XXXVII. Abolitionists Classified by Mr. Clay--Ultras
Denounced--Slavery Agitators
North and South Equally denounced
as Dangerous to the Union 154
XXXVIII. Bank of the United States--Resignation
of Mr. Biddle--Final Suspension 157
XXXIX. First Session Twenty-sixth Congress--Members--
Organization--Political Map of the House 158
XL. First Session of the Twenty-sixth Congress--President's
Message 162
XLI. Divorce of Bank and State--Divorce decreed 164
XLII. Florida Armed Occupation Bill--Mr.
Benton's Speech--Extracts 167
XLIII. Assumption of the State Debts 171
XLIV. Assumption of the State Debts--Mr. Benton's
Speech--Extracts 172
XLV. Death of General Samuel Smith, of Maryland;
and Notice of his Life and Character 176
XLVI. Salt--the Universality of its Supply--Mystery
and Indispensability of its Use--Tyranny
and Impiety of its Taxation--Speech
of Mr. Benton--Extracts 176
XLVII. Pairing off 178
XLVIII. Tax on Bank Notes--Mr. Benton's Speech--Extracts 179
XLIX. Liberation of Slaves belonging to American
Citizens in British Colonial Ports 182
L. Resignation of Senator Hugh Lawson
White of Tennessee--His Death--Some
Notice of his Life and Character 184
LI. Death of Ex-Senator Hayne of South Carolina--Notice
of his Life and Character 186
LII. Abolition of Specific Duties by the Compromise
Act of 1833--Its Error, and
Loss to the Revenue, shown by Experience 189
LIII. Refined Sugar and Rum Drawbacks--their
Abuse under the Compromise
Act of 1833--Mr. Benton's Speech 190
LIV. Fishing Bounties and Allowances, and
their Abuse--Mr. Benton's Speech--Extracts 194
LV. Expenditures of the Government 198
LVI. Expenses of the Government, Comparative
and Progressive, and Separated
from Extraordinaries 200
LVII. Death of Mr. Justice Barbour of the Supreme
Court, and Appointment of Peter
V. Daniel, Esq., in his place 202
LVIII. Presidential Election 203
LIX. Conclusion of Mr. Van Buren's Administration 207
LX. Inauguration of President Harrison--His
Cabinet--Call of Congress--and Death 209
LXI. Accession of the Vice-President to the
Presidency 211
LXII. Twenty-seventh Congress--First Session--List
of Members, and Organization of
the House 213
LXIII. First Message of Mr. Tyler to Congress,
and Mr. Clay's Programme of Business 215
LXIV. Repeal of the Independent Treasury Act 219
LXV. Repeal of the Independent Treasury Act--Mr.
Benton's Speech 220
LXVI. The Bankrupt Act--What it was--and
how it was Passed 229
LXVII. Bankrupt Bill--Mr. Benton's Speech--Extracts 234
LXVIII. Distribution of the Public Land Revenue,
and Assumption of the State
Debts 240
LXIX. Institution of the Hour Rule in Debate
in the House of Representatives--Its
Attempt, and Repulse in the Senate 247
LXX. Bill for the Relief of Mrs. Harrison,
Widow of the late President of the
United States 257
LXXI. Mrs. Harrison's Bill--Speech of Mr.
Benton--Extracts 262
LXXII. Abuse of the Naval Pension System--Vain
attempt to Correct it 265
LXXIII. Home Squadron, and Aid to Private
Steam Lines 271
LXXIV. Recharter of the District Banks--Mr.
Benton's Speech--Extracts 273
LXXV. Revolt in Canada--Border Sympathy--Firmness
of Mr. Van Buren--Public
Peace Endangered--and Preserved--Case
of McLeod 276
LXXVI. Destruction of the Caroline--Arrest and
Trial of McLeod--Mr. Benton's
Speech--Extracts 291
LXXVII. Refusal of the House to allow Recess
Committees 304
LXXVIII. Reduction of the Expense of Foreign
Missions by reducing the Number 305
LXXIX. Infringement of the Tariff Compromise
Act of 1833--Correction of Abuses in
Drawbacks 307
LXXX. National Bank--First Bill 317
LXXXI. Second Fiscal Agent--Bill Presented--Passed--Disapproved
by the President 331
LXXXII. Secret History of the Second Bill for a
Fiscal Agent, called Fiscal Corporation--Its
Origin with Mr. Tyler--Its
Progress through Congress under his
Lead--Its Rejection under his Veto 342
LXXXIII. The Veto Message hissed in the Senate
Galleries 350
LXXXIV. Resignation of Mr. Tyler's Cabinet 353
LXXXV. Repudiation of Mr. Tyler by the Whig
Party--their Manifesto--Counter
Manifesto by Mr. Caleb Cushing 357
LXXXVI. The Danish Sound Dues 362
LXXXVII. Last Notice of the Bank of the United
States 365
LXXXVIII. End and Results of the Extra Session 372
LXXXIX. First Annual Message of President Tyler 373
XC. Third Plan for a Fiscal Agent, called
Exchequer Board--Mr. Benton's
Speech against it--Extracts 376
XCI. The Third Fiscal Agent, entitled a
Board of Exchequer 394
XCII. Attempted Repeal of the Bankrupt Act 395
XCIII. Death of Lewis Williams, of North
Carolina, and Notice of his Life and
Character 396
XCIV. The Civil List Expenses--the Contingent
Expenses of Congress--and the
Revenue Collection Expense 397
XCV. Resignation and Valedictory of Mr. Clay 398
XCVI. Military Department--Progress of its Expense 404
XCVII. Paper Money Payments--Attempted by
the Federal Government--Resisted--Mr.
Benton's Speech 406
XCVIII. Case of the American Brig Creole with
Slaves for New Orleans, carried by Mutiny
into Nassau, and the Slaves Liberated 409
XCIX. Distress of the Treasury--Three Tariff Bills,
and Two Vetoes--End of the Compromise
Act 413
C. Mr. Tyler and the Whig Party--Confirmed
Separation 417
CI. Lord Ashburton's Mission, and the British
Treaty 420
CII. British Treaty--The Pretermitted Subjects--Mr.
Benton's Speech--Extracts 426
CIII. British Treaty--Northeastern Boundary
Article--Mr. Benton's Speech--Extracts 438
CIV. British Treaty--Northwestern Boundary--Mr.
Benton's Speech--Extracts 441
CV. British Treaty--Extradition Article--Mr.
Benton's Speech--Extract 444
CVI. British Treaty--African Squadron for the
Suppression of the Slave Trade--Mr.
Benton's Speech--Extract 449
CVII. Expense of the Navy--Waste of Money--Necessity
of a Naval Peace Establishment,
and of a Naval Policy 452
CVIII. Expenses of the Navy--Mr. Benton's Speech--Extracts 456
CIX. Message of the President at the Opening
of the Regular Session of 1842-'3 460
CX. Repeal of the Bankrupt Act--Mr. Benton's
Speech--Extracts 463
CXI. Military Academy and Army Expenses 466
CXII. Emigration to the Columbia River, and
Foundation of its Settlement by American
Citizens--Frémont's First Expedition 468
CXIII. Lieutenant Frémont's First Expedition--Speech,
and Motion of Senator Linn 478
CXIV. Oregon Colonization Act--Mr. Benton's
Speech 479
CXV. Navy Pay and Expenses--Proposed Reduction--Speech
of Mr. Meriwether, of Georgia--Extracts 482
CXVI. Eulogy on Senator Linn--Speeches of Mr.
Benton and Mr. Crittenden 485
CXVII. The Coast Survey--Attempt to diminish
its Expense, and to expedite its Completion
by restoring the Work to Naval and
Military Officers 487
CXVIII. Death of Commodore Porter, and Notice of
his Life and Character 491
CXIX. Refunding of General Jackson's Fine 499
CXX. Repeal of the Bankrupt Act--Attack of
Mr. Cushing on Mr. Clay--Its Rebuke 503
CXXI. Naval Expenditures and Administration--Attempts
at Reform--Abortive 507
CXXII. Chinese Mission--Mr. Cushing's Appointment
and Negotiation 510
CXXIII. The Alleged Mutiny, and the Executions
(as they were called) on Board the United
States man-of-war, Somers 522
CXXIV. Retirement of Mr. Webster from Mr.
Tyler's Cabinet 562
CXXV. Death of William H. Crawford 562
CXXVI. First Session of the Twenty-eighth
Congress--List of Members--Organization
of the House of Representatives 563
CXXVII. Mr. Tyler's Second Annual Message 565
CXXVIII. Explosion of the Great Gun on Board
the Princeton man-of-war--the Killed
and Wounded 567
CXXIX. Reconstruction of Mr. Tyler's Cabinet 569
CXXX. Death of Senator Porter, of Louisiana--Eulogium
of Mr. Benton 569
CXXXI. Naval Academy, and Naval Policy of
the United States 571
CXXXII. The Home Squadron--Its Inutility and
Expense 575
CXXXIII. Professor Morse--His Electro-Magnetic
Telegraph 578
CXXXIV. Frémont's Second Expedition 579
CXXXV. Texas Annexation--Secret Origin--Bold
Intrigue for the Presidency 581
CXXXVI. Democratic Convention for the Nomination
of Presidential Candidates 591
CXXXVII. Presidential--Democratic National Convention--Mr.
Calhoun's Refusal to
Submit his Name to it--His Reasons 596
CXXXVIII. Annexation of Texas--Secret Negotiation--Presidential
Intrigue--Schemes
of Speculation and Disunion 599
CXXXIX. Texas Annexation Treaty--First Speech
of Mr. Benton against it--Extracts 600
CXL. Texas or Disunion--Southern Convention--Mr.
Benton's Speech--Extracts 613
CXLI. Texas or Disunion--Violent Demonstrations
in the South--Southern Convention
proposed 616
CXLII. Rejection of the Annexation Treaty--Proposal
of Mr. Benton's Plan 619
CXLIII. Oregon Territory--Conventions of 1818
and 1828--Joint Occupation--Attempted
Notice to Terminate it 624
CXLIV. Presidential Election 625
CXLV. Amendment of the Constitution--Election
of President and Vice-President--Mr.
Benton's Plan 626
CXLVI. The President and the Senate--Want
of Concord--Numerous Rejections of
Nominations 629
CXLVII. Mr. Tyler's Last Message to Congress 631
CXLVIII. Legislative Admission of Texas into the
Union as a State 632
CXLIX. The War with Mexico--Its Cause--Charged
on the Conduct of Mr. Calhoun--Mr.
Benton's Speech 639
CL. Mr. Polk's Inaugural Address--Cabinet 649
CLI. Mr. Blair and the Globe superseded as
the Administration Organ--Mr. T. Ritchie
and the Daily Union substituted 650
CLII. Twenty-ninth Congress--List of Members--First
Session--Organization of
the House 655
CLIII. Mr. Polk's First Annual Message to
Congress 657
CLIV. Death of John Forsyth 659
CLV. Admission of Florida and Iowa 660
CLVI. Oregon Treaty--Negotiations commenced,
and broken off 660
CLVII. Oregon Question--Notice to abrogate the
Article in the Treaty for a Joint Occupation--The
President denounced in
the Senate for a supposed Leaning to
the Line of Forty-nine 662
CLVIII. Oregon Territorial Government--Boundaries
and History of the Country--Frazer's
River--Treaty of Utrecht--Mr.
Benton's Speech--Extracts 667
CLIX. Oregon Joint Occupation--Notice authorized
for terminating it--British Government
offers the Line of 49--Quandary of
the Administration--Device--Senate
Consulted--Treaty made and Ratified 673
CLX. Meeting of the Second Session of the 29th
Congress--President's Message--Vigorous
Prosecution of the War Recommended--Lieutenant-general
proposed to be created 677
CLXI. War with Mexico--The War Declared,
and an Intrigue for Peace commenced
the same Day 679
CLXII. Bloodless Conquest of New Mexico--How
it was Done--Subsequent Bloody Insurrection,
and its Cause 682
CLXIII. Mexican War--Doniphan's Expedition--Mr.
Benton's Salutatory Address, St.
Louis, Missouri 684
CLXIV. Frémont's Third Expedition, and Acquisition
of California 688
CLXV. Pause in the War--Sedentary Tactics--"Masterly
Inactivity" 693
CLXVI. The Wilmot Proviso--Or, Prohibition of
Slavery in the Territories--Its Inutility
and Mischief 694
CLXVII. Mr. Calhoun's Slavery Resolutions, and
Denial of the Right of Congress to Prohibit
Slavery in a Territory 696
CLXVIII. The Slavery Agitation--Disunion--Key
to Mr. Calhoun's Policy--Forcing the
Issue--Mode of Forcing it 698
CLXIX. Death of Silas Wright, Ex-Senator and
Ex-Governor of New York 700
CLXX. Thirtieth Congress--First Session--List of
Members--President's Message 702
CLXXI. Death of Senator Barrow--Mr. Benton's
Eulogium 706
CLXXII. Death of Mr. Adams 707
CLXXIII. Downfall of Santa Anna--New Government
in Mexico--Peace Negotiations--Treaty
of Peace 709
CLXXIV. Oregon Territorial Government--Anti-Slavery
Ordinance of 1787 applied to
Oregon Territory--Missouri Compromise
Line of 1820, and the Texas Annexation
Renewal of it in 1845, affirmed 711
CLXXV. Mr. Calhoun's New Dogma on Territorial
Slavery--Self-extension of the Slavery
Part of the Constitution to Territories 713
CLXXVI. Court-martial of Lieutenant-colonel Frémont 715
CLXXVII. Frémont's Fourth Expedition, and Great
Disaster in the Snows at the Head of
the Rio Grande del Norte--Subsequent
Discovery of the Pass he sought 719
CLXXVIII. Presidential Election 722
CLXXIX. Last Message of Mr. Polk 724
CLXXX. Financial Working of the Government
under the Hard Money System 726
CLXXXI. Coast Survey--Belongs to the Navy--Converted
into a Separate Department--Expense
and Interminability--Should
be done by the Navy,
as in Great Britain--Mr. Benton's
Speech--Extract 726
CLXXXII. Proposed Extension of the Constitution
of the United States to the Territories,
with a View to make it carry
Slavery into California, Utah and
New Mexico 729
CLXXXIII. Progress of the Slavery Agitation--Meeting
of Members from the Slave
States--Inflammatory Address to
the Southern States 733
CLXXXIV. Inauguration of President Taylor--His
Cabinet 737
CLXXXV. Death of Ex-President Polk 737
CLXXXVI. Thirty-first Congress--First Session--List
of Members--Organization of
the House 738
CLXXXVII. First and only Annual Message of
President Taylor 740
CLXXXVIII. Mr. Clay's Plan of Compromise 742
CLXXXIX. Extension of the Missouri Compromise
Line to the Pacific Ocean--Mr.
Davis, of Mississippi, and Mr.
Clay--The Wilmot Proviso 743
CXC. Mr. Calhoun's Last Speech--Dissolution
of the Union proclaimed unless
the Constitution was amended,
and a Dual Executive appointed--one
President from the Slave States
and one from the Free States 744
CXCI. Death of Mr. Calhoun--His Eulogium
by Senator Butler 747
CXCII. Mr. Clay's Plan of Slavery Compromise--Mr.
Benton's Speech Against
it--Extracts 749
CXCIII. Death of President Taylor 765
CXCIV. Inauguration and Cabinet of Mr. Fillmore 767
CXCV. Rejection of Mr. Clay's Plan of Compromise 768
CXCVI. The Admission of the State of California--Protest
of Southern Senators--Remarks
upon it by Mr. Benton 769
CXCVII. Fugitive Slaves; Ordinance of 1787--The
Constitution--Act of 1793--Act
of 1850 773
CXCVIII. Disunion Movements--Southern Press
at Washington--Southern Convention
at Nashville--Southern Congress
called for by South Carolina
and Mississippi 780
CXCIX. The Supreme Court--Its Judges,
Clerk, Attorney-Generals, Reporters
and Marshals during the Period
treated of in this Volume 787
CC. Conclusion 787
THIRTY YEARS' VIEW.
ADMINISTRATION OF MARTIN VAN BUREN.
CHAPTER I.
INAUGURATION OF MR. VAN BUREN.
March the 4th of this year, Mr. Van Buren was inaugurated President
of the United States with the usual formalities, and conformed to
the usage of his predecessors in delivering a public address on the
occasion: a declaration of general principles, and an indication
of the general course of the administration, were the tenor of his
discourse: and the doctrines of the democratic school, as understood
at the original formation of parties, were those professed. Close
observance of the federal constitution as written--no latitudinarian
constructions permitted, or doubtful powers assumed--faithful
adherence to all its compromises--economy in the administration of
the government--peace, friendship and fair dealing with all foreign
nations--entangling alliances with none: such was his political
chart: and with the expression of his belief that a perseverance
in this line of foreign policy, with an increased strength, tried
valor of the people, and exhaustless resources of the country,
would entitle us to the good will of nations, protect our national
respectability, and secure us from designed aggression from foreign
powers. His expressions and views on this head deserve to be
commemorated, and to be considered by all those into whose hands the
management of the public affairs may go; and are, therefore, here
given in his own words:
"Our course of foreign policy has been so uniform and
intelligible, as to constitute a rule of executive conduct
which leaves little to my discretion, unless, indeed, I were
willing to run counter to the lights of experience, and the
known opinions of my constituents. We sedulously cultivate the
friendship of all nations, as the condition most compatible
with our welfare, and the principles of our government. We
decline alliances, as adverse to our peace. We desire commercial
relations on equal terms, being ever willing to give a fair
equivalent for advantages received. We endeavor to conduct our
intercourse with openness and sincerity; promptly avowing our
objects, and seeking to establish that mutual frankness which is
as beneficial in the dealings of nations as of men. We have no
disposition, and we disclaim all right, to meddle in disputes,
whether internal or foreign, that may molest other countries;
regarding them, in their actual state, as social communities,
and preserving a strict neutrality in all their controversies.
Well knowing the tried valor of our people, and our exhaustless
resources, we neither anticipate nor fear any designed
aggression; and, in the consciousness of our own just conduct,
we feel a security that we shall never be called upon to exert
our determination, never to permit an invasion of our rights,
without punishment or redress."
These are sound and encouraging views, and in adherence to them,
promise to the United States a career of peace and prosperity
comparatively free from the succession of wars which have loaded
so many nations with debt and taxes, filled them with so many
pensioners and paupers, created so much necessity for permanent
fleets and armies; and placed one half the population in the
predicament of living upon the labor of the other. The stand which
the United States had acquired among nations by the vindication of
her rights against the greatest powers--and the manner in which
all unredressed aggressions, and all previous outstanding injuries,
even of the oldest date, had been settled up and compensated under
the administration of President Jackson--authorized this language
from Mr. Van Buren; and the subsequent conduct of nations has
justified it. Designed aggression, within many years, has come from
no great power: casual disagreements and accidental injuries admit
of arrangement: weak neighbors can find no benefit to themselves
in wanton aggression, or refusal of redress for accidental wrong:
isolation (a continent, as it were, to ourselves) is security
against attack; and our railways would accumulate rapid destruction
upon any invader. These advantages, and strict adherence to the
rule, to ask only what is right, and submit to nothing wrong, will
leave us (we have reason to believe) free from hostile collision
with foreign powers, free from the necessity of keeping up war
establishments of army and navy in time of peace, with our great
resources left in the pockets of the people (always the safest and
cheapest national treasuries), to come forth when public exigencies
require them, and ourselves at liberty to pursue an unexampled
career of national and individual prosperity.
One single subject of recently revived occurrence in our domestic
concerns, and of portentous apparition, admitted a departure from
the generalities of an inaugural address, and exacted from the
new President the notice of a special declaration: it was the
subject of slavery--an alarming subject of agitation near twenty
years before--quieted by the Missouri compromise--resuscitated in
1835, as shown in previous chapters of this View; and apparently
taking its place as a permanent and most pestiferous element in
our presidential elections and federal legislation. It had largely
mixed with the presidential election of the preceding year: it was
expected to mix with ensuing federal legislation: and its evil
effect upon the harmony and stability of the Union justified the
new President in making a special declaration in relation to it,
and even in declaring beforehand the cases of slavery legislation
in which he would apply the qualified negative with which the
constitution invested him over the acts of Congress. Under this
sense of duty and propriety the inaugural address presented this
passage:
"The last, perhaps the greatest, of the prominent sources of
discord and disaster supposed to lurk in our political condition,
was the institution of domestic slavery. Our forefathers were deeply
impressed with the delicacy of this subject, and they treated it
with a forbearance so evidently wise, that, in spite of every
sinister foreboding, it never, until the present period disturbed
the tranquillity of our common country. Such a result is sufficient
evidence of the justice and the patriotism of their course; it is
evidence not to be mistaken, that an adherence to it can prevent all
embarrassment from this, as well as from every other anticipated
cause of difficulty or danger. Have not recent events made it
obvious to the slightest reflection, that the least deviation from
this spirit of forbearance is injurious to every interest, that of
humanity included? Amidst the violence of excited passions, this
generous and fraternal feeling has been sometimes disregarded;
and, standing as I now do before my countrymen in this high place
of honor and of trust, I cannot refrain from anxiously invoking my
fellow-citizens never to be deaf to its dictates. Perceiving, before
my election, the deep interest this subject was beginning to excite,
I believed it a solemn duty fully to make known my sentiments in
regard to it; and now, when every motive for misrepresentations
have passed away, I trust that they will be candidly weighed and
understood. At least, they will be my standard of conduct in the
path before me. I then declared that, if the desire of those of my
countrymen who were favorable to my election was gratified, 'I must
go into the presidential chair the inflexible and uncompromising
opponent of every attempt, on the part of Congress, to abolish
slavery in the District of Columbia, against the wishes of the
slaveholding States; and also with a determination equally decided
to resist the slightest interference with it in the States where
it exists.' I submitted also to my fellow-citizens, with fulness
and frankness, the reasons which led me to this determination. The
result authorizes me to believe that they have been approved, and
are confided in, by a majority of the people of the United States,
including those whom they most immediately affect. It now only
remains to add, that no bill conflicting with these views can ever
receive my constitutional sanction. These opinions have been adopted
in the firm belief that they are in accordance with the spirit that
actuated the venerated fathers of the republic, and that succeeding
experience has proved them to be humane, patriotic, expedient,
honorable and just. If the agitation of this subject was intended
to reach the stability of our institutions, enough has occurred to
show that it has signally failed; and that in this, as in every
other instance, the apprehensions of the timid and the hopes of the
wicked for the destruction of our government, are again destined to
be disappointed."
The determination here declared to yield the presidential sanction
to no bill which proposed to interfere with slavery in the States;
or to abolish it in the District of Columbia while it existed in
the adjacent States, met the evil as it then presented itself--a
fear on the part of some of the Southern States that their rights of
property were to be endangered by federal legislation: and against
which danger the veto power was now pledged to be opposed. There was
no other form at that time in which slavery agitation could manifest
itself, or place on which it could find a point to operate--the
ordinance of 1787, and the compromise of 1820, having closed up the
Territories against it. Danger to slave property in the States,
either by direct action, or indirectly through the District of
Columbia, were the only points of expressed apprehension; and
at these there was not the slightest ground for fear. No one in
Congress dreamed of interfering with slavery in the States, and the
abortion of all the attempts made to abolish it in the District,
showed the groundlessness of that fear. The pledged veto was not a
necessity, but a propriety;--not necessary, but prudential;--not
called for by anything in congress, but outside of it. In that
point of view it was wise and prudent. It took from agitation its
point of support--its means of acting on the fears and suspicions
of the timid and credulous: and it gave to the country a season of
repose and quiet from this disturbing question until a new point of
agitation could be discovered and seized.
The cabinet remained nearly as under the previous administration:
Mr. Forsyth, Secretary of State; Mr. Woodbury, Secretary of the
Treasury; Mr. Poinsett, Secretary at War; Mr. Mahlon Dickerson,
Secretary of the Navy; Mr. Amos Kendall, Postmaster General; and
Benjamin F. Butler, Esq. Attorney General. Of all these Mr. Poinsett
was the only new appointment. On the bench of the Supreme Court,
John Catron, Esq. of Tennessee, and John McKinley, Esq. of Alabama,
were appointed Justices; William Smith, formerly senator in Congress
from South Carolina, having declined the appointment which was
filled by Mr. McKinley. Mr. Butler soon resigning his place of
Attorney General, Henry D. Gilpin, Esq. of Pennsylvania (after a
temporary appointment of Felix Grundy, Esq. of Tennessee), became
the Attorney General during the remainder of the administration.
CHAPTER II.
FINANCIAL AND MONETARY CRISIS: GENERAL SUSPENSION OF SPECIE
PAYMENTS BY THE BANKS.
The nascent administration of the new President was destined to
be saluted by a rude shock, and at the point most critical to
governments as well as to individuals--that of deranged finances and
broken-up treasury; and against the dangers of which I had in vain
endeavored to warn our friends. A general suspension of the banks,
a depreciated currency, and the insolvency of the federal treasury,
were at hand. Visible signs, and some confidential information,
portended to me this approaching calamity, and my speeches in the
Senate were burthened with its vaticination. Two parties, inimical
to the administration, were at work to accomplish it--politicians
and banks; and well able to succeed, because the government money
was in the hands of the banks, and the federal legislation in the
hands of the politicians; and both interested in the overthrow of
the party in power;--and the overthrow of the finances the obvious
means to the accomplishment of the object. The public moneys had
been withdrawn from the custody of the Bank of the United States:
the want of an independent, or national treasury, of necessity,
placed them in the custody of the local banks: and the specie order
of President Jackson having been rescinded by the Act of Congress,
the notes of all these banks, and of all others in the country,
amounting to nearly a thousand, became receivable in payment of
public dues. The deposit banks became filled up with the notes of
these multitudinous institutions, constituting that surplus, the
distribution of which had become an engrossing care with Congress,
and ended with effecting the object under the guise of a deposit
with the States. I recalled the recollection of the times of
1818-19, when the treasury reports of one year showed a superfluity
of revenue for which there was no want, and of the next a deficit
which required to be relieved by a loan; and argued that we must now
have the same result from the bloat in the paper system which we
then had. I demanded--
"Are we not at this moment, and from the same cause, realizing the
first part--the illusive and treacherous part--of this picture? and
must not the other, the sad and real sequel, speedily follow? The
day of revulsion must come, and its effects must be more or less
disastrous; but come it must. The present bloat in the paper system
cannot continue: violent contraction must follow enormous expansion:
a scene of distress and suffering must ensue--to come of itself out
of the present state of things, without being stimulated and helped
on by our unwise legislation."
Of the act which rescinded the specie order, and made the notes of
the local banks receivable in payment of all federal dues, I said:
"This bill is to be an era in our legislation and in our political
history. It is to be a point on which the view of the future age
is to be thrown back, and from which future consequences will be
traced. I separate myself from it: I wash my hands of it: I oppose
it. I am one of those who promised gold--not paper. I promised the
currency of the constitution, not the currency of corporations. I
did not join in putting down the Bank of the United States to put
up a wilderness of local banks. I did not join in putting down
the paper currency of a national bank, to put up a national paper
currency of a thousand local banks. I did not strike Cæsar to make
Antony master of Rome."
The condition of our deposit banks was desperate--wholly inadequate
to the slightest pressure on their vaults in the ordinary course
of business, much less that of meeting the daily government drafts
and the approaching deposit of near forty millions with the States.
The necessity of keeping one-third of specie on hand for its
immediate liabilities, was enforced from the example and rule of
the Bank of England, while many of our deposit banks could show but
the one-twentieth, the one-thirtieth, the one-fortieth, and even
the one-fiftieth of specie in hand for immediate liabilities in
circulation and deposits. The sworn evidence of a late Governor of
the Bank of England (Mr. Horsely Palmer), before a parliamentary
committee, was read, in which he testified that the average
proportion of coin and bullion which the bank deems it prudent to
keep on hand, was at the rate of the third of the total amount of
all her liabilities--including deposits as well as issues. And this
was the proportion which that bank deemed it prudent to keep--that
bank which was the largest in the world, situated in the moneyed
metropolis of Europe, with its list of debtors within the circuit
of London, supported by the richest merchants in the world, and
backed by the British government, which stood her security for
fourteen millions sterling, and ready with her supply of exchequer
bills (the interest to be raised to insure sales), at any moment
of emergency. Tested by the rule of the Bank of England, and our
deposit banks were in the jaws of destruction; and this so evident
to me, that I was amazed that others did not see it--those of our
friends who voted with the opponents of the administration in
rescinding the specie order, and in making the deposit with the
States. The latter had begun to take effect, at the rate of about
ten millions to the quarter, on the first day of January preceding
Mr. Van Buren's inauguration: a second ten millions were to be
called for on the first of April: and like sums on the first days
of the two remaining quarters. It was utterly impossible for the
banks to stand these drafts; and, having failed in all attempts to
wake up our friends, who were then in the majority, to a sense of
the danger which was impending, and to arrest their ruinous voting
with the opposition members (which most of them did), I determined
to address myself to the President elect, under the belief that,
although he would not be able to avert the blow, he might do much
to soften its force and avert its consequences, when it did come.
It was in the month of February, while Mr. Van Buren was still
President of the Senate, that I invited him into a committee room
for that purpose, and stated to him my opinion that we were on the
eve of an explosion of the paper system and of a general suspension
of the banks--intending to follow up that expression of opinion with
the exposition of my reasons for thinking so: but the interview
came to a sudden and unexpected termination. Hardly had I expressed
my belief of this impending catastrophe, than he spoke up, and
said, "Your friends think you a little exalted in the head on that
subject." I said no more. I was miffed. We left the room together,
talking on different matters, and I saying to myself, "_You will
soon feel the thunderbolt._" But I have since felt that I was
too hasty, and that I ought to have carried out my intention of
making a full exposition of the moneyed affairs of the country. His
habitual courtesy, from which the expression quoted was a most rare
departure, and his real regard for me, both personal and political
(for at that time he was pressing me to become a member of his
cabinet), would have insured me a full hearing, if I had shown a
disposition to go on; and his clear intellect would have seized and
appreciated the strong facts and just inferences which would have
been presented to him. But I stopped short, as if I had nothing
more to say, from that feeling of self-respect which silences a
man of some pride when he sees that what he says is not valued. I
have regretted my hastiness ever since. It was of the utmost moment
that the new President should have his eyes opened to the dangers
of the treasury, and my services on the Committee of Finance had
given me opportunities of knowledge which he did not possess.
Forewarned is forearmed; and never was there a case in which the
maxim more impressively applied. He could not have prevented the
suspension: the repeal of the specie circular and the deposit
with the States (both measures carried by the help of votes from
professing friends), had put that measure into the hands of those
who would be sure to use it: but he could have provided against it,
and prepared for it, and lessened the force of the blow when it did
come. He might have quickened the vigilance of the Secretary of
the Treasury--might have demanded additional securities from the
deposit banks--and might have drawn from them the moneys called
for by appropriation acts. There was a sum of about five millions
which might have been saved with a stroke of the pen, being the
aggregate of sums drawn from the treasury by the numerous disbursing
officers, and left in the banks in their own names for daily current
payments: an order to these officers would have saved these five
millions, and prevented the disgrace and damage of a stoppage in the
daily payments, and the spectacle of a government waking up in the
morning without a dollar to pay the day-laborer with, while placing
on its statute book a law for the distribution of forty millions of
surplus. Measures like these, and others which a prudent vigilance
would have suggested, might have enabled the government to continue
its payments without an extra session of Congress, and without the
mortification of capitulating to the broken banks, by accepting and
paying out their depreciated notes as the currency of the federal
treasury.
CHAPTER III.
PREPARATION FOR THE DISTRESS AND SUSPENSION.
In the autumn of the preceding year, shortly before the meeting of
Congress, Mr. Biddle, president of the Pennsylvania Bank of the
United States (for that was the ridiculous title it assumed after
its resurrection under a Pennsylvania charter), issued one of those
characteristic letters which were habitually promulgated whenever
a new lead was to be given out, and a new scent emitted for the
followers of the bank to run upon. A new distress, as the pretext
for a new catastrophe, was now the object. A picture of ruin was
presented, alarm given out, every thing going to destruction; and
the federal government the cause of the whole, and the _national_
recharter of the defunct bank the sovereign remedy. The following is
an extract from that letter.
"The Bank of the United States has not ceased to exist more
than seven months, and already the whole currency and exchanges
are running into inextricable confusion, and the industry
of the country is burdened with extravagant charges on all
the commercial intercourse of the Union. And now, when these
banks have been created by the Executive, and urged into these
excesses, instead of gentle and gradual remedies, a fierce
crusade is raised against them, the funds are harshly and
suddenly taken from them, and they are forced to extraordinary
means of defense against the very power which brought them
into being. They received, and were expected to receive, in
payment for the government, the notes of each other and the
notes of other banks, and the facility with which they did so
was a ground of special commendation by the government; and now
that government has let loose upon them a demand for specie
to the whole amount of these notes. I go further. There is an
outcry abroad, raised by faction, and echoed by folly, against
the banks of the United States. Until it was disturbed by the
government, the banking system of the United States was at
least as good as that of any other commercial country. What
was desired for its perfection was precisely what I have so
long striven to accomplish--to widen the metallic basis of
the currency by a greater infusion of coin into the smaller
channels of circulation. This was in a gradual and judicious
train of accomplishment. But this miserable foolery about an
exclusively metallic currency, is quite as absurd as to discard
the steamboats, and go back to poling up the Mississippi."
The lead thus given out was sedulously followed during the winter,
both in Congress and out of it, and at the end of the session had
reached an immense demonstration in New York, in the preparations
made to receive Mr. Webster, and to hear a speech from him, on
his return from Washington. He arrived in New York on the 15th of
March, and the papers of the city give this glowing account of his
reception:
"In conformity with public announcement, yesterday, at about
half past 3 o'clock, the Honorable DANIEL WEBSTER arrived in
this city in the steamboat Swan from Philadelphia. The intense
desire on the part of the citizens to give a grateful reception
to this great advocate of the constitution, set the whole city
in motion towards the point of debarkation, for nearly an hour
before the arrival of the distinguished visitor. At the moment
when the steamboat reached the pier, the assemblage had attained
that degree of density and anxiety to witness the landing, that
it was feared serious consequences would result. At half past
3 o'clock Mr. Webster, accompanied by Philip Hone and David B.
Ogden, landed from the boat amidst the deafening cheers and
plaudits of the multitude, thrice repeated, and took his seat
in an open barouche provided for the occasion. The procession,
consisting of several hundred citizens upon horseback, a large
train of carriages and citizens, formed upon State street,
and after receiving their distinguished guest, proceeded with
great order up Broadway to the apartments arranged for his
reception at the American Hotel. The scene presented the most
gratifying spectacle. Hundreds of citizens who had been opposed
to Mr. Webster in politics, now that he appeared as a private
individual, came forth to demonstrate their respect for his
private worth and to express their approbation of his personal
character; and thousands more who appreciated his principles and
political integrity, crowded around to convince him of their
personal attachment, and give evidence of their approval of
his public acts. The wharves, the shipping, the housetops and
windows, and the streets through which the procession passed,
were thronged with citizens of every occupation and degree,
and loud and continued cheers greeted the great statesman at
every point. There was not a greater number at the reception
of General Jackson in this city, with the exception of the
military, nor a greater degree of enthusiasm manifested upon
that occasion, than the arrival upon our shores of Daniel
Webster. At 6 o'clock in the evening, the anxious multitude
began to move towards Niblo's saloon, where Mr. Webster was to
be addressed by the committee of citizens delegated for that
purpose, and to which it was expected he would reply. A large
body of officers were upon the ground to keep the assemblage
within bounds, and at a quarter past six the doors were opened,
when the saloon, garden, and avenues leading thereto were
instantly crowded to overflowing.
The meeting was called to order by Alderman Clark, who proposed
for president, David B. Ogden, which upon being put to vote was
unanimously adopted. The following gentlemen were then elected
vice-presidents, viz: Robert C. Cornell, Jonathan Goodhue,
Joseph Tucker, Nathaniel Weed; and Joseph Hoxie and G. S.
Robins, secretaries.
Mr. W. began his remarks at a quarter before seven o'clock,
P.M. and concluded them at a quarter past nine. When he entered
the saloon, he was received with the most deafening cheers. The
hall rang with the loud plaudits of the crowd, and every hat was
waving. So great was the crowd in the galleries, and such was
the apprehension that the apparently weak wooden columns which
supported would give way, that Mr. W. was twice interrupted
with the appalling cry "_the galleries are falling_," when only
a window was broken, or a stove-pipe shaken. The length of the
address (two and a half hours), none too long, however, for the
audience would with pleasure have tarried two hours longer,
compels us to give at present only the heads of a speech which
we would otherwise now report in detail."
Certainly Mr. Webster was worthy of all honors in the great city
of New York; but having been accustomed to pass through that
city several times in every year during the preceding quarter
of a century, and to make frequent sojourns there, and to speak
thereafter, and in all the characters of politician, social guest,
and member of the bar,--it is certain that neither his person nor
his speaking could be such a novelty and rarity as to call out upon
his arrival so large a meeting as is here described, invest it with
so much form, fire it with so much enthusiasm, fill it with so much
expectation, unless there had been some large object in view--some
great effect to be produced--some consequence to result: and of
all which this imposing demonstration was at once the sign and the
initiative. No holiday occasion, no complimentary notice, no feeling
of personal regard, could have called forth an assemblage so vast,
and inspired it with such deep and anxious emotions. It required
a public object, a general interest, a pervading concern, and a
serious apprehension of some uncertain and fearful future, to call
out and organize such a mass--not of the young, the ardent, the
heedless--but of the age, the character, the talent, the fortune,
the gravity of the most populous and opulent city of the Union. It
was as if the population of a great city, in terror of some great
impending unknown calamity, had come forth to get consolation and
counsel from a wise man--to ask him what was to happen? and what
they were to do? And so in fact it was, as fully disclosed in the
address with which the orator was saluted, and in the speech of
two hours and a half which he made in response to it. The address
was a deprecation of calamities; the speech was responsive to the
address--admitted every thing that could be feared--and charged
the whole upon the mal-administration of the federal government. A
picture of universal distress was portrayed, and worse coming; and
the remedy for the whole the same which had been presented in Mr.
Biddle's letter--the recharter of _the_ national bank. The speech
was a manifesto against the Jackson administration, and a protest
against its continuation in the person of his successor, and an
invocation to a general combination against it. All the banks were
sought to be united, and made to stand together upon a sense of
common danger--the administration their enemy, the national bank
their protection. Every industrial pursuit was pictured as crippled
and damaged by bad government. Material injury to private interests
were still more vehemently charged than political injuries to the
body politic. In the deplorable picture which it presented of the
condition of every industrial pursuit, and especially in the "war"
upon the banks and the currency, it seemed to be a justificatory
pleading in advance for a general shutting up of their doors,
and the shutting up of the federal treasury at the same time. In
this sense, and on this point, the speech contained this ominous
sentence, more candid than discreet, taken in connection with what
was to happen:
"_Remember, gentlemen, in the midst of this deafening din against
all banks, that if it shall create such a panic, or such alarm, as
shall shut up the banks, it will shut up the treasury of the United
States also._"
The whole tenor of the speech was calculated to produce discontent,
create distress, and excite alarm--discontent and distress for
present sufferings--alarm for the greater, which were to come. This
is a sample:
"Gentlemen, I would not willingly be a prophet of ill. I most
devoutly wish to see a better state of things; and I believe the
repeal of the treasury order would tend very much to bring about
that better state of things. And I am of opinion, gentlemen,
that the order will be repealed. I think it must be repealed. I
think the east, west, north and south, will demand its repeal.
But, gentlemen, I feel it my duty to say, that if I should be
disappointed in this expectation, I see no immediate relief to
the distresses of the community. I greatly fear, even, that the
worst is not yet. I look for severer distresses; for extreme
difficulties in exchange; for far greater inconveniences in
remittance, and for a sudden fall in prices. Our condition is
one not to be tampered with, and the repeal of the treasury
order being something which government can do, and which will do
good, the public voice is right in demanding that repeal. It is
true, if repealed now, the relief will come late. Nevertheless
its repeal or abrogation is a thing to be insisted on, and
pursued till it shall be accomplished."
The speech concluded with an earnest exhortation to the citizens of
New York to do something, without saying what, but which with my
misgivings and presentiments, the whole tenor of the speech and the
circumstances which attended it--delivered in the moneyed metropolis
of the Union, at a time when there was no political canvass
depending, and the ominous omission to name what was required to
be done--appeared to me to be an invitation to the New York banks
to close their doors! which being done by them would be an example
followed throughout the Union, and produce the consummation of a
universal suspension. The following is that conclusion:
"Whigs of New York! Patriotic citizens of this great
metropolis!--Lovers of constitutional liberty, bound by interest
and affection to the institutions of your country, Americans
in heart and in principle! You are ready, I am sure, to fulfil
all the duties imposed upon you by your situation, and demanded
of you by your country. You have a central position; your city
is the point from which intelligence emanates, and spreads in
all directions over the whole land. Every hour carries reports
of your sentiments and opinions to the verge of the Union. You
cannot escape the responsibility which circumstances have thrown
upon you. You must live and act on a broad and conspicuous
theatre either for good or for evil, to your country. You cannot
shrink away from public duties; you cannot obscure yourselves,
nor bury your talent. In the common welfare, in the common
prosperity, in the common glory of Americans, you have a stake,
of value not to be calculated. You have an interest in the
preservation of the Union, of the constitution, and of the true
principles of the government, which no man can estimate. You
act for yourselves, and for the generations that are to come
after you; and those who, ages hence, shall bear your names,
and partake your blood, will feel in their political and social
condition, the consequences of the manner in which you discharge
your political duties."
The appeal for action in this paragraph is vehement. It takes every
form of violent desire which is known to the art of entreaty.
Supplication, solicitation, remonstrance, importunity, prayer,
menace! until rising to the dignity of a debt due from a moneyed
metropolis to an expectant community, he demanded payment as matter
of right! and enforced the demand as an obligation of necessity, as
well as of duty, and from which such a community could not escape,
if it would. The nature of the action which was so vehemently
desired, could not be mistaken. I hold it a fair interpretation of
this appeal that it was an exhortation to the business population
of the commercial metropolis of the Union to take the initiative
in suspending specie payments, and a justificatory manifesto for
doing so; and that the speech itself was the first step in the grand
performance: and so it seemed to be understood. It was received
with unbounded applause, lauded to the skies, cheered to the echo,
carefully and elaborately prepared for publication,--published
and republished in newspaper and pamphlet form; and universally
circulated. This was in the first month of Mr. Van Buren's
presidency, and it will be seen what the second one brought forth.
The specie circular--that treasury order of President Jackson,
which saved the public lands from being converted into broken bank
paper--was the subject of repeated denunciatory reference--very
erroneous, as the event has proved, in its estimate of the measure;
but quite correct in its history, and amusing in its reference to
some of the friends of the administration who undertook to act a
part for and against the rescission of the order at the same time.
"Mr. Webster then came to the treasury circular, and related the
history of the late legislation upon it. 'A member of Congress,'
said he, 'prepared this very treasury order in 1836, but the
only vote he got for it was his own--he stood 'solitary' and
'alone' (a laugh); and yet eleven days after Congress had
adjourned--only six months after the President in his annual
message had congratulated the people upon the prosperous sales
of the public lands,--this order came out in known and direct
opposition to the wishes of nine-tenths of the members of
Congress.'"
This is good history from a close witness of what he relates. The
member referred to as having prepared the treasury order, and
offered it in the shape of a bill in the Senate, and getting no vote
for it but his own,--who stood solitary and alone on that occasion,
as well as on some others--was no other than the writer of this
View; and he has lived to see about as much unanimity in favor of
that measure since as there was against it then. Nine-tenths of the
members of Congress were then against it, but from very different
motives--some because they were deeply engaged in land speculations,
and borrowed paper from the banks for the purpose; some because
they were in the interest of the banks, and wished to give their
paper credit and circulation; others because they were sincere
believers in the paper system; others because they were opposed
to the President, and believed him to be in favor of the measure;
others again from mere timidity of temperament, and constitutional
inability to act strongly. And these various descriptions embraced
friends as well as foes to the administration. Mr. Webster says
the order was issued eleven days after that Congress adjourned
which had so unanimously rejected it. That is true. We only waited
for Congress to be gone to issue the order. Mr. Benton was in the
room of the private secretary (Mr. Donelson), hard by the council
chamber, while the cabinet sat in council upon this measure. They
were mostly against it. General Jackson ordered it, and directed
the private Secretary to bring him a draft of the order to be
issued. He came to Mr. Benton to draw it--who did so: and being
altered a little, it was given to the Secretary of the Treasury to
be promulgated. Then Mr. Benton asked for his draft, that he might
destroy it. The private secretary said no--that the time might come
when it should be known who was at the bottom of that Treasury
order: and that he would keep it. It was issued on the strong will
and clear head of President Jackson, and saved many ten millions
to the public treasury. Bales of bank notes were on the road to
be converted into public lands which this order overtook, and
sent back, to depreciate in the vaults of the banks instead of the
coffers of the treasury. To repeal the order by law was the effort
as soon as Congress met, and direct legislation to that effect was
proposed by Mr. Ewing, of Ohio, but superseded by a circumlocutory
bill from Mr. Walker and Mr. Rives, which the President treated as a
nullity for want of intelligibility: and of which Mr. Webster gave
this account:
"If he himself had had power, he would have voted for Mr.
Ewing's proposition to repeal the order, in terms which Mr.
Butler and the late President could not have misunderstood;
but power was so strong, and members of Congress had now
become so delicate about giving offence to it, that it would
not do, for the world, to repeal the obnoxious circular,
plainly and forthwith; but the ingenuity of the friends of
the administration must dodge around it, and over it--and now
Mr. Butler had the unkindness to tell them that their views
neither he, lawyer as he is, nor the President, could possibly
understand (a laugh), and that, as it could not be understood,
the President had pocketed it--and left it upon the archives of
state, no doubt to be studied there. Mr. W. would call attention
to the remarkable fact, that though the Senate acted upon this
currency bill in season, yet it was put off, and put off--so
that, by no action upon it before the ten days allowed the
President by the constitution, the power over it was completely
in his will, even though the whole nation and every member of
Congress wished for its repeal. Mr. W., however, believed that
such was the pressure of public opinion upon the new President,
that it must soon be repealed."
This amphibology of the bill, and delay in passing it, and this
dodging around and over, was occasioned by what Mr. Webster calls
the delicacy of some members who had the difficult part to play,
of going with the enemies of the administration without going
against the administration. A chapter in the first volume of this
View gives the history of this work; and the last sentence in the
passage quoted from Mr. Webster's speech gives the key to the views
in which the speech originated, and to the proceedings by which it
was accompanied and followed. "_It is believed that such is the
pressure of public opinion upon the new President that it must soon
be repealed._"
In another part of his speech, Mr. Webster shows that the repealing
bill was put by the whigs into the hands of certain friends of
the administration, to be by them seasoned into a palatable dish;
and that they gained no favor with the "bold man" who despised
flinching, and loved decision, even in a foe. Thus:
"At the commencement of the last session, as you know,
gentlemen, a resolution was brought forward in the Senate for
annulling and abrogating this order, by Mr. Ewing, a gentleman
of much intelligence, of sound principles, of vigorous and
energetic character, whose loss from the service of the country,
I regard as a public misfortune. The whig members all supported
this resolution, and all the members, I believe, with the
exception of some five or six, were very anxious, in some way,
to get rid of the treasury order. But Mr. Ewing's resolution
was too direct. It was deemed a pointed and ungracious attack
on executive policy. Therefore, it must be softened, modified,
qualified, made to sound less harsh to the ears of men in power,
and to assume a plausible, polished, inoffensive character. It
was accordingly put into the plastic hands of the friends of the
executive, to be moulded and fashioned, so that it might have
the effect of ridding the country of the obnoxious order, and
yet not appear to question executive infallibility. All this
did not answer. The late President is not a man to be satisfied
with soft words; and he saw in the measure, even as it passed
the two houses, a substantial repeal of the order. He is a man
of boldness and decision; and he respects boldness and decision
in others. If you are his friend, he expects no flinching;
and if you are his adversary, he respects you none the less,
for carrying your opposition to the full limits of honorable
warfare."
Mr. Webster must have been greatly dissatisfied with his democratic
allies, when he could thus, in a public speech, before such
an audience, and within one short month after they had been
co-operating with him, hold them up as equally unmeritable in the
eyes of both parties.
History deems it essential to present this New York speech of
Mr. Webster as part of a great movement, without a knowledge of
which the view would be imperfect. It was the first formal public
step which was to inaugurate the new distress, and organize the
proceedings for shutting up the banks, and with them, the federal
treasury, with a view to coerce the government into submission to
the Bank of the United States and its confederate politicians. Mr.
Van Buren was a man of great suavity and gentleness of deportment,
and, to those who associated the idea of violence with firmness,
might be supposed deficient in that quality. An experiment upon
his nerves was resolved on--a pressure of public opinion, in the
language of Mr. Webster, under which his gentle temperament was
expected to yield.
CHAPTER IV.
PROGRESS OF THE DISTRESS, AND PRELIMINARIES FOR THE SUSPENSION.
The speech of Mr. Webster--his appeal for action--was soon followed
by its appointed consequence--an immense meeting in the city of
New York. The speech did not produce the meeting, any more than
the meeting produced the speech. Both were in the programme, and
performed as prescribed, in their respective places--the speech
first, the meeting afterwards; and the latter justified by the
former. It was an immense assemblage, composed of the elite of what
was foremost in the city for property, talent, respectability; and
took for its business the consideration of the times: the distress
of the times, and the nature of the remedy. The imposing form of
a meeting, solemn as well as numerous and respectable, was gone
through: speeches made, resolutions adopted: order and emphasis
given to the proceedings. A president, ten vice-presidents,
two secretaries, seven orators (Mr. Webster not among them: he
had performed his part, and made his exit), officiated in the
ceremonies; and thousands of citizens constituted the accumulated
mass. The spirit and proceedings of the meeting were concentrated
in a series of resolves, each stronger than the other, and each
more welcome than the former; and all progressive, from facts and
principles declared, to duties and performances recommended. The
first resolve declared the existence of the distress, and made the
picture gloomy enough. It was in these words:
"Whereas, the great commercial interests of our city have
nearly reached a point of general ruin--our merchants driven
from a state of prosperity to that of unprecedented difficulty
and bankruptcy--the business, activity and energy, which
have heretofore made us the polar star of the new world, is
daily sinking, and taking from us the fruits of years of
industry--reducing the aged among us, who but yesterday were
sufficiently in affluence, to a state of comparative want; and
blighting the prospects, and blasting the hopes of the young
throughout our once prosperous land: we deem it our duty to
express to the country our situation and desires, while yet
there is time to retrace error, and secure those rights and
perpetuate those principles which were bequeathed us by our
fathers, and which we are bound to make every honorable effort
to maintain."
After the fact of the distress, thus established by a resolve, came
the cause; and this was the condensation of Mr. Webster's speech,
collecting into a point what had been oratorically diffused over
a wide surface. What was itself a condensation cannot be farther
abridged, and must be given in its own words:
"That the wide-spread disaster which has overtaken the
commercial interests of the country, and which threatens
to produce general bankruptcy, may be in a great measure
ascribed to the interference of the general government with
the commercial and business operations of the country; its
intermeddling with the currency; its destruction of the national
bank; its attempt to substitute a metallic for a credit
currency; and, finally, to the issuing by the President of
the United States of the treasury order, known as the 'specie
circular.'"
The next resolve foreshadowed the consequences which follow from
governmental perseverance in such calamitous measures--general
bankruptcy to the dealing classes, starvation to the laboring
classes, public convulsions, and danger to our political
institutions; with an admonition to the new President of what might
happen to himself, if he persevered in the "_experiments_" of a
predecessor whose tyranny and oppression had made him the scourge of
his country. But let the resolve speak for itself:
"That while we would do nothing which might for a moment
compromit our respect for the laws, we feel it incumbent
upon us to remind the executive of the nation, that the
government of the country, as of late administered, has
become the oppressor of the people, instead of affording them
protection--that his perseverance in the experiment of his
predecessor (after the public voice, in every way in which that
voice could be expressed, has clearly denounced it as ruinous
to the best interests of the country) has already caused the
ruin of thousands of merchants, thrown tens of thousands of
mechanics and laborers out of employment, depreciated the
value of our great staple millions of dollars, destroyed the
internal exchanges, and prostrated the energies and blighted
the prospects of the industrious and enterprising portion
of our people; and must, if persevered in, not only produce
_starvation_ among the laboring classes, but inevitably lead
to disturbances which may endanger the stability of our
institutions themselves."
This word "_experiment_" had become a staple phrase in all the
distress oratory and literature of the day, sometimes heightened
by the prefix of "_quack_," and was applied to all the efforts of
the administration to return the federal government to the hard
money currency, which was the currency of the constitution and the
currency of all countries; and which efforts were now treated as
novelties and dangerous innovations. Universal was the use of the
phrase by one of the political parties some twenty years ago: dead
silent are their tongues upon it now! Twenty years of successful
working of the government under the hard money system has put an
end to the repetition of a phrase which has suffered the fate of
all catch-words of party, and became more distasteful to its old
employers than it ever was to their adversaries. It has not been
heard since the federal government got divorced from bank and paper
money! since gold and silver has become the sole currency of the
federal government! since, in fact, the memorable epoch when the
Bank of the United States (former sovereign remedy for all the ills
the body politic was heir to) has become a defunct authority, and an
"obsolete idea."
The next resolve proposed a direct movement upon the
President--nothing less than a committee of fifty to wait upon
him, and "_remonstrate_" with him upon what was called the ruinous
measures of the government.
"That a committee of not less than fifty be appointed to repair
to Washington, and remonstrate with the Executive against the
continuance of "the specie circular;" and in behalf of this
meeting and in the name of the merchants of New York, and the
people of the United States, urge its immediate repeal."
This formidable committee, limited to a minimum of fifty, open to
a maximum of any amount, besides this "_remonstrance_" against the
specie circular, were also instructed to petition the President to
forbear the collection of merchants' bonds by suit; and also to call
an extra session of Congress. The first of these measures was to
stop the collection of the accruing revenues: the second, to obtain
from Congress that submission to the bank power which could not be
obtained from the President. Formidable as were the arrangements
for acting on the President, provision was discreetly made for
a possible failure, and for the prosecution of other measures.
With this view, the committee of fifty, after their return from
Washington, were directed to call another general meeting of the
citizens of New York, and to report to them the results of their
mission. A concluding resolution invited the co-operation of the
other great cities in these proceedings, and seemed to look to an
imposing demonstration of physical force, and strong determination,
as a means of acting on the mind, or will of the President; and thus
controlling the free action of the constitutional authorities. This
resolve was specially addressed to the merchants of Philadelphia,
Boston and Baltimore, and generally addressed to all other
commercial cities, and earnestly prayed their assistance in saving
the whole country from ruin.
"That merchants of Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and the
commercial cities of the Union, be respectfully requested to
unite with us in our remonstrance and petition, and to use their
exertions, in connection with us, to induce the Executive of
the nation to listen to the voice of the people, and to recede
from a measure under the evils of which we are now laboring, and
which threatens to involve the whole country in ruin."
The language and import of all these resolves and proceedings were
sufficiently strong, and indicated a feeling but little short of
violence towards the government; but, according to the newspapers
of the city, they were subdued and moderate--tame and spiritless,
in comparison to the feeling which animated the great meeting. A
leading paper thus characterized that feeling:
"The meeting was a remarkable one for the vast numbers
assembled--the entire decorum of the proceedings--and especially
for the deep, though subdued and restrained, excitement which
evidently pervaded the mighty mass. It was a spectacle that
could not be looked upon without emotion,--that of many thousand
men trembling, as it were, on the brink of ruin, owing to the
measures, as they verily believe, of their own government,
which should be their friend, instead of their oppressor--and
yet meeting with deliberation and calmness, listening to a
narrative of their wrongs, and the causes thereof, adopting
such resolutions as were deemed judicious; and then quietly
separating, to abide the result of their firm but respectful
remonstrances. But it is proper and fit to say that this
moderation must not be mistaken for pusillanimity, nor be
trifled with, as though it could not by any aggravation of
wrong be moved from its propriety. No man accustomed, from the
expression of the countenance, to translate the emotions of the
heart, could have looked upon the faces and the bearing of the
multitude assembled last evening, and not have felt that there
were fires smouldering there, which a single spark might cause
to burst into flame."
Smouldering fires which a single spark might light into a flame!
Possibly that spark might have been the opposing voice of some
citizen, who thought the meeting mistaken, both in the fact of
the ruin of the country and the attribution of that ruin to the
specie circular. No such voice was lifted--no such spark applied,
and the proposition to march 10,000 men to Washington to demand a
redress of grievances was not sanctioned. The committee of fifty
was deemed sufficient, as they certainly were, for every purpose of
peaceful communication. They were eminently respectable citizens,
any two, or any one of which, or even a mail transmission of their
petition, would have commanded for it a most respectful attention.
The grand committee arrived at Washington--asked an audience of the
President--received it; but with the precaution (to avoid mistakes)
that written communications should alone be used. The committee
therefore presented their demands in writing, and a paragraph from
it will show the degree to which the feeling of the city had allowed
itself to be worked up.
"We do not tell a fictitious tale of woe; we have no selfish or
partisan views to sustain, when we assure you that the noble
city which we represent, lies prostrate in despair, its credit
blighted, its industry paralyzed, and without a hope beaming
through the darkness of the future, unless the government of our
country can be induced to relinquish the measures to which we
attribute our distress. We fully appreciate the respect which
is due to our chief magistrate, and disclaim every intention
inconsistent with that feeling; but we speak in behalf of a
community which trembles upon the brink of ruin, which deems
itself an adequate judge of all questions connected with the
trade and currency of the country, and believes that the policy
adopted by the recent administration and sustained by the
present, is founded in error, and threatens the destruction of
every department of industry. Under a deep impression of the
propriety of confining our declarations within moderate limits,
we affirm that the value of our real estate has, within the last
six months, depreciated more than forty millions: that within
the last two months, there have been more than two hundred and
fifty failures of houses engaged in extensive business: that
within the same period, a decline of twenty millions of dollars
has occurred in our local stocks, including those railroad
and canal incorporations, which, though chartered in other
States, depend chiefly upon New York for their sale: that the
immense amount of merchandise in our warehouses has within the
same period fallen in value at least thirty per cent.; that
within a few weeks, not less than twenty thousand individuals,
depending on their daily labor for their daily bread, have been
discharged by their employers, because the means of retaining
them were exhausted--and that a complete blight has fallen upon
a community heretofore so active, enterprising and prosperous.
The error of our rulers has produced a wider desolation than the
pestilence which depopulated our streets, or the conflagration,
which laid them in ashes. We believe that it is unjust to
attribute these evils to any excessive development of mercantile
enterprise, and that they really flow from that unwise system
which aimed at the substitution of a metallic for a paper
currency--the system which gave the first shock to the fabric of
our commercial prosperity by removing the public deposits from
the United States bank, which weakened every part of the edifice
by the destruction of that useful and efficient institution,
and now threatens to crumble it into a mass of ruins under the
operations of the specie circular, which withdrew the gold and
silver of the country from the channels in which it could be
profitably employed. We assert that the experiment has had a
fair--a liberal trial, and that disappointment and mischief are
visible in all its results--that the promise of a regulated
currency and equalized exchanges has been broken, the currency
totally disordered, and internal exchanges almost entirely
discontinued. We, therefore, make our earnest appeal to the
Executive, and ask whether it is not time to interpose the
paternal authority of the government, and abandon the policy
which is beggaring the people."
The address was read to the President. He heard it with entire
composure--made no sort of remark upon it--treated the gentlemen
with exquisite politeness--and promised them a written answer the
next day. This was the third of May: on the fourth the answer
was delivered. It was an answer worthy of a President--a calm,
quiet, decent, peremptory refusal to comply with a single one of
their demands! with a brief reason, avoiding all controversy, and
foreclosing all further application, by a clean refusal in each
case. The committee had nothing to do but to return, and report: and
they did so. There had been a mistake committed in the estimate of
the man. Mr. Van Buren vindicated equally the rights of the chief
magistrate, and his own personal decorum; and left the committee
without any thing to complain of, although unsuccessful in all their
objects. He also had another opportunity of vindicating his personal
and official decorum in another visit which he received about the
same time. Mr. Biddle called to see the President--apparently a
call of respect on the chief magistrate--about the same time, but
evidently with the design to be consulted, and to appear as the
great restorer of the currency. Mr. Van Buren received the visit
according to its apparent intent, with entire civility, and without
a word on public affairs. Believing Mr. Biddle to be at the bottom
of the suspension, he could not treat him with the confidence and
respect which a consultation would imply. He (Mr. Biddle) felt the
slight, and caused this notice to be put in the papers:
"Being on other business at Washington, Mr. Biddle took occasion
to call on the President of the United States, to pay his
respects to him in that character, and especially, to afford the
President an opportunity, if he chose to embrace it, to speak of
the present state of things, and to confer, if he saw fit, with
the head of the largest banking institution in the country--and
that the institution in which such general application has been
made for relief. During the interview, however, the President
remained profoundly silent upon the great and interesting topics
of the day; and as Mr. Biddle did not think it his business to
introduce them, not a word in relation to them was said."
Returning to New York, the committee convoked another general
meeting of the citizens, as required to do at the time of their
appointment; and made their report to it, recommending further
forbearance, and further reliance on the ballot box, although (as
they said) history recorded many popular insurrections where the
provocation was less. A passage from this report will show its
spirit, and to what excess a community may be excited about nothing,
by the mutual inflammation of each other's passions and complaints,
combined with a power to act upon the business and interests of the
people.
"From this correspondence it is obvious, fellow-citizens, that
we must abandon all hope that either the justice of our claims
or the severity of our sufferings will induce the Executive to
abandon or relax the policy which has produced such desolating
effects--and it remains for us to consider what more is to be
done in this awful crisis of our affairs. Our first duty under
losses and distresses which we have endured, is to cherish with
religious care the blessings which we yet enjoy, and which can
be protected only by a strict observance of the laws upon which
society depends for security and happiness. We do not disguise
our opinion that the pages of history record, and the opinions
of mankind justify, numerous instances of popular insurrection,
the provocation to which was less severe than the evils of which
we complain. But in these cases, the outraged and oppressed
had no other means of redress. Our case is different. If we
can succeed in an effort to bring public opinion into sympathy
with the views which we entertain, the Executive will abandon
the policy which oppresses, instead of protecting the people.
Do not despair because the time at which the ballot box can
exercise its healing influence appears so remote--the sagacity
of the practical politician will perceive the change in public
sentiment before you are aware of its approach. But the effort
to produce this change must be vigorous and untiring."
The meeting adopted corresponding resolutions. Despairing of acting
on the President, the move was to act upon the people--to rouse and
combine them against an administration which was destroying their
industry, and to remove from power (at the elections) those who were
destroying the industry of the country. Thus:
"_Resolved_, That the interests of the capitalists, merchants,
manufacturers, mechanics and industrious classes, are dependent
upon each other, and any measures of the government which
prostrate the active business men of the community, will also
deprive honest industry of its reward; and we call upon all our
fellow-citizens to unite with us in removing from power those
who persist in a system that is destroying the prosperity of our
country."
Another resolve summed up the list of grievances of which they
complained, and enumerated the causes of the pervading ruin which
had been brought upon the country. Thus:
"_Resolved_, That the chief causes of the existing distress
are the defeat of Mr. Clay's land bill, the removal of the
public deposits, the refusal to re-charter the Bank of the
United States, and the issuing of the specie circular. The land
bill was passed by the people's representatives, and vetoed
by the President--the bill rechartering the bank was passed
by the people's representatives, and vetoed by the President.
The people's representatives declared by a solemn resolution,
that the public deposits were safe in the United States Bank;
within a few weeks thereafter, the President removed the public
deposits. The people's representatives passed a bill rescinding
the specie circular: the President destroyed it by omitting
to return it within the limited period; and in the answer to
our addresses, President Van Buren declares that the specie
circular was issued by his predecessor, omitting all notice
of the Secretary of the Treasury, who is amenable directly to
Congress, and charged by the act creating his department with
the superintendence of the finances, and who signed the order."
These two resolves deserve to be noted. They were not empty or
impotent menace. They were for action, and became what they were
intended for. The moneyed corporations, united with a political
party, were in the field as a political power, to govern the
elections, and to govern them, by the only means known to a moneyed
power--by operating on the interests of men, seducing some, alarming
and distressing the masses. They are the key to the manner of
conducting the presidential election, and which will be spoken of in
the proper place. The union of Church and State has been generally
condemned: the union of Bank and State is far more condemnable.
Here the union was not with the State, but with a political party,
nearly as strong as the party in possession of the government,
and exemplified the evils of the meretricious connection between
money and politics; and nothing but this union could have produced
the state of things which so long afflicted the country, and from
which it has been relieved, not by the cessation of their imputed
causes, but by their perpetuation. It is now near twenty years
since this great meeting was held in New York. The ruinous measures
complained of have not been revoked, but become permanent. They have
been in full force, and made stronger, for near twenty years. The
universal and black destruction which was to ensue their briefest
continuance, has been substituted by the most solid, brilliant,
pervading, and abiding prosperity that any people ever beheld.
Thanks to the divorce of Bank and State. But the consummation was
not yet. Strong in her name, and old recollections, and in her
political connections--dominant over other banks--bribing with
one hand, scourging with the other--a long retinue of debtors and
retainers--desperate in her condition--impotent for good, powerful
for evil--confederated with restless politicians, and wickedly,
corruptly, and revengefully ruled: the Great Red Harlot, profaning
the name of a National Bank, was still to continue a while longer
its career of abominations--maintaining dubious contest with the
government which created it, upon whose name and revenues it had
gained the wealth and power of which it was still the shade, and
whose destruction it plotted because it could not rule it. Posterity
should know these things, that by avoiding bank connections, their
governments may avoid the evils that we have suffered; and, by
seeing the excitements of 1837, they may save themselves from ever
becoming the victims of such delusion.
CHAPTER V.
ACTUAL SUSPENSION OF THE BANKS: PROPAGATION OF THE ALARM.
None of the public meetings, and there were many following the
leading one in New York, recommended in terms a suspension of specie
payments by the banks. All avoided, by concert or instinct, the
naming of that high measure; but it was in the list, and at the head
of the list, of the measures to be adopted; and every thing said or
done was with a view to that crowning event; and to prepare the way
for it before it came; and to plead its subsequent justification by
showing its previous necessity. It was in the programme, and bound
to come in its appointed time; and did--and that within a few days
after the last great meeting in New York. It took place quietly
and generally, on the morning of the 10th of May, altogether, and
with a concert and punctuality of action, and with a military and
police preparation, which announced arrangement and determination;
such as attend revolts and insurrections in other countries. The
preceding night all the banks of the city, three excepted, met
by their officers, and adopted resolutions to close their doors
in the morning: and gave out notice to that effect. At the same
time three regiments of volunteers, and a squadron of horse, were
placed on duty in the principal parts of the city; and the entire
police force, largely reinforced with special constables, was on
foot. This was to suppress the discontent of those who might be
too much dissatisfied at being repulsed when they came to ask for
the amount of a deposit, or the contents of a bank note. It was
a humiliating spectacle, but an effectual precaution. The people
remained quiet. At twelve o'clock a large mercantile meeting took
place. Resolutions were adopted by it to sustain the suspension,
and the newspaper press was profuse and energetic in its support.
The measure was consummated: the suspension was complete: it was
triumphant in that city whose example, in such a case, was law to
the rest of the Union. But, let due discrimination be made. Though
all the banks joined in the act, all were not equally culpable; and
some, in fact, not culpable at all, but victims of the criminality,
or misfortunes of others. It was the effect of necessity with the
deposit banks, exhausted by vain efforts to meet the quarterly
deliveries of the forty millions to be deposited with the States;
and pressed on all sides because they were government banks, and
because the programme required them to stop first. It was an act of
self-defence in others which were too weak to stand alone, and which
followed with reluctance an example which they could not resist.
With others it was an act of policy, and of criminal contrivance,
as the means of carrying a real distress into the ranks of the
people, and exciting them against the political party to whose
acts the distress was attributed. But the prime mover, and master
manager of the suspension, was the Bank of the United States, then
rotten to the core and tottering to its fall, but strong enough to
carry others with it, and seeking to hide its own downfall in the
crash of a general catastrophe. Having contrived the suspension, it
wished to appear as opposing it, and as having been dragged down
by others; and accordingly took the attitude of a victim. But the
impudence and emptiness of that pretension was soon exposed by the
difficulty which other banks had in forcing her to resume; and by
the facility with which she fell back, "solitary and alone," into
the state of permanent insolvency from which the other banks had
momentarily galvanized her. But the occasion was too good to be lost
for one of those complacent epistles, models of quiet impudence and
cool mendacity, with which Mr. Biddle was accustomed to regale the
public in seasons of moneyed distress. It was impossible to forego
such an opportunity; and, accordingly, three days after the New York
suspension, and two days after his own, he held forth in a strain
of which the following is a sample:
"All the deposit banks of the government of the United States in
the city of New York suspended specie payments this week--the
deposit banks elsewhere have followed their example; which was
of course adopted by the State banks not connected with the
government. I say of course, because it is certain that when
the government banks cease to pay specie, all the other banks
must cease, and for this clear reason. The great creditor in
the United States is the government. It receives for duties the
notes of the various banks, which are placed for collection in
certain government banks, and are paid to those government banks
in specie if requested. From the moment that the deposit banks
of New York, failed to comply with their engagements, it was
manifest that all the other deposit banks must do the same, that
there must be a universal suspension throughout the country, and
that the treasury itself in the midst of its nominal abundance
must be practically bankrupt."
This was all true. The stoppage of the deposit banks was the
stoppage of the Treasury. Non-payment by the government, was an
excuse for non-payment by others. Bankruptcy was the legal condition
of non-payment; and that condition was the fate of the government as
well as of others; and all this was perfectly known before by those
who contrived, and those who resisted the deposit with the States
and the use of paper money by the federal government. These two
measures made the suspension and the bankruptcy; and all this was so
obvious to the writer of this View that he proclaimed it incessantly
in his speeches, and was amazed at the conduct of those professing
friends of the administration who voted with the opposition on
these measures, and by their votes insured the bankruptcy of the
government which they professed to support. Mr. Biddle was right.
The deposit banks were gone; the federal treasury was bankrupt; and
those two events were two steps on the road which was to lead to the
re-establishment of the Bank of the United States! and Mr. Biddle
stood ready with his bank to travel that road. The next paragraph
displayed this readiness.
"In the midst of these disorders the Bank of the United States
occupies a peculiar position, and has special duties. Had it
consulted merely its own strength it would have continued its
payments without reserve. But in such a state of things the
first consideration is how to escape from it--how to provide
at the earliest practicable moment to change a condition which
should not be tolerated beyond the necessity which commanded it.
The old associations, the extensive connections, the established
credit, the large capital of the Bank of the United States,
rendered it the natural rallying point of the country for the
resumption of specie payments. It seemed wiser, therefore, not
to waste its strength in a struggle which might be doubtful
while the Executive persevered in its present policy, but to
husband all its resources so as to profit by the first favorable
moment to take the lead in the early resumption of specie
payments. Accordingly the Bank of the United States assumes that
position. From this moment its efforts will be to keep itself
strong, and to make itself stronger; always prepared and always
anxious to assist in recalling the currency and the exchanges of
the country to the point from which they have fallen. It will
co-operate cordially and zealously with the government, with the
government banks, with all the other banks, and with any other
influences which can aid in that object."
This was a bold face for an eviscerated institution to assume--one
which was then nothing but the empty skin of an immolated
victim--the contriver of the suspension to cover its own rottenness,
and the architect of distress and ruin that out of the public
calamity it might get again into existence and replenish its
coffers out of the revenues and credit of the federal government.
"Would have continued specie payments, if it had only consulted
its own strength"--"only suspended from a sense of duty and
patriotism"--"will take the lead in resuming"--"assumes the position
of restorer of the currency"--"presents itself as the rallying
point of the country in the resumption of specie payments"--"even
promises to co-operate with the government:" such were the impudent
professions at the very moment that this restorer of currency, and
rallying point of resumption, was plotting a continuance of the
distress and suspension until it could get hold of the federal
moneys to recover upon; and without which it never could recover.
Indissolubly connected with this bank suspension, and throwing
a broad light upon its history, (if further light were wanted,)
was Mr. Webster's tour to the West, and the speeches which he
made in the course of it. The tour extended to the Valley of the
Mississippi, and the speeches took for their burden the distress and
the suspension, excusing and justifying the banks, throwing all
blame upon the government, and looking to the Bank of the United
States for the sole remedy. It was at Wheeling that he opened the
series of speeches which he delivered in his tour, it being at that
place that he was overtaken by the news of the suspension, and which
furnished him with the text for his discourse.
"Recent evils have not at all surprised me, except that they
have come sooner and faster than I had anticipated. But, though
not surprised, I am afflicted; I feel any thing but pleasure
in this early fulfilment of my own predictions. Much injury is
done which the wisest future counsels can never repair, and
much more that can never be remedied but by such counsels and
by the lapse of time. From 1832 to the present moment I have
foreseen this result. I may safely say I have foreseen it,
because I have presented and proclaimed its approach in every
important discussion and debate, in the public body of which I
am a member. We learn to-day that most of the eastern banks have
stopped payment; deposit banks as well as others. The experiment
has exploded. That bubble, which so many of us have all along
regarded as the offspring of conceit, presumption and political
quackery, has burst. A general suspension of payment must be the
result; a result which has come, even sooner than was predicted.
Where is now that better currency that was promised? Where is
that specie circulation? Where are those rupees of gold and
silver, which were to fill the treasury of the government as
well as the pockets of the people? Has the government a single
hard dollar? Has the treasury any thing in the world but credit
and deposits in banks that have already suspended payment? How
are public creditors now to be paid in specie? How are the
deposits, which the law requires to be made with the states on
the 1st of July, now to be made."
This was the first speech that Mr. Webster delivered after the
great one before the suspension in New York, and may be considered
the epilogue after the performance as the former was the prologue
before it. It is a speech of exultation, with bitter taunts to
the government. In one respect his information was different from
mine. He said the suspension came sooner than was expected: my
information was that it came later, a month later; and that he
himself was the cause of the delay. My information was that it was
to take place in the first month of Mr. Van Buren's administration,
and that the speech which was to precede it was to be delivered
early in March, immediately after the adjournment of Congress:
but it was not delivered till the middle of that month, nor got
ready for _pamphlet_ publication until the middle of April; which
delay occasioned a corresponding postponement in all the subsequent
proceedings. The complete shutting up of the treasury--the loss
of its moneys--the substitution of broken bank paper for hard
money--the impossibility of paying a dollar to a creditor: these
were the points of his complacent declamation: and having made
these points strong enough and clear enough, he came to the remedy,
and fell upon the same one, in almost the same words, that Mr.
Biddle was using at the same time, four hundred miles distant, in
Philadelphia: and that without the aid of the electric telegraph,
not then in use. The recourse to the Bank of the United States was
that remedy! that bank strong enough to hold out, (unhappily the
news of its suspending arrived while he was speaking:) patriotic
enough to do so! but under no obligation to do better than the
deposit banks! and justifiable in following their example. Hear him:
"The United States Bank, now a mere state institution, with no
public deposits, no aid from government, but, on the contrary,
long an object of bitter persecution by it, was at our latest
advices still firm. But can we expect of that Bank to make
sacrifices to continue specie payment? If it continue to do so,
now the deposit banks have stopped, the government will draw
from it its last dollar, if it can do so, in order to keep up a
pretence of making its own payments in specie. I shall be glad
if this institution find it prudent and proper to hold out; but
as it owes no more duty to the government than any other bank,
and, of course, much less than the deposit banks, I cannot see
any ground for demanding from it efforts and sacrifices to favor
the government, which those holding the public money, and owing
duty to the government, are unwilling or unable to make; nor do
I see how the New England banks can stand alone in the general
crush."
The suspension was now complete; and it was evident, and as good
as admitted by those who had made it, that it was the effect of
contrivance on the part of politicians, and the so-called Bank of
the United States, for the purpose of restoring themselves to power.
The whole process was now clear to the vision of those who could see
nothing while it was going on. Even those of the democratic party
whose votes had helped to do the mischief, could now see that the
attempt to deposit forty millions with the States was destruction
to the deposit banks;--that the repeal of the specie circular was
to fill the treasury with paper money, to be found useless when
wanted;--that distress was purposely created in order to throw the
blame of it upon the party in power;--that the promptitude with
which the Bank of the United States had been brought forward as a
remedy for the distress, showed that it had been held in reserve for
that purpose;--and the delight with which the whig party saluted the
general calamity, showed that they considered it their own passport
to power. All this became visible, after the mischief was over, to
those who could see nothing of it before it was done.
CHAPTER VI.
TRANSMIGRATION OF THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES FROM A FEDERAL TO A
STATE INSTITUTION.
This institution having again appeared on the public theatre,
politically and financially, and with power to influence national
legislation, and to control moneyed corporations, and with
art and skill enough to deceive astute merchants and trained
politicians,--(for it is not to be supposed that such men would
have committed themselves in her favor if they had known her
condition,)--it becomes necessary to trace her history since the
expiration of her charter, and learn by what means she continued an
existence, apparently without change, after having undergone the
process which, in law and in reason, is the death of a corporation.
It is a marvellous history, opening a new chapter in the necrology
of corporations, very curious to study, and involving in its
solution, besides the biological mystery, the exposure of a legal
fraud and juggle, a legislative smuggle, and a corrupt enactment.
The charter of the corporation had expired upon its own limitation
in the year 1836: it was entitled to two years to wind up its
affairs, engaging in no new business: but was seen to go on after
the expiration, as if still in full life, and without the change of
an attribute or feature. The explanation is this:
On the 19th day of January, in the year 1836, a bill was reported
in the House of Representatives of the General Assembly of
Pennsylvania, entitled, "_An act to repeal the State tax, and to
continue the improvement of the State by railroads and canals;
and for other purposes_." It came from the standing committee on
"_Inland navigation and internal improvement_;" and was, in fact,
a bill to repeal a tax and make roads and canals, but which,
under the vague and usually unimportant generality of "_other
purposes_," contained the entire draught of a charter for the
Bank of the United States--adopting it as a Pennsylvania State
bank. The introduction of the bill, with this addendum, colossal
tail to it, was a surprise upon the House. No petition had asked
for such a bank: no motion had been made in relation to it: no
inquiry had been sent to any committee: no notice of any kind
had heralded its approach: no resolve authorized its report: the
unimportant clause of "_other purposes_," hung on at the end of
the title, could excite no suspicion of the enormous measures
which lurked under its unpretentious phraseology. Its advent was
an apparition: its entrance an intrusion. Some members looked at
each other in amazement. But it was soon evident that it was the
minority only that was mystified--that a majority of the elected
members in the House, and a cluster of exotics in the lobbies,
perfectly understood the intrusive movement:--in brief, it had been
smuggled into the House, and a power was present to protect it
there. This was the first intimation that had reached the General
Assembly, the people of Pennsylvania, or the people of the United
States, that the Bank of the United States was transmigrating!
changing itself from a national to a local institution--from a
federal to a State charter--from an imperial to a provincial
institution--retaining all the while its body and essence, its
nature and attributes, its name and local habitation. It was a new
species of metempsychosis, heretofore confined to souls separated
from bodies, but now appearing in a body that never had a soul: for
that, according to Sir Edward Coke, is the psychological condition
of a corporation--and, above all, of a moneyed corporation.
The mystified members demanded explanations; and it was a case in
which explanations could not be denied. Mr. Biddle, in a public
letter to an eminent citizen, on whose name he had been accustomed
to hang such productions, (Mr. John Quincy Adams,) attributed the
procedure, so far as he had moved in it, to a "_formal application
on the part of the legislature to know from him on what terms
the expiring bank would receive a charter from it_;" and gave up
the names of two members who had conveyed the application. The
legislature had no knowledge of the proceeding. The two members
whose names had been vouched disavowed the legislative application,
but admitted that, in compliance with suggestions, they had written
a letter to Mr. Biddle in their own names, making the inquiry; but
without the sanction of the legislature, or the knowledge of the
committees of which they were members. They did not explain the
reason which induced them to take the initiative in so important
business; and the belief took root that their good nature had
yielded to an importunity from an invisible source, and that they
had consented to give a private and bungling commencement to what
must have a beginning, and which could not find it in any open or
parliamentary form. It was truly a case in which the first step
cost the difficulty. How to begin was the puzzle, and so to begin
as to conceal the beginning, was the desideratum. The finger of
the bank must not be seen in it, yet, without the touch of that
finger, the movement could not begin. Without something from the
Bank--without some request or application from it, it would have
been gratuitous and impertinent, and might have been insulting and
offensive, to have offered it a State charter. To apply openly for
a charter was to incur a publicity which would be the defeat of
the whole movement. The answer of Mr. Biddle to the two members,
dexterously treating their private letter, obtained by solicitation,
as a formal legislative application, surmounted the difficulty! and
got the Bank before the legislature, where there were friends enough
secretly prepared for the purpose to pass it through. The terms
had been arranged with Mr. Biddle beforehand, so that there was
nothing to be done but to vote. The principal item in these terms
was the stipulation to pay the State the sum of $1,300,000, to be
expended in works of internal improvements; and it was upon this
slender connection with the subject that the whole charter referred
itself to the committee of "_Inland navigation and internal
improvement_;"--to take its place as a proviso to a bill entitled,
"_To repeal the State tax, and to continue the improvements of the
State by railroads and canals_;"--and to be no further indicated in
the title to that act than what could be found under the addendum
of that vague and flexible generality, "_other purposes_;" usually
added to point attention to something not worth a specification.
Having mastered the first step--the one of greatest difficulty, if
there is truth in the proverb--the remainder of the proceeding was
easy and rapid, the bill, with its proviso, being reported, read a
first, second, and third time, passed the House--sent to the Senate;
read a first, second, and third time there, and passed--sent to
the Governor and approved, and made a law of the land: and all in
as little time as it usually requires to make an act for changing
the name of a man or a county. To add to its titles to infamy, the
repeal of the State tax which it assumed to make, took the air of
a bamboozle, the tax being a temporary imposition, and to expire
within a few days upon its own limitation. The distribution of the
bonus took the aspect of a bribe to the people, being piddled out
in driblets to the inhabitants of the counties: and, to stain the
bill with the last suspicion, a strong lobby force from Philadelphia
hung over its progress, and cheered it along with the affection
and solicitude of parents for their offspring. Every circumstance
of its enactment announced corruption--bribery in the members who
passed the act, and an attempt to bribe the people by distributing
the bonus among them: and the outburst of indignation throughout
the State was vehement and universal. People met in masses to
condemn the act, demand its repeal, to denounce the members who
voted for it, and to call for investigation into the manner in
which it passed. Of course, the legislature which passed it was in
no haste to respond to these demands; but their successors were
different. An election intervened; great changes of members took
place; two-thirds of the new legislature demanded investigation,
and resolved to have it. A committee was appointed, with the usual
ample powers, and sat the usual length of time, and worked with the
usual indefatigability, and made the usual voluminous report; and
with the usual "lame and impotent conclusion." A mass of pregnant
circumstances were collected, covering the whole case with black
suspicion: but direct bribery was proved upon no one. Probably, the
case of the Yazoo fraud is to be the last, as it was the first, in
which a succeeding general assembly has fully and unqualifiedly
condemned its predecessor for corruption.
The charter thus obtained was accepted: and, without the change
of form or substance in any particular, the old bank moved on as
if nothing had happened--as if the Congress charter was still in
force--as if a corporate institution and all its affairs could
be shifted by statute from one foundation to another;--as if
a transmigration of corporate existence could be operated by
legislative enactment, and the debtors, creditors, depositors, and
stockholders in one bank changed, transformed, and constituted
into debtors, creditors, depositors and stockholders in another.
The illegality of the whole proceeding was as flagrant as it was
corrupt--as scandalous as it was notorious--and could only find
its motive in the consciousness of a condition in which detection
adds infamy to ruin; and in which no infamy, to be incurred, can
exceed that from which escape is sought. And yet it was this broken
and rotten institution--this criminal committing crimes to escape
from the detection of crimes--this "counterfeit presentment" of a
defunct corporation--this addendum to a Pennsylvania railroad--this
whited sepulchre filled with dead men's bones, thus bribed and
smuggled through a local legislature--that was still able to
set up for a power and a benefactor! still able to influence
federal legislation--control other banks--deceive merchants
and statesmen--excite a popular current in its favor--assume a
guardianship over the public affairs, and actually dominate for
months longer in the legislation and the business of the country.
It is for the part she acted--the dominating part--in contriving
the financial distress and the general suspension of the banks in
1837--the last one which has afflicted our country,--that renders
necessary and proper this notice of her corrupt transit through the
General Assembly of the State of Pennsylvania.
CHAPTER VII.
EFFECTS OF THE SUSPENSION: GENERAL DERANGEMENT OF BUSINESS:
SUPPRESSION AND RIDICULE OF THE SPECIE CURRENCY: SUBMISSION OF THE
PEOPLE: CALL OF CONGRESS.
A great disturbance of course took place in the business of the
country, from the stoppage of the banks. Their agreement to receive
each others' notes made these notes the sole currency of the
country. It was a miserable substitute for gold and silver, falling
far below these metals when measured against them, and very unequal
to each other in different parts of the country. Those of the
interior, and of the west, being unfit for payments in the great
commercial Atlantic cities, were far below the standard of the
notes of those cities, and suffered a heavy loss from difference
of exchange, as it was called (although it was only the difference
of depreciation,) in all remittances to those cities:--to which
points the great payments tended. All this difference was considered
a loss, and charged upon the mismanagement of the public affairs
by the administration, although the clear effect of geographical
position. Specie disappeared as a currency, being systematically
suppressed. It became an article of merchandise, bought and sold
like any other marketable commodity; and especially bought in
quantities for exportation. Even metallic change disappeared, down
to the lowest subdivision of the dollar. Its place was supplied
by every conceivable variety of individual and corporation
tickets--issued by some from a feeling of necessity; by others, as a
means of small gains; by many, politically, as a means of exciting
odium against the administration for having destroyed the currency.
Fictitious and burlesque notes were issued with caricatures and
grotesque pictures and devices, and reproachful sentences, entitled
the "_better currency_:" and exhibited every where to excite
contempt. They were sent in derision to all the friends of the
specie circular, especially to him who had the credit (not untruly)
of having been its prime mover--most of them plentifully sprinkled
over with taunting expressions to give them a personal application:
such as--"This is what you have brought the country to:" "the end
of the experiment:" "the gold humbug exploded:" "is this what was
promised us?" "behold the effects of tampering with the currency."
The presidential mansion was infested, and almost polluted with
these missives, usually made the cover of some vulgar taunt. Even
gold and silver could not escape the attempted degradation--copper,
brass, tin, iron pieces being struck in imitation of gold and
silver coins--made ridiculous by figures and devices, usually the
whole hog, and inscribed with taunting and reproachful expressions.
Immense sums were expended in these derisory manufactures,
extensively carried on, and universally distributed; and reduced
to a system as a branch of party warfare, and intended to act on
the thoughtless and ignorant through appeals to their eyes and
passions. Nor were such means alone resorted to to inflame the
multitude against the administration. The opposition press teemed
with inflammatory publications. The President and his friends were
held up as great state criminals, ruthlessly destroying the property
of the people, and meriting punishment--even death. Nor did these
publications appear in thoughtless or obscure papers only, but in
some of the most weighty and influential of the bank party. Take,
for example, this paragraph from a leading paper in the city of New
York:
"We would put it directly to each and all of our readers,
whether it becomes this great people, quietly and tamely to
submit to any and every degree of lawless oppression which their
rulers may inflict, merely because _resistance_ may involve
us in trouble and expose those who resist, to censure? We are
very certain their reply will be, '_No_, but at what point
is "resistance to commence?"--is not the evil of resistance
greater "than the evil of submission?"' We answer promptly, that
resistance on the part of a free people, if they would preserve
their freedom, should always commence whenever it is made
plain and palpable that there has been a deliberate violation
of their rights; and whatever temporary evils may result from
such resistance, it can never be so great or so dangerous to
our institutions, as a blind submission to a most manifest act
of oppression and tyranny. And now, we would ask of all--what
shadow of right, what plea of expediency, what constitutional
or legal justification can MARTIN VAN BUREN offer to the people
of the United States, for having brought upon them all their
present difficulties by a continuance of the _specie circular_,
after two-thirds of their representatives had declared their
solemn convictions that it was injurious to the country and
should be repealed? Most assuredly, none, and we unhesitatingly
say, that it is a more high-handed measure of _tyranny_ than
that which cost _Charles_ the 1st his crown and his head--more
illegal and unconstitutional than the act of the British
ministry which caused the patriots of the revolution to destroy
the tea in the harbor of Boston--and one which calls more loudly
for resistance than any act of Great Britain which led to the
Declaration of Independence."
Taken by surprise in the deprivation of its revenues,--specie
denied it by the banks which held its gold and silver,--the federal
government could only do as others did, and pay out depreciated
paper. Had the event been foreseen by the government, it might have
been provided against, and much specie saved. It was now too late
to enter into a contest with the banks, they in possession of the
money, and the suspension organized and established. They would only
render their own notes: the government could only pay in that which
it received. Depreciated paper was their only medium of payment;
and every such payment (only received from a feeling of duresse)
brought resentment, reproach, indignation, loss of popularity to
the administration; and loud calls for the re-establishment of the
National Bank, whose notes had always been equal to specie, and
were then contrived to be kept far above the level of those of
other suspended banks. Thus the administration found itself, in the
second month of its existence, struggling with that most critical of
all government embarrassments--deranged finances, and depreciated
currency; and its funds dropping off every day. Defections were
incessant, and by masses, and sometimes by whole States: and all on
account of these vile payments in depreciated paper. Take a single
example. The State of Tennessee had sent numerous volunteers to
the Florida Indian war. There were several thousands of them, and
came from thirty different counties, requiring payments to be made
through a large part of the State, and to some member of almost
every family in it. The paymaster, Col. Adam Duncan Steuart, had
treasury drafts on the Nashville deposit banks for the money to make
the payments. They delivered their own notes, and these far below
par--even twenty per cent. below those of the so-called Bank of the
United States, which the policy of the suspension required to be
kept in strong contrast with those of the government deposit banks.
The loss on each payment was great--one dollar in every five. Even
patriotism could not stand it. The deposit banks and their notes
were execrated: the Bank of the United States and its notes were
called for. It was the children of Israel wailing for the fleshpots
of Egypt. Discontent, from individual became general, extending
from persons to masses. The State took the infection. From being
one of the firmest and foremost of the democratic States, Tennessee
fell off from her party, and went into opposition. At the next
election she showed a majority of 20,000 against her old friends;
and that in the lifetime of General Jackson; and contrary to what it
would have been if his foresight had been seconded. He foresaw the
consequences of paying out this depreciated paper. The paymaster had
foreseen them, and before drawing a dollar from the banks he went
to General Jackson for his advice. This energetic man, then aged,
and dying, and retired to his beloved hermitage,--but all head and
nerve to the last, and scorning to see the government capitulate
to insurgent banks,--acted up to his character. He advised the
paymaster to proceed to Washington and ask for solid money--for the
gold and silver which was then lying in the western land offices. He
went; but being a military subordinate, he only applied according
to the rules of subordination, through the channels of official
intercourse: and was denied the hard money, wanted for payments
on debenture bonds and officers of the government. He did not go
to Mr. Van Buren, as General Jackson intended he should do. He
did not feel himself authorized to go beyond official routine. It
was in the recess of Congress, and I was not in Washington to go
to the President in his place (as I should instantly have done);
and, returning without the desired orders, the payments were
made, through a storm of imprecations, in this loathsome trash:
and Tennessee was lost. And so it was, in more or less degree,
throughout the Union. The first object of the suspension had been
accomplished--a political revolt against the administration.
Miserable as was the currency which the government was obliged to
use, it was yet in the still more miserable condition of not having
enough of it! The deposits with the States had absorbed two sums
of near ten millions each: two more sums of equal amount were
demandable in the course of the year. Financial embarrassment, and
general stagnation of business, diminished the current receipts from
lands and customs: an absolute deficit--that horror, and shame, and
mortal test of governments--showed itself ahead. An extraordinary
session of Congress became a necessity, inexorable to any
contrivance of the administration: and, on the 15th day of May--just
five days after the suspension in the principal cities--the
proclamation was issued for its assembling: to take place on
the first Monday of the ensuing September. It was a mortifying
concession to imperative circumstances; and the more so as it had
just been refused to the grand committee of Fifty--demanding it in
the imposing name of that great meeting in the city of New York.
CHAPTER VIII.
EXTRA SESSION: MESSAGE, AND RECOMMENDATIONS.
The first session of the twenty-fifth Congress, convened upon the
proclamation of the President, to meet an extraordinary occasion,
met on the first Monday in September, and consisted of the following
members:
SENATE.
NEW HAMPSHIRE--Henry Hubbard and Franklin Pierce.
MAINE--John Ruggles and Ruel Williams.
VERMONT--Samuel Prentiss and Benjamin Swift.
MASSACHUSETTS--Daniel Webster and John Davis.
RHODE ISLAND--Nehemiah R. Knight and Asher Robbins.
_Connecticut_--John M. Niles and Perry Smith.
_New York_--Silas Wright and Nathaniel P. Tallmadge.
_New Jersey_--Garret D. Wall and Samuel L. Southard.
_Delaware_--Richard H. Bayard and Thomas Clayton.
_Pennsylvania_--James Buchanan and Samuel McKean.
_Maryland_--Joseph Kent and John S. Spence.
_Virginia_--William C. Rives and William H. Roane.
NORTH CAROLINA--Bedford Brown and Robert Strange.
SOUTH CAROLINA--John C. Calhoun and Wm. Campbell Preston.
GEORGIA--John P. King and Alfred Cuthbert.
ALABAMA--Wm. Rufus King and Clement C. Clay.
MISSISSIPPI--John Black and Robert J. Walker.
LOUISIANA--Robert C. Nicholas and Alexander Mouton.
TENNESSEE--Hugh L. White and Felix Grundy.
KENTUCKY--Henry Clay and John Crittenden.
ARKANSAS--Ambrose H. Sevier and William S. Fulton.
MISSOURI--Thomas H. Benton and Lewis F. Linn.
ILLINOIS--Richard M. Young and John M. Robinson.
INDIANA--Oliver H. Smith and John Tipton.
OHIO--William Allen and Thomas Morris.
MICHIGAN--Lucius Lyon and John Norvell.
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
MAINE--George Evans, John Fairfield, Timothy J. Carter, F. O. J.
Smith, Thomas Davee, Jonathan Cilley, Joseph C. Noyes, Hugh J.
Anderson.
NEW HAMPSHIRE--Samuel Cushman, James Farrington, Charles G.
Atherton, Joseph Weeks, Jared W. Williams.
MASSACHUSETTS--Richard Fletcher, Stephen C. Phillips, Caleb Cushing,
Wm. Parmenter, Levi Lincoln, George Grinnell, jr., George N. Briggs,
Wm. B. Calhoun, Nathaniel B. Borden, John Q. Adams, John Reed,
Abbott Lawrence, Wm. S. Hastings.
RHODE ISLAND--Robert B. Cranston, Joseph L. Tillinghast.
CONNECTICUT--Isaac Toucey, Samuel Ingham, Elisha Haley, Thomas T.
Whittlesey, Launcelot Phelps, Orrin Holt.
VERMONT--Hiland Hall, William Slade, Heman Allen, Isaac Fletcher,
Horace Everett.
NEW YORK--Thomas B. Jackson, Abraham Vanderveer, C. C. Cambreleng,
Ely Moore, Edward Curtis, Ogden Hoffman, Gouverneur Kemble, Obadiah
Titus, Nathaniel Jones, John C. Broadhead, Zadoc Pratt, Robert
McClelland, Henry Vail, Albert Gallup, John I. DeGraff, David
Russell, John Palmer, James B. Spencer, John Edwards, Arphaxad
Loomis, Henry A. Foster, Abraham P. Grant, Isaac H. Bronson, John H.
Prentiss, Amasa J. Parker, John C. Clark, Andrew D. W. Bruyn, Hiram
Gray, William Taylor, Bennett Bicknell, William H. Noble, Samuel
Birdsall, Mark H. Sibley, John T. Andrews, Timothy Childs, William
Patterson, Luther C. Peck, Richard P. Marvin, Millard Fillmore,
Charles F. Mitchell.
NEW JERSEY--John B. Aycrigg, John P. B. Maxwell, William Halstead,
Jos. F. Randolph, Charles G. Stratton, Thomas Jones Yorke.
PENNSYLVANIA--Lemuel Paynter, John Sergeant, George W. Toland,
Charles Naylor, Edward Davies, David Potts, Edward Darlington, Jacob
Fry, jr., Matthias Morris, David D. Wagener, Edward B. Hubley, Henry
A. Muhlenberg, Luther Reilly, Henry Logan, Daniel Sheffer, Chas.
McClure, Wm. W. Potter, David Petriken, Robert H. Hammond, Samuel
W. Morris, Charles Ogle, John Klingensmith, Andrew Buchanan, T. M.
T. McKennan, Richard Biddle, William Beatty, Thomas Henry, Arnold
Plumer.
DELAWARE--John J. Milligan.
MARYLAND--John Dennis, James A. Pearce, J. T. H. Worthington,
Benjamin C. Howard, Isaac McKim, William Cost Johnson, Francis
Thomas, Daniel Jenifer.
VIRGINIA--Henry A. Wise, Francis Mallory, John Robertson, Charles
F. Mercer, John Taliaferro, R. T. M. Hunter, James Garland, Francis
E. Rives, Walter Coles, George C. Dromgoole, James W. Bouldin, John
M. Patton, James M. Mason, Isaac S. Pennybacker, Andrew Beirne,
Archibald Stuart, John W. Jones, Robert Craig, Geo. W. Hopkins,
Joseph Johnson, Wm. S. Morgan.
NORTH CAROLINA--Jesse A. Bynum, Edward D. Stanley, Charles Shepard,
Micajah T. Hawkins, James McKay, Edmund Deberry, Abraham Rencher,
William Montgomery, Augustine H. Shepherd, James Graham, Henry
Connor, Lewis Williams, Samuel T. Sawyer.
SOUTH CAROLINA--H. S. Legare, Waddy Thompson, Francis W. Pickens,
W. K. Clowney, F. H. Elmore, John K. Griffin, R. B. Smith, John
Campbell, John P. Richardson.
GEORGIA--Thomas Glascock, S. F. Cleveland, Seaton Grantland, Charles
E. Haynes, Hopkins Holsey, Jabez Jackson, Geo. W. Owens, Geo. W. B.
Townes, W. C. Dawson.
TENNESSEE--Wm. B. Carter, A. A. McClelland, Joseph Williams, (one
vacancy,) H. L. Turney, Wm. B. Campbell, John Bell, Abraham P.
Maury, James K. Polk, Ebenezer J. Shields, Richard Cheatham, John W.
Crockett, Christopher H. Williams.
KENTUCKY--John L. Murray, Edward Rumsey, Sherrod Williams, Joseph
R. Underwood, James Harlan, John Calhoun, John Pope, Wm. J. Graves,
John White, Richard Hawes, Richard H. Menifee, John Chambers, Wm. W.
Southgate.
OHIO--Alexander Duncan, Taylor Webster, Patrick G. Goode, Thomas
Corwin, Thomas L. Hamer, Calvary Morris, Wm. K. Bond, J. Ridgeway,
John Chaney, Samson Mason, J. Alexander, jr., Alexander Harper, D.
P. Leadbetter, Wm. H. Hunter, John W. Allen, Elisha Whittlesey, A.
W. Loomis, Matthias Shepler, Daniel Kilgore.
ALABAMA--Francis S. Lyon, Dixon H. Lewis, Joab Lawler, Reuben
Chapman, J. L. Martin.
INDIANA--Ratliff Boon, John Ewing, William Graham, George H. Dunn,
James Rariden, William Herrod, Albert S. White.
ILLINOIS--A. W. Snyder, Zadoc Casey, Wm. L. May.
LOUISIANA--Henry Johnson, Eleazer W. Ripley, Rice Garland.
MISSISSIPPI--John F. H. Claiborne, S. H. Gholson.
ARKANSAS--Archibald Yell.
MISSOURI--Albert G. Harrison, John Miller.
MICHIGAN--Isaac E. Crary.
FLORIDA--Charles Downing.
WISCONSIN--George W. Jones.
In these ample lists, both of the Senate and of the House, will
be discovered a succession of eminent names--many which had then
achieved eminence, others to achieve it:--and, besides those which
captivate regard by splendid ability, a still larger number of those
less brilliant, equally respectable, and often more useful members,
whose business talent performs the work of the body, and who in
England are well called, the working members. Of these numerous
members, as well the brilliant as the useful, it would be invidious
to particularize part without enumerating the whole; and that would
require a reproduction of the greater part of the list of each
House. Four only can be named, and they entitled to that distinction
from the station attained, or to be attained by them:--Mr. John
Quincy Adams, who had been president; _Messrs._ James K. Polk,
Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce, who became presidents. In my
long service I have not seen a more able Congress; and it is only
necessary to read over the names, and to possess some knowledge of
our public men, to be struck with the number of names which would
come under the description of useful or brilliant members.
The election of speaker was the first business of the House; and Mr.
James K. Polk and Mr. John Bell, both of Tennessee, being put in
nomination, Mr. Polk received 116 votes; and was elected--Mr. Bell
receiving 103. Mr. Walter S. Franklin was elected clerk.
The message was delivered upon receiving notice of the organization
of the two Houses; and, with temperance and firmness, it met all
the exigencies of the occasion. That specie order which had been
the subject of so much denunciation,--the imputed cause of the
suspension, and the revocation of which was demanded with so much
pertinacity and such imposing demonstration,--far from being given
up was commended for the good effects it had produced; and the
determination expressed not to interfere with its operation. In
relation to that decried measure the message said:
"Of my own duties under the existing laws, when the banks
suspended specie payments, I could not doubt. Directions were
immediately given to prevent the reception into the Treasury
of any thing but gold and silver, or its equivalent; and every
practicable arrangement was made to preserve the public faith,
by similar or equivalent payments to the public creditors.
The revenue from lands had been for some time substantially
so collected, under the order issued by the directions of my
predecessor. The effects of that order had been so salutary,
and its forecast in regard to the increasing insecurity of bank
paper had become so apparent, that, even before the catastrophe,
I had resolved not to interfere with its operation. Congress
is now to decide whether the revenue shall continue to be so
collected, or not."
This was explicit, and showed that all attempts to operate upon the
President at that point, and to coerce the revocation of a measure
which he deemed salutary, had totally failed. The next great object
of the party which had contrived the suspension and organized the
distress, was to extort the re-establishment of the Bank of the
United States; and here again was an equal failure to operate upon
the firmness of the President. He reiterated his former objections
to such an institution--not merely to the particular one which had
been tried--but to any one in any form, and declared his former
convictions to be strengthened by recent events. Thus:
"We have seen for nearly half a century, that those who advocate
a national bank, by whatever motive they may be influenced,
constitute a portion of our community too numerous to allow us
to hope for an early abandonment of their favorite plan. On the
other hand, they must indeed form an erroneous estimate of the
intelligence and temper of the American people, who suppose that
they have continued, on slight or insufficient grounds, their
persevering opposition to such an institution; or that they can
be induced by pecuniary pressure, or by any other combination
of circumstances, to surrender principles they have so long
and so inflexibly maintained. My own views of the subject are
unchanged. They have been repeatedly and unreservedly announced
to my fellow-citizens, who, with full knowledge of them,
conferred upon me the two highest offices of the government.
On the last of these occasions, I felt it due to the people
to apprise them distinctly, that, in the event of my election,
I would not be able to co-operate in the re-establishment of a
national bank. To these sentiments, I have now only to add the
expression of an increased conviction, that the re-establishment
of such a bank, in any form, whilst it would not accomplish the
beneficial purpose promised by its advocates, would impair the
rightful supremacy of the popular will; injure the character and
diminish the influence of our political system; and bring once
more into existence a concentrated moneyed power, hostile to
the spirit, and threatening the permanency, of our republican
institutions."
Having noticed these two great points of pressure upon him, and
thrown them off with equal strength and decorum, he went forward
to a new point--the connection of the federal government with any
bank of issue in any form, either as a depository of its moneys,
or in the use of its notes;--and recommended a total and perpetual
dissolution of the connection. This was a new point of policy, long
meditated by some, but now first brought forward for legislative
action, and cogently recommended to Congress for its adoption.
The message, referring to the recent failure of the banks, took
advantage of it to say:
"Unforeseen in the organization of the government, and forced
on the Treasury by early necessities, the practice of employing
banks, was, in truth, from the beginning, more a measure of
emergency than of sound policy. When we started into existence
as a nation, in addition to the burdens of the new government,
we assumed all the large, but honorable load, of debt which was
the price of our liberty; but we hesitated to weigh down the
infant industry of the country by resorting to adequate taxation
for the necessary revenue. The facilities of banks, in return
for the privileges they acquired, were promptly offered, and
perhaps too readily received, by an embarrassed treasury. During
the long continuance of a national debt, and the intervening
difficulties of a foreign war, the connection was continued
from motives of convenience; but these causes have long since
passed away. We have no emergencies that make banks necessary
to aid the wants of the Treasury; we have no load of national
debt to provide for, and we have on actual deposit a large
surplus. No public interest, therefore, now requires the renewal
of a connection that circumstances have dissolved. The complete
organization of our government, the abundance of our resources,
the general harmony which prevails between the different States,
and with foreign powers, all enable us now to select the system
most consistent with the constitution, and most conducive to
the public welfare."
This wise recommendation laid the foundation for the Independent
Treasury--a measure opposed with unwonted violence at the time,
but vindicated as well by experience as recommended by wisdom; and
now universally concurred in--constituting an era in our financial
history, and reflecting distinctive credit on Mr. Van Buren's
administration. But he did not stop at proposing a dissolution of
governmental connection with these institutions; he went further,
and proposed to make them safer for the community, and more amenable
to the laws of the land. These institutions exercised the privilege
of stopping payment, qualified by the gentle name of suspension,
when they judged a condition of the country existed making it
expedient to do so. Three of these general suspensions had taken
place in the last quarter of a century, presenting an evil entirely
too large for the remedy of individual suits against the delinquent
banks; and requiring the strong arm of a general and authoritative
proceeding. This could only be found in subjecting them to the
process of bankruptcy; and this the message boldly recommended.
It was the first recommendation of the kind, and deserves to be
commemorated for its novelty and boldness, and its undoubted
efficiency, if adopted. This is the recommendation:
"In the mean time, it is our duty to provide all the remedies
against a depreciated paper currency which the constitution
enables us to afford. The Treasury Department, on several former
occasions, has suggested the propriety and importance of a
uniform law concerning bankruptcies of corporations, and other
bankers. Through the instrumentality of such a law, a salutary
check may doubtless be imposed on the issues of paper money,
and an effectual remedy given to the citizen, in a way at once
equal in all parts of the Union, and fully authorized by the
constitution."
A bankrupt law for banks! That was the remedy. Besides its efficacy
in preventing future suspensions, it would be a remedy for the
actual one. The day fixed for the act to take effect would be the
day for resuming payments, or going into liquidation. It would be
the day of honesty or death to these corporations; and between these
two alternatives even the most refractory bank would choose the
former, if able to do so.
The banks of the District of Columbia, and their currency, being
under the jurisdiction of Congress, admitted a direct remedy in
its own legislation, both for the fact of their suspension and the
evil of the small notes which they issued. The forfeiture of the
charter, where the resumption did not take place in a limited time,
and penalties on the issue of the small notes, were the appropriate
remedies;--and, as such were recommended to Congress.
There the President not only met and confronted the evils of the
actual suspension as they stood, but went further, and provided
against the recurrence of such evils thereafter, in four cardinal
recommendations: 1, never to have another national bank; 2, never
to receive bank notes again in payment of federal dues; 3, never
to use the banks again for depositories of the public moneys; 4,
to apply the process of bankruptcy to all future defaulting banks.
These were strong recommendations, all founded in a sense of justice
to the public, and called for by the supremacy of the government,
if it meant to maintain its supremacy; but recommendations running
deep into the pride and interests of a powerful class, and well
calculated to inflame still higher the formidable combination
already arrayed against the President, and to extend it to all that
should support him.
The immediate cause for convoking the extraordinary session--the
approaching deficit in the revenue--was frankly stated, and the
remedy as frankly proposed. Six millions of dollars was the
estimated amount; and to provide it neither loans nor taxes were
proposed, but the retention of the fourth instalment of the deposit
to be made with the States, and a temporary issue of treasury notes
to supply the deficiency until the incoming revenue should replenish
the treasury. The following was that recommendation:
"It is not proposed to procure the required amount by loans or
increased taxation. There are now in the treasury nine millions
three hundred and sixty-seven thousand two hundred and fourteen
dollars, directed by the Act of the 23d of June, 1836, to be
deposited with the States in October next. This sum, if so
deposited, will be subject, under the law, to be recalled, if
needed, to defray existing appropriations; and, as it is now
evident that the whole, or the principal part of it, will
be wanted for that purpose, it appears most proper that the
deposits should be withheld. Until the amount can be collected
from the banks, treasury notes may be temporarily issued, to be
gradually redeemed as it is received."
Six millions of treasury notes only were required, and from this
small amount required, it is easy to see how readily an adequate
amount could have been secured from the deposit banks, if the
administration had foreseen a month or two beforehand that the
suspension was to take place. An issue of treasury notes, being an
imitation of the exchequer bill issues of the British government,
which had been the facile and noiseless way of swamping that
government in bottomless debt, was repugnant to the policy of
this writer, and opposed by him: but of this hereafter. The third
instalment of the deposit, as it was called, had been received by
the States--received in depreciated paper, and the fourth demanded
in the same. A deposit demanded! and claimed as a debt!--that is
to say: the word "_deposit_" used in the act admitted to be both
by Congress and the States a fraud and a trick, and distribution
the thing intended and done. Seldom has it happened that so gross a
fraud, and one, too, intended to cheat the constitution, has been so
promptly acknowledged by the high parties perpetrating it. But of
this also hereafter.
The decorum and reserve of a State paper would not allow the
President to expatiate upon the enormity of the suspension which
had been contrived, nor to discriminate between the honest and
solvent banks which had been taken by surprise and swept off in a
current which they could not resist, and the insolvent or criminal
class, which contrived the catastrophe and exulted in its success.
He could only hint at the discrimination, and, while recommending
the bankrupt process for one class, to express his belief that with
all the honest and solvent institutions the suspension would be
temporary, and that they would seize the earliest moment which the
conduct of others would permit, to vindicate their integrity and
ability by returning to specie payments.
CHAPTER IX.
ATTACKS ON THE MESSAGE: TREASURY NOTES.
Under the first two of our Presidents, Washington, and the first
Mr. Adams, the course of the British Parliament was followed in
answering the address of the President, as the course of the
sovereign was followed in delivering it. The Sovereign delivered his
address in person to the two assembled Houses, and each answered
it: our two first Presidents did the same, and the Houses answered.
The purport of the answer was always to express a concurrence, or
non-concurrence with the general policy of the government as thus
authentically exposed; and the privilege of answering the address
laid open the policy of the government to the fullest discussion.
The effect of the practice was to lay open the state of the
country, and the public policy, to the fullest discussion; and, in
the character of the answer, to decide the question of accord or
disaccord--of support or opposition--between the representative
and the executive branches of the government. The change from the
address delivered in person, with its answer, to the message sent
by the private secretary, and no answer, was introduced by Mr.
Jefferson, and considered a reform; but it was questioned at the
time, whether any good would come of it, and whether that would not
be done irregularly, in the course of the debates, which otherwise
would have been done regularly in the discussion of the address. The
administration policy would be sure to be attacked, and irregularly,
in the course of business, if the spirit of opposition should not
be allowed full indulgence in a general and regular discussion. The
attacks would come, and many of Mr. Jefferson's friends thought
it better they should come at once, and occupy the first week or
two of the session, than to be scattered through the whole session
and mixed up with all its business. But the change was made, and
has stood, and now any bill or motion is laid hold of, to hang a
speech upon, against the measures or policy of an administration.
This was signally the case at this extra session, in relation to
Mr. Van Buren's policy. He had staked himself too decisively
against too large a combination of interests to expect moderation
or justice from his opponents; and he received none. Seldom has any
President been visited with more violent and general assaults than
he received, almost every opposition speaker assailing some part of
the message. One of the number, Mr. Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts,
made it a business to reply to the whole document, formally and
elaborately, under two and thirty distinct heads--the number of
points in the mariner's compass: each head bearing a caption to
indicate its point: and in that speech any one that chooses, can
find in a condensed form, and convenient for reading, all the points
of accusation against the democratic policy from the beginning of
the government down to that day.
Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster assailed it for what it contained, and
for what it did not--for its specific recommendations, and for its
omission to recommend measures which they deemed necessary. The
specie payments--the disconnection with banks--the retention of
the fourth instalment--the bankrupt act against banks--the brief
issue of treasury notes; all were condemned as measures improper
in themselves and inadequate to the relief of the country: while,
on the other hand, a national bank appeared to them to be the
proper and adequate remedy for the public evils. With them acted
many able men:--in the Senate, Bayard, of Delaware, Crittenden, of
Kentucky, John Davis, of Massachusetts, Preston, of South Carolina,
Southard, of New Jersey, Rives, of Virginia:--in the House of
Representatives, Mr. John Quincy Adams, Bell, of Tennessee, Richard
Biddle, of Pennsylvania, Cushing, of Massachusetts, Fillmore, of New
York, Henry Johnson, of Louisiana, Hunter and Mercer, of Virginia,
John Pope, of Kentucky, John Sargeant, Underwood of Kentucky,
Lewis Williams, Wise. All these were speaking members, and in
their diversity of talent displayed all the varieties of effective
speaking--close reasoning, sharp invective, impassioned declamation,
rhetoric, logic.
On the other hand was an equal array, both in number and
speaking talent, on the other side, defending and supporting the
recommendations of the President:--in the Senate, Silas Wright,
Grundy, John M. Niles, King, of Alabama, Strange, of North
Carolina, Buchanan, Calhoun, Linn, of Missouri, Benton, Bedford
Brown, of North Carolina, William Allen, of Ohio, John P. King, of
Georgia, Walker, of Mississippi:--in the House of Representatives,
Cambreleng, of New York, Hamer, of Ohio, Howard and Francis Thomas,
of Maryland, McKay, of North Carolina, John M. Patton, Francis
Pickens.
The treasury note bill was one of the first measures on which the
struggle took place. It was not a favorite with the whole body of
the democracy, but the majority preferred a small issue of that
paper, intended to operate, not as a currency, but as a ready means
of borrowing money, and especially from small capitalists; and,
therefore, preferable to a direct loan. It was opposed as a paper
money bill in disguise, as germinating a new national debt, and as
the easy mode of raising money, so ready to run into abuse from
its very facility of use. The President had recommended the issue
in general terms: the Secretary of the Treasury had descended into
detail, and proposed notes as low as twenty dollars, and without
interest. The Senate's committee rejected that proposition, and
reported a bill only for large notes--none less than 100 dollars,
and bearing interest; so as to be used for investment, not
circulation. Mr. Webster assailed the Secretary's plan, saying--
"He proposes, sir, to issue treasury notes of small
denominations, down even as low as twenty dollars, not bearing
interest, and redeemable at no fixed period; they are to be
received in debts due to government, but are not otherwise to
be paid until at some indefinite time there shall be a certain
surplus in the treasury beyond what the Secretary may think its
wants require. Now, sir, this is plain, authentic, statutable
paper money; it is exactly a new emission of old continental.
If the genius of the old confederation were now to rise up in
the midst of us, he could not furnish us, from the abundant
stores of his recollection, with a more perfect model of paper
money. It carries no interest; it has no fixed time of payment;
it is to circulate as currency, and it is to circulate on the
credit of government alone, with no fixed period of redemption!
If this be not paper money, pray, sir, what is it? And, sir,
who expected this? Who expected that in the fifth year of the
_experiment for reforming the currency_, and bringing it to an
absolute gold and silver circulation, the Treasury Department
would be found recommending to us a regular emission of
paper money? This, sir, is quite new in the history of this
government; it belongs to that of the confederation which has
passed away. Since 1789, although we have issued treasury notes
on sundry occasions, we have issued none like these; that is
to say, we have issued none not bearing interest, intended for
circulation, and with no fixed mode of redemption. I am glad,
however, Mr. President, that the committee have not adopted the
Secretary's recommendation, and that they have recommended the
issue of treasury notes of a description more conformable to the
practice of the government."
Mr. Benton, though opposed to the policy of issuing these notes,
and preferring himself a direct loan in this case, yet defended the
particular bill which had been brought in from the character and
effects ascribed to it, and said:
"He should not have risen in this debate, had it not been for
the misapprehensions which seemed to pervade the minds of some
senators as to the character of the bill. It is called by some
a paper-money bill, and by others a bill to germinate a new
national debt. These are serious imputations, and require to be
answered, not by declamation and recrimination, but by facts and
reasons, addressed to the candor and to the intelligence of an
enlightened and patriotic community.
"I dissent from the imputations on the character of the bill. I
maintain that it is neither a paper-money bill, nor a bill to
lay the foundation for a new national debt; and will briefly
give my reasons for believing as I do on both points.
"There are certainly two classes of treasury notes--one for
investment, and one for circulation; and both classes are
known to our laws, and possess distinctive features, which
define their respective characters, and confine them to their
respective uses.
"The notes for investment bear an interest sufficient to induce
capitalists to exchange gold and silver for them, and to lay
them by as a productive fund. This is their distinctive feature,
but not the only one; they possess other subsidiary qualities,
such as transferability only by indorsement--payable at a
fixed time--not re-issuable--nor of small denomination--and
to be cancelled when paid. Notes of this class are, in fact,
loan notes--notes to raise loans on, by selling them for hard
money--either immediately by the Secretary of the Treasury, or,
secondarily, by the creditor of the government to whom they
have been paid. In a word, they possess all the qualities which
invite investment, and forbid and impede circulation.
"The treasury notes for currency are distinguished by
features and qualities the reverse of those which have been
mentioned. They bear little or no interest. They are payable
to bearer--transferable by delivery--re-issuable--of low
denominations--and frequently reimbursable at the pleasure of
the government. They are, in fact, paper money, and possess
all the qualities which forbid investment, and invite to
circulation. The treasury notes of 1815 were of that character,
except for the optional clause to enable the holder to fund them
at the interest which commanded loans--at seven per cent.
"These are the distinctive features of the two classes of notes.
Now try the committee's bill by the test of these qualities.
It will be found that the notes which it authorizes belong
to the first-named class; that they are to bear an interest,
which may be six per cent.; that they are transferable only by
indorsement; that they are not re-issuable; that they are to be
paid at a day certain--to wit, within one year; that they are
not to be issued of less denomination than one hundred dollars;
are to be cancelled when taken up; and that the Secretary of the
Treasury is expressly authorized to raise money upon them by
loaning them.
"These are the features and qualities of the notes to be issued,
and they define and fix their character as notes to raise loans,
and to be laid by as investments, and not as notes for currency,
to be pushed into circulation by the power of the government;
and to add to the curse of the day by increasing the quantity of
unconvertible paper money."
Though yielding to an issue of these notes in this particular form,
limited in size of the notes to one hundred dollars, yet Mr. Benton
deemed it due to himself and the subject to enter a protest against
the policy of such issues, and to expose their dangerous tendency,
both to slide into a paper currency, and to steal by a noiseless
march into the creation of public debt, and thus expressed himself:
"I trust I have vindicated the bill from the stigma of being a
paper currency bill, and from the imputation of being the first
step towards the creation of a new national debt. I hope it is
fully cleared from the odium of both these imputations. I will
now say a few words on the policy of issuing treasury notes
in time of peace, or even in time of war, until the ordinary
resources of loans and taxes had been tried and exhausted. I am
no friend to the issue of treasury notes of any kind. As loans,
they are a disguised mode of borrowing, and easy to slide into
a currency: as a currency, it is the most seductive, the most
dangerous, and the most liable to abuse of all the descriptions
of paper money. 'The stamping of paper (by government) is
an operation so much easier than the laying of taxes, or of
borrowing money, that a government in the habit of paper
emissions would rarely fail, in any emergency, to indulge itself
too far in the employment of that resource, to avoid as much as
possible one less auspicious to present popularity.' So said
General Hamilton; and Jefferson, Madison Macon, Randolph, and
all the fathers of the republican church, concurred with him.
These sagacious statesmen were shy of this facile and seductive
resource, 'so liable to abuse, and so certain of being abused.'
They held it inadmissible to recur to it in time of peace,
and that it could only be thought of amidst the exigencies
and perils of war, and that after exhausting the direct and
responsible alternative of loans and taxes. Bred in the school
of these great men, I came here at this session to oppose, at
all risks, an issue of treasury notes. I preferred a direct
loan, and that for many and cogent reasons. There is clear
authority to borrow in the constitution; but, to find authority
to issue these notes, we must enter the field of constructive
powers. To borrow, is to do a responsible act; it is to incur
certain accountability to the constituent, and heavy censure
if it cannot be justified; to issue these notes, is to do an
act which few consider of, which takes but little hold of the
public mind, which few condemn and some encourage, because it
increases the quantum of what is vainly called money. Loans
are limited by the capacity, at least, of one side to borrow,
and of the other to lend: the issue of these notes has no
limit but the will of the makers, and the supply of lamp-black
and rags. The continental bills of the Revolution, and the
assignats of France, should furnish some instructive lessons
on this head. Direct loans are always voluntary on the part of
the lender; treasury note loans may be a forced borrowing from
the government creditor--as much so as if the bayonet were put
to his breast; for necessity has no law, and the necessitous
claimant must take what is tendered, whether with or without
interest--whether ten or fifty per cent. below par. I distrust,
dislike, and would fain eschew, this treasury note resource. I
prefer the direct loans of 1820-'21. I could only bring myself
to acquiesce in this measure when it was urged that there was
not time to carry a loan through its forms; nor even then could
I consent to it, until every feature of a currency character had
been eradicated from the face of the bill."
The bill passed the Senate by a general vote, only Messrs. Clay,
Crittenden, Preston, Southard, and Spence of Maryland, voting
against it. In the House of Representatives it encountered a more
strenuous resistance, and was subjected to some trials which showed
the dangerous proclivity of these notes to slide from the foundation
of investment into the slippery path of currency. Several motions
were made to reduce their size--to make them as low as $25; and that
failing, to reduce them to $50; which succeeded. The interest was
struck at in a motion to reduce it to a nominal amount; and this
motion, like that for reducing the minimum size to $25, received a
large support--some ninety votes. The motion to reduce to $50 was
carried by a majority of forty. Returning to the Senate with this
amendment, Mr. Benton moved to restore the $100 limit, and intimated
his intention, if it was not done, of withholding his support from
the bill--declaring that nothing but the immediate wants of the
Treasury, and the lack of time to raise the money by a direct loan
as declared by the Secretary of the Treasury, could have brought him
to vote for treasury notes in any shape. Mr. Clay opposed the whole
scheme as a government bank in disguise, but supported Mr. Benton's
motion as being adverse to that design. He said:
"He had been all along opposed to this measure, and he saw
nothing now to change that opinion. Mr. C. would have been glad
to aid the wants of the Treasury, but thought it might have been
done better by suspending the action of many appropriations not
so indispensably necessary, rather than by resorting to a loan.
Reduction, economy, retrenchment, had been recommended by the
President, and why not then pursued? Mr. C.'s chief objection,
however, was, that these notes were mere post notes, only
differing from bank notes of that kind in giving the Secretary a
power of fixing the interest as he pleases.
"It is, said Mr. C., a government bank, issuing government
bank notes; an experiment to set up a government bank. It
is, in point of fact, an incipient bank. Now, if government
has the power to issue bank notes, and so to form indirectly
and covertly a bank, how is it that it has not the power to
establish a national bank? What difference is there between a
great government bank, with Mr. Woodbury as the great cashier,
and a bank composed of a corporation of private citizens? What
difference is there, except that the latter is better and safer,
and more stable, and more free from political influences,
and more rational and more republican? An attack is made at
Washington upon all the banks of the country, when we have at
least one hundred millions of bank paper in circulation. At
such a time, a time too of peace, instead of aid, we denounce
them, decry them, seek to ruin them, and begin to issue paper in
opposition to them! You resort to paper, which you profess to
put down; you resort to a bank, which you pretend to decry and
to denounce; you resort to a government paper currency, after
having exclaimed against every currency except that of gold and
silver! Mr. C. said he should vote for Mr. Benton's amendment,
as far as it went to prevent the creation of a government bank
and a government currency."
Mr. Webster also supported the motion of Mr. Benton, saying:
"He would not be unwilling to give his support to the bill, as a
loan, and that only a temporary loan. He was, however, utterly
opposed to every modification of the measure which went to
stamp upon it the character of a government currency. All past
experience showed that such a currency would depreciate; that
it will and must depreciate. He should vote for the amendment,
inasmuch as $100 bills were less likely to get into common
circulation than $50 bills. His objection was against the old
continental money in any shape or in any disguise, and he would
therefore vote for the amendment."
The motion was lost by a vote of 16 to 25, the yeas and nays being:
YEAS--Messrs. Allen, Benton, Clay, of Kentucky, Clayton, Kent,
King, of Georgia, McKean, Pierce, Rives, Robbins, Smith, of
Connecticut, Southard, Spence, Tipton, Webster, White--16.
NAYS--Messrs. Buchanan, Clay, of Alabama, Crittenden, Fulton,
Grundy, Hubbard, King, of Alabama, Knight, Linn, Lyon, Morris,
Nicholas, Niles, Norvell, Roane, Robinson, Smith, of Indiana,
Strange, Swift, Talmadge, Walker, Williams, Wall, Wright,
Young--25.
CHAPTER X.
RETENTION OF THE FOURTH DEPOSIT INSTALMENT.
The deposit with the States had only reached its second instalment
when the deposit banks, unable to stand a continued quarterly drain
of near ten millions to the quarter, gave up the effort and closed
their doors. The first instalment had been delivered the first of
January, in specie, or its equivalent; the second in April, also
in valid money; the third one demandable on the first of June, was
accepted by the States in depreciated paper: and they were very
willing to receive the fourth instalment in the same way. It had
cost the States nothing,--was not likely to be called back by the
federal government, and was all clear gains to those who took it
as a deposit and held it as a donation. But the Federal Treasury
needed it also; and likewise needed ten millions more of that amount
which had already been "_deposited_" with the States; and which
"_deposit_" was made and accepted under a statute which required
it to be paid back whenever the wants of the Treasury required it.
That want had now come, and the event showed the delusion and
the cheat of the bill under which a distribution had been made in
the name of a deposit. The idea of restitution entered no one's
head! neither of the government to demand it, nor of the States to
render back. What had been delivered, was gone! that was a clear
case; and reclamation, or rendition, even of the smallest part,
or at the most remote period, was not dreamed of. But there was a
portion behind--another instalment of ten millions--deliverable
out of the "_surplus_" on the first day of October: but there was
no surplus: on the contrary a deficit: and the retention of this
sum would seem to be a matter of course with the government, only
requiring the form of an act to release the obligation for the
delivery. It was recommended by the President, counted upon in the
treasury estimates, and its retention the condition on which the
amount of treasury notes was limited to ten millions of dollars.
A bill was reported for the purpose, in the mildest form, not to
repeal but to postpone the clause; and the reception which it met,
though finally successful, should be an eternal admonition to the
federal government never to have any money transaction with its
members--a transaction in which the members become the masters,
and the devourers of the head. The finance committee of the Senate
had brought in a bill to repeal the obligation to deposit this
fourth instalment; and from the beginning it encountered a serious
resistance. Mr. Webster led the way, saying:
"We are to consider that this money, according to the provisions
of the existing law, is to go equally among all the States, and
among all the people; and the wants of the Treasury must be
supplied, if supplies be necessary, equally by all the people.
It is not a question, therefore, whether some shall have money,
and others shall make good the deficiency. All partake in the
distribution, and all will contribute to the supply. So that it
is a mere question of convenience, and, in my opinion, it is
decidedly most convenient, on all accounts, that this instalment
should follow its present destination, and the necessities of
the Treasury be provided for by other means."
Mr. Preston opposed the repealing bill, principally on the ground
that many of the States had already appropriated this money; that is
to say, had undertaken public works on the strength of it; and would
suffer more injury from not receiving it than the Federal Treasury
would suffer from otherwise supplying its place. Mr. Crittenden
opposed the bill on the same ground. Kentucky, he said, had made
provision for the expenditure of the money, and relied upon it, and
could not expect the law to be lightly rescinded, or broken, on the
faith of which she had anticipated its use. Other senators treated
the deposit act as a contract, which the United States was bound to
comply with by delivering all the instalments.
In the progress of the bill Mr. Buchanan proposed an amendment, the
effect of which would be to change the essential character of the
so called, deposit act, and convert it into a real distribution
measure. By the terms of the act, it was the duty of the Secretary
of the Treasury to call upon the States for a return of the deposit
when needed by the Federal Treasury: Mr. Buchanan proposed to
release the Secretary from this duty, and devolve it upon Congress,
by enacting that the three instalments already delivered, should
remain on deposit with the States until called for by Congress. Mr.
Niles saw the evil of the proposition, and thus opposed it:
"He must ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment, and was
sorry it had been offered. If it was to be fully considered, it
would renew the debate on the deposit act, as it went to change
the essential principles and terms of that act. A majority of
those who voted for that act, about which there had been so much
said, and so much misrepresentation, had professed to regard
it--and he could not doubt that at the time they did so regard
it--as simply a deposit law; as merely changing the place of
deposit from the banks to the States, so far as related to the
surplus. The money was still to be in the Treasury, and liable
to be drawn out, with certain limitations and restrictions, by
the ordinary appropriation laws, without the direct action of
Congress. The amendment, if adopted, will change the principles
of the deposit act, and the condition of the money deposited
with the States under it. It will no longer be a deposit; it
will not be in the Treasury, even in point of legal effect or
form: the deposit will be changed to a loan, or, perhaps more
properly, a grant to the States. The rights of the United States
will be changed to a mere claim, like that against the late Bank
of the United States; and a claim without any means to enforce
it. We were charged, at the time, of making a distribution of
the public revenue to the States, in the disguise and form of a
deposit; and this amendment, it appeared to him, would be a very
bold step towards confirming the truth of that charge. He deemed
the amendment an important one, and highly objectionable; but
he saw that the Senate were prepared to adopt it, and he would
not pursue the discussion, but content himself with repeating
his request for the ayes and noes on the question."
Mr. Buchanan expressed his belief that the substitution of Congress
for the Secretary of the Treasury, would make no difference in
the nature of the fund: and that remark of his, if understood as
sarcasm, was undoubtedly true; for the deposit was intended as a
distribution by its authors from the beginning, and this proposed
substitution was only taking a step, and an effectual one, to make
it so: for it was not to be expected that a Congress would ever
be found to call for this money from the States, which they were
so eager to give to the States. The proposition of Mr. Buchanan
was carried by a large majority--33 to 12--all the opponents of
the administration, and a division of its friends, voting for it.
Thus, the whole principle, and the whole argument on which the
deposit act had been passed, was reversed. It was passed to make the
State treasuries the Treasury _pro tanto_ of the United States--to
substitute the States for the banks, for the keeping of this surplus
until it was wanted--and it was placed within the call of a federal
executive officer that it might be had for the public service when
needed. All this was reversed. The recall of the money was taken
from the federal executive, and referred to the federal legislative
department--to the Congress, composed of members representing the
States--that is to say, from the payee to the payor, and was a
virtual relinquishment of the payment. And thus the deposit was made
a mockery and a cheat; and that by those who passed it.
In the House of Representatives the disposition to treat the deposit
as a contract, and to compel the government to deliver the money
(although it would be compelled to raise by extraordinary means what
was denominated a surplus), was still stronger than in the Senate,
and gave rise to a protracted struggle, long and doubtful in its
issue. Mr. Cushing laid down the doctrine of contract, and thus
argued it:
"The clauses of the deposit act, which appertain to the present
question, seem to me to possess all the features of a contract.
It provides that the whole surplus revenue of the United
States, beyond a certain sum, which may be in the Treasury on
a certain day, shall be deposited with the several States;
which deposit the States are to keep safely, and to pay back
to the United States, whenever the same shall be called for by
the Secretary of the Treasury in a prescribed time and mode,
and on the happening of a given contingency. Here, it seems
to me, is a contract in honor; and, so far as there can be a
contract between the United States and the several States, a
contract in law; there being reciprocal engagements, for a
valuable consideration, on both sides. It is, at any rate, a
quasi-contract. They who impugn this view of the question argue
on the supposition that the act, performed or to be performed
by the United States, is an inchoate gift of money to the
States. Not so. It is a contract of deposit; and that contract
is consummated, and made perfect, on the formal reception of
any instalment of the deposit by the States. Now, entertaining
this view of the transaction, I am asked by the administration
to come forward and break this contract. True, a contract made
by the government of the United States cannot be enforced in
law. Does that make it either honest or honorable for the United
States to take advantage of its power and violate its pledged
faith? I refuse to participate in any such breach of faith. But
further. The administration solicits Congress to step in between
the United States and the States as a volunteer, and to violate
a contract, as the means of helping the administration out of
difficulties, into which its own madness and folly have wilfully
sunk it, and which press equally upon the government and the
people. The object of the measure is to relieve the Secretary of
the Treasury from the responsibility of acting in this matter
as he has the power to do. Let him act. I will not go out of my
way to interpose in this between the Executive and the several
States, until the administration appeals to me in the right
spirit. This it has not done. The Executive comes to us with
a new doctrine, which is echoed by his friends in this House,
namely, that the American government is not to exert itself for
the relief of the American people. Very well. If this be your
policy, I, as representing the people, will not exert myself for
the relief of your administration."
Such was the chicanery, unworthy of a _pie-poudre_ court--with
which a statute of the federal Congress, stamped with every word,
invested with every form, hung with every attribute, to define it
a deposit--not even a loan--was to be pettifogged into a gift! and
a contract for a gift! and the federal Treasury required to stand
and deliver! and all that, not in a low law court, where attorneys
congregate, but in the high national legislature, where candor and
firmness alone should appear. History would be faithless to her
mission if she did not mark such conduct for reprobation, and
invoke a public judgment upon it.
After a prolonged contest the vote was taken, and the bill carried,
but by the smallest majority--119 to 117;--a difference of two
votes, which was only a difference of one member. But even that
was a delusive victory. It was immediately seen that more than one
had voted with the majority, not for the purpose of passing the
bill, but to gain the privilege of a majority member to move for a
reconsideration. Mr. Pickens, of South Carolina, immediately made
that motion, and it was carried by a majority of 70! Mr. Pickens
then proposed an amendment, which was to substitute definite for
indefinite postponement--to postpone to a day certain instead of the
pleasure of Congress: and the first day of January, 1839, was the
day proposed; and that without reference to the condition of the
Treasury (which might not then have any surplus), for the transfer
of this fourth instalment of a deposit to the States. The vote being
taken on this proposed amendment, it was carried by a majority
of 40: and that amendment being concurred in by the Senate, the
bill in that form became a law, and a virtual legalization of the
deposit into a donation of forty millions to the States. And this
was done by the votes of members who had voted for a deposit with
the States; because a donation to the States was unconstitutional.
The three instalments already delivered were not to be recalled
until Congress should so order; and it was quite certain that it
never would so order. At the same time the nominal discretion of
Congress over the deposit of the remainder was denied, and the duty
of the Secretary made peremptory to deliver it in the brief space
of one year and a quarter from that time. But events frustrated
that order. The Treasury was in no condition on the first day of
January, 1839, to deliver that amount of money. It was penniless
itself. The compromise act of 1833, making periodical reductions in
the tariff, until the whole duty was reduced to an _ad valorem_ of
twenty per cent., had nearly run its course, and left the Treasury
in the condition of a borrower, instead of that of a donor or lender
of money. This fourth instalment could not be delivered at the time
appointed, nor subsequently;--and was finally relinquished, the
States retaining the amount they had received: which was so much
clear gain through the legislative fraud of making a distribution
under the name of a deposit.
This was the end of one of the distribution schemes which had so
long afflicted and disturbed Congress and the country. Those schemes
began now to be known by their consequences--evil to those they were
intended to benefit, and of no service to those whose popularity
they were to augment. To the States the deposit proved to be an
evil, in the contentions and combinations to which their disposition
gave rise in the general assemblies--in the objects to which they
were applied--and the futility of the help which they afforded.
Popularity hunting, on a national scale, gave birth to the schemes
in Congress: the same spirit, on a smaller and local scale, took
them up in the States. All sorts of plans were proposed for the
employment of the money, and combinations more or less interested,
or designing, generally carried the point in the universal scramble.
In some States a pro rata division of the money, per capite, was
made; and the distributive share of each individual being but a few
shillings, was received with contempt by some, and rejected with
scorn by others. In other States it was divided among the counties,
and gave rise to disjointed undertakings of no general benefit.
Others, again, were stimulated by the unexpected acquisition of
a large sum, to engage in large and premature works of internal
improvement, embarrassing the State with debt, and commencing works
which could not be finished. Other States again, looking upon the
deposit act as a legislative fraud to cover an unconstitutional and
demoralizing distribution of public money to the people, refused
for a long time to receive their proffered dividend, and passed
resolutions of censure upon the authors of the act. And thus the
whole policy worked out differently from what had been expected. The
States and the people were not grateful for the favor: the authors
of the act gained no presidential election by it: and the gratifying
fact became evident that the American people were not the degenerate
Romans, or the volatile Greeks, to be seduced with their own
money--to give their votes to men who lavished the public moneys on
their wants or their pleasures--in grain to feed them, or in shows
and games to delight and amuse them.
CHAPTER XI.
INDEPENDENT TREASURY AND HARD MONEY PAYMENTS.
These were the crowning measures of the session, and of Mr. Van
Buren's administration,--not entirely consummated at that time,
but partly, and the rest assured;--and constitute in fact an era
in our financial history. They were the most strenuously contested
measures of the session, and made the issue completely between
the hard money and the paper money systems. They triumphed--have
maintained their supremacy ever since--and vindicated their
excellence on trial. Vehemently opposed at the time, and the
greatest evil predicted, opposition has died away, and given
place to support; and the predicted evils have been seen only in
blessings. No attempt has been made to disturb these great measures
since their final adoption, and it would seem that none need now
be apprehended; but the history of their adoption presents one
of the most instructive lessons in our financial legislation,
and must have its interest with future ages as well as with the
present generation. The bills which were brought in for the
purpose were clear in principle--simple in detail: the government
to receive nothing but gold and silver for its revenues, and
its own officers to keep it--the Treasury being at the seat of
government, with branches, or sub-treasuries at the principal points
of collection and disbursement. And these treasuries to be real,
not constructive--strong buildings to hold the public moneys, and
special officers to keep the keys. The capacious, strong-walled and
well-guarded custom houses and mints, furnished in the great cities
the rooms that were wanted: the Treasury building at Washington was
ready, and in the right place.
This proposed total separation of the federal government from all
banks--called at the time in the popular language of the day, the
divorce of Bank and State--naturally arrayed the whole bank power
against it, from a feeling of interest; and all (or nearly so) acted
in conjunction with the once dominant, and still potent, Bank of the
United States. In the Senate, Mr. Webster headed one interest--Mr.
Rives, of Virginia, the other; and Mr. Calhoun, who had long acted
with the opposition, now came back to the support of the democracy,
and gave the aid without which these great measures of the session
could not have been carried. His temperament required him to have a
lead; and it was readily yielded to him in the debate in all cases
where he went with the recommendations of the message; and hence
he appeared, in the debate on these measures, as the principal
antagonist of Mr. Webster and Mr. Rives.
The present attitude of Mr. Calhoun gave rise to some taunts in
relation to his former support of a national bank, and on his
present political associations, which gave him the opportunity to
set himself right in relation to that institution and his support of
it in 1816 and 1834. In this vein Mr. Rives said:
"It does seem to me, Mr. President, that this perpetual and
gratuitous introduction of the Bank of the United States into
this debate, with which it has no connection, as if to alarm the
imaginations of grave senators, is but a poor evidence of the
intrinsic strength of the gentleman's cause. Much has been said
of argument _ad captandum_ in the course of this discussion. I
have heard none that can compare with this solemn stalking of
the ghost of the Bank of the United States through this hall, to
'frighten senators from their propriety.' I am as much opposed
to that institution as the gentleman or any one else is, or
can be. I think I may say I have given some proofs of it. The
gentleman himself acquits me of any design to favor the interest
of that institution, while he says such is the necessary
consequence of my proposition. The suggestion is advanced for
effect, and then retracted in form. Whatever be the new-born
zeal of the senator from South Carolina against the Bank of
the United States, I flatter myself that I stand in a position
that places me, at least, as much above suspicion of an undue
leaning in favor of that institution as the honorable gentleman.
If I mistake not, it was the senator from South Carolina who
introduced and supported the bill for the charter of the United
States Bank in 1816; it was he, also, who brought in a bill in
1834, to extend the charter of that institution for a term of
twelve years; and none were more conspicuous than he in the
well-remembered scenes of that day, in urging the restoration of
the government deposits to this same institution."
The reply of Mr. Calhoun to those taunts, which impeached his
consistency--a point at which he was always sensitive--was quiet
and ready, and the same that he had often been heard to express in
common conversation. He said:
"In supporting the bank of 1816, I openly declared that, as a
question _de novo_, I would be decidedly against the bank, and
would be the last to give it my support. I also stated that,
in supporting the bank then, I yielded to the necessity of the
case, growing out of the then existing and long-established
connection between the government and the banking system. I
took the ground, even at that early period, that so long as
the connection existed, so long as the government received and
paid away bank notes as money, they were bound to regulate
their value, and had no alternative but the establishment
of a national bank. I found the connection in existence and
established before my time, and over which I could have no
control. I yielded to the necessity, in order to correct the
disordered state of the currency, which had fallen exclusively
under the control of the States. I yielded to what I could not
reverse, just as any member of the Senate now would, who might
believe that Louisiana was unconstitutionally admitted into the
Union, but who would, nevertheless, feel compelled to vote to
extend the laws to that State, as one of its members, on the
ground that its admission was an act, whether constitutional or
unconstitutional, which he could not reverse. In 1834, I acted
in conformity to the same principle, in proposing the renewal
of the bank charter for a short period. My object, as expressly
avowed, was to use the bank to break the connection between the
government and the banking system gradually, in order to avert
the catastrophe which has now befallen us, and which I then
clearly perceived. But the connection, which I believed to be
irreversible in 1816, has now been broken by operation of law.
It is now an open question. I feel myself free, for the first
time, to choose my course on this important subject; and, in
opposing a bank, I act in conformity to principles which I have
entertained ever since I have fully investigated the subject."
Going on with his lead in support of the President's
recommendations, Mr. Calhoun brought forward the proposition to
discontinue the use of bank paper in the receipts and disbursements
of the federal government, and supported his motion as a measure as
necessary to the welfare of the banks themselves as to the safety of
the government. In this sense he said:
"We have reached a new era with regard to these institutions.
He who would judge of the future by the past, in reference
to them, will be wholly mistaken. The year 1833 marks the
commencement of this era. That extraordinary man who had the
power of imprinting his own feelings on the community, then
commenced his hostile attacks, which have left such effects
behind, that the war then commenced against the banks, I clearly
see, will not terminate, unless there be a separation between
them and the government,--until one or the other triumphs--till
the government becomes the bank, or the bank the government. In
resisting their union, I act as the friend of both. I have, as
I have said, no unkind feeling toward the banks. I am neither
a bank man, nor an anti-bank man. I have had little connection
with them. Many of my best friends, for whom I have the highest
esteem, have a deep interest in their prosperity, and, as far
as friendship or personal attachment extends, my inclination
would be strongly in their favor. But I stand up here as the
representative of no particular interest. I look to the whole,
and to the future, as well as the present; and I shall steadily
pursue that course which, under the most enlarged view, I
believe to be my duty. In 1834 I saw the present crisis. I
in vain raised a warning voice, and endeavored to avert it.
I now see, with equal certainty, one far more portentous. If
this struggle is to go on--if the banks will insist upon a
reunion with the government, against the sense of a large and
influential portion of the community--and, above all, if they
should succeed in effecting it--a reflux flood will inevitably
sweep away the whole system. A deep popular excitement is never
without some reason, and ought ever to be treated with respect;
and it is the part of wisdom to look timely into the cause, and
correct it before the excitement shall become so great as to
demolish the object, with all its good and evil, against which
it is directed."
Mr. Rives treated the divorce of bank and State as the divorce of
the government from the people, and said:
"Much reliance, Mr. President, has been placed on the popular
catch-word of divorcing the government from all connection
with banks. Nothing is more delusive and treacherous than
catch-words. How often has the revered name of liberty been
invoked, in every quarter of the globe, and every age of the
world, to disguise and sanctify the most heartless despotisms.
Let us beware that, in attempting to divorce the government
from all connection with banks, we do not end with divorcing
the government from the people. As long as the people shall
be satisfied in their transactions with each other, with a
sound convertible paper medium, with a due proportion of the
precious metals forming the basis of that medium, and mingled
in the current of circulation, why should the government reject
altogether this currency of the people, in the operations of
the public Treasury? If this currency be good enough for the
masters it ought to be so for the servants. If the government
sternly reject, for its uses, the general medium of exchange
adopted by the community, is it not thereby isolated from the
general wants and business of the country, in relation to this
great concern of the currency? Do you not give it a separate, if
not hostile, interest, and thus, in effect, produce a divorce
between government and people?--a result, of all others, to be
most deprecated in a republican system."
Mr. Webster's main argument in favor of the re-establishment of
the National Bank (which was the consummation he kept steadily
in his eye) was, as a regulator of currency, and of the domestic
exchanges. The answer to this was, that these arguments, now relied
on as the main ones for the continuance of the institution, were
not even thought of at its commencement--that no such reasons
were hinted at by General Hamilton and the advocates of the first
bank--that they were new-fangled, and had not been brought forward
by others until after the paper system had deranged both currency
and exchanges;--and that it was contradictory to look for the
cure of the evil in the source of the evil. It was denied that
the regulation of exchanges was a government concern, or that the
federal government was created for any such purpose. The buying and
selling of bills of exchange was a business pursuit--a commercial
business, open to any citizen or bank; and the loss or profit was
an individual, and not a government concern. It was denied that
there was any derangement of currency in the only currency which
the constitution recognized--that of gold and silver. Whoever had
this currency to be exchanged--that is, given in exchange at one
place for the same in another place--now had the exchange effected
on fair terms, and on the just commercial principle--that of paying
a difference equal to the freight and insurance of the money: and,
on that principle, gold was the best regulator of exchanges; for its
small bulk and little weight in proportion to its value, made it
easy and cheap of transportation; and brought down the exchange to
the minimum cost of such transportation (even when necessary to be
made), and to the uniformity of a permanent business. That was the
principle of exchange; but, ordinarily, there was no transportation
in the case: the exchange dealer in one city had his correspondent
in another: a letter often did the business. The regulation of the
currency required an understanding of the meaning of the term. As
used by the friends of a National Bank, and referred to its action,
the paper currency alone was intended. The phrase had got into
vogue since the paper currency had become predominant, and that is
a currency not recognized by the constitution, but repudiated by
it; and one of its main objects was to prevent the future existence
of that currency--the evils of which its framers had seen and
felt. Gold and silver was the only currency recognized by that
instrument, and its regulation specially and exclusively given to
Congress, which had lately discharged its duty in that particular,
in regulating the relative value of the two metals. The gold act
of 1834 had made that regulation, correcting the error of previous
legislation, and had revived the circulation of gold, as an ordinary
currency, after a total disappearance of it under an erroneous
valuation, for an entire generation. It was in full circulation when
the combined stoppage of the banks again suppressed it. That was the
currency--gold and silver, with the regulation of which Congress
was not only intrusted, but charged: and this regulation included
preservation. It must be saved before it can be regulated; and to
save it, it must be brought into the country--and kept in it. The
demand of the federal treasury could alone accomplish these objects.
The quantity of specie required for the use of that treasury--its
large daily receipts and disbursements--all inexorably confined to
hard money--would create the demand for the precious metals which
would command their presence, and that in sufficient quantity for
the wants of the people as well as of the government. For the
government does not consume what it collects--does not melt up or
hoard its revenue, or export it to foreign countries, but pays it
out to the people; and thus becomes the distributor of gold and
silver among them. It is the greatest paymaster in the country; and,
while it pays in hard money, the people will be sure of a supply.
We are taunted with the demand: "_Where is the better currency?_"
We answer: "_Suppressed by the conspiracy of the banks!_" And this
is the third time in the last twenty years in which paper money has
suppressed specie, and now suppresses it: for this is a game--(the
war between gold and paper)--in which the meanest and weakest
is always the conqueror. The baser currency always displaces the
better. Hard money needs support against paper, and that support
can be given by us, by excluding paper money from all federal
receipts and payments; and confining paper money to its own local
and inferior orbit: and its regulation can be well accomplished by
subjecting delinquent banks to the process of bankruptcy, and their
small notes to suppression under a federal stamp duty.
The distress of the country figured largely in the speeches of
several members, but without finding much sympathy. That engine of
operating upon the government and the people had been over-worked
in the panic session of 1833-'34 and was now a stale resource, and
a crippled machine. The suspension appeared to the country to have
been purposely contrived, and wantonly continued. There was now
more gold and silver in the country than had ever been seen in it
before--four times as much as in 1832, when the Bank of the United
States was in its palmy state, and was vaunted to have done so
much for the currency. Twenty millions of silver was then its own
estimate of the amount of that metal in the United States, and not
a particle of gold included in the estimate. Now the estimate of
gold and silver was eighty millions; and with this supply of the
precious metals, and the determination of all the sound banks to
resume as soon as the Bank of the United States could be forced into
resumption, or forced into open insolvency, so as to lose control
over others, the suspension and embarrassment were obliged to be of
brief continuance. Such were the arguments of the friends of hard
money.
The divorce bill, as amended, passed the Senate, and though not
acted upon in the House during this called session, yet received the
impetus which soon carried it through, and gives it a right to be
placed among the measures of that session.
CHAPTER XII.
ATTEMPTED RESUMPTION OF SPECIE PAYMENTS.
The suspension of the banks commenced at New York, and took place
on the morning of the 10th of May: those of Philadelphia, headed
by the Bank of the United States, closed their doors two days
after, and merely in consequence, as they alleged, of the New
York suspension; and the Bank of the United States especially
declared its wish and ability to have continued specie payments
without reserve, but felt it proper to follow the example which
had been set. All this was known to be a fiction at the time; and
the events were soon to come, to prove it to be so. As early as
the 15th of August ensuing--in less than one hundred days after
the suspension--the banks of New York took the initiatory steps
towards resuming. A general meeting of the officers of the banks of
the city took place, and appointed a committee to correspond with
other banks to procure the appointment of delegates to agree upon
a time of general resumption. In this meeting it was unanimously
resolved: "_That the banks of the several States be respectfully
invited to appoint delegates to meet on the 27th day of November
next, in the city of New York, for the purpose of conferring on
the time when specie payments may be resumed with safety; and on
the measures necessary to effect that purpose._" Three citizens,
eminently respectable in themselves, and presidents of the leading
institutions--_Messrs._ Albert Gallatin, George Newbold, and
Cornelius W. Lawrence--were appointed a committee to correspond with
other banks on the subject of the resolution. They did so; and,
leaving to each bank the privilege of sending as many delegates as
it pleased, they warmly urged the importance of the occasion, and
that the banks from each State should be represented in the proposed
convention. There was a general concurrence in the invitation; but
the convention did not take place. One powerful interest, strong
enough to paralyze the movement, refused to come into it. That
interest was the Philadelphia banks, headed by the Bank of the
United States! So soon were fallacious pretensions exploded when put
to the test. And the test in this case was not resumption itself,
but only a meeting to confer upon a time when it would suit the
general interest to resume. Even to unite in that conference was
refused by this arrogant interest, affecting such a superiority
over all other banks; and pretending to have been only dragged into
their condition by their example. But a reason had to be given for
this refusal, and it was--and was worthy of the party; namely, that
it was not proper to do any thing in the business until after the
adjournment of the extra session of Congress. That answer was a key
to the movements in Congress to thwart the government plans, and
to coerce a renewal of the United States Bank charter. After the
termination of the session it will be seen that another reason for
refusal was found.
CHAPTER XIII.
BANKRUPT ACT AGAINST BANKS.
This was the stringent measure recommended by the President to cure
the evil of bank suspensions. Scattered through all the States of
the Union, and only existing as local institutions, the federal
government could exercise no direct power over them; and the
impossibility of bringing the State legislatures to act in concert,
left the institutions to do as they pleased; or rather, left even
the insolvent ones to do as they pleased; for these, dominating
over the others, and governed by their own necessities, or designs,
compelled the solvent banks, through panic or self-defence, to
follow their example. Three of these general suspensions had
occurred in the last twenty years. The notes of these banks
constituting the mass of the circulating medium, put the actual
currency into the hands of these institutions; leaving the community
helpless; for it was not in the power of individuals to contend
with associated corporations. It was a reproach to the federal
government to be unable to correct this state of things--to see the
currency of the constitution driven out of circulation, and out of
the country; and substituted by depreciated paper; and the very evil
produced which it was a main object of the constitution to prevent.
The framers of that instrument were hard-money men. They had seen
the evils of paper money, and intended to guard their posterity
against what they themselves had suffered. They had done so, as
they believed, in the prohibition upon the States to issue bills of
credit; and in the prohibition upon the States to make any thing
but gold and silver a tender in discharge of debts. The invention
of banks, and their power over the community, had nullified this
just and wise intention of the constitution; and certainly it would
be a reproach to that instrument if it was incapable of protecting
itself against such enemies, at such an important point. Thus far
it had been found so incapable; but it was a question whether the
fault was in the instrument, or in its administrators. There were
many who believed it entirely to be the fault of the latter--who
believed that the constitution had ample means of protection, within
itself, against insolvent, or delinquent banks--and that, all that
was wanted was a will in the federal legislature to apply the remedy
which the evil required. This remedy was the process of bankruptcy,
under which a delinquent bank might be instantly stopped in its
operations--its circulation called in and paid off, as far as its
assets would go--itself closed up, and all power of further mischief
immediately terminated. This remedy it was now proposed to apply.
President Van Buren recommended it: he was the first President who
had had the merit of doing so; and all that was now wanted was a
Congress to back him: and that was a great want! one hard to supply.
A powerful array, strongly combined, was on the other side, both
moneyed and political. All the local banks were against it; and they
counted a thousand--their stockholders myriads;--and many of their
owners and debtors were in Congress: the (still so-called) Bank of
the United States was against it: and its power and influence were
still great: the whole political party opposed to the administration
were against it, as well because opposition is always a necessity
of the party out of power, as a means of getting in, as because in
the actual circumstances of the present state of things opposition
was essential to the success of the outside party. Mr. Webster was
the first to oppose the measure, and did so, seeming to question the
right of Congress to apply the remedy rather than to question the
expediency of it. He said:
"We have seen the declaration of the President, in which he
says that he refrains from suggesting any specific plan for the
regulation of the exchanges of the country, and for relieving
mercantile embarrassments, or for interfering with the ordinary
operation of foreign or domestic commerce; and that he does
this from a conviction that such measures are not within the
constitutional province of the general government; and yet he
has made a recommendation to Congress which appears to me to
be very remarkable, and it is of a measure which he thinks may
prove a salutary remedy against a depreciated paper currency.
This measure is neither more nor less than a bankrupt law
against corporations and other bankers.
"Now, Mr. President, it is certainly true that the constitution
authorizes Congress to establish uniform rules on the subject of
bankruptcies; but it is equally true, and abundantly manifest
that this power was not granted with any reference to currency
questions. It is a general power--a power to make uniform
rules on the subject. How is it possible that such a power can
be fairly exercised by seizing on corporations and bankers,
but excluding all the other usual subjects of bankrupt laws!
Besides, do such laws ordinarily extend to corporations at
all? But suppose they might be so extended, by a bankrupt law
enacted for the usual purposes contemplated by such laws; how
can a law be defended, which embraces them and bankers alone? I
should like to hear what the learned gentleman at the head of
the Judiciary Committee, to whom the subject is referred, has
to say upon it. How does the President's suggestion conform to
his notions of the constitution? The object of bankrupt laws,
sir, has no relation to currency. It is simply to distribute the
effects of insolvent debtors among their creditors; and I must
say, it strikes me that it would be a great perversion of the
power conferred on Congress to exercise it upon corporations
and bankers, with the leading and primary object of remedying a
depreciated paper currency.
"And this appears the more extraordinary, inasmuch as the
President is of opinion that the general subject of the currency
is not within our province. Bankruptcy, in its common and just
meaning, is within our province. Currency, says the message, is
not. But we have a bankruptcy power in the constitution, and
we will use this power, not for bankruptcy, indeed, but for
currency. This, I confess, sir, appears to me to be the short
statement of the matter. I would not do the message, or its
author, any intentional injustice, nor create any apparent,
where there was not a real inconsistency; but I declare, in
all sincerity, that I cannot reconcile the proposed use of the
bankrupt power with those opinions of the message which respect
the authority of Congress over the currency of the country."
The right to use this remedy against bankrupt corporations was of
course well considered by the President before he recommended it and
also by the Secretary of the Treasury (Mr. Woodbury), bred to the
bar, and since a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States,
by whom it had been several times recommended. Doubtless the remedy
was sanctioned by the whole cabinet before it became a subject of
executive recommendation. But the objections of Mr. Webster, though
rather suggested than urged, and confined to the _right_ without
impeaching the _expediency_ of the remedy, led to a full examination
into the nature and objects of the laws of bankruptcy, in which the
right to use them as proposed seemed to be fully vindicated. But
the measure was not then pressed to a vote; and the occasion for
the remedy having soon passed away, and not recurring since, the
question has not been revived. But the importance of the remedy,
and the possibility that it may be wanted at some future time, and
the high purpose of showing that the constitution is not impotent
at a point so vital, renders it proper to present, in this View
of the working of the government, the line of argument which was
then satisfactory to its advocates: and this is done in the ensuing
chapter.
CHAPTER XIV.
BANKRUPT ACT FOR BANKS: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH.
The power of Congress to pass bankrupt laws is expressly given in
our constitution, and given without limitation or qualification.
It is the fourth in the number of the enumerated powers, and runs
thus: "Congress shall have power to establish a uniform rule of
naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies
throughout the United States." This is a full and clear grant of
power. Upon its face it admits of no question, and leaves Congress
at full liberty to pass any kind of bankrupt laws they please,
limited only by the condition, that whatever laws are passed, they
are to be uniform in their operation throughout the United States.
Upon the face of our own constitution there is no question of our
right to pass a bankrupt law, limited to banks and bankers; but the
senator from Massachusetts [Mr. WEBSTER] and others who have spoken
on the same side with him, must carry us to England, and conduct us
through the labyrinth of English statute law, and through the chaos
of English judicial decisions, to learn what this word bankruptcies,
in our constitution, is intended to signify. In this he, and they,
are true to the habits of the legal profession--those habits which,
both in Great Britain and our America, have become a proverbial
disqualification for the proper exercise of legislative duties. I
know, Mr. President, that it is the fate of our lawyers and judges
to have to run to British law books to find out the meaning of the
phrases contained in our constitution; but it is the business of
the legislator, and of the statesman, to take a larger view--to
consider the difference between the political institutions of the
two countries--to ascend to first principles--to know the causes of
events--and to judge how far what was suitable and beneficial to
one might be prejudicial and inapplicable to the other. We stand
here as legislators and statesmen, not as lawyers and judges; we
have a grant of power to execute not a statute to interpret; and
our first duty is to look to that grant, and see what it is; and
our next duty is to look over our country, and see whether there is
any thing in it which requires the exercise of that grant of power.
This is what our President has done, and what we ought to do. He
has looked into the constitution, and seen there an unlimited grant
of power to pass uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies; and
he has looked over the United States, and seen what he believes to
be fit subjects for the exercise of that power, namely, about a
thousand banks in a state of bankruptcy, and no State possessed of
authority to act beyond its own limits in remedying the evils of a
mischief so vast and so frightful. Seeing these two things--a power
to act, and a subject matter requiring action--the President has
recommended the action which the constitution permits, and which
the subject requires; but the senator from Massachusetts has risen
in his place, and called upon us to shift our view; to transfer our
contemplation--from the constitution of the United States to the
British statute book--from actual bankruptcy among ourselves to
historical bankruptcy in England; and to confine our legislation to
the characteristics of the English model.
As a general proposition, I lay it down that Congress is not
confined, like jurists and judges, to the English statutory
definitions, or the Nisi Prius or King's Bench construction
of the phrases known to English legislation, and used in our
constitution. Such a limitation would not only narrow us down to a
mere lawyer's view of a subject, but would limit us, in point of
time, to English precedents, as they stood at the adoption of our
constitution, in the year 1789. I protest against this absurdity,
and contend that we are to use our granted powers according to
the circumstances of our own country, and according to the genius
of our republican institutions, and according to the progress of
events and the expansion of light and knowledge among ourselves.
If not, and if we are to be confined to the "usual objects,"
and the "usual subjects," and the "usual purposes," of British
legislation at the time of the adoption of our constitution, how
could Congress ever make a law in relation to steamboats, or to
railroad cars, both of which were unknown to British legislation
in 1789; and therefore, according to the idea that would send us
to England to find out the meaning of our constitution, would not
fall within the limits of our legislative authority. Upon their
face, the words of the constitution are sufficient to justify the
President's recommendation, even as understood by those who impugn
that recommendation. The bankrupt clause is very peculiar in its
phraseology, and the more strikingly so from its contrast with
the phraseology of the naturalization clause, which is coupled
with it. Mark this difference: there is to be a uniform rule of
naturalization: there are to be uniform laws on the subject of
bankruptcies. One is in the singular, the other in the plural; one
is to be a rule, the other are to be laws; one acts on individuals,
the other on the subject; and it is bankruptcies that are, and not
bankruptcy that is, to be the objects of these uniform laws.
As a proposition, now limited to this particular case, I lay it
down that we are not confined to the modern English acceptation
of this term _bankrupt_; for it is a term, not of English, but of
Roman origin. It is a term of the civil law, and borrowed by the
English from that code. They borrowed from Italy both the name
and the purpose of the law; and also the first objects to which
the law was applicable. The English were borrowers of every thing
connected with this code; and it is absurd in us to borrow from a
borrower--to copy from a copyist--when we have the original lender
and the original text before us. _Bancus_ and _ruptus_ signifies a
broken bench; and the word _broken_ is not metaphorical but literal,
and is descriptive of the ancient method of cashiering an insolvent
or fraudulent banker, by turning him out of the exchange or market
place, and breaking the table bench to pieces on which he kept his
money and transacted his business. The term _bankrupt_, then, in the
civil law from which the English borrowed it, not only applied to
bankers, but was confined to them; and it is preposterous in us to
limit ourselves to an English definition of a civil law term.
Upon this exposition of our own constitution, and of the civil law
derivation of this term _bankrupt_, I submit that the Congress
of the United States is not limited to the English judicial or
statutory acceptation of the term; and so I finish the first point
which I took in the argument. The next point is more comprehensive,
and makes a direct issue with the proposition of the senator from
Massachusetts, [Mr. WEBSTER.] His proposition is, that we must
confine our bankrupt legislation to the usual objects, the usual
subjects, and the usual purposes of bankrupt laws in England; and
that currency (meaning paper money and shin-plasters of course), and
banks, and banking, are not within the scope of that legislation.
I take issue, sir, upon all these points, and am ready to go with
the senator to England, and to contest them, one by one, on the
evidences of English history, of English statute law, and of English
judicial decision. I say English; for, although the senator did not
mention England, yet he could mean nothing else, in his reference to
the usual objects, usual subjects, and usual purposes of bankrupt
laws. He could mean nothing else. He must mean the English examples
and the English practice, or nothing; and he is not a person to
speak, and mean nothing.
Protesting against this voyage across the high seas, I nevertheless
will make it, and will ask the senator on what act, out of the
scores which Parliament has passed upon this subject, or on what
period, out of the five hundred years that she has been legislating
upon it, will he fix for his example? Or, whether he will choose
to view the whole together; and out of the vast chaotic and
heterogeneous mass, extract a general power which Parliament
possesses, and which he proposes for our exemplar? For myself, I am
agreed to consider the question under the whole or under either of
these aspects, and, relying on the goodness of the cause, expect a
safe deliverance from the contest, take it in any way.
And first, as to the acts passed upon this subject; great is their
number, and most dissimilar their provisions. For the first two
hundred years, these acts applied to none but aliens, and a single
class of aliens, and only for a single act, that of flying the
realm to avoid their creditors. Then they were made to apply to
all debtors, whether natives or foreigners, engaged in trade or
not, and took effect for three acts: 1st, flying the realm; 2d,
keeping the house to avoid creditors; 3d, taking sanctuary in a
church to avoid arrest. For upwards of two hundred years--to be
precise, for two hundred and twenty years--bankruptcy was only
treated criminally, and directed against those who would not face
their creditors, or abide the laws of the land; and the remedies
against them were not civil, but criminal; it was not a distribution
of the effects, but corporal punishment, to wit: imprisonment and
outlawry.[1] The statute of Elizabeth was the first that confined
the law to merchants and traders, took in the unfortunate as well
as the criminal, extended the acts of bankruptcy to inability as
well as to disinclination to pay, discriminated between innocent and
fraudulent bankruptcy; and gave to creditors the remedial right to
a distribution of effects. This statute opened the door to judicial
construction, and the judges went to work to define by decisions,
who were traders, and what acts constituted the fact, or showed an
intent to delay or to defraud creditors. In making these decisions,
the judges reached high enough to get hold of royal companies, and
low enough to get hold of shoemakers; the latter upon the ground
that they bought the leather out of which they made the shoes;
and they even had a most learned consultation to decide whether a
man who was a landlord for dogs, and bought dead horses for his
four-legged boarders, and then sold the skins and bones of the horse
carcases he had bought, was not a trader within the meaning of the
act; and so subject to the statute of bankrupts. These decisions of
the judges set the Parliament to work again to preclude judicial
constructions by the precision, negatively and affirmatively, of
legislative enactment. But, worse and worse! Out of the frying-pan
into the fire. The more legislation the more construction; the more
statutes Parliament made, the more numerous and the more various
the judicial decisions; until, besides merchants and traders, near
forty other descriptions of persons were included; and the catalogue
of bankruptcy acts, innocent or fraudulent, is swelled to a length
which requires whole pages to contain it. Among those who are now
included by statutory enactment in England, leaving out the great
classes comprehended under the names of merchants and traders, are
bankers, brokers, factors, and scriveners; insurers against perils
by sea and land; warehousemen, wharfingers, packers, builders,
carpenters, shipwrights and victuallers; keepers of inns, hotels,
taverns and coffee-houses; dyers, printers, bleachers, fullers,
calendrers, sellers of cattle or sheep; commission merchants and
consignees; and the agents of all these classes. These are the
affirmative definitions of the classes liable to bankruptcy in
England; then come the negative; and among these are farmers,
graziers, and common laborers for hire; the receivers general of
the king's taxes, and members or subscribers to any incorporated
companies established by charter of act of Parliament. And among
these negative and affirmative exclusions and inclusions, there
are many classes which have repeatedly changed position, and found
themselves successively in and out of the bankrupt code. Now, in
all this mass of variant and contradictory legislation, what part
of it will the senator from Massachusetts select for his model?
The improved, and approved parts, to be sure! But here a barrier
presents itself--an impassable wall interposes--a veto power
intervenes. For it so happens that the improvements in the British
bankrupt code, those parts of it which are considered best, and most
worthy of our imitation, are of modern origin--the creations of the
last fifty years--actually made since the date of our constitution;
and, therefore, not within the pale of its purview and meaning.
Yes, sir, made since the establishment of our constitution, and,
therefore, not to be included within its contemplation; unless
this doctrine of searching into British statutes for the meaning
of our constitution, is to make us search forwards to the end of
the British empire, as well as search backwards to its beginning.
Fact is, that the actual bankrupt code of Great Britain--the one
that preserves all that is valuable, that consolidates all that is
preserved, and improves all that is improvable, is an act of most
recent date--of the reign of George IV.; and not yet a dozen years
old. Here, then, in going back to England for a model, we are cut
off from her improvements in the bankrupt code, and confined to take
it as it stood under the reign of the Plantagenets, the Tudors,
the Stuarts, and the earlier reigns of the Brunswick sovereigns.
This should be a consideration, and sufficiently weighty to turn
the scale in favor of looking to our own constitution alone for the
extent and circumscription of our powers.
[1] _Preamble to the act of 34th of_ HENRY VIII.
Whereas divers and sundry persons craftily obtained into their hands
great substance of other men's goods, do suddenly flee to parts
unknown, or keep their houses, not minding to pay or restore to any
of their creditors, their debts and duties, but at their own wills
and own pleasures consume the substance obtained by credit of other
men for their own pleasures and delicate living, against all reason,
equity, and good conscience.
But let us continue this discussion upon principles of British
example and British legislation. We must go to England for one
of two things; either for a case in point, to be found in some
statute, or a general authority, to be extracted from a general
practice. Take it either way, or both ways, and I am ready and able
to vindicate, upon British precedents, our perfect right to enact a
bankrupt law, limited in its application to banks and bankers. And
first, for a case in point, that is to say, an English statute of
bankruptcy, limited to these lords of the purse-strings: we have
it at once, in the first act ever passed on the subject--the act
of the 30th year of the reign of Edward III., against the Lombard
Jews. Every body knows that these Jews were bankers, usually formed
into companies, who, issuing from Venice, Milan, and other parts
of Italy, spread over the south and west of Europe, during the
middle ages; and established themselves in every country and city in
which the dawn of reviving civilization, and the germ of returning
industry, gave employment to money, and laid the foundation of
credit. They came to London as early as the thirteenth century,
and gave their name to a street which still retains it, as well
as it still retains the particular occupation, and the peculiar
reputation, which the Lombard Jews established for it. The first
law against bankrupts ever passed in England, was against the
banking company composed of these Jews, and confined exclusively
to them. It remained in force two hundred years, without any
alteration whatever, and was nothing but the application of the
law of their own country to these bankers in the country of their
sojournment--the Italian law, founded upon the civil law, and called
in Italy _banco rotto_, broken bank. It is in direct reference to
these Jews, and this application of the exotic bankrupt law to them,
that Sir Edward Coke, in his institutes, takes occasion to say that
both the name and the wickedness of bankruptcy were of foreign
origin, and had been brought into England from foreign parts. It
was enacted under the reign of one of the most glorious of the
English princes--a reign as much distinguished for the beneficence
of its civil administration as for the splendor of its military
achievements. This act of itself is a full answer to the whole
objection taken by the senator from Massachusetts. It shows that,
even in England, a bankrupt law has been confined to a single class
of persons, and that class a banking company. And here I would be
willing to close my speech upon a compromise--a compromise founded
in reason and reciprocity, and invested with the equitable mantle
of a mutual concession. It is this: if we must follow English
precedents, let us follow them chronologically and orderly. Let
us begin at the beginning, and take them as they rise. Give me a
bankrupt law for two hundred years against banks and bankers; and,
after that, make another for merchants and traders.
The senator from Massachusetts [Mr. WEBSTER] has emphatically
demanded, how the bankrupt power could be fairly exercised by
seizing on corporations and bankers, and excluding all the other
usual subjects of bankrupt laws? I answer, by following the example
of that England to which he has conducted us; by copying the act of
the 30th of Edward III., by going back to that reign of heroism,
patriotism, and wisdom; that reign in which the monarch acquired as
much glory from his domestic policy as from his foreign conquests;
that reign in which the acquisition of dyers and weavers from
Flanders, the observance of law and justice, and the encouragement
given to agriculture and manufactures, conferred more benefit
upon the kingdom, and more glory upon the king, than the splendid
victories of Poictiers, Agincourt, and Cressy.
But the senator may not be willing to yield to this example, this
case in point, drawn from his own fountain, and precisely up to the
exigency of the occasion. He may want something more; and he shall
have it. I will now take the question upon its broadest bottom and
fullest merits. I will go to the question of general power--the
point of general authority--exemplified by the general practice
of the British Parliament, for five hundred years, over the whole
subject of bankruptcy. I will try the question upon this basis; and
here I lay down the proposition, that this five hundred years of
parliamentary legislation on bankruptcy establishes the point of
full authority in the British Parliament to act as it pleased on
the entire subject of bankruptcies. This is my proposition; and,
when it is proved, I shall claim from those who carry me to England
for authority, the same amount of power over the subject which the
British Parliament has been in the habit of exercising. Now, what
is the extent of that power? Happily for me, I, who have to speak,
without any inclination for the task; still more happily for those
who have to hear me, peradventure without profit or pleasure;
happily for both parties, my proposition is already proved, partly
by what I have previously advanced, and fully by what every senator
knows. I have already shown the practice of Parliament upon this
subject, that it has altered and changed, contracted and enlarged,
put in and left out, abolished and created, precisely as it pleased.
I have already shown, in my rapid view of English legislation on
this subject, that the Parliament exercised plenary power and
unlimited authority over every branch of the bankrupt question;
that it confined the action of the bankrupt laws to a single class
of persons, or extended it to many classes; that it was sometimes
confined to foreigners, then applied to natives, and that now it
comprehends natives, aliens, denizens, and women; that at one time
all debtors were subject to it; then none but merchants and traders;
and now, besides merchants and traders, a long list of persons who
have nothing to do with trade; that at one time bankruptcy was
treated criminally, and its object punished corporeally, while now
it is a remedial measure for the benefit of the creditors, and the
relief of unfortunate debtors; and that the acts of the debtor
which may constitute him a bankrupt, have been enlarged from
three or four glaring misdeeds, to so long a catalogue of actions,
divided into the heads of innocent and fraudulent; constructive
and positive; intentional and unintentional; voluntary and forced;
that none but an attorney, with book in hand, can pretend to
enumerate them. All this has been shown; and, from all this, it is
incontestable that Parliament can do just what it pleases on the
subject; and, therefore, our Congress, if referred to England for
its powers, can do just what it pleases also. And thus, whether we
go by the words of our own constitution, or by a particular example
in England, or deduce a general authority from the general practice
of that country, the result is still the same: we have authority to
limit, if we please, our bankrupt law to the single class of banks
and bankers.
The senator from Massachusetts [MR. WEBSTER] demands whether
bankrupt laws ordinarily extend to corporations, meaning moneyed
corporations. I am free to answer that, in point of fact, they do
not. But why? because they ought not? or because these corporations
have yet been powerful enough, or fortunate enough, to keep their
necks out of that noose? Certainly the latter. It is the power of
these moneyed corporations in England, and their good fortune in
our America, which, enabling them to grasp all advantages on one
hand, and to repulse all penalties on the other, has enabled them
to obtain express statutory exemption from bankrupt liabilities
in England; and to escape, thus far, from similar liabilities in
the United States. This, sir, is history, and not invective; it is
fact, and not assertion; and I will speedily refresh the senator's
memory, and bring him to recollect why it is, in point of fact,
that bankrupt laws do not usually extend to these corporations.
And, first, let us look to England, that great exemplar, whose
evil examples we are so prompt, whose good ones we are so slow,
to imitate. How stands this question of corporation unliability
there? By the judicial construction of the statute of Elizabeth,
the partners in all incorporated companies were held subject to
the bankrupt law; and, under this construction, a commission of
bankrupt was issued against Sir John Wolstenholme, a gentleman of
large fortune, who had advanced a sum of money on an adventure in
the East India Company's trade. The issue of this commission was
affirmed by the Court of King's Bench; but this happened to take
place in the reign of Charles II.--that reign during which so little
is found worthy of imitation in the government of Great Britain--and
immediately two acts of Parliament were passed, one to annul the
judgment of the Court of King's Bench in the case of Sir John
Wolstenholme, and the other to prevent any such judgments from being
given in future. Here are copies of the two acts:
FIRST ACT, TO ANNUL THE JUDGMENT.
"Whereas a verdict and judgment was had in the Easter term of
the King's Bench, whereby Sir John Wolstenholme, knight, and
adventurer in the East India Company, was found liable to a
commission of bankrupt only for, and by reason of, a share which
he had in the joint stock of said company: Now, &c., Be it
enacted, That the said judgment be reversed, annulled, vacated,
and for naught held," &c.
SECOND ACT, TO PREVENT SUCH JUDGMENTS IN FUTURE.
"That whereas divers noblemen and gentlemen, and persons of
quality, no ways bred up to trade, do often put in great stocks
of money into the East India and Guinea Company: Be it enacted,
That no persons adventurers for putting in money or merchandise
into the said companies, or for venturing or managing the
fishing trade, called the royal fishing trade, shall be reputed
or taken to be a merchant or trader within any statutes for
bankrupts."
Thus, and for these reasons, were chartered companies and their
members exempted from the bankrupt penalties, under the dissolute
reign of Charles II. It was not the power of the corporations at
that time--for the Bank of England was not then chartered, and the
East India Company had not then conquered India--which occasioned
this exemption; but it was to favor the dignified characters who
engaged in the trade--noblemen, gentlemen, and persons of quality.
But, afterwards, when the Bank of England had become almost the
government of England, and when the East India Company had acquired
the dominions of the Great Mogul, an act of Parliament expressly
declared that no member of any incorporated company, chartered by
act of Parliament, should be liable to become bankrupt. This act was
passed in the reign of George IV., when the Wellington ministry was
in power, and when liberal principles and human rights were at the
last gasp. So much for these corporation exemptions in England; and
if the senator from Massachusetts finds any thing in such instances
worthy of imitation, let him stand forth and proclaim it.
But, sir, I am not yet done with my answer to this question; do
such laws ordinarily extend to corporations at all? I answer, most
decidedly, that they do! that they apply in England to all the
corporations, except those specially excepted by the act of George
IV.; and these are few in number, though great in power--powerful,
but few--nothing but units to myriads, compared to those which are
not excepted. The words of that act are: "Members of, or subscribers
to, any incorporated commercial or trading companies, established
by charter act of Parliament." These words cut off at once the
many ten thousand corporations in the British empire existing by
prescription, or incorporated by letters patent from the king; and
then they cut off all those even chartered by act of Parliament
which are not commercial or trading in their nature. This saves
but a few out of the hundreds of thousands of corporations which
abound in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. It saves, or rather
confirms, the exemption of the Bank of England, which is a trader
in money; and it confirms, also, the exemption of the East India
Company which is, in contemplation of law at least, a commercial
company; and it saves or exempts a few others deriving charters of
incorporation from Parliament; but it leaves subject to the law
the whole wilderness of corporations, of which there are thousands
in London alone, which derive from prescription or letters patent;
and it also leaves subject to the same laws all the corporations
created by charter act of Parliament, which are not commercial
or trading. The words of the act are very peculiar--"charter act
of Parliament;" so that corporations by a general law, without a
special charter act, are not included in the exemption. This answer,
added to what has been previously said, must be a sufficient reply
to the senator's question, whether bankrupt laws ordinarily extend
to corporations? Sir, out of the myriad of corporations in Great
Britain, the bankrupt law extends to the whole, except some half
dozen or dozen.
So much for the exemption of these corporations in England; now
for our America. We never had but one bankrupt law in the United
States, and that for the short period of three or four years. It was
passed under the administration of the elder Mr. Adams, and repealed
under Mr. Jefferson. It copied the English acts including among the
subjects of bankruptcy, bankers, brokers, and factors. Corporations
were not included; and it is probable that no question was raised
about them, as, up to that time, their number was few, and their
conduct generally good. But, at a later date, the enactment of a
bankrupt law was again attempted in our Congress; and, at that
period, the multiplication and the misconduct of banks presented
them to the minds of many as proper subjects for the application
of the law; I speak of the bill of 1827, brought into the Senate,
and lost. That bill, like all previous laws since the time of
George II., was made applicable to bankers, brokers, and factors. A
senator from North Carolina [Mr. BRANCH] moved to include banking
corporations. The motion was lost, there being but twelve votes
for it; but in this twelve there were some whose names must carry
weight to any cause to which they are attached. The twelve were,
Messrs. Barton, Benton, Branch, Cobb, Dickerson, Hendricks, Macon,
Noble, Randolph, Reed, Smith of South Carolina, and White. The whole
of the friends of the bill, twenty-one in number, voted against
the proposition, (the present Chief Magistrate in the number,) and
for the obvious reason, with some, of not encumbering the measure
they were so anxious to carry, by putting into it a new and untried
provision. And thus stands our own legislation on this subject. In
point of fact, then, chartered corporations have thus far escaped
bankrupt penalties, both in England, and in our America; but ought
they to continue to escape? This is the question--this the true and
important inquiry, which is now to occupy the public mind.
The senator from Massachusetts [Mr. WEBSTER] says the object of
bankrupt laws has no relation to currency; that their object is
simply to distribute the effects of insolvent debtors among their
creditors. So says the senator, but what says history? What says the
practice of Great Britain? I will show you what it says, and for
that purpose will read a passage from McCulloch's notes on Smith's
Wealth of Nations. He says:
"In 1814-'15, and '16, no fewer than 240 country banks stopped
payment, and ninety-two commissions of bankruptcy were issued
against these establishments, being at the rate of one
commission against every seven and a half of the total number of
country banks existing in 1813."
Two hundred and forty stopped payment at one dash, and ninety-two
subjected to commissions of bankruptcy. They were not indeed
chartered banks, for there are none such in England, except the
Bank of England; but they were legalized establishments, existing
under the first joint-stock bank act of 1708; and they were banks of
issue. Yet they were subjected to the bankrupt laws, ninety-two of
them in a single season of bank catalepsy; their broken "promises
to pay" were taken out of circulation; their doors closed; their
directors and officers turned out; their whole effects, real and
personal, their money, debts, books, paper, and every thing, put
into the hands of assignees; and to these assignees, the holders of
their notes forwarded their demands, and were paid, every one in
equal proportion--as the debts of the bank were collected, and its
effects converted into money; and this without expense or trouble
to any one of them. Ninety-two banks in England shared this fate
in a single season of bank mortality; five hundred more could be
enumerated in other seasons, many of them superior in real capital,
credit, and circulation, to our famous chartered banks, most of
which are banks of moonshine, built upon each other's paper; and
the whole ready to fly sky-high the moment any one of the concern
becomes sufficiently inflated to burst. The immediate effect of this
application of the bankrupt laws to banks in England, is two-fold:
first, to save the general currency from depreciation, by stopping
the issue and circulation of irredeemable notes; secondly, to do
equal justice to all creditors, high and low, rich and poor, present
and absent, the widow and the orphan, as well as the cunning and the
powerful, by distributing their effects in proportionate amounts to
all who hold demands. This is the operation of bankrupt laws upon
banks in England, and all over the British empire; and it happens to
be the precise check upon the issue of broken bank paper, and the
precise remedy for the injured holders of their dishonored paper
which the President recommends. Here is his recommendation, listen
to it:
"In the mean time, it is our duty to provide all the remedies
against a depreciated paper currency which the constitution
enables us to afford. The Treasury Department, on several former
occasions, has suggested the propriety and importance of a
uniform law concerning bankruptcies of corporations and other
bankers. Through the instrumentality of such a law, a salutary
check may doubtless be imposed on the issues of paper money,
and an effectual remedy given to the citizen, in a way at once
equal in all parts of the Union, and fully authorized by the
constitution."
The senator from Massachusetts says he would not, intentionally,
do injustice to the message or its author; and doubtless he is not
conscious of violating that benevolent determination; but here is
injustice, both to the message and to its author; injustice in not
quoting the message as it is, and showing that it proposes a remedy
to the citizen, as well as a check upon insolvent issues; injustice
to the author in denying that the object of bankrupt laws has any
relation to currency, when history shows that these laws are the
actual instrument for regulating and purifying the whole local paper
currency of the entire British empire, and saving that country
from the frauds, losses, impositions, and demoralization of an
irredeemable paper money.
The senator from Massachusetts says the object of bankrupt laws has
no relation to currency. If he means hard-money currency, I agree
with him; but if he means bank notes, as I am sure he does, then I
point him to the British bankrupt code, which applies to every bank
of issue in the British empire, except the Bank of England itself,
and the few others, four or five in number, which are incorporated
by charter acts. All the joint-stock banks, all the private banks,
all the bankers of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, are
subject to the law of bankruptcy. Many of these establishments are
of great capital and credit; some having hundreds, or even thousands
of partners; and many of them having ten, or twenty, or thirty, and
some even forty branches. They are almost the exclusive furnishers
of the local and common bank note currency; the Bank of England
notes being chiefly used in the great cities for large mercantile
and Government payments. These joint-stock banks, private companies,
and individual bankers are, practically, in the British empire what
the local banks are in the United States. They perform the same
functions, and differ in name only; not in substance nor in conduct.
They have no charters, but they have a legalized existence; they are
not corporations, but they are allowed by law to act in a body; they
furnish the actual paper currency of the great body of the people
of the British empire, as much so as our local banks furnish the
mass of paper currency to the people of the United States. They have
had twenty-four millions sterling (one hundred and twenty millions
of dollars) in circulation at one time; a sum nearly equal to the
greatest issue ever known in the United States; and more than equal
to the whole bank-note circulation of the present day. They are all
subject to the law of bankruptcy, and their twenty-four millions
sterling of currency along with them; and five hundred of them have
been shut up and wound up under commissions of bankruptcy in the
last forty years; and yet the senator from Massachusetts informs us
that the object of bankrupt laws has no relation to currency!
But it is not necessary to go all the way to England to find
bankrupt laws having relation to currency. The act passed in our
own country, about forty years ago, applied to bankers; the bill
brought into the House of Representatives, about fifteen years
ago, by a gentleman then, and now, a representative from the city
of Philadelphia, [Mr. SERGEANT,] also applied to bankers; and the
bill brought into this Senate, ten years ago, by a senator from
South Carolina, not now a member of this body, [General HAYNE,]
still applied to bankers. These bankers, of whom there were many
in the United States, and of whom Girard, in the East, and Yeatman
and Woods, in the West, were the most considerable--these bankers
all issued paper money; they all issued currency. The act, then, of
1798, if it had continued in force, or the two bills just referred
to, if they had become law, would have operated upon these bankers
and their banks--would have stopped their issues, and put their
establishments into the hands of assignees, and distributed their
effects among their creditors. This, certainly, would have been
having some relation to currency: so that, even with our limited
essays towards a bankrupt system, we have scaled the outworks of the
banking empire; we have laid hold of bankers, but not of banks;
we have reached the bank of Girard, but not the Girard Bank; we
have applied our law to the bank of Yeatman and Woods, but not to
the rabble of petty corporations which have not the tithe of their
capital and credit. We have gone as far as bankers, but not as far
as banks; and now give me a reason for the difference. Give me a
reason why the act of 1798, the bill of Mr. SERGEANT, in 1821, and
the bill of General HAYNE, in 1827, should not include banks as well
as bankers. They both perform the same function--that of issuing
paper currency. They both involve the same mischief when they stop
payment--that of afflicting the country with a circulation of
irredeemable and depreciated paper money. They are both culpable in
the same mode, and in the same degree; for they are both violators
of their "promises to pay." They both exact a general credit from
the community, and they both abuse that credit. They both have
creditors, and they both have effects; and these creditors have as
much right to a _pro rata_ distribution of the effects in one case
as in the other. Why, then, a distinction in favor of the bank? Is
it because corporate bodies are superior to natural bodies? because
artificial beings are superior to natural beings? or, rather, is it
not because corporations are assemblages of men; and assemblages are
more powerful than single men; and, therefore, these corporations,
in addition to all their vast privileges, are also to have the
privilege of being bankrupt, and afflicting the country with the
evils of bankruptcy, without themselves being subjected to the laws
of bankruptcy? Be this as it may--be the cause what it will--the
decree has gone forth for the decision of the question--for the
trial of the issue--for the verdict and judgment upon the claim of
the banks. They have many privileges and exemptions now, and they
have the benefit of all laws against the community. They pay no
taxes; the property of the stockholders is not liable for their
debts; they sue their debtors, sell their property, and put their
bodies in jail. They have the privilege of stamping paper money;
the privilege of taking interest upon double, treble, and quadruple
their actual money. They put up and put down the price of property,
labor, and produce, as they please. They have the monopoly of
making the actual currency. They are strong enough to suppress
the constitutional money, and to force their own paper upon the
community, and then to redeem it or not, as they please. And is it
to be tolerated, that, in addition to all these privileges, and all
these powers, they are to be exempted from the law of bankruptcy?
the only law of which they are afraid, and the only one which can
protect the country against their insolvent issues, and give a
fair chance for payment to the numerous holders of their violated
"promises to pay!"
I have discussed, Mr. President, the right of Congress to apply
a bankrupt law to banking corporations; I have discussed it on
the words of our own constitution, on the practice of England,
and on the general authority of Parliament; and on each and every
ground, as I fully believe, vindicated our right to pass the law.
The right is clear; the expediency is manifest and glaring. Of all
the objects upon the earth, banks of circulation are the fittest
subjects of bankrupt laws. They act in secret, and they exact a
general credit. Nobody knows their means, yet every body must trust
them. They send their "promises to pay" far and near. They push
them into every body's hands; they make them small to go into small
hands--into the hands of the laborer, the widow, the helpless,
the ignorant. Suddenly the bank stops payment; all these helpless
holders of their notes are without pay, and without remedy. A few
on the spot get a little; those at a distance get nothing. For each
to sue, is a vexatious and a losing business. The only adequate
remedy--the only one that promises any justice to the body of the
community, and the helpless holders of small notes--is the bankrupt
remedy of assignees to distribute the effects. This makes the real
effects available. When a bank stops, it has little or no specie;
but it has, or ought to have, a good mass of solvent debts. At
present, all these debts are unavailable to the community--they go
to a few large and favored creditors; and those who are most in
need get nothing. But a stronger view remains to be taken of these
debts: the mass of them are due from the owners and managers of
the banks--from the presidents, directors, cashiers, stockholders,
attorneys; and these people do not make themselves pay. They do
not sue themselves, nor protest themselves. They sue and protest
others, and sell out their property, and put their bodies in jail;
but, as for themselves, who are the main debtors, it is another
affair! They take their time, and usually wait till the notes are
heavily depreciated, and then square off with a few cents in the
dollar! A commission of bankruptcy is the remedy for this evil;
assignees of the effects of the bank are the persons to make these
owners, and managers, and chief debtors to the institutions, pay up.
Under the bankrupt law, every holder of a note, no matter how small
in amount, nor how distant the holder may reside, on forwarding the
note to the assignees, will receive his ratable proportion of the
bank's effects, without expense, and without trouble to himself.
It is a most potent, a most proper, and most constitutional remedy
against delinquent banks. It is an equitable and a brave remedy. It
does honor to the President who recommended it, and is worthy of the
successor of Jackson.
Senators upon this floor have ventured the expression of an opinion
that there can be no resumption of specie payments in this country
until a national bank shall be established, meaning, all the while,
until the present miscalled Bank of the United States shall be
rechartered. Such an opinion is humiliating to this government,
and a reproach upon the memory of its founders. It is tantamount
to a declaration that the government, framed by the heroes and
sages of the Revolution, is incapable of self-preservation; that
it is a miserable image of imbecility, and must take refuge in the
embraces of a moneyed corporation, to enable it to survive its
infirmities. The humiliation of such a thought should expel it
from the imagination of every patriotic mind. Nothing but a dire
necessity--a last, a sole, an only alternative--should bring this
government to the thought of leaning upon any extraneous aid. But
here is no necessity, no reason, no pretext, no excuse, no apology,
for resorting to collateral aid; and, above all, to the aid of a
master in the shape of a national bank. The granted powers of the
government are adequate to the coercion of all the banks. As banks,
the federal government has no direct authority over them; but as
bankrupts, it has them in its own hands. It can pass bankrupt laws
for these delinquent institutions. It can pass such laws either with
or without including merchants and traders; and the day for such
law to take effect, will be the day for the resumption of specie
payments by every solvent bank, and the day for the extinction of
the abused privileges of every insolvent one. So far from requiring
the impotent aid of the miscalled Bank of the United States to
effect a resumption, that institution will be unable to prevent a
resumption. Its veto power over other banks will cease; and it will
itself be compelled to resume specie payment, or die!
Besides these great objects to be attained by the application of a
bankrupt law to banking corporations, there are other great purposes
to be accomplished, and some most sacred duties to be fulfilled,
by the same means. Our constitution contains three most vital
prohibitions, of which the federal government is the guardian and
the guarantee, and which are now publicly trodden under foot. No
State shall emit bills of credit; no State shall make any thing but
gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; no State shall
pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts. No State shall
do these things. So says the constitution under which we live, and
which it is the duty of every citizen to protect, preserve, and
defend. But a new power has sprung up among us, and has annulled
the whole of these prohibitions. That new power is the oligarchy of
banks. It has filled the whole land with bills of credit; for it is
admitted on all hands that bank notes, not convertible into specie,
are bills of credit. It has suppressed the constitutional currency,
and made depreciated paper money a forced tender in payment of every
debt. It has violated all its own contracts, and compelled all
individuals, and the federal government and State governments, to
violate theirs; and has obtained from sovereign States an express
sanction, or a silent acquiescence, in this double violation of
sacred obligations, and in this triple annulment of constitutional
prohibitions. It is our duty to bring, or to try to bring, this
new power under subordination to the laws and the government. It
is our duty to go to the succor of the constitution--to rescue, if
possible, these prohibitions from daily, and public and permanent
infraction. The application of the bankrupt law to this new power,
is the way to effect this rescue--the way to cause these vital
prohibitions to be respected and observed, and to do it in a way to
prevent collisions between the States and the federal government.
The prohibitions are upon the States; it is they who are not to do
these things, and, of course, are not to authorize others to do what
they cannot do themselves. The banks are their delegates in this
three-fold violation of the constitution; and, in proceeding against
these delegates, we avoid collision with the States.
Mr. President, every form of government has something in it to
excite the pride, and to rouse the devotion, of its citizens. In
monarchies, it is the authority of the king; in republics, it is
the sanctity of the laws. The loyal subject makes it the point of
honor to obey the king; the patriot republican makes it his glory to
obey the laws. We are a republic. We have had illustrious citizens,
conquering generals, and victorious armies; but no citizen, no
general, no army, has undertaken to dethrone the laws and to
reign in their stead. This parricidal work has been reserved for
an oligarchy of banks! Three times, in thrice seven years, this
oligarchy has dethroned the law, and reigned in its place. Since May
last, it has held the sovereign sway, and has not yet vouchsafed to
indicate the day of its voluntary abdication. The Roman military
dictators usually fixed a term to their dictatorships. I speak of
the usurpers, not of the constitutional dictators for ten days.
These usurpers usually indicated a time at which usurpation should
cease, and law and order again prevail. Not so with this new power
which now lords it over our America. They fix no day; they limit
no time; they indicate no period for their voluntary descent from
power, and for their voluntary return to submission to the laws.
They could agree in the twinkling of an eye--at the drop of a
hat--at the crook of a finger--to usurp the sovereign power; they
cannot agree, in four months, to relinquish it. They profess to be
willing, but cannot agree upon the time. Let us perform that service
for them. Let us name a day. Let us fix it in a bankrupt law. Let
us pass that law, and fix a day for it to take effect; and that day
will be the day for the resumption of specie payments, or for the
trial of the question of permanent supremacy between the oligarchy
of banks, and the constitutional government of the people.
We are called upon to have mercy upon the banks; the prayer should
rather be to them, to have mercy upon the government and the
people. Since May last the ex-deposit banks alone have forced
twenty-five millions of depreciated paper through the federal
government upon its debtors and the States, at a loss of at least
two and a half millions to the receivers, and a gain of an equal
amount to the payers. The thousand banks have the country and
the government under their feet at this moment, owing to the
community upwards of an hundred millions of dollars, of which they
will pay nothing, not even ninepences, picayunes, and coppers.
Metaphorically, if not literally, they give their creditors more
kicks than coppers. It is for them to have mercy on us. But what
is the conduct of government towards these banks? Even at this
session, with all their past conduct unatoned for, we have passed
a relief bill for their benefit--a bill to defer the collection of
the large balance which they still owe the government. But there
is mercy due in another quarter--upon the people, suffering from
the use of irredeemable and depreciated paper--upon the government,
reduced to bankruptcy--upon the character of the country, suffering
in the eyes of Europe--upon the character of republican government,
brought into question by the successful usurpation of these
institutions. This last point is the sorest. Gentlemen speak of
the failure of experiments--the failure of the specie experiment,
as it is called by those who believe that paper is the ancient and
universal money of the world; and that the use of a little specie
for the first time is not to be attempted. They dwell upon the
supposed failure of "the experiment;" while all the monarchists of
Europe are rejoicing in the failure of the experiment of republican
government, at seeing this government, the last hope of the liberal
world, struck and paralyzed by an oligarchy of banks--seized by the
throat, throttled and held as a tiger would hold a babe--stripped
of its revenues, bankrupted, and subjected to the degradation of
becoming their engine to force their depreciated paper upon helpless
creditors. Here is the place for mercy--upon the people--upon the
government--upon the character of the country--upon the character of
republican government.
The apostle of republicanism, Mr. Jefferson, has left it as a
political legacy to the people of the United States, never to suffer
their government to fall under the control of any unauthorized,
irresponsible, or self-created institutions of bodies whatsoever.
His allusion was to the Bank of the United States, and its notorious
machinations to govern the elections, and get command of the
government; but his admonition applies with equal force to all other
similar or affiliated institutions; and, since May last, it applies
to the whole league of banks which then "shut up the Treasury," and
reduced the government to helpless dependence.
It is said that bankruptcy is a severe remedy to apply to banks. It
may be answered that it is not more severe here than in England,
where it applies to all banks of issue, except the Bank of England,
and a few others; and it is not more severe to them than it is
to merchants and traders, and to bankers and brokers, and all
unincorporated banks. Personally, I was disposed to make large
allowances for the conduct of the banks. Our own improvidence
tempted them into an expansion of near forty millions, in 1835 and
1836, by giving them the national domain to bank upon; a temptation
which they had not the fortitude to resist, and which expanded them
to near the bursting point. Then they were driven almost to a choice
of bankruptcy between themselves and their debtors, by the act which
required near forty millions to be distributed in masses, and at
brief intervals, among the States. Some failures were inevitable
under these circumstances, and I was disposed to make liberal
allowances for them; but there are three things for which the banks
have no excuse, and which should forever weigh against their claims
to favor and confidence. These things are, first, the political
aspect which the general suspension of payment was permitted to
assume, and which it still wears; secondly, the issue and use of
shinplasters, and refusal to pay silver change, when there are
eighty millions of specie in the country; thirdly, the refusal, by
the deposit banks to pay out the sums which had been severed from
the Treasury, and stood in the names of disbursing officers, and
was actually due to those who were performing work and labor, and
rendering daily services to the government. For these three things
there is no excuse; and, while memory retains their recollection,
there can be no confidence in those who have done them.
CHAPTER XV.
DIVORCE OF BANK AND STATE: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH.
The bill is to divorce the government from the banks, or rather is
to declare the divorce, for the separation has already taken place
by the operation of law and by the delinquency of the banks. The
bill is to declare the divorce; the amendment is to exclude their
notes from revenue payments, not all at once, but gradually, and
to be accomplished by the 1st day of January, 1841. Until then
the notes of specie-paying banks may be received, diminishing
one-fourth annually; and after that day, all payments to and from
the federal government are to be made in hard money. Until that
day, payments from the United States will be governed by existing
laws. The amendment does not affect the Post Office department
until January, 1841; until then, the fiscal operations of that
Department remain under the present laws; after that day they fall
under the principle of the bill, and all payments to and from that
department will be made in hard money. The effect of the whole
amendment will be to restore the currency of the constitution to the
federal government--to re-establish the great acts of 1789 and of
1800--declaring that the revenues should be collected in gold and
silver coin only; those early statutes which were enacted by the
hard money men who made the constitution, who had seen and felt the
evils of that paper money, and intended to guard against these evils
in future by creating, not a paper, but a hard-money government.
I am for this restoration. I am for restoring to the federal
treasury the currency of the constitution. I am for carrying back
this government to the solidity projected by its founders. This
is a great object in itself--a reform of the first magnitude--a
reformation with healing on its wings, bringing safety to the
government and blessings to the people. The currency is a thing
which reaches every individual, and every institution. From the
government to the washer-woman, all are reached by it, and all
concerned in it; and, what seems parodoxical, all are concerned to
the same degree; for all are concerned to the whole extent of their
property and dealings; and all is all, whether it be much or little.
The government with its many ten millions of revenue, suffers no
more in proportion than the humble and meritorious laborer who works
from sun to sun for the shillings which give food and raiment to
his family. The federal government has deteriorated the currency,
and carried mischief to the whole community, and lost its own
revenues, and subjected itself to be trampled upon by corporations,
by departing from the constitution, and converting this government
from a hard-money to a paper money government. The object of the
amendment and the bill is to reform these abuses, and it is a reform
worthy to be called a reformation--worthy to engage the labor of
patriots--worthy to unite the exertions of different parties--worthy
to fix the attention of the age--worthy to excite the hopes of the
people, and to invoke upon its success the blessings of heaven.
Great are the evils,--political, pecuniary, and moral,--which have
flowed from this departure from our constitution. Through the
federal government alone--through it, not by it--two millions and
a half of money have been lost in the last four months. Thirty-two
millions of public money was the amount in the deposit banks when
they stopped payment; of this sum twenty-five millions have been
paid over to government creditors, or transferred to the States.
But how paid, and how transferred? In what? In real money, or its
equivalent? Not at all! But in the notes of suspended banks--in
notes depreciated, on an average, ten per cent. Here then were two
and a half millions lost. Who bore the loss? The public creditors
and the States. Who gained it? for where there is a loss to one,
there must be a gain to another. Who gained the two and a half
millions, thus sunk upon the hands of the creditors and the States?
The banks were the gainers; they gained it; the public creditors
and the States lost it; and to the creditors it was a forced loss.
It is in vain to say that they consented to take it. They had no
alternative. It was that or nothing. The banks forced it upon the
government; the government forced it upon the creditor. Consent was
out of the question. Power ruled, and that power was in the banks;
and they gained the two and a half millions which the States and the
public creditors lost.
I do not pretend to estimate the moneyed losses, direct and
indirect, to the government alone, from the use of local bank notes
in the last twenty-five years, including the war, and covering
three general suspensions. Leaving the people out of view, as a
field of losses beyond calculation, I confine myself to the federal
government, and say, its losses have been enormous, prodigious,
and incalculable. We have had three general stoppages of the local
banks in the short space of twenty-two years. It is at the average
rate of one in seven years; and who is to guaranty us from another,
and from the consequent losses, if we continue to receive their
bills in payment of public dues? Another stoppage must come, and
that, reasoning from all analogies, in less than seven years after
the resumption. Many must perish in the attempt to resume, and
would do better to wind up at once, without attempting to go on,
without adequate means, and against appalling obstacles. Another
revulsion must come. Thus it was after the last resumption. The
banks recommenced payments in 1817--in two years, the failures
were more disastrous than ever. Thus it was in England after the
long suspension of twenty-six years. Payments recommenced in
1823--in 1825 the most desolating crash of banks took place which
had ever been known in the kingdom, although the Bank of England
had imported, in less than four years, twenty millions sterling in
gold,--about one hundred millions of dollars, to recommence upon.
Its effects reached this country, crushed the cotton houses in New
Orleans, depressed the money market, and injured all business.
The senators from New York and Virginia (Messrs. Tallmadge and
Rives) push this point of confidence a little further; they
address a question to me, and ask if I would lose confidence in
all steamboats, and have them all discarded, if one or two blew
up in the Mississippi? I answer the question in all frankness,
and say, that I should not. But if, instead of one or two in the
Mississippi, all the steamboats in the Union should blow up at
once--in every creek, river and bay--while all the passengers were
sleeping in confidence, and the pilots crying out all is well; if
the whole should blow up from one end of the Union to the other just
as fast as they could hear each other's explosions; then, indeed,
I should lose confidence in them, and never again trust wife, or
child, or my own foot, or any thing not intended for destruction,
on board such sympathetic and contagious engines of death. I
answer further, and tell the gentlemen, that if only one or two
banks had stopped last May in New York, I should not have lost all
confidence in the remaining nine hundred and ninety-nine; but when
the whole thousand stopped at once; tumbled down together--fell in
a lump--lie there--and when ONE of their number, by a sign with
the little finger, can make the whole lie still, then, indeed,
confidence is gone! And this is the case with the banks. They have
not only stopped altogether, but in a season of profound peace,
with eighty millions of specie in the country, and just after the
annual examinations by commissioners and legislative committees, and
when all was reported well. With eighty millions in the country,
they stop even for change! It did not take a national calamity--a
war--to stop them! They fell in time of peace and prosperity! We
read of people in the West Indies, and in South America, who rebuild
their cities on the same spot where earthquakes had overthrown
them; we are astonished at their fatuity; we wonder that they will
build again on the same perilous foundations. But these people
have a reason for their conduct; it is, that their cities are
only destroyed by earthquakes; it takes an earthquake to destroy
them; and when there is no earthquake, they are safe. But suppose
their cities fell down without any commotion in the earth, or the
air--fell in a season of perfect calm and serenity--and after that
the survivors should go to building again in the same place; would
not all the world say that they were demented, and were doomed to
destruction? So of the government of the United States by these
banks. If it continues to use them, and to receive their notes
for revenue, after what has happened, and in the face of what now
exists, it argues fatuity, and a doom to destruction.
Resume when they will, or when they shall, and the longer it is
delayed the worse for themselves, the epoch of resumption is to be a
perilous crisis to many. This stopping and resuming by banks, is the
realization of the poetical description of the descent into hell,
and the return from it. _Facilis descensus Averni--sed revocare
gradum--hic opus, hic labor est._ Easy is the descent into the
regions below, but to return! this is work, this is labor indeed!
Our banks have made the descent; they have gone down with ease; but
to return--to ascend the rugged steps, and behold again the light
above how many will falter, and fall back into the gloomy regions
below.
Banks of circulation are banks of hazard and of failure. It is an
incident of their nature. Those without circulation rarely fail.
That of Venice has stood seven hundred years; those of Hamburgh,
Amsterdam, and others, have stood for centuries. The Bank of
England, the great mother of banks of circulation, besides an
actual stoppage of a quarter of a century, has had her crisis and
convulsion in average periods of seven or eight years, for the last
half century--in 1783, '93, '97, 1814, '19, '25, '36--and has only
been saved from repeated failure by the powerful support of the
British government, and profuse supplies of exchequer bills. Her
numerous progeny of private and joint stock banks of circulation
have had the same convulsions; and not being supported by the
government, have sunk by hundreds at a time. All the banks of the
United States are banks of circulation; they are all subject to the
inherent dangers of that class of banks, and are, besides, subject
to new dangers peculiar to themselves. From the quantity of their
stock held by foreigners, the quantity of other stocks in their
hands, and the current foreign balance against the United States,
our paper system has become an appendage to that of England. As
such, it suffers from sympathy when the English system suffers. In
addition to this, a new doctrine is now broached--that our first
duty is to foreigners! and, upon this principle, when the banks of
the two countries are in peril, ours are to be sacrificed to save
those of England!
The power of a few banks over the whole presents a new feature of
danger in our system. It consolidates the banks of the whole Union
into one mass, and subjects them to one fate, and that fate to be
decided by a few, without even the knowledge of the rest. An unknown
divan of bankers sends forth an edict which sweeps over the empire,
crosses the lines of States with the facility of a Turkish firman,
prostrating all State institutions, breaking up all engagements,
and levelling all law before it. This is consolidation of a kind
which the genius of Patrick Henry had not even conceived. But while
this firman is thus potent and irresistible for prostration, it
is impotent and powerless for resurrection. It goes out in vain,
bidding the prostrate banks to rise. A _veto_ power intervenes.
One voice is sufficient to keep all down; and thus we have seen
one word from Philadelphia annihilate the New York proposition for
resumption, and condemn the many solvent banks to the continuation
of a condition as mortifying to their feelings as it is injurious to
their future interests.
Again, from the mode of doing business among our banks--using
each other's paper to bank upon, instead of holding each other to
weekly settlements, and liquidation of balances in specie, and
from the fatal practice of issuing notes at one place, payable at
another--our banks have all become links of one chain, the strength
of the whole being dependent on the strength of each. A few govern
all. Whether it is to fail, or to resume, the few govern; and not
only the few, but the weak. A few weak banks fail; a panic ensues,
and the rest shut up; many strong ones are ready to resume; the weak
are not ready, and the strong must wait. Thus the principles of
safety, and the rules of government, are reversed. The weak govern
the strong; the bad govern the good; and the insolvent govern the
solvent. This is our system, if system it can be called, which has
no feature of consistency, no principle of safety, and which is
nothing but the floating appendage of a foreign and overpowering
system.
The federal government and its creditors have suffered great
pecuniary losses from the use of these banks and their paper; they
must continue to sustain such losses if they continue to use such
depositories and to receive such paper. The pecuniary losses have
been, now are, and must be hereafter great; but, great as they
have been, now are, and may be hereafter, all that loss is nothing
compared to the political dangers which flow from the same source.
These dangers affect the life of the government. They go to its
existence. They involve anarchy, confusion, violence, dissolution!
They go to deprive the government of support--of the means of
living; they strip it in an instant of every shilling of revenue,
and leave it penniless, helpless, lifeless. The late stoppage might
have broken up the government, had it not been for the fidelity
and affection of the people to their institutions and the eighty
millions of specie which General Jackson had accumulated in the
country. That stoppage presented a peculiar feature of peril which
has not been brought to the notice of the public; it was the
stoppage of the sums standing in the names of disbursing officers,
and wanted for daily payments in all the branches of the public
service.--These sums amounted to about five millions of dollars.
They had been drawn from the Treasury, they were no longer standing
to the credit of the United States; they had gone into the hands of
innumerable officers and agents, in all parts of the Union, and were
temporarily, and for mere safe-keeping from day to day, lodged with
these deposit banks, to be incessantly paid out to those who were
doing work and labor, performing contracts, or rendering service,
civil or military, to the country. These five millions were stopped
with the rest! In an instant, as if by enchantment, every disbursing
officer, in every part of the Union, was stripped of the money which
he was going to pay out! All officers of the government, high and
low, the whole army and navy, all the laborers and contractors,
post offices and all, were suddenly, instantaneously, left without
pay; and consequently without subsistence. It was tantamount to a
disbandment of the entire government. It was like a decree for the
dissolution of the body politic. It was celebrated as a victory--as
a conquest--as a triumph, over the government. The least that was
expected was an immediate civil revolution--the overthrow of the
democratic party, the change of administration, the reascension
of the federal party to power, and the re-establishment of the
condemned Bank of the United States. These consequences were counted
upon; and that they did not happen was solely owing to the eighty
millions of hard money which kept up a standard of value in the
country, and prevented the dishonored bank notes from sinking too
low to be used by the community. But it is not merely stoppage of
the banks that we have to fear: collisions with the States may
ensue. State legislatures may sanction the stoppage, withhold the
poor right of suing, and thus interpose their authority between the
federal government and its revenues. This has already happened, not
in hostility to the government, but in protection of themselves;
and the consequence was the same as if the intention had been
hostile. It was interposition between the federal government and
its depositories; it was deprivation of revenue; it was an act the
recurrence of which should be carefully guarded against in future.
This is what we have seen; this is a danger which we have just
escaped; and if these banks shall be continued as depositories of
public money, or, which is just the same thing, if the government
shall continue to receive their "paper promises to pay," the same
danger may be seen again, and under far more critical circumstances.
A similar stoppage of the banks may take place again--will
inevitably take place again--and it may be when there is little
specie in the country, or when war prevails. All history is full of
examples of armies and navies revolting for want of pay; all history
is full of examples of military and naval operations miscarried
for want of money; all history is full of instances of governments
overturned from deficits of revenue and derangements of finances.
And are we to expose ourselves recklessly, and with our eyes open,
to such dangers? And are we to stake the life and death of this
government upon the hazards and contingencies of banking--and of
such banking as exists in these United States? Are we to subject
the existence of this government to the stoppages of the banks,
whether those stoppages result from misfortune, improvidence, or bad
faith? Are we to subject this great and glorious political fabric,
the work of so many wise and patriotic heads, to be demolished in
an instant, and by an unseen hand? Are we to suffer the machinery
and the working of our boasted constitution to be arrested by a
spring-catch, applied in the dark? Are men, with pens sticking
behind their ears, to be allowed to put an end to this republic? No,
sir! never. If we are to perish prematurely, let us at least have a
death worthy of a great nation; let us at least have a field covered
with the bodies of heroes and of patriots, and consecrated forever
to the memory of a subverted empire. Rome had her Pharsalia--Greece
her Chæronca--and many barbarian kingdoms have given immortality to
the spot on which they expired; and shall this great republic be
subjected to extinction on the contingencies of trade and banking?
But what excuse, what apology, what justification have we for
surrendering, abandoning, and losing the precise advantage for which
the present constitution was formed? What was that advantage--what
the leading and governing object, which led to the abandonment of
the old confederation, and induced the adoption of the present form
of government? It was revenue! independent revenue! a revenue under
the absolute control of this government, and free from the action
of the States. This was the motive--the leading and the governing
motive--which led to the formation of this government. The reason
was, that the old confederation, being dependent upon the States,
was often left without money. This state of being was incompatible
with its existence; it deprived it of all power; its imbecility was
a proverb. To extricate it from that condition was the design--and
the cardinal design--of the new constitution. An independent
revenue was given to it--independent, even, of the States. Is it
not suicidal to surrender that independence, and to surrender it,
not to States, but to money corporations? What does history record
of the penury and moneyed destitution of the old confederation,
comparable to the annihilation of the revenues of this government in
May last? when the banks shut down, in one night, upon a revenue, in
hand, of thirty-two millions; even upon that which was in the names
of disbursing officers, and refuse a nine-pence, or a picaillon in
money, from that day to this? What is there in the history of the
old confederation comparable to this? The old confederation was
often reduced low--often near empty-handed--but never saw itself
stripped in an instant, as if by enchantment, of tens of millions,
and heard the shout of triumph thundered over its head, and the
notes of exultation sung over its supposed destruction! Yet, this
is what we have seen--what we now see--from having surrendered
to corporations our moneyed independence, and unwisely abandoned
the precise advantage which led to the formation of this federal
government.
I do not go into the moral view of this question. It is too obvious,
too impressive, too grave, to escape the observation of any one.
Demoralization follows in the train of an unconvertible paper
money. The whole community becomes exposed to a moral pestilence.
Every individual becomes the victim of some imposition; and, in
self-defence, imposes upon some one else. The weak, the ignorant,
the uninformed, the necessitous, are the sufferers; the crafty and
the opulent are the gainers. The evil augments until the moral sense
of the community, revolting at the frightful accumulation of fraud
and misery, applies the radical remedy of total reform.
Thus, pecuniary, political, and moral considerations require the
government to retrace its steps, to return to first principles,
and to restore its fiscal action to the safe and solid path of the
constitution. Reform is demanded. It is called for by every public
and by every private consideration. Now is the time to make it.
The connection between Bank and State is actually dissolved. It
is dissolved by operation of law, and by the delinquency of these
institutions. They have forfeited the right to the deposits, and
lost the privilege of paying the revenue in their notes, by ceasing
to pay specie. The government is now going on without them, and
all that is wanting is the appropriate legislation to perpetuate
the divorce which, in point of fact, has already taken place. Now
is the time to act; this the moment to restore the constitutional
currency to the federal government; to restore the custody of the
public moneys to national keepers; and to avoid, in time to come,
the calamitous revulsions and perilous catastrophes of 1814, 1819,
and 1837.
And what is the obstacle to the adoption of this course, so
imperiously demanded by the safety of the republic and the welfare
of the people, and so earnestly recommended to us by the chief
magistrate? What is the obstacle--what the power that countervails
the Executive recommendation, paralyzes the action of Congress, and
stays the march of reform? The banks--the banks--the banks, are
this obstacle, and this power. They set up the pretension to force
their paper into the federal Treasury, and to force themselves to
be constituted that Treasury. Though now bankrupt, their paper
dishonored, their doors closed against creditors, every public and
every private obligation violated, still they arrogate a supremacy
over this federal government; they demand the guardianship of the
public moneys, and the privilege of furnishing a federal currency;
and, though too weak to pay their debts, they are strong enough to
throttle this government, and to hold in doubtful suspense the issue
of their vast pretensions.
The President, in his message, recommends four things: first, to
discontinue the reception of local bank paper in payment of federal
dues; secondly, to discontinue the same banks as depositories of
the public moneys; thirdly, to make the future collection and
disbursement of the public moneys in gold and silver; fourthly, to
take the keeping of the public moneys into the hands of our own
officers.
What is there in this but a return to the words and meaning of the
constitution, and a conformity to the practice of the government in
the first years of President Washington's administration? When this
federal government was first formed, there was no Bank of the United
States, and no local banks, except three north of the Potomac. By
the act of 1789, the revenues were directed to be collected in gold
and silver coin only; and it was usually drawn out of the hands of
collectors by drafts drawn upon them, payable at sight. It was a
most effectual way of drawing money out of their hands; far more so
than an order to deposit in banks; for the drafts must be paid, or
protested, at sight, while the order to deposit may be eluded under
various pretexts.
The right and the obligation of the government to keep its own
moneys in its own hands, results from first principles, and from
the great law of self-preservation. Every thing else that belongs
to her, she keeps herself; and why not keep that also, without
which every thing else is nothing? Arms and ships--provisions,
munitions, and supplies of every kind--are kept in the hands of
government officers; money is the sinew of war, and why leave this
sinew exposed to be cut by any careless or faithless hand? Money
is the support and existence of the government--the breath of its
nostrils, and why leave this support--this breath--to the custody of
those over whom we have no control? How absurd to place our ships,
our arms, our military and naval supplies in the hands of those who
could refuse to deliver them when requested, and put the government
to a suit at law to recover their possession! Every body sees the
absurdity of this; but to place our money in the same condition,
and, moreover, to subject it to the vicissitudes of trade and the
perils of banking, is still more absurd; for it is the life blood,
without which the government cannot live--the oil, without which no
part of its machinery can move.
England, with all her banks, trusts none of them with the
collection, keeping, and disbursement of her public moneys. The Bank
of England is paid a specific sum to manage the public debt; but the
revenue is collected and disbursed through subordinate collectors
and receivers general; and these receivers general are not subject
to the bankrupt laws, because the government will not suffer its
revenue to be operated upon by any law except its own will. In
France, subordinate collectors and receivers general collect, keep,
and disburse the public moneys. If they deposit any thing in banks,
it is at their own risk. It is the same thing in England. A bank
deposit by an officer is at the risk of himself and his securities.
Too much of the perils and vicissitudes of banking is known in these
countries to permit the government ever to jeopard its revenues in
their keeping. All this is shown, fully and at large, in a public
document now on our tables. And who does not recognize in these
collectors and receivers general of France and England, the ancient
Roman officers of quæstors and proquæstors? These fiscal officers
of France and England are derivations from the Roman institutions;
and the same are found in all the modern kingdoms of Europe which
were formerly, like France and Britain, provinces of the Roman
empire. The measure before the Senate is to enable us to provide
for our future safety, by complying with our own constitution, and
conforming to the practice of all nations, great or small, ancient
or modern.
Coming nearer home, and looking into our own early history, what
were the "continental treasurers" of the confederation, and the
"provincial treasurers and collectors," provided for as early as
July, 1775, but an imitation of the French and English systems,
and very near the plan which we propose now to re-establish! These
continental treasurers, and there were two of them at first,
though afterwards reduced to one, were the receivers general; the
provincial treasurers and collectors were their subordinates.
By these officers the public moneys were collected, kept, and
disbursed; for there were no banks then! and all government drafts
were drawn directly upon these officers. This simple plan worked
well during the Revolution, and afterwards, until the new government
was formed; and continued to work, with a mere change of names
and forms, during the first years of Washington's administration,
and until General Hamilton's bank machinery got into play. This
bill only proposes to re-establish, in substance, the system of the
Revolution, of the Congress of the confederation, and of the first
years of Washington's administration.
The bill reported by the chairman of the Committee on Finance
[Mr. WRIGHT of New York] presents the details of the plan for
accomplishing this great result. That bill has been printed and
read. Its simplicity, economy, and efficiency strike the sense
of all who hear it, and annihilate without argument, the most
formidable arguments of expense and patronage, which had been
conceived against it. The present officers, the present mints,
and one or two more mints in the South, in the West, and in the
North, complete the plan. There will be no necessity to carry
masses of hard money from one quarter of the Union to another.
Government drafts will make the transfer without moving a dollar.
A government draft upon a national mint, will be the highest order
of bills of exchange. Money wanted by the government in one place,
will be exchanged, through merchants, for money in another place.
Thus it has been for thousands of years, and will for ever be. We
read in Cicero's letters that, when he was Governor of Cilicia, in
Asia Minor, he directed his _quæstor_ to deposit the tribute of
the province in Antioch, and exchange it for money in Rome with
merchants engaged in the Oriental trade, of which Antioch was one
of the emporiums. This is the natural course of things, and is too
obvious to require explanation, or to admit of comment.
We are taunted with these treasury notes; it seems to be matter of
triumph that the government is reduced to the necessity of issuing
them; but with what justice? And how soon can any government that
wishes it, emerge from the wretchedness of depreciated paper,
and stand erect on the solid foundations of gold and silver? How
long will it take any respectable government, that so wills it,
to accomplish this great change? Our own history, at the close of
the Revolution, answers the question; and more recently, and more
strikingly, the history of France answers it also. I speak of the
French finances from 1800 to 1807; from the commencement of the
consulate to the peace of Tilsit. This wonderful period is replete
with instruction on the subject of finance and currency. The whole
period is full of instruction; but I can only seize two views--the
beginning and the end--and, for the sake of precision, will read
what I propose to present. I read from Bignon, author of the civil
and diplomatic history of France during the consulate and the first
years of the empire; written at the testamentary request of the
Emperor himself.
After stating that the expenditures of the republic were six
hundred millions of francs--about one hundred and ten millions of
dollars--when Bonaparte became First Consul, the historian proceeds:
"_At his arrival at power, a sum of 160,000 francs in money
[about $32,000] was all that the public chests contained. In the
impossibility of meeting the current service by the ordinary
receipts, the Directorial Government had resorted to ruinous
expedients, and had thrown into circulation bills of various
values, and which sunk upon the spot fifty to eighty per cent. A
part of the arrearages had been discharged in bills two-thirds
on credit, payable to the bearer, but which, in fact, the
treasury was not able to pay when due. The remaining third had
been inscribed in the great book, under the name of consolidated
third. For the payment of the forced requisitions to which they
had been obliged to have recourse, there had been issued bills
receivable in payment of the revenues. Finally, the government,
in order to satisfy the most imperious wants, gave orders upon
the receivers general, delivered in advance to contractors,
which they negotiated before they began to furnish the supplies
for which they were the payment._"
This, resumed Mr. B., was the condition of the French finances
when Bonaparte became First Consul at the close of the year 1799.
The currency was in the same condition--no specie--a degraded
currency of assignats, ruinously depreciated, and issued as low as
ten sous. That great man immediately began to restore order to the
finances, and solidity to the currency. Happily a peace of three
years enabled him to complete the great work, before he was called
to celebrate the immortal campaigns ending at Austerlitz, Jena, and
Friedland. At the end of three years--before the rupture of the
peace of Amiens--the finances and the currency were restored to
order and to solidity; and, at the end of six years, when the vast
establishments, and the internal ameliorations of the imperial
government, had carried the annual expenses to eight hundred
millions of francs, about one hundred and sixty millions of dollars;
the same historian copying the words of the Minister of Finance,
thus speaks of the treasury, and the currency:
"_The resources of the State have increased beyond its wants;
the public chests are full; all payments are made at the day
named; the orders upon the public treasury have become the most
approved bills of exchange. The finances are in the most happy
condition; France alone, among all the States of Europe, has no
paper money._"
What a picture! how simply, how powerfully drawn! and what a change
in six years! Public chests full--payments made to the day--orders
on the treasury the best bills of exchange--France alone, of all
Europe, having no paper money; meaning no government paper money,
for there were bank notes of five hundred francs, and one thousand
francs. A government revenue of one hundred and sixty millions of
dollars was paid in gold and silver; a hard money currency, of five
hundred and fifty millions of dollars, saturated all parts of France
with specie, and made gold and silver the every day currency of
every man, woman and child, in the empire. These great results were
the work of six years, and were accomplished by the simple process
of gradually requiring hard money payments--gradually calling in the
assignats--increasing the branch mints to fourteen, and limiting the
Bank of France to an issue of large notes--five hundred francs and
upwards. This simple process produced these results, and thus stands
the French currency at this day; for the nation has had the wisdom
to leave untouched the financial system of Bonaparte.
I have repeatedly given it as my opinion--many of my speeches
declare it--that the French currency is the best in the world.
It has hard money for the government; hard money for the common
dealings of the people; and large notes for large transactions. This
currency has enabled France to stand two invasions, the ravaging of
300,000 men, two changes of dynasty, and the payment of a _milliard_
of contributions; and all without any commotion or revulsion in
trade. It has saved her from the revulsions which have afflicted
England and our America for so many years. It has saved her from
expansions, contractions, and ruinous fluctuations of price. It
has saved her, for near forty years, from a debate on currency.
It has saved her even from the knowledge of our sweet-scented
phrases: "sound currency--unsound currency; plethoric, dropsical,
inflated, bloated; the money market tight to-day--a little easier
this morning;" and all such verbiage, which the haberdashers' boys
repeat. It has saved France from even a discussion on currency;
while in England, and with us, it is banks! banks! banks!--morning,
noon, and night; breakfast, dinner, and supper; levant, and
couchant; sitting, or standing; at home, or abroad; steamboat, or
railroad car; in Congress, or out of Congress, it is all the same
thing: banks--banks--banks; currency--currency--currency; meaning,
all the while, paper money and shin-plasters; until our very brains
seem as if they would be converted into lampblack and rags.
The bill before the Senate dispenses with the further use of banks
as depositories of the public moneys. In that it has my hearty
concurrence. Four times heretofore, and on four different occasions,
I have made propositions to accomplish a part of the same purpose.
_First_, in proposing an amendment to the deposit bill of 1836,
by which the mint, and the branch mints, were to be included in
the list of depositories; _secondly_, in proposing that the public
moneys here, at the seat of Government, should be kept and paid
out by the Treasurer; _thirdly_, by proposing that a preference,
in receiving the deposits, should be given to such banks as should
cease to be banks of circulation; _fourthly_, in opposing the
establishment of a bank agency in Missouri, and proposing that the
moneys there should be drawn direct from the hands of the receivers.
Three of these propositions are now included in the bill before the
Senate; and the whole object at which they partially aimed is fully
embraced. I am for the measure--fully, cordially, earnestly for it.
Congress has a sacred duty to perform in reforming the finances,
and the currency; for the ruin of both has resulted from federal
legislation, and federal administration. The States at the formation
of the constitution, delivered a solid currency--I will not say
sound, for that word implies subject to unsoundness, to rottenness,
and to death--but they delivered a solid currency, one not liable
to disease, to this federal government. They started the new
government fair upon gold and silver. The first act of Congress
attested this great fact; for it made the revenues payable in gold
and silver coin only. Thus the States delivered a solid currency to
this government, and they reserved the same currency for themselves;
and they provided constitutional sanctions to guard both. The
thing to be saved, and the power to save it, was given to this
government by the States; and in the hands of this government it
became deteriorated. The first great error was General Hamilton's
construction of the act of 1789, by which he nullified that act,
and overturned the statute and the constitution together. The next
great error was the establishment of a national bank of circulation,
with authority to pay all the public dues in its own paper. This
confirmed the overthrow of the constitution, and of the statute of
1789; and it set the fatal example to the States to make banks,
and to receive their paper for public dues, as the United States
had done. This was the origin of the evil--this the origin of the
overthrow of the solid currency which the States had delivered to
the federal government. It was the Hamiltonian policy that did the
mischief; and the state of things in 1837, is the natural fruit
of that policy. It is time for us to quit it--to return to the
constitution and the statute of 1789, and to confine the federal
Treasury to the hard money which was intended for it.
I repeat, this is a measure of reform, worthy to be called a
reformation. It goes back to a fundamental abuse, nearly coeval
with the foundation of the government. Two epochs have occurred
for the reformation of this abuse; one was lost, the other is now
in jeopardy. Mr. Madison's administration committed a great error
at the expiration of the charter of the first Bank of the United
States, in not reviving the currency of the constitution for the
federal Treasury, and especially the gold currency. That error threw
the Treasury back upon the local bank paper. This paper quickly
failed, and out of that failure grew the second United States
Bank. Those who put down the second United States Bank, warned
by the calamity, determined to avoid the error of Mr. Madison's
administration: they determined to increase the stock of specie,
and to revive the gold circulation, which had been dead for thirty
years. The accumulation of eighty millions in the brief space of
five years, fifteen millions of it in gold, attest the sincerity of
their design, and the facility of its execution. The country was
going on at the rate of an average increase of twelve millions of
specie per annum, when the general stoppages of the banks in May
last, the exportation of specie, and the imposition of irredeemable
paper upon the government and the people, seemed to announce the
total failure of the plan. But it was a seeming only. The impetus
given to the specie policy still prevails, and five millions are
added to the stock during the present fiscal year. So far, then,
as the counteraction of the government policy, and the suppression
of the constitutional currency, might have been expected to result
from that stoppage, the calculation seems to be in a fair way to be
disappointed. The spirit of the people, and our hundred millions of
exportable produce, are giving the victory to the glorious policy
of our late illustrious President. The other great consequences
expected to result from that stoppage, namely, the recharter of
the Bank of the United States, the change of administration, the
overthrow of the republican party, and the restoration of the
federal dynasty, all seem to be in the same fair way to total
miscarriage; but the objects are too dazzling to be abandoned by
the party interested, and the destruction of the finances and the
currency, is still the cherished road to success. The miscalled
Bank of the United States, the soul of the federal dynasty, and the
anchor of its hopes--believed by many to have been at the bottom
of the stoppages in May, and known by all to be at the head of
non-resumption--now displays her policy on this floor; it is to
compel the repetition of the error of Mr. Madison's administration!
Knowing that from the repetition of this error must come the
repetition of the catastrophes of 1814, 1819, and 1837; and out of
these catastrophes to extract a new clamor for the revivification of
herself. This is her line of conduct; and to this line, the conduct
of all her friends conforms. With one heart, one mind, one voice,
they labor to cut off gold and silver from the federal government,
and to impose paper upon it! they labor to deprive it of the keeping
of its own revenues, and to place them again where they have been so
often lost! This is the conduct of that bank and its friends. Let
us imitate their zeal, their unanimity, and their perseverance. The
amendment and the bill now before the Senate, embodies our policy.
Let us carry them, and the republic is safe.
The extra session had been called to relieve the distress of the
federal treasury, and had done so by authorizing an issue of
treasury notes. That object being accomplished, and the great
measures for the divorce of Bank and State, and for the sole use of
gold and silver in federal payments, having been recommended, and
commenced, the session adjourned.
CHAPTER XVI.
FIRST REGULAR SESSION UNDER MR. VAN BUREN'S ADMINISTRATION: HIS
MESSAGE.
A brief interval of two months only intervened between the
adjournment of the called session and the meeting of the regular
one; and the general state of the public affairs, both at home and
abroad, being essentially the same at both periods, left no new
or extraordinary measures for the President to recommend. With
foreign powers we were on good terms, the settlement of all our
long-standing complaints under General Jackson's administration
having left us free from the foreign controversies which gave
trouble; and on that head the message had little but what was
agreeable to communicate. Its topics were principally confined
to home affairs, and that part of these affairs which were
connected with the banks. That of the United States, as it still
called itself, gave a new species of disregard of moral and legal
obligation, and presented a new mode of depraving the currency
and endangering property and contracts, by continuing to issue
and to use the notes of the expired institution. Its currency was
still that of the defunct bank. It used the dead notes of that
institution, for which, of course, neither bank was liable. They
were called resurrection notes; and their use, besides the injury
to the currency and danger to property, was a high contempt and
defiance of the authority which had created it; and called for the
attention of the federal government. The President, therefore, thus
formally brought the procedure to the notice of Congress:
"It was my hope that nothing would occur to make necessary, on
this occasion, any allusion to the late national bank. There
are circumstances, however, connected with the present state
of its affairs that bear so directly on the character of the
government and the welfare of the citizen, that I should not
feel myself excused in neglecting to notice them. The charter
which terminated its banking privileges on the 4th of March,
1836, continued its corporate powers two years more, for the
sole purpose of closing its affairs, with authority 'to use the
corporate name, style, and capacity, for the purpose of suits
for a final settlement and liquidation of the affairs and acts
of the corporation, and for the sale and disposition of their
estate, real, personal and mixed, but for no other purpose
or in any other manner whatsoever.' Just before the banking
privileges ceased, its effects were transferred by the bank to a
new State institution then recently incorporated, in trust, for
the discharge of its debts and the settlement of its affairs.
With this trustee, by authority of Congress, an adjustment was
subsequently made of the large interest which the government
had in the stock of the institution. The manner in which a
trust unexpectedly created upon the act granting the charter,
and involving such great public interests, has been executed,
would, under any circumstances, be a fit subject of inquiry; but
much more does it deserve your attention, when it embraces the
redemption of obligations to which the authority and credit of
the United States have given value. The two years allowed are
now nearly at an end. It is well understood that the trustee
has not redeemed and cancelled the outstanding notes of the
bank, but has reissued, and is actually reissuing, since the 3d
of March, 1836, the notes which have been received by it to a
vast amount. According to its own official statement, so late
as the 1st of October last, nineteen months after the banking
privileges given by the charter had expired, it had under
its control uncancelled notes of the late Bank of the United
States to the amount of twenty-seven millions five hundred and
sixty-one thousand eight hundred and sixty-six dollars, of
which six millions one hundred and seventy-five thousand eight
hundred and sixty-one dollars were in actual circulation, one
million four hundred and sixty-eight thousand six hundred and
twenty-seven dollars at State bank agencies, and three millions
two thousand three hundred and ninety dollars _in transitu_;
thus showing that upwards of ten millions and a half of the
notes of the old bank were then still kept outstanding. The
impropriety of this procedure is obvious: it being the duty
of the trustee to cancel and not to put forth the notes of an
institution, whose concerns it had undertaken to wind up. If
the trustee has a right to reissue these notes now, I can see
no reason why it may not continue to do so after the expiration
of the two years. As no one could have anticipated a course
so extraordinary, the prohibitory clause of the charter above
quoted was not accompanied by any penalty or other special
provision for enforcing it; nor have we any general law for the
prevention of similar acts in future.
"But it is not in this view of the subject alone that your
interposition is required. The United States, in settling with
the trustee for their stock, have withdrawn their funds from
their former direct ability to the creditors of the old bank,
yet notes of the institution continue to be sent forth in its
name, and apparently upon the authority of the United States.
The transactions connected with the employment of the bills
of the old bank are of vast extent; and should they result
unfortunately, the interests of individuals may be deeply
compromised. Without undertaking to decide how far, or in what
form, if any, the trustee could be made liable for notes which
contain no obligation on its part; or the old bank, for such
as are put in circulation after the expiration of its charter,
and without its authority; or the government for indemnity,
in case of loss, the question still presses itself upon your
consideration, whether it is consistent with duty and good
faith on the part of the government, to witness this proceeding
without a single effort to arrest it."
On the subject of the public lands, and the most judicious mode
of disposing of them--a question of so much interest to the new
States--the message took the view of those who looked to the
domain less as a source of revenue than as a means of settling and
improving the country. He recommended graduated prices according to
the value of the different classes of lands in order to facilitate
their sale; and a prospective permanent pre-emption act to give
encouragement to settlers. On the first of these points he said:
"Hitherto, after being offered at public sale, lands have been
disposed of at one uniform price, whatever difference there
might be in their intrinsic value. The leading considerations
urged in favor of the measure referred to, are, that in almost
all the land districts, and particularly in those in which the
lands have been long surveyed and exposed to sale, there are
still remaining numerous and large tracts of every gradation of
value, from the government price downwards; that these lands
will not be purchased at the government price, so long as better
can be conveniently obtained for the same amount; that there are
large tracts which even the improvements of the adjacent lands
will never raise to that price; and that the present uniform
price, combined with their irregular value, operates to prevent
a desirable compactness of settlement in the new States, and to
retard the full development of that wise policy on which our
land system is founded, to the injury not only of the several
States where the lands lie, but of the United States as a whole.
"The remedy proposed has been a reduction of prices according
to the length of time the lands have been in market, without
reference to any other circumstances. The certainty that the
efflux of time would not always in such cases, and perhaps
not even generally, furnish a true criterion of value; and
the probability that persons residing in the vicinity, as the
period for the reduction of prices approached, would postpone
purchases they would otherwise make, for the purpose of availing
themselves of the lower price, with other considerations of a
similar character, have hitherto been successfully urged to
defeat the graduation upon time. May not all reasonable desires
upon this subject be satisfied without encountering any of
these objections? All will concede the abstract principle, that
the price of the public lands should be proportioned to their
relative value, so far as that can be accomplished without
departing from the rule, heretofore observed, requiring fixed
prices in cases of private entries. The difficulty of the
subject seems to lie in the mode of ascertaining what that value
is. Would not the safest plan be that which has been adopted by
many of the States as the basis of taxation; an actual valuation
of lands, and classification of them into different rates? Would
it not be practicable and expedient to cause the relative value
of the public lands in the old districts, which have been for a
certain length of time in market, to be appraised, and classed
into two or more rates below the present minimum price, by the
officers now employed in this branch of the public service, or
in any other mode deemed preferable, and to make those prices
permanent, if upon the coming in of the report they shall prove
satisfactory to Congress? Cannot all the objects of graduation
be accomplished in this way, and the objections which have
hitherto been urged against it avoided? It would seem to me
that such a step, with a restriction of the sales to limited
quantities, and for actual improvement, would be free from all
just exception."
A permanent prospective pre-emption law was cogently recommended
as a measure just in itself to the settlers, and not injurious
to the public Treasury, as experience had shown that the auction
system--that of selling to the highest bidder above the prescribed
minimum price--had produced in its aggregate but a few cents on the
acre above the minimum price. On this point he said:
"A large portion of our citizens have seated themselves on
the public lands, without authority, since the passage of the
last pre-emption law and now ask the enactment of another,
to enable them to retain the lands occupied, upon payment of
the minimum government price. They ask that which has been
repeatedly granted before. If the future may be judged of by the
past, little harm can be done to the interests of the Treasury
by yielding to their request. Upon a critical examination, it
is found that the lands sold at the public sales since the
introduction of cash payments in 1820, have produced, on an
average, the net revenue of only six cents an acre more than the
minimum government price. There is no reason to suppose that
future sales will be more productive. The government, therefore,
has no adequate pecuniary interest to induce it to drive these
people from the lands they occupy, for the purpose of selling
them to others."
This wise recommendation has since been carried into effect, and
pre-emptive rights are now admitted in all cases where settlements
are made upon lands to which the Indian title shall have been
extinguished; and the graduation of the price of the public lands,
though a measure long delayed, yet prevailed in the end, and was
made as originally proposed, by reductions according to the length
of time the land had been offered at sale. Beginning at the minimum
price of $1 25 per acre, the reduction of price went down through
a descending scale, according to time, as low as 12-1/2 cents per
acre. But this was long after.
CHAPTER XVII.
PENNSYLVANIA BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. ITS USE OF THE DEFUNCT
NOTES OF THE EXPIRED INSTITUTION.
History gives many instances of armies refusing to be disbanded,
and remaining in arms in defiance of the authority which created
them; but the example of this bank presents, probably, the first
instance in which a great moneyed corporation refused to be
dissolved--refused to cease its operations after its legal existence
had expired;--and continued its corporate transactions as if in full
life. It has already been shown that its proviso charter, at the end
of a local railroad act, made no difference in its condition--that
it went on exactly as before. Its use of the defunct notes of
the expired institution was a further instance of this conduct,
transcending any thing conceived of, and presenting a case of danger
to the public, and defiance of government, which the President
had deemed it his duty to bring to the attention of Congress, and
ask a remedy for a proceeding so criminal. Congress acted on the
recommendation, and a bill was brought in to make the repetition of
the offence a high misdemeanor, and the officers and managers of the
institution personally and individually liable for its commission.
In support of this bill, Mr. Buchanan gave the fullest and clearest
account of this almost incredible misconduct. He said:
"The charter of the late Bank of the United States expired, by
its own limitation, on the 3d of March, 1836. After that day,
it could issue no notes, discount no new paper, and exercise
none of the usual functions of a bank. For two years thereafter,
until the 3d of March, 1838, it was merely permitted to use its
corporate name and capacity 'for the purpose of suits for the
final settlement and liquidation of the affairs and accounts
of the corporation, and for the sale and disposition of their
estate, real, personal, and mixed; _but not for any other
purpose, or in any other manner, whatsoever_.' Congress had
granted the bank no power to make a voluntary assignment of its
property to any corporation or any individual. On the contrary,
the plain meaning of the charter was, that all the affairs of
the institution should be wound up by its own president and
directors. It received no authority to delegate this important
trust to others, and yet what has it done? On the second day
of March, 1836, one day before the charter had expired, this
very president and these directors assigned all the property
and effects of the old corporation to the Pennsylvania Bank of
the United States. On the same day, this latter bank accepted
the assignment, and agreed to 'pay, satisfy, and discharge all
debts, contracts, and engagements, owing, entered into, or
made by this [the old] bank, as the same shall become due and
payable, _and fulfil and execute all trusts and obligations
whatsoever arising from its transactions, or from any of them_,
so that every creditor or rightful claimant shall be fully
satisfied.' By its own agreement, it has thus expressly created
itself a trustee of the old bank. But this was not necessary to
confer upon it that character. By the bare act of accepting the
assignment, it became responsible, under the laws of the land,
for the performance of all the duties and trusts required by
the old charter. Under the circumstances, it cannot make the
slightest pretence of any want of notice.
"Having assumed this responsibility, the duty of the new
bank was so plain that it could not have been mistaken. It
had a double character to sustain. Under the charter from
Pennsylvania, it became a new banking corporation; whilst,
under the assignment from the old bank, it became a trustee
to wind up the concerns of that institution under the Act of
Congress. These two characters were in their nature separate
and distinct, and never ought to have been blended. For each of
these purposes it ought to have kept a separate set of books.
Above all, as the privilege of circulating bank notes, and thus
creating a paper currency is that function of a bank which most
deeply and vitally affects the community, the new bank ought
to have cancelled or destroyed all the notes of the old bank
which it found in its possession on the 4th of March, 1836, and
ought to have redeemed the remainder at its counter, as they
were demanded by the holders, and then destroyed them. This
obligation no senator has attempted to doubt, or to deny. But
what was the course of the bank? It has grossly violated both
the old and the new charter. It at once declared independence
of both, and appropriated to itself all the notes of the old
bank,--not only those which were then still in circulation, but
those which had been redeemed before it accepted the assignment,
and were then lying dead in its vaults. I have now before me
the first monthly statement which was ever made by the Bank to
the Auditor-general of Pennsylvania. It is dated on the 2d of
April, 1836, and signed J. Cowperthwaite, acting cashier. In
this statement, the Bank charges itself with 'notes issued,'
$36,620,420 16; whilst, in its cash account, along with its
specie and the notes of State banks, it credits itself with
'notes of the Bank of the United States and offices,' on hand,
$16,794,713 71. It thus seized these dead notes to the amount
of $16,794,713 71, and transformed them into cash; whilst
the difference between those on hand and those issued, equal
to $19,825,706 45, was the circulation which the new bank
boasted it had inherited from the old. It thus, in an instant,
appropriated to itself, and adopted as its own circulation,
all the notes and all the illegal branch drafts of the old
bank which were then in existence. Its boldness was equal to
its utter disregard of law. In this first return, it not only
proclaimed to the Legislature and people of Pennsylvania that
it had disregarded its trust as assignee of the old Bank, by
seizing upon the whole of the old circulation and converting it
to its own use, but that it had violated one of the fundamental
provisions of its new charter."
Mr. Calhoun spoke chiefly to the question of the _right_ of Congress
to pass a bill of the tenor proposed. Several senators denied that
right others supported it--among them Mr. Wright, Mr. Grundy, Mr.
William H. Roane, Mr. John M. Niles, Mr. Clay, of Alabama, and Mr.
Calhoun. Some passages from the speech of the latter are here given.
"He [Mr. Calhoun] held that the right proposed to be exercised
in this case rested on the general power of legislation
conferred on Congress, which embraces not only the power of
making, but that of repealing laws. It was, in fact, a portion
of the repealing power. No one could doubt the existence of the
right to do either, and that the right of repealing extends
as well to unconstitutional as constitutional laws. The case
as to the former was, in fact, stronger than the latter; for,
whether a constitutional law should be repealed or not, was a
question of expediency, which left us free to act according to
our discretion; while, in the case of an unconstitutional law,
it was a matter of obligation and duty, leaving no option; and
the more unconstitutional, the more imperious the obligation
and duty. Thus far, there could be no doubt nor diversity of
opinion. But there are many laws, the effects of which do not
cease with their repeal or expiration, and which require some
additional act on our part to arrest or undo them. Such, for
instance, is the one in question. The charter of the late bank
expired some time ago, but its notes are still in existence,
freely circulating from hand to hand, and reissued and banked
on by a bank chartered by the State of Pennsylvania, into whose
possession the notes of the old bank have passed. In a word,
our name and authority are used almost as freely for banking
purposes as they were before the expiration of the charter
of the late bank. Now, he held that the right of arresting
or undoing these after-effects rested on the same principle
as the right of repealing a law, and, like that, embraces
unconstitutional as well as constitutional acts, superadding, in
the case of the former, obligation and duty to right. We have an
illustration of the truth of this principle in the case of the
alien and sedition acts, which are now conceded on all sides to
have been unconstitutional. Like the act incorporating the late
bank, they expired by their own limitation; and, like it, also,
their effects continued after the period of their expiration.
Individuals had been tried, convicted, fined, and imprisoned
under them; but, so far was their unconstitutionality from being
regarded as an impediment to the right of arresting or undoing
these effects, that Mr. Jefferson felt himself compelled on that
very account to pardon those who had been fined and convicted
under their provisions, and we have at this session passed, on
the same ground, an act to refund the money paid by one of the
sufferers under them. The bill is limited to those only who
are the trustees, or agents for winding up the concerns of the
late bank, and it is those, and those only, who are subject to
the penalties of the bill for reissuing its notes. They are,
_pro tanto_, our officers, and, to that extent, subject to our
jurisdiction, and liable to have their acts controlled as far
as they relate to the trust or agency confided to them; just
as much so as receivers or collectors of the revenue would be.
No one can doubt that we could prohibit them from passing off
any description of paper currency that might come into their
hands in their official character. Nor is the right less clear
in reference to the persons who may be comprehended in this
bill. Whether Mr. Biddle or others connected with this bank
are, in fact, trustees, or agents, within the meaning of the
bill, is not a question for us to decide. They are not named,
nor referred to by description. The bill is very properly drawn
up in general terms, so as to comprehend all cases of the kind,
and would include the banks of the District, should Congress
refuse to re-charter them. It is left to the court and jury,
to whom it properly belongs, to decide, when a case comes up,
whether the party is, or is not, a trustee, or agent; and, of
course, whether he is, or is not, included in the provisions
of the bill. If he is, he will be subject to its penalties,
but not otherwise; and it cannot possibly affect the question
of the constitutionality of the bill, whether Mr. Biddle, and
others connected with him, are, or are not, comprehended in its
provisions, and subject to its penalties."
The bill was severe in its enactments, prescribing both fine and
imprisonment for the repetition of the offence--the fine not to
exceed ten thousand dollars--the imprisonment not to be less than
one nor more than five years. It also gave a preventive remedy in
authorizing injunctions from the federal courts to prevent the
circulation of such defunct notes, and proceedings in chancery to
compel their surrender for cancellation. And to this "complexion"
had the arrogant institution come which so lately held itself to
be a _power_, and a great one, in the government--now borne on
the statute book as criminally liable for a high misdemeanor,
and giving its name to a new species of offence in the criminal
catalogue--_exhumer and resurrectionist of defunct notes_. And
thus ended the last question between the federal government and
this, once so powerful moneyed corporation; and certainly any one
who reads the history of that bank as faithfully shown in our
parliamentary history, and briefly exhibited in this historic View,
can ever wish to see another national bank established in our
country, or any future connection of any kind between the government
and the banks. The last struggle between it and the government
was now over--just seven years since that struggle began: but its
further conduct will extort a further notice from history.
CHAPTER XVIII.
FLORIDA INDIAN WAR: ITS ORIGIN AND CONDUCT.
This was one of the most troublesome, expensive and unmanageable
Indian wars in which the United States had been engaged; and
from the length of time which it continued, the amount of money
it cost, and the difficulty of obtaining results, it became a
convenient handle of attack upon the administration; and in
which party spirit, in pursuit of its object, went the length of
injuring both individual and national character. It continued about
seven years--as long as the revolutionary war--cost some thirty
millions of money--and baffled the exertions of several generals;
recommenced when supposed to be finished; and was only finally
terminated by changing military campaigns into an armed occupation
by settlers. All the opposition presses and orators took hold of
it, and made its misfortunes the common theme of invective and
declamation. Its origin was charged to the oppressive conduct of
the administration--its protracted length to their imbecility--its
cost to their extravagance--its defeats to the want of foresight
and care. The Indians stood for an innocent and persecuted people.
Heroes and patriots were made of their chiefs. Our generals and
troops were decried; applause was lavished upon a handful of savages
who could thus defend their country; and corresponding censure upon
successive armies which could not conquer them. All this going
incessantly into the Congress debates and the party newspapers,
was injuring the administration at home, and the country abroad;
and, by dint of iteration and reiteration, stood a good chance to
become history, and to be handed down to posterity. At the same
time the war was one of flagrant and cruel aggression on the part
of these Indians. Their removal to the west of the Mississippi was
part of the plan for the general removal of all the Indians, and
every preparation was complete for their departure by their own
agreement, when it was interrupted by a horrible act. It was the
28th day of December, 1835, that the United States agent in Florida,
and several others, were suddenly massacred by a party under
Osceola, who had just been at the hospitable table with them: at the
same time the sutler and others were attacked as they sat at table:
same day two expresses were killed: and to crown these bloody deeds,
the same day witnessed the destruction of Major Dade's command of
112 men, on its march from Tampa Bay to Withlacootchee. All these
massacres were surprises, the result of concert, and executed as
such upon unsuspecting victims. The agent (Mr. Thompson), and some
friends were shot from the bushes while taking a walk near his
house: the sutler and his guests were shot at the dinner table: the
express riders were waylaid, and shot in the road: Major Dade's
command was attacked on the march, by an unseen foe, overpowered,
and killed nearly to the last man. All these deadly attacks took
place on the same day, and at points wide apart--showing that
the plot was as extensive as it was secret, and cruel as it was
treacherous; for not a soul was spared in either of the four
relentless attacks.
It was two days after the event that an infantry soldier of Major
Dade's command, appeared at Fort King, on Tampa Bay, from which
it had marched six days before, and gave information of what had
happened. The command was on the march, in open pine woods, tall
grass all around, and a swamp on the left flank. The grass concealed
a treacherous ambuscade. The advanced guard had passed, and was
cut off. Both the advance and the main body were attacked at the
same moment, but divided from each other. A circle of fire enclosed
each--fire from an invisible foe. To stand, was to be shot down: to
advance was to charge upon concealed rifles. But it was the only
course--was bravely adopted--and many savages thus sprung from
their coverts, were killed. The officers, courageously exposing
themselves, were rapidly shot--Major Dade early in the action. At
the end of an hour successive charges had roused the savages from
the grass, (which seemed to be alive with their naked and painted
bodies, yelling and leaping,) and driven beyond the range of shot.
But the command was too much weakened for a further operation. The
wounded were too numerous to be carried along: too precious to be
left behind to be massacred. The battle ground was maintained, and
a small band had conquered respite from attack: but to advance or
retreat was equally impossible. The only resource was to build a
small pen of pine logs, cut from the forest, collect the wounded
and the survivors into it, as into a little fort, and repulse the
assailants as long as possible. This was done till near sunset--the
action having began at ten in the morning. By that time every
officer was dead but one, and he desperately wounded, and helpless
on the ground. Only two men remained without wounds, and they red
with the blood of others, spirted upon them, or stained in helping
the helpless. The little pen was filled with the dead and the dying.
The firing ceased. The expiring lieutenant told the survivors he
could do no more for them, and gave them leave to save themselves
as they could. They asked his advice. He gave it to them; and to
that advice we are indebted for the only report of that bloody day's
work. He advised them all to lay down among the dead--to remain
still--and take their chance of being considered dead. This advice
was followed. All became still, prostrate and motionless; and the
savages, slowly and cautiously approaching, were a long time before
they would venture within the ghastly pen, where danger might still
lurk under apparent death. A squad of about forty negroes--fugitives
from the Southern States, more savage than the savage--were the
first to enter. They came in with knives and hatchets, cutting
throats and splitting skulls wherever they saw a sign of life. To
make sure of skipping no one alive, all were pulled and handled,
punched and kicked; and a groan or movement, an opening of the eye,
or even the involuntary contraction of a muscle, was an invitation
to the knife and the tomahawk. Only four of the living were able
to subdue sensations, bodily and mental, and remain without sign
of feeling under this dreadful ordeal; and two of these received
stabs, or blows--as many of the dead did. Lying still until the
search was over, and darkness had come on, and the butchers were
gone, these four crept from among their dead comrades and undertook
to make their way back to Tampa Bay--separating into two parties for
greater safety. The one that came in first had a narrow escape.
Pursuing a path the next day, an Indian on horseback, and with a
rifle across the saddle bow, met them full in the way. To separate,
and take the chance of a divided pursuit, was the only hope for
either: and they struck off into opposite directions. The one to
the right was pursued; and very soon the sharp crack of a rifle
made known his fate to the one that had gone to the left. To him
it was a warning, that his comrade being despatched, his own turn
came next. It was open pine woods, and a running, or standing man,
visible at a distance. The Indian on horseback was already in view.
Escape by flight was impossible. Concealment in the grass, or among
the palmettos, was the only hope: and this was tried. The man laid
close: the Indian rode near him. He made circles around, eyeing the
ground far and near. Rising in his stirrups to get a wider view,
and seeing nothing, he turned the head of his horse and galloped
off--the poor soldier having been almost under the horse's feet.
This man, thus marvellously escaping, was the first to bring in the
sad report of the Dade defeat--followed soon after by two others
with its melancholy confirmation. And these were the only reports
ever received of that completest of defeats. No officer survived to
report a word. All were killed in their places--men and officers,
each in his place, no one breaking ranks or giving back: and when
afterwards the ground was examined, and events verified by signs,
the skeletons in their places, and the bullet holes in trees and
logs, and the little pen with its heaps of bones, showed that the
carnage had taken place exactly as described by the men. And this
was the slaughter of Major Dade and his command--of 108 out of
112: as treacherous, as barbarous, as perseveringly cruel as ever
was known. One single feature is some relief to the sadness of the
picture, and discriminates this defeat from most others suffered
at the hands of Indians. There were no prisoners put to death; for
no man surrendered. There were no fugitives slain in vain attempts
at flight; for no one fled. All stood, and fought, and fell in
their places, returning blow for blow while life lasted. It was the
death of soldiers, showing that steadiness in defeat which is above
courage in victory.
And this was the origin of the Florida Indian war: and a more
treacherous, ferocious, and cold-blooded origin was never given to
any Indian war. Yet such is the perversity of party spirit that its
author--the savage Osceola--has been exalted into a hero-patriot;
our officers, disparaged and ridiculed; the administration loaded
with obloquy. And all this by our public men in Congress, as well
as by writers in the daily and periodical publications. The future
historian who should take these speeches and publications for their
guide, (and they are too numerous and emphatic to be overlooked,)
would write a history discreditable to our arms, and reproachful to
our justice. It would be a narrative of wickedness and imbecility
on our part--of patriotism and heroism on the part of the Indians:
those Indians whose very name (Seminole--wild,) define them as
the fugitives from all tribes, and made still worse than fugitive
Indians by a mixture with fugitive negroes, some of whom became
their chiefs. It was to obviate the danger of such a history as that
would be, that the author of this View delivered at the time, and in
the presence of all concerned, an historical speech on the Florida
Indian war, fortified by facts, and intended to stand for true;
and which has remained unimpeached. Extracts from that speech will
constitute the next chapter, to which this brief sketch will serve
as a preface and introduction.
CHAPTER XIX.
FLORIDA INDIAN WAR: HISTORICAL SPEECH OF MR. BENTON
A senator from New Jersey [Mr. SOUTHARD] has brought forward an
accusation which must affect the character of the late and present
administrations at home, and the character of the country abroad;
and which, justice to these administrations, and to the country,
requires to be met and answered upon the spot. That senator has
expressly charged that a fraud was committed upon the Florida
Indians in the treaty negotiated with them for their removal to
the West; that the war which has ensued was the consequence of
this fraud; and that our government was responsible to the moral
sense of the community, and of the world, for all the blood that
has been shed, and for all the money that has been expended, in
the prosecution of this war. This is a heavy accusation. At home,
it attaches to the party in power, and is calculated to make them
odious; abroad, it attaches to the country, and is calculated to
blacken the national character. It is an accusation, without the
shadow of a foundation! and, both, as one of the party in power,
and as an American citizen, I feel myself impelled by an imperious
sense of duty to my friends, and to my country, to expose its
incorrectness at once, and to vindicate the government, and the
country, from an imputation as unfounded as it is odious.
The senator from New Jersey first located this imputed fraud in the
Payne's Landing treaty, negotiated by General Gadsden, in Florida,
in the year 1832; and, after being tendered an issue on the fairness
and generosity of that treaty by the senator from Alabama [Mr.
CLAY], he transferred the charge to the Fort Gibson treaty, made
in Arkansas, in the year 1833, by Messrs. Stokes, Ellsworth and
Schermerhorn. This was a considerable change of locality, but no
change in the accusation itself; the two treaties being but one,
and the last being a literal performance of a stipulation contained
in the first. These are the facts; and, after stating the case, I
will prove it as stated. This is the statement: The Seminole Indians
in Florida being an emigrant band of the Creeks, and finding game
exhausted, subsistence difficult, and white settlements approaching,
concluded to follow the mother tribe, the Creeks, to the west of the
Mississippi, and to reunite with them. This was conditionally agreed
to be done at the Payne's Landing treaty; and in that treaty it was
stipulated that a deputation of Seminole chiefs, under the sanction
of the government of the United States, should proceed to the Creek
country beyond the Mississippi--there to ascertain first whether a
suitable country could be obtained for them there; and, secondly,
whether the Creeks would receive them back as a part of their
confederacy: and if the deputation should be satisfied on these two
points, then the conditional obligation to remove, contained in the
Payne's Landing treaty, to become binding and obligatory upon the
Seminole tribe. The deputation went: the two points were solved
in the affirmative the obligation to remove became absolute on
the part of the Indians; and the government of the United States
commenced preparations for effecting their easy, gradual, and
comfortable removal.
The entire emigration was to be completed in three years, one-third
going annually, commencing in the year 1833, and to be finished in
the years 1834, and 1835. The deputation sent to the west of the
Mississippi, completed their agreement with the Creeks on the 28th
of March, 1833; they returned home immediately, and one-third of
the tribe was to remove that year. Every thing was got ready on the
part of the United States, both to transport the Indians to their
new homes, and to subsist them for a year after their arrival there.
But, instead of removing, the Indians began to invent excuses, and
to interpose delays, and to pass off the time without commencing
the emigration. The year 1833, in which one-third of the tribe were
to remove, passed off without any removal; the year 1834, in which
another third was to go, was passed off in the same manner; the year
1835, in which the emigration was to have been completed, passed
away, and the emigration was not begun. On the contrary, on the last
days of the last month of that year, while the United States was
still peaceably urging the removal, an accumulation of treacherous
and horrible assassinations and massacres were committed. The United
States agent, General Thompson, Lieutenant Smith, of the artillery,
and five others, were assassinated in sight of Fort King; two
expresses were murdered; and Major Dade's command was massacred.
In their excuses and pretexts for not removing, the Indians never
thought of the reasons which have been supplied to them on this
floor. They never thought of alleging fraud. Their pretexts were
frivolous; as that it was a long distance, and that bad Indians
lived in that country, and that the old treaty of Fort Moultrie
allowed them twenty years to live in Florida. Their real motive was
the desire of blood and pillage on the part of many Indians, and
still more on the part of the five hundred runaway negroes mixed
up among them; and who believed that they could carry on their
system of robbery and murder with impunity, and that the swamps of
the country would for ever protect them against the pursuit of the
whites.
This, Mr. President, is the plain and brief narrative of the causes
which led to the Seminole war; it is the brief historical view of
the case; and if I was speaking under ordinary circumstances, and
in reply to incidental remarks, I should content myself with this
narrative, and let the question go to the country upon the strength
and credit of this statement. But I do not speak under ordinary
circumstances; I am not replying to incidental and casual remarks.
I speak in answer to a formal accusation, preferred on this floor;
I speak to defend the late and present administrations from an
odious charge; and, in defending them, to vindicate the character
of our country from the accusation of the senator from New Jersey
[Mr. SOUTHARD], and to show that fraud has not been committed upon
these Indians, and that the guilt of a war, founded in fraud, is not
justly imputable to them.
The Seminoles had stipulated that the agent, Major Phagan, and their
own interpreter, the negro Abraham, should accompany them; and this
was done. It so happened, also, that an extraordinary commission
of three members sent out by the United States to adjust Indian
difficulties generally, was then beyond the Mississippi; and these
commissioners were directed to join in the negotiations on the part
of the United States, and to give the sanction of our guarantee
to the agreements made between the Seminoles and the Creeks for
the reunion of the former to the parent tribe. This was done. Our
commissioners, Messrs. Stokes, Ellsworth, and Schermerhorn, became
party to a treaty with the Creek Indians for the reunion of the
Seminoles, made at Fort Gibson, the 14th of February, 1833. The
treaty contained this article:
"ARTICLE IV. It is understood and agreed that the Seminole
Indians of Florida, whose removal to this country is provided
for by their treaty with the United States, dated May 9, 1832,
shall also have a permanent and comfortable home on the lands
hereby set apart as the country of the Creek nation; and they,
the Seminoles, will hereafter be considered as a constituent
part of the said nation, but are to be located on some part
of the Creek country by themselves, which location shall be
selected for them by the commissioners who have seen these
articles of agreement."
This agreement with the Creeks settled one of the conditions on
which the removal of the Seminoles was to depend. We will now see
how the other condition was disposed of.
In a treaty made at the same Fort Gibson, on the 28th of March,
1833, between the same three commissioners on the part of the United
States, and the seven delegated Seminole chiefs, after reciting the
two conditions precedent contained in the Payne's Landing treaty,
and reciting, also, the convention with the Creeks on the 14th of
February preceding, it is thus stipulated:
"Now, therefore, the commissioners aforesaid, by virtue of the
power and authority vested in them by the treaty made with the
Creek Indians on the 14th of February, 1833, as above stated,
hereby designate and assign to the Seminole tribe of Indians,
for their separate future residence for ever, a tract of country
lying between the Canadian River and the south fork thereof, and
extending west to where a line running north and south between
the main Canadian and north branch will strike the forks of
Little River; provided said west line does not extend more than
twenty-five miles west from the mouth of said Little River. And
the undersigned Seminole chiefs, delegated as aforesaid, on
behalf of the nation, hereby declare themselves well satisfied
with the location provided for them by the commissioners, and
agree that their nation shall commence the removal to their new
home as soon as the government will make the arrangements for
their emigration satisfactory to the Seminole nation."
This treaty is signed by the delegation, and by the commissioners
of the United States, and witnessed, among others, by the same
Major Phagan, agent, and Abraham, interpreter, whose presence was
stipulated for at Payne's Landing.
Thus the two conditions on which the removal depended, were complied
with; they were both established in the affirmative. The Creeks,
under the solemn sanction and guarantee of the United States, agree
to receive back the Seminoles as a part of their confederacy, and
agree that they shall live adjoining them on lands designated for
their residence. The delegation declare themselves well satisfied
with the country assigned them, and agree that the removal should
commence as soon as the United States could make the necessary
arrangements for the removal of the people.
This brings down the proof to the conclusion of all questions beyond
the Mississippi; it brings it down to the conclusion of the treaty
at Fort Gibson--that treaty in which the senator from New Jersey
[Mr. SOUTHARD] has located the charge of fraud, after withdrawing
the same charge from the Payne's Landing treaty. It brings us to the
end of the negotiations at the point selected for the charge; and
now how stands the accusation? How stands the charge of fraud? Is
there a shadow, an atom, a speck, of foundation on which to rest it?
No, sir: Nothing--nothing--nothing! Every thing was done that was
stipulated for; done by the persons who were to do it; and done in
the exact manner agreed upon. In fact, the nature of the things to
be done west of the Mississippi was such as not to admit of fraud.
Two things were to be done, one to be seen with the eyes, and the
other to be heard with the ears. The deputation was to see their new
country, and say whether they liked it. This was a question to their
own senses--to their own eyes--and was not susceptible of fraud.
They were to _hear_ whether the Creeks would receive them back as a
part of their confederacy; this was a question to their own _ears_,
and was also unsusceptible of fraud. Their own eyes could not
deceive them in looking at land; their own ears could not deceive
them in listening to their own language from the Creeks. No, sir:
there was no physical capacity, or moral means, for the perpetration
of fraud; and none has ever been pretended by the Indians from that
day to this. The Indians themselves have never thought of such a
thing. There is no assumption of a deceived party among them. It
is not a deceived party that is at war--a party deceived by the
delegation which went to the West--but that very delegation itself,
with the exception of Charley Emarthla, are the hostile leaders at
home! This is reducing the accusation to an absurdity. It is making
the delegation the dupes of their own eyes and of their own ears,
and then going to war with the United States, because their own eyes
deceived them in looking at land on the Canadian River, and their
own ears deceived them in listening to their own language from the
Creeks; and then charging these frauds upon the United States. All
this is absurd; and it is due to these absent savages to say that
they never committed any such absurdity--that they never placed
their objection to remove upon any plea of deception practised upon
them beyond the Mississippi, but on frivolous pretexts invented long
after the return of the delegation; which pretexts covered the real
grounds growing out of the influence of runaway slaves, and some
evilly disposed chiefs, and that thirst for blood and plunder, in
which they expected a long course of enjoyment and impunity in their
swamps, believed to be impenetrable to the whites.
Thus, sir, it is clearly and fully proved that there was no fraud
practised upon these Indians; that they themselves never pretended
such a thing; and that the accusation is wholly a charge of recent
origin sprung up among ourselves. Having shown that there was no
fraud, this might be sufficient for the occasion, but having been
forced into the inquiry, it may be as well to complete it by showing
what were the causes of this war. To understand these causes, it
is necessary to recur to dates, to see the extreme moderation with
which the United States acted, the long time which they tolerated
the delays of the Indians, and the treachery and murder with which
their indulgence and forbearance was requited. The emigration was to
commence in 1833, and be completed in the years 1834 and 1835. The
last days of the last month of this last year had arrived, and the
emigration had not yet commenced. Wholly intent on their peaceable
removal, the administration had despatched a disbursing agent,
Lieutenant Harris of the army, to take charge of the expenditures
for the subsistence of these people. He arrived at Fort King on the
afternoon of the 28th of December, 1835; and as he entered the fort,
he became almost an eye-witness of a horrid scene which was the
subject of his first despatch to his government. He describes it in
these words:
"I regret that it becomes my first duty after my arrival here
to be the narrator of a story, which it will be, I am sure, as
painful for you to hear, as it is for me, who was almost an eye
witness to the bloody deed, to relate to you. Our excellent
superintendent, General Wiley Thompson, has been most cruelly
murdered by a party of the hostile Indians, and with him
Lieutenant Constant Smith, of the 2d regiment of artillery,
Erastus Rogers, the suttler to the post, with his two clerks,
a Mr. Kitzler, and a boy called Robert. This occurred on the
afternoon of the 28th instant (December), between three and
four o'clock. On the day of the massacre, Lieutenant Smith had
dined with the General, and after dinner invited him to take a
short stroll with him. They had not proceeded more than three
hundred yards beyond the agency office, when they were fired
upon by a party of Indians, who rose from ambush in the hammock,
within sight of the fort, and on which the suttler's house
borders. The reports of the rifles fired, the war-whoop twice
repeated, and after a brief space, several other volleys more
remote, and in the quarter of Mr. Rogers's house, were heard,
and the smoke of the firing seen from the fort. Mr. Rogers and
his clerks were surprised at dinner. Three escaped: the rest
murdered. The bodies of General Thompson, Lieutenant Smith, and
Mr. Kitzler, were soon found and brought in. Those of the others
were not found until this morning. That of General Thompson
was perforated with fourteen bullets. Mr. Rogers had received
seventeen. All were scalped, except the boy. The cowardly
murderers are supposed to be a party of Micasookees, 40 or
50 strong, under the traitor Powell (Osceola), whose shrill,
peculiar war-whoop, was recognized by our interpreters, and the
one or two friendly Indians we have in the fort, and who knew it
well. Two expresses (soldiers) were despatched upon fresh horses
on the evening of this horrid tragedy, with tidings of it to
General Clinch; but not hearing from him or them, we conclude
they were cut off. We are also exceedingly anxious for the fate
of the two companies (under Major Dade) which had been ordered
up from Fort Brooke, and of whom we learn nothing."
Sir, this is the first letter of the disbursing agent, specially
detached to furnish the supplies to the emigrating Indians. He
arrives in the midst of treachery and murder; and his first letter
is to announce to the government the assassination of their agent,
an officer of artillery, and five citizens; the assassination of two
expresses, for they were both waylaid and murdered; and the massacre
of one hundred and twelve men and officers under Major Dade. All
this took place at once; and this was the beginning of the war.
Up to that moment the government of the United States were wholly
employed in preparing the Indians for removal, recommending them to
go, and using no force or violence upon them. This is the way the
war was brought on; this is the way it began; and was there ever a
case in which a government was so loudly called upon to avenge the
dead, to protect the living, and to cause itself to be respected
by punishing the contemners of its power? The murder of the agent
was a double offence, a peculiar outrage to the government whose
representative he was, and a violation even of the national law of
savages. Agents are seldom murdered even by savages; and bound
as every government is to protect all its citizens, it is doubly
bound to protect its agents and representatives abroad. Here, then,
is a government agent, and a military officer, five citizens, two
expresses, and a detachment of one hundred and twelve men, in all
one hundred and twenty-one persons, treacherously and inhumanly
massacred in one day! and because General Jackson's administration
did not submit to this horrid outrage, he is charged with the guilt
of a war founded in fraud upon innocent and unoffending Indians!
Such is the spirit of opposition to our own government! such the
love of Indians and contempt of whites! and such the mawkish
sentimentality of the day in which we live--a sentimentality which
goes moping and sorrowing about in behalf of imaginary wrongs to
Indians and negroes, while the whites themselves are the subject of
murder, robbery and defamation.
The prime mover in all this mischief, and the leading agent in the
most atrocious scene of it, was a half-blooded Indian of little
note before this time, and of no consequence in the councils of
his tribe; for his name is not to be seen in the treaty either of
Payne's Landing or Fort Gibson. We call him Powell; by his tribe
he was called Osceola. He led the attack in the massacre of the
agent, and of those who were killed with him, in the afternoon of
the 28th of December. The disbursing agent, whose letter has been
read, in his account of that massacre, applies the epithet _traitor_
to the name of this Powell. Well might he apply that epithet to
that assassin; for he had just been fed and caressed by the very
person whom he waylaid and murdered. He had come into the agency
shortly before that time with seventy of his followers, professed
his satisfaction with the treaty, his readiness to remove, and
received subsistence and supplies for himself and all his party. The
most friendly relations seemed to be established; and the doomed
and deceived agent, in giving his account of it to the government,
says: "The result was that we closed with the utmost good feeling;
and I have never seen Powell and the other chiefs so cheerful and in
so fine a humor, at the close of a discussion upon the subject of
removal."
This is Powell (Osceola), for whom all our sympathies are so
pathetically invoked! a treacherous assassin, not only of our
people, but of his own--for he it was who waylaid, and shot in the
back, in the most cowardly manner, the brave chief Charley Emarthla,
whom he dared not face, and whom he thus assassinated because he
refused to join him and his runaway negroes in murdering the white
people. The collector of Indian curiosities and portraits, Mr.
Catlin, may be permitted to manufacture a hero out of this assassin,
and to make a poetical scene of his imprisonment on Sullivan's
island; but it will not do for an American senator to take the same
liberties with historical truth and our national character. Powell
ought to have been hung for the assassination of General Thompson;
and the only fault of our officers is, that they did not hang him
the moment they caught him. The fate of Arbuthnot and Ambrister was
due to him a thousand times over.
I have now answered the accusation of the senator from New Jersey
[Mr. SOUTHARD]. I have shown the origin of this war. I have shown
that it originated in no fraud, no injustice, no violence, on the
part of this government, but in the thirst for blood and rapine on
the part of these Indians, and in their confident belief that their
swamps would be their protection against the pursuit of the whites;
and that, emerging from these fastnesses to commit robbery and
murder, and retiring to them to enjoy the fruits of their marauding
expeditions, they had before them a long perspective of impunity in
the enjoyment of their favorite occupation. This I have shown to be
the cause of the war; and having vindicated the administration and
the country from the injustice of the imputation cast upon them, I
proceed to answer some things said by a senator from South Carolina
[Mr. PRESTON], which tended to disparage the troops generally which
have been employed in Florida; to disparage a particular general
officer, and also to accuse that general officer of a particular and
specified offence. That senator has decried our troops in Florida
for the general inefficiency of their operations; he has decried
General Jesup for the general imbecility of his operations, and
he has charged this General with the violation of a flag, and the
commission of a perfidious act, in detaining and imprisoning the
Indian Powell, who came into his camp.
I think there is great error and great injustice in all these
imputations, and that it is right for some senator on this floor
to answer them. My position, as chairman of the Committee on
Military Affairs, would seem to assign that duty to me, and it
may be the reason why others who have spoken have omitted all
reply on these points. Be that as it may, I feel impelled to say
something in behalf of those who are absent, and cannot speak for
themselves--those who must always feel the wound of unmerited
censure, and must feel it more keenly when the blow that inflicts
the wound falls from the elevated floor of the American Senate. So
far as the army, generally, is concerned in this censure, I might
leave them where they have been placed by the senator from South
Carolina [Mr. PRESTON], and others on that side of the House, if
I could limit myself to acting a political part here. The army,
as a body, is no friend of the political party to which I belong.
Individuals among them are friendly to the administration; but, as a
body, they go for the opposition, and would terminate our political
existence, if they could, and put our opponents in our place, at
the first general election that intervenes. Asa politician, then,
I might abandon them to the care of their political friends; but,
as an American, as a senator, and as having had some connection
with the military profession, I feel myself called upon to dissent
from the opinion which has been expressed, and to give my reasons
for believing that the army has not suffered, and ought not to
suffer, in character, by the events in Florida. True, our officers
and soldiers have not performed the same feats there which they
performed in Canada, and elsewhere. But why? Certainly because they
have not got the same, or an equivalent, theatre to act upon, nor an
enemy to cope with over whom brilliant victories can be obtained.
The peninsula of Florida, where this war rages, is sprinkled all
over with swamps, hammocks, and lagoons, believed for three hundred
years to be impervious to the white man's tread. The theatre of
war is of great extent, stretching over six parallels of latitude;
all of it in the sultry region below thirty-one degrees of north
latitude. The extremity of this peninsula approaches the tropic of
Capricorn; and at this moment, while we speak here, the soldier
under arms at mid-day there will cast no shadow: a vertical sun
darts its fiery rays direct upon the crown of his head. Suffocating
heat oppresses the frame; annoying insects sting the body; burning
sands, a spongy morass, and the sharp cutting saw grass, receive the
feet and legs; disease follows the summer's exertion; and a dense
foliage covers the foe. Eight months in the year military exertions
are impossible; during four months only can any thing be done. The
Indians well understand this; and, during these four months, either
give or receive an attack, as they please, or endeavor to consume
the season in wily parleys. The possibility of splendid military
exploits does not exist in such a country, and against such a foe:
but there is room there, and ample room there, for the exhibition
of the highest qualities of the soldier. There is room there for
patience, and for fortitude, under every variety of suffering, and
under every form of privation. There is room there for courage
and discipline to exhibit itself against perils and trials which
subject courage and discipline to the severest tests. And has there
been any failure of patience, fortitude, courage, discipline, and
subordination in all this war? Where is the instance in which the
men have revolted against their officers, or in which the officer
has deserted his men? Where is the instance of a flight in battle?
Where the instance of orders disobeyed, ranks broken, or confusion
of corps? On the contrary, we have constantly seen the steadiness,
and the discipline, of the parade maintained under every danger, and
in the presence of massacre itself. Officers and men have fought
it out where they were told to fight; they have been killed in the
tracks in which they were told to stand. None of those pitiable
scenes of which all our Indian wars have shown some--those harrowing
scenes in which the helpless prisoner, or the hapless fugitive,
is massacred without pity, and without resistance: none of these
have been seen. Many have perished; but it was the death of the
combatant in arms, and not of the captive or the fugitive. In no one
of our savage wars have our troops so stood together, and conquered
together, and died together, as they have done in this one; and
this standing together is the test of the soldier's character.
Steadiness, subordination, courage, discipline,--these are the
test of the soldier; and in no instance have our troops, or any
troops, ever evinced the possession of these qualities in a higher
degree than during the campaigns in Florida. While, then, brilliant
victories may not have been seen, and, in fact, were impossible,
yet the highest qualities of good soldiership have been eminently
displayed throughout this war. Courage and discipline have shown
themselves, throughout all its stages, in their noblest forms.
From the general imputation of inefficiency in our operations in
Florida, the senator from South Carolina [Mr. PRESTON] comes to
a particular commander, and charges inefficiency specifically
upon him. This commander is General Jesup. The senator from South
Carolina has been lavish, and even profuse, in his denunciation
of that general, and has gone so far as to talk about military
courts of inquiry. Leaving the general open to all such inquiry,
and thoroughly convinced that the senator from South Carolina has
no idea of moving such inquiry, and intends to rest the effect of
his denunciation upon its delivery here, I shall proceed to answer
him here--giving speech for speech on this floor, and leaving the
general himself to reply when it comes to that threatened inquiry,
which I undertake to affirm will never be moved.
General Jesup is charged with imbecility and inefficiency; the
continuance of the war is imputed to his incapacity; and he is
held up here, on the floor of the Senate, to public reprehension
for these imputed delinquencies. This is the accusation; and now
let us see with how much truth and justice it is made. Happily for
General Jesup, this happens to be a case in which we have data to
go upon, and in which there are authentic materials for comparing
the operations of himself with those of other generals--his
predecessors in the same field--with whose success the senator from
South Carolina is entirely satisfied. Dates and figures furnish
this data and these materials; and, after refreshing the memory of
the Senate with a few dates, I will proceed to the answers which
the facts of the case supply. The first date is, as to the time
of the commencement of this war; the second, as to the time that
General Jesup assumed the command; the third, as to the time when
he was relieved from the command. On the first point, it will be
recollected that the war broke out upon the assassination of General
Thompson, the agent, Lieutenant Smith, who was with him; the sutler
and his clerks; the murder of the two expresses; and the massacre
of Major Dade's command;--events which came together in point of
time, and compelled an immediate resort to war by the United States.
These assassinations, these murders, and this massacre, took place
on the 28th day of December, 1835. The commencement of the war,
then, dates from that day. The next point is, the time of General
Jesup's appointment to the command. This occurred in December, 1836.
The third point is, the date of General Jesup's relief from the
command, and this took place in May, of the present year, 1838. The
war has then continued--counting to the present time--two years and
a half; and of that period, General Jesup has had command something
less than one year and a half. Other generals had command for a year
before he was appointed in that quarter. Now, how much had those
other generals done? All put together, how much had they done? And
I ask this question not to disparage their meritorious exertions,
but to obtain data for the vindication of the officer now assailed.
The senator from South Carolina [Mr. PRESTON] is satisfied with
the operations of the previous commanders; now let him see how
the operations of the officer whom he assails will compare with
the operations of those who are honored with his approbation. The
comparison is brief and mathematical. It is a problem in the exact
sciences. General Jesup reduced the hostiles in the one year and a
half of his command, 2,200 souls: all his predecessors together had
reduced them 150 in one year. Where does censure rest now?
Sir, I disparage nobody. I make no exhibit of comparative results
to undervalue the operations of the previous commanders in Florida.
I know the difficulty of military operations there, and the ease
of criticism here. I never assailed those previous commanders; on
the contrary, often pointed out the nature of the theatre on which
they operated as a cause for the miscarriage of expeditions, and
for the want of brilliant and decisive results. Now for the first
time I refer to the point, and, not to disparage others, but to
vindicate the officer assailed. His vindication is found in the
comparison of results between himself and his predecessors, and in
the approbation of the senator from South Carolina of the results
under the predecessors of General Jesup. Satisfied with _them_, he
must be satisfied with _him_; for the difference is as fifteen to
one in favor of the decried general.
Besides the general denunciation for inefficiency, which the
senator from South Carolina has lavished upon General Jesup, and
which denunciation has so completely received its answer in this
comparative statement; besides this general denunciation, the
senator from South Carolina brought forward a specific accusation
against the honor of the same officer--an accusation of perfidy, and
of a violation of flag of truce, in the seizure and detention of the
Indian Osceola, who had come into his camp. On the part of General
Jesup, I repel this accusation, and declare his whole conduct in
relation to this Indian, to have been _justifiable_, under the laws
of civilized or savage warfare; that it was _expedient_ in point of
policy; and that if any blame could attach to the general, it would
be for the contrary of that with which he is blamed; it would be for
an excess of forbearance and indulgence.
The justification of the general for the seizure and detention of
this half-breed Indian, is the first point; and that rests upon
several and distinct grounds, either of which fully justifies the
act.
1. _This Osceola had broken his parole; and, therefore, was liable
to be seized and detained._
The facts were these: In the month of May, 1837, this chief,
with his followers, went into Fort Mellon, under the cover of a
white flag, and there surrendered to Lieutenant Colonel Harney.
He declared himself done with the war, and ready to emigrate
to the west of the Mississippi, and solicited subsistence and
transportation for himself and his people for that purpose.
Lieutenant Colonel Harney received him, supplied him with
provisions, and, relying upon his word and apparent sincerity,
instead of sending him under guard, took his parole to go to Tampa
Bay, the place at which he preferred to embark, to take shipping
there for the West. Supplied with every thing, Osceola and his
people left Fort Mellon, under the pledge to go to Tampa Bay.
He never went there! but returned to the hostiles; and it was
afterwards ascertained that he never had any idea of going West,
but merely wished to live well for a while at the expense of the
whites, examine their strength and position, and return to his work
of blood and pillage. After this, he had the audacity to approach
General Jesup's camp in October of the same year, with another
piece of white cloth over his head, thinking, after his successful
treacheries to the agent, General Thompson, and Lieut. Colonel
Harney, that there was no end to his tricks upon white people.
General Jesup ordered him to be seized and carried a prisoner to
Sullivan's Island, where he was treated with the greatest humanity,
and allowed every possible indulgence and gratification. This is one
of the reasons in justification of General Jesup's conduct to that
Indian, and it is sufficient of itself; but there are others, and
they shall be stated.
2. _Osceola had violated an order in coming in, with a view to
return to the hostiles; and, therefore, was liable to be detained._
The facts were these: Many Indians, at different times, had come
in under the pretext of a determination to emigrate; and after
receiving supplies, and viewing the strength and position of the
troops, returned again to the hostiles, and carried on the war
with renewed vigor. This had been done repeatedly. It was making a
mockery of the white flag, and subjecting our officers to ridicule
as well as to danger. General Jesup resolved to put an end to
these treacherous and dangerous visits, by which spies and enemies
obtained access to the bosom of his camp. He made known to the
chief, Coi Hadjo, his determination to that effect. In August, 1837,
he declared peremptorily to this chief, for the information of all
the Indians, that none were to come in, except to remain, and to
emigrate; that no one coming into his camp again should be allowed
to go out of it, but should be considered as having surrendered with
a view to emigrate under the treaty, and should be detained for that
purpose. In October, Osceola came in, in violation of that order,
and was detained in compliance with it. This is a second reason for
the justification of General Jesup, and is of itself sufficient to
justify him; but there is more justification yet, and I will state
it.
3. _Osceola, had broken a truce, and, therefore, was liable to be
detained whenever he could be taken._
The facts were these: The hostile chiefs entered into an agreement
for a truce at Fort King, in August, 1837, and agreed: 1. Not to
commit any act of hostility upon the whites; 2. Not to go east of
the St. John's river, or north of Fort Mellon. This truce was broken
by the Indians in both points. A citizen was killed by them, and
they passed both to the east of the St. John's and far north of Fort
Mellon. As violators of this truce, General Jesup had a right to
detain any of the hostiles which came into his hands, and Osceola
was one of these.
Here, sir, are three grounds of justification, either of them
sufficient to justify the conduct of General Jesup towards Powell,
as the gentlemen call him. The first of the three reasons applies
personally and exclusively to that half-breed; the other two apply
to all the hostile Indians, and justify the seizure and detention of
others, who have been sent to the West.
So much for justification; now for the expediency of having detained
this Indian Powell. I hold it was expedient to exercise the right
of detaining him, and prove this expediency by reasons both _a
priori_ and _a posteriori_. His previous treachery and crimes, and
his well known disposition for further treachery and crimes, made
it right for the officers of the United States to avail themselves
of the first justifiable occasion to put an end to his depredations
by confining his person until the war was over. This is a reason
_a priori_. The reason _a posteriori_ is, that it has turned out
right; it has operated well upon the mass of the Indians, between
eighteen and nineteen hundred of which, negroes inclusive, have
since surrendered to Gen. Jesup. This, sir, is a fact which contains
an argument which overturns all that can be said on this floor
against the detention of Osceola. The Indians themselves do not view
that act as perfidious or dishonorable, or the violation of a flag,
or even the act of an enemy. They do not condemn General Jesup on
account of it, but no doubt respect him the more for refusing to
be made the dupe of a treacherous artifice. A bit of white linen,
stripped, perhaps from the body of a murdered child, or its murdered
mother, was no longer to cover the insidious visits of spies and
enemies. A firm and manly course was taken, and the effect was good
upon the minds of the Indians. The number since surrendered is proof
of its effect upon their minds; and this proof should put to blush
the lamentations which are here set up for Powell, and the censure
thrown upon General Jesup.
No, sir, no. General Jesup has been guilty of no perfidy, no
fraud, no violation of flags. He has done nothing to stain his own
character, or to dishonor the flag of the United States. If he
has erred, it has been on the side of humanity, generosity, and
forbearance to the Indians. If he has erred, as some suppose, in
losing time to parley with the Indians, that error has been on
the side of humanity, and of confidence in them. But has he erred?
Has his policy been erroneous? Has the country been a loser by his
policy? To all these questions, let results give the answer. Let the
twenty-two hundred Indians, abstracted from the hostile ranks by his
measures, be put in contrast with the two hundred, or less, killed
and taken by his predecessors. Let these results be compared; and
let this comparison answer the question whether, in point of fact,
there has been any error, even a mistake of judgment, in his mode of
conducting the war.
The senator from South Carolina [Mr. PRESTON] complains of the
length of time which General Jesup has consumed without bringing
the war to a close. Here, again, the chapter of comparisons must be
resorted to in order to obtain the answer which justice requires.
How long, I pray you, was General Jesup in command? from December,
1836, to May, 1838; nominally he was near a year and a half in
command; in reality not one year, for the summer months admit of no
military operations in that peninsula. His predecessors commanded
from December, 1835, to December, 1836; a term wanting but a few
months of as long a period as the command of General Jesup lasted.
Sir, there is nothing in the length of time which this general
commanded, to furnish matter for disadvantageous comparisons to him;
but the contrary. He reduced the hostiles about one-half in a year
and a half; they reduced them about the one-twentieth in a year.
The whole number was about 5,000; General Jesup diminished their
number, during his command, 2,200; the other generals had reduced
them about 150. At the rate he proceeded, the work would be finished
in about three years; at the rate they proceeded, in about twenty
years. Yet he is to be censured here for the length of time consumed
without bringing the war to a close. He, and he alone, is selected
for censure. Sir, I dislike these comparisons; it is a disagreeable
task for me to make them; but I am driven to it, and mean no
disparagement to others. The violence with which General Jesup is
assailed here--the comparisons to which he has been subjected in
order to degrade him--leave me no alternative but to abandon a
meritorious officer to unmerited censure, or to defend him in the
same manner in which he has been assailed.
The essential policy of General Jesup has been to induce the
Indians to come in--to surrender--and to emigrate under the treaty.
This has been his main, but not his exclusive, policy; military
operations have been combined with it; many skirmishes and actions
have been fought since he had command; and it is remarkable that
this general, who has been so much assailed on this floor, is the
only commander-in-chief in Florida who has been wounded in battle
at the head of his command. His person marked with the scars of
wounds received in Canada during the late war with Great Britain,
has also been struck by a bullet, in the face, in the peninsula of
Florida; yet these wounds--the services in the late war with Great
Britain--the removal of upwards of 16,000 Creek Indians from Alabama
and Georgia to the West, during the summer of 1836--and more than
twenty-five years of honorable employment in the public service--all
these combined, and an unsullied private character into the bargain,
have not been able to protect the feelings of this officer from
laceration on this floor. Have not been sufficient to protect his
feelings! for, as to his character, that is untouched. The base
accusation--the vague denunciation--the offensive epithets employed
here, may lacerate feelings, but they do not reach character; and
as to the military inquiry, which the senator from South Carolina
speaks of, I undertake to say that no such inquiry will ever take
place. Congress, or either branch of Congress, can order an inquiry
if it pleases; but before it orders an inquiry, _a probable cause
has to be shown for it_; and that probable cause never has been, and
never will be, shown in General Jesup's case.
The senator from South Carolina speaks of the large force which
was committed to General Jesup, and the little that was effected
with that force. Is the senator aware of the extent of the country
over which his operations extended? that it extended from 31 to 25
degrees of north latitude? that it began in the Okefenokee swamp in
Georgia, and stretched to the Everglades in Florida? that it was
near five hundred miles in length in a straight line, and the whole
sprinkled over with swamps, one of which alone was equal in length
to the distance between Washington City and Philadelphia? But it
was not extent of country alone, with its fastnesses, its climate,
and its wily foe, that had to be contended with; a new element
of opposition was encountered by General Jesup, in the poisonous
information which was conveyed to the Indians' minds, which
encouraged them to hold out, and of which he had not even knowledge
for a long time. This was the quantity of false information which
was conveyed to the Indians, to stimulate and encourage their
resistance. General Jesup took command just after the presidential
election of 1836. The Indians were informed of this change of
presidents, and were taught to believe that the white people had
_broke_ General Jackson--that was the phrase--had _broke_ General
Jackson for making war upon them. They were also informed that
General Jesup was carrying on the war without the leave of Congress;
that Congress would give no more money to raise soldiers to fight
them; and that he dared not come home to Congress. Yes, he dared not
come home to Congress! These poor Indians seem to have been informed
of intended movements against the general in Congress, and to have
relied upon them both to stop supplies and to punish the general.
Moreover, they were told, that, if they surrendered to emigrate,
they would receive the worst treatment on the way; that, if a child
cried, it would be thrown overboard; if a chief gave offence, he
would be put in irons. Who the immediate informants of all these
fine stories were, cannot be exactly ascertained. They doubtless
originated with that mass of fanatics, devoured by a morbid
sensibility for negroes and Indians, which are now _Don Quixoting_
over the land, and filling the public ear with so many sympathetic
tales of their own fabrication.
General Jesup has been censured for writing a letter disparaging
to his predecessor in command. If he did so, and I do not deny it,
though I have not seen the letter, nobly has he made the amends.
Publicly and officially has he made amends for a private and
unofficial wrong. In an official report to the war department,
published by that department, he said:
"As an act of justice to all my predecessors in command, I
consider it my duty to say that the difficulties attending
military operations in this country, can be properly appreciated
only by those acquainted with them. I have advantages which
neither of them possessed, in better preparations and more
abundant supplies; and I found it impossible to operate with
any prospect of success, until I had established a line of
depots across the country. If I have at any time said aught in
disparagement of the operations of others in Florida, either
verbally or in writing, officially or unofficially, knowing the
country as I now know it, I consider myself bound as a man of
honor solemnly to retract it."
Such are the amends which General Jesup makes--frank and
voluntary--full and kindly--worthy of a soldier towards brother
soldiers; and far more honorable to his predecessors in command than
the disparaging comparisons which have been instituted here to do
them honor at his expense.
The expenses of this war is another head of attack pressed into this
debate, and directed more against the administration than against
the commanding general. It is said to have cost twenty millions of
dollars; but that is an error--an error of near one-half. An actual
return of all expenses up to February last, amounts to nine and a
half millions; the rest of the twenty millions go to the suppression
of hostilities in other places, and with other Indians, principally
in Georgia and Alabama, and with the Cherokees and Creeks. Sir, this
charge of expense seems to be a standing head with the opposition at
present. Every speech gives us a dish of it; and the expenditures
under General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren are constantly put in
contrast with those of previous administrations. Granted that these
expenditures are larger--that they are greatly increased; yet
what are they increased for? Are they increased for the personal
expenses of the officers of the government, or for great national
objects? The increase is for great objects; such as the extinction
of Indian titles in the States east of the Mississippi--the removal
of whole nations of Indians to the west of the Mississippi--their
subsistence for a year after they arrive there--actual wars with
some tribes--the fear of it with others, and the consequent
continual calls for militia and volunteers to preserve peace--large
expenditures for the permanent defences of the country, both by
land and water, with a pension list for ever increasing; and other
heads of expenditure which are for future national benefit; and not
for present individual enjoyment. Stripped of all these heads of
expenditure, and the expenses of the present administration have
nothing to fear from a comparison with other periods. Stated in the
gross, as is usually done, and many ignorant people are deceived
and imposed upon, and believe that there has been a great waste of
public money; pursued into the detail, and these expenditures will
be found to have been made for great national objects--objects which
no man would have undone, to get back the money, even if it was
possible to get back the money by undoing the objects. No one, for
example, would be willing to bring back the Creeks, the Cherokees,
the Choctaws, and Chickasaws into Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia,
Tennessee and North Carolina, even if the tens of millions which it
has cost to remove them could be got back by that means; and so of
the other expenditures: yet these eternal croakers about expense are
blaming the government for these expenditures.
Sir, I have gone over the answers, which I proposed to make to the
accusations of the senators from New Jersey and South Carolina. I
have shown them to be totally mistaken in all their assumptions
and imputations. I have shown that there was no fraud upon the
Indians in the treaty at Fort Gibson--that the identical chiefs
who made that treaty have since been the hostile chiefs--that the
assassination and massacre of an agent, two government expresses,
an artillery officer, five citizens, and one hundred and twelve men
of Major Dade's command, caused the war--that our troops are not
subject to censure for inefficiency--that General Jesup has been
wrongfully denounced upon this floor--and that even the expense of
the Florida war, resting as it does in figures and in documents, has
been vastly overstated to produce effect upon the public mind. All
these things I have shown; and I conclude with saying that cost,
and time, and loss of men, are all out of the question; that, for
outrages so wanton and so horrible as those which occasioned this
war, the national honor requires the most ample amends; and the
national safety requires a future guarantee in prosecuting this war
to a successful close, and completely clearing the peninsula of
Florida of all the Indians that are upon it.
CHAPTER XX.
RESUMPTION OF SPECIE PAYMENTS BY THE NEW YORK BANKS.
The suspension commenced on the 10th of May in New York, and was
followed throughout the country. In August the New York banks
proposed to all others to meet in convention, and agree upon a time
to commence a general resumption. That movement was frustrated by
the opposition of the Philadelphia banks, for the reason, as given,
that it was better to await the action of the extra session of
Congress, then convoked, and to meet in September. The extra session
adjourned early in October, and the New York banks, faithful to the
promised resumption of specie payments, immediately issued another
invitation for the general convention of the banks in that city on
the 27th of November ensuing, to carry into effect the object of
the meeting which had been invited in the month of August. The 27th
of November arrived; a large proportion of the delinquent banks had
accepted the invitation to send delegates to the convention: but
its meeting was again frustrated--and from the same quarter--the
Bank of the United States, and the institutions under its influence.
They then resolved to send a committee to Philadelphia to ascertain
from the banks when they would be ready, and to invite them to
name a day when they would be able to resume; and if no day was
definitely fixed, to inform them that the New York banks would
commence specie payments without waiting for their co-operation. The
Philadelphia banks would not co-operate. They would not agree to
any definite time to take even initiatory steps towards resumption.
This was a disappointment to the public mind--that large part of
it which still had faith in the Bank of the United States; and the
contradiction which it presented to all the previous professions
of that institution, required explanations, and, if possible,
reconciliation with past declarations. The occasion called for the
pen of Mr. Biddle, always ready, always confident, always presenting
an easy remedy, and a sure one, for all the diseases to which banks,
currency, and finance were heir. It called for another letter to
Mr. John Quincy Adams, that is to say, to the public, through the
distinction of that gentleman's name. It came--the most elaborate
and ingenious of its species; its burden, to prove the entire
ability of the bank over which he presided to pay in full, and
without reserve, but its intention not to do so on account of its
duty to others not able to follow its example, and which might be
entirely ruined by a premature effort to do so. And he concluded
with condensing his opinion into a sentence of characteristic and
sententious brevity: "_On the whole, the course which in my judgment
the banks ought to pursue, is simply this: The banks should remain
exactly as they are--prepared to resume, but not yet resuming._" But
he did not stop there, but in another publication went the length of
a direct threat of destruction against the New York banks if they
should, in conformity to their promise, venture to resume, saying:
"Let the banks of the Empire State come up from their Elba, and
enjoy their hundred days of resumption! a Waterloo awaits them, and
a Saint Helena is prepared for them."_
The banks of New York were now thrown upon the necessity of acting
without the concurrence of those of Pennsylvania, and in fact under
apprehension of opposition and counteraction from that quarter. They
were publicly pledged to act without her, and besides were under a
legal obligation to do so. The legislature of the State, at the time
of the suspension, only legalized it for one year. The indulgence
would be out on the 15th of May, and forfeiture of charter was the
penalty to be incurred throughout the State for continuing it beyond
that time. The city banks had the control of the movement, and they
invited a convention of delegates from all the banks in the Union to
meet in New York on the 15th of April. One hundred and forty-three
delegates, from the principal banks in a majority of the States,
attended. Only delegates from fifteen States voted--Pennsylvania,
Maryland and South Carolina among the absent; which, as including
the three principal commercial cities on the Atlantic board south of
New York, was a heavy defalcation from the weight of the convention.
Of the fifteen States, thirteen voted for resuming on the 1st day
of January, 1839--a delay of near nine months; two voted against
that day--New York and Mississippi; and (as it often happens in
concurring votes) for reasons directly opposite to each other. The
New York banks so voted because the day was too distant--those of
Mississippi because it was too near. The New York delegates wished
the 15th of May, to avoid the penalty of the State law: those of
Mississippi wished the 1st of January, 1840, to allow them to get in
two more cotton crops before the great pay-day came. The result of
the voting showed the still great power of the Bank of the United
States. The delegates of the banks of ten States, including those
with which she had most business, either refused to attend the
convention, or to vote after having attended. The rest chiefly voted
the late day, "_to favor the views of Philadelphia and Baltimore
rather than those of New York_." So said the delegates, "_frankly
avowing that their interests and sympathies were with the former two
rather than with the latter_." The banks of the State of New York
were then left to act alone--and did so. Simultaneously with the
issue of the convention recommendation to resume on the first day
of January, 1839, they issued another, recommending all the banks
of the State of New York to resume on the 10th day of May, 1838;
that is to say, within twenty-five days of that time. Those of the
city declared their determination to begin on that day, or earlier,
expressing their belief that they had nothing to fear but from the
opposition and "deliberate animosity of others"--meaning the Bank
of the United States. The New York banks all resumed at the day
named. Their example was immediately followed by others, even by the
institutions in those States whose delegates had voted for the long
day; so that within sixty days thereafter the resumption was almost
general, leaving the Bank of the United States uncovered, naked,
and prominent at the head of all the delinquent banks in the Union.
But her power was still great. Her stock stood at one hundred and
twelve dollars to the share, being a premium of twelve dollars on
the hundred. In Congress, which was still in session, not a tittle
was abated of her pretensions and her assurance--her demands for
a recharter--for the repeal of the specie circular--and for the
condemnation of the administration, as the author of the misfortunes
of the country; of which evils there were none except the bank
suspensions, of which she had been the secret prime contriver
and was now the detected promoter. Briefly before the New York
resumption, Mr. Webster the great advocate of the Bank of the United
States, and the truest exponent of her wishes, harangued the Senate
in a set speech in her favor, of which some extracts will show the
design and spirit:
"And now, sir, we see the upshot of the experiment. We see
around us bankrupt corporations and broken promises; but we see
no promises more really and emphatically broken than all those
promises of the administration which gave us assurance of a
better currency. These promises, now broken, notoriously and
openly broken, if they cannot be performed, ought, at least, to
be acknowledged. The government ought not, in common fairness
and common honesty, to deny its own responsibility, seek to
escape from the demands of the people, and to hide itself,
out of the way and beyond the reach of the process of public
opinion, by retreating into this sub-treasury system. Let it, at
least, come forth; let it bear a port of honesty and candor; let
it confess its promises, if it cannot perform them; and, above
all, now, even now, at this late hour, let it renounce schemes
and projects, the inventions of presumption, and the resorts
of desperation, and let it address itself, in all good faith,
to the great work of restoring the currency by approved and
constitutional means.
"What say these millions of souls to the sub-treasury? In
the first place, what says the city of New York, that great
commercial emporium, worthy the gentleman's [Mr. Wright]
commendation in 1834, and worthy of his commendation and
my commendation, and all commendation, at all times? What
sentiments, what opinions, what feelings, are proclaimed
by the thousands of merchants, traders, manufacturers, and
laborers? What is the united shout of all the voices of all her
classes? What is it but that you will put down this new-fangled
sub-treasury system, alike alien to their interests and their
feelings, at once, and for ever? What is it, but that in mercy
to the mercantile interest, the trading interest, the shipping
interest, the manufacturing interest, the laboring class, and
all classes, you will give up useless and pernicious political
schemes and projects, and return to the plain, straight course
of wise and wholesome legislation? The sentiments of the city
cannot be misunderstood. A thousand pens and ten thousand
tongues, and a spirited press, make them all known. If we have
not already heard enough, we shall hear more. Embarrassed,
vexed, pressed and distressed, as are her citizens at this
moment, yet their resolution is not shaken, their spirit is not
broken; and, depend upon it, they will not see their commerce,
their business, their prosperity and their happiness, all
sacrificed to preposterous schemes and political empiricism,
without another, and a yet more vigorous struggle.
"Sir, I think there is a revolution in public opinion now going
on, whatever may be the opinion of the member from New York, or
others. I think the fall elections prove this, and that other
more recent events confirm it. I think it is a revolt against
the absolute dictation of party, a revolt against coercion on
the public judgment; and, especially, against the adoption of
new mischievous expedients on questions of deep public interest;
a revolt against the rash and unbridled spirit of change; a
revolution, in short, against further revolution. I hope, most
sincerely, that this revolution may go on; not, sir, for the
sake of men, but for the sake of measures, and for the sake of
the country. I wish it to proceed, till the whole country, with
an imperative unity of voice, shall call back Congress to the
true policy of the government.
"I verily believe a majority of the people of the United
States are now of the opinion that a national bank, properly
constituted, limited, and guarded, is both constitutional and
expedient, and ought now to be established. So far as I can
learn, three-fourths of the western people are for it. Their
representatives here can form a better judgment; but such is my
opinion upon the best information which I can obtain. The South
may be more divided, or may be against a national institution;
but, looking again to the centre, the North and the East, and
comprehending the whole in one view, I believe the prevalent
sentiment is such as I have stated.
"At the last session great pains were taken to obtain a vote of
this and the other House against a bank, for the obvious purpose
of placing such an institution out of the list of remedies, and
so reconciling the people to the sub-treasury scheme. Well, sir,
and did those votes produce any effect? None at all. The people
did not, and do not, care a rush for them. I never have seen,
or heard, a single man, who paid the slightest respect to those
votes of ours. The honorable member, to-day, opposed as he is
to a bank, has not even alluded to them. So entirely vain is
it, sir, in this country, to attempt to forestall, commit, or
coerce the public judgment. All those resolutions fell perfectly
dead on the tables of the two Houses. We may resolve what we
please, and resolve it when we please; but if the people do not
like it, at their own good pleasure they will rescind it; and
they are not likely to continue their approbation long to any
system of measures, however plausible, which terminates in deep
disappointment of all their hopes, for their own prosperity."
All the friends of the Bank of the United States came to her
assistance in this last trial. The two halls of Congress resounded
with her eulogium, and with condemnation of the measures of the
administration. It was a last effort to save her, and to force her
upon the federal government. Multitudes of speakers on one side
brought out numbers on the other--among those on the side of the
sub-treasury and hard money, and against the whole paper system, of
which he considered a national bank the citadel, was the writer of
this View, who undertook to collect into a speech, from history and
experience, the facts and reasons which would bear upon the contest,
and act upon the judgment of candid men, and show the country to be
independent of banks, if it would only will it. Some extracts from
that speech make the next chapter.
CHAPTER XXI.
RESUMPTION OF SPECIE PAYMENTS: HISTORICAL NOTICES: MR. BENTON'S
SPEECH: EXTRACTS.
There are two of those periods, each marking the termination of
a national bank charter, and each presenting us with the actual
results of the operations of those institutions upon the general
currency, and each replete with lessons of instruction applicable to
the present day, and to the present state of things. The first of
these periods is the year 1811, when the first national bank had run
its career of twenty years, and was permitted by Congress to expire
upon its own limitation. I take for my guide the estimate of Mr.
Lloyd, then a senator in Congress from the State of Massachusetts,
whose dignity of character and amenity of manners is so pleasingly
remembered by those who served with him here, and whose intelligence
and accuracy entitle his statements to the highest degree of credit.
That eminent senator estimated the total currency of the country,
at the expiration of the charter of the first national bank, at
sixty millions of dollars, to wit: ten millions of specie, and fifty
millions in bank notes. Now compare the two quantities, and mark the
results. Our population has precisely doubled itself since 1811. The
increase of our currency should, therefore, upon the same principle
of increase, be the double of what it then was; yet it is three
times as great as it then was! The next period which challenges
our attention is the veto session of 1832, when the second Bank
of the United States, according to the opinion of its eulogists,
had carried the currency to the ultimate point of perfection. What
was the amount then? According to the estimate of a senator from
Massachusetts, then and now a member of this body [Mr. WEBSTER],
then a member of the Finance Committee, and with every access to the
best information, the whole amount of currency was then estimated
at about one hundred millions; to wit: twenty millions in specie,
and seventy-five to eighty millions in bank notes. The increase of
our population since that time is estimated at twenty per cent.;
so that the increase of our currency, upon the basis of increased
population, should also be twenty per cent. This would give an
increase of twenty millions of dollars, making, in the whole, one
hundred and twenty millions. Thus, our currency in actual existence,
is nearly one-third more than either the ratio of 1811 or of 1832
would give. Thus, we have actually about fifty millions more,
in this season of ruin and destitution, than we should have, if
supplied only in the ratio of what we possessed at the two periods
of what is celebrated as the best condition of the currency, and
most prosperous condition of the country. So much for quantity; now
for the solidity of the currency at these respective periods. How
stands the question of solidity? Sir, it stands thus: in 1811, five
paper dollars to one of silver; in 1822, four to one; in 1838, one
to one, as near as can be! Thus, the comparative solidity of the
currency is infinitely preferable to what it ever was before; for
the increase, under the sagacious policy of General Jackson, has
taken place precisely where it was needed--at the bottom, and not
at the top; at the foundation, and not in the roof; at the base,
and not at the apex. Our paper currency has increased but little;
we may say nothing, upon the bases of 1811 and 1832; our specie has
increased immeasurably; no less than eight-fold, since 1811, and
four-fold since 1832. The whole increase is specie; and of that we
have seventy millions more than in 1811, and sixty millions more
than in 1832. Such are the fruits of General Jackson's policy! a
policy which we only have to persevere in for a few years, to have
our country as amply supplied with gold and silver as France and
Holland are; that France and Holland in which gold is borrowed at
three per cent. per annum, while we often borrow paper money at
three per cent. a month.
But there is no specie. Not a ninepence to be got for a servant; not
a picayune for a beggar; not a ten cent piece for the post-office.
Such is the assertion; but how far is it true? Go to the banks, and
present their notes at their counter, and it is all too true. No
gold, no silver, no copper to be had there in redemption of their
solemn promises to pay. Metaphorically, if not literally speaking,
a demand for specie at the counter of a bank might bring to the
unfortunate applicant more kicks than coppers. But change the
direction of the demand; go to the brokers; present the bank note
there; no sooner said than done; gold and silver spring forth in any
quantity; the notes are cashed; you are thanked for your custom,
invited to return again; and thus, the counter of the broker, and
not the counter of the bank, becomes the place for the redemption
of the notes of the bank. The only part of the transaction that
remains to be told, is the per centum which is shaved off! And,
whoever will submit to that shaving, can have all the bank notes
cashed which he can carry to them. Yes, Mr. President, the brokers,
and not the bankers, now redeem the bank notes. There is no dearth
of specie for that purpose. They have enough to cash all the notes
of the banks, and all the treasury notes of the government into the
bargain. Look at their placards! not a village, not a city, not a
town in the Union, in which the sign-boards do not salute the eye of
the passenger, inviting him to come in and exchange his bank notes,
and treasury notes, for gold and silver. And why cannot the banks
redeem, as well as the brokers? Why can they not redeem their own
notes? Because a _veto_ has issued from the city of Philadelphia,
and because a political revolution is to be effected by injuring the
country, and then charging the injury upon the folly and wickedness
of the republican administrations. This is the reason, and the sole
reason. The Bank of the United States, its affiliated institutions,
and its political confederates, are the sole obstacles to the
resumption of specie payments. They alone prevent the resumption. It
is they who are now in terror lest the resumption shall begin and
to prevent it, we hear the real shout, and feel the real application
of the rallying cry, so pathetically uttered on this floor by the
senator from Massachusetts [Mr. WEBSTER]--_once more to the breach,
dear friends, once more!_
Yes, Mr. President, the cause of the non-resumption of specie
payments is now plain and undeniable. It is as plain as the sun
at high noon, in a clear sky. No two opinions can differ about
it, how much tongues may differ. The cause of not resuming is
known, and the cause of suspension will soon be known likewise.
Gentlemen of the opposition charge the suspension upon the folly,
the wickedness, the insanity, the misrule, and misgovernment of the
outlandish administration, as they classically call it; expressions
which apply to the people who created the administration which have
been so much vilified, and who have sanctioned their policy by
repeated elections. The opposition charge the suspension to them--to
their policy--to their acts--to the veto of 1832--the removal of
the deposits of 1833--the Treasury order of 1836--and the demand
for specie for the federal Treasury. This is the charge of the
politicians, and of all who follow the lead, and obey the impulsion
of the denationalized Bank of the United States. But what say others
whose voice should be potential, and even omnipotent, on this
question? What say the New York city banks, where the suspension
began, and whose example was alleged for the sole cause of
suspension by all the rest? What say these banks, whose position is
at the fountain-head of knowledge, and whose answer for themselves
is an answer for all. What say they? Listen, and you shall hear! for
I hold in my hand a report of a committee of these banks, made under
an official injunction, by their highest officers, and deliberately
approved by all the city institutions. It is signed by Messrs.
Albert Gallatin, George Newbold, C. C. Lawrence, C. Heyer, J. J.
Palmer, Preserved Fish, and G. A. Worth,--seven gentlemen of known
and established character; and not more than one out of the seven
politically friendly to the late and present administrations of the
federal government. This is their report:
"The immediate causes which thus compelled the banks of the
city of New York to suspend specie payments on the 10th of May
last, are well known. The simultaneous withdrawing of the large
public deposits, and of excessive foreign credits, combined with
the great and unexpected fall in the price of the principal
article of our exports, with an import of corn and bread stuffs,
such as had never before occurred, and with the consequent
inability of the country, particularly in the south-western
States, to make the usual and expected remittances, did, at one
and the same time, fall principally and necessarily, on the
greatest commercial emporium of the Union. After a long and most
arduous struggle, during which the banks, though not altogether
unsuccessfully, resisting the imperative foreign demand for the
precious metals, were gradually deprived of a great portion of
their specie; some unfortunate incidents of a _local_ nature,
operating in concert with other previous exciting causes,
produced distrust and panic, and finally one of those general
runs, which, if continued, no banks that issue paper money,
payable on demand, can ever resist; and which soon put it out of
the power of those of this city to sustain specie payments. The
example was followed by the banks throughout the whole country,
with as much _rapidity_ as the news of the suspension in New
York reached them, without waiting for an _actual run_; and
principally, if not exclusively, on the alleged grounds of the
effects to be apprehended from that suspension. Thus, whilst the
New York city banks were almost _drained_ of their specie, those
in other places preserved the _amount_ which they held before
the final catastrophe."
These are the reasons! and what becomes now of the Philadelphia
cry, re-echoed by politicians and subaltern banks, against the
ruinous measures of the administration? Not a measure of the
administration mentioned! not one alluded to! Not a word about the
Treasury order; not a word about the veto of the National Bank
charter; not a word about the removal of the deposits from the
Bank of the United States; not a word about, the specie policy of
the administration! Not one word about any act of the government,
except that distribution act, disguised as a deposit law, which
was a measure of Congress, and not of the administration, and the
work of the opponents, and not the friends of the administration,
and which encountered its only opposition in the ranks of those
friends. I opposed it, with some half dozen others; and among my
grounds of opposition, one was, that it would endanger the deposit
banks, especially the New York city deposit banks,--that it would
reduce them to the alternative of choosing between breaking their
customers, and being broken themselves. This was the origin of
that act--the work of the opposition on this floor; and now we
find that very act to be the cause which is put at the head of all
the causes which led to the suspension of specie payments. Thus,
the administration is absolved. Truth has performed its office. A
false accusation is rebuked and silenced. Censure falls where it is
due; and the authors of the mischief stand exposed in the double
malefaction of having done the mischief, and then charged it upon
the heads of the innocent.
But, gentlemen of the opposition say, there can be no resumption
until Congress "_acts upon the currency_." Until Congress acts upon
the currency! that is the phrase! and it comes from Philadelphia;
and the translation of it is, that there shall be no resumption
until Congress submits to Mr. Biddle's bank, and recharters that
institution. This is the language from Philadelphia, and the meaning
of the language; but, happily, a different voice issues from the
city of New York! The authentic notification is issued from the
banks of that city, pledging themselves to resume by the 10th day
of May. They declare their ability to resume, and to continue
specie payments; and declare they have nothing to fear, except from
"_deliberate hostility_"--an hostility for which they allege there
can be no motive--but of which they delicately intimate there is
danger. Philadelphia is distinctly unveiled as the seat of this
danger. The resuming banks fear hostility--deliberate acts of
hostility--from that quarter. They fear nothing from the hostility,
or folly, or wickedness of this administration. They fear nothing
from the Sub-Treasury bill. They fear Mr. Biddle's bank, and nothing
else but his bank, with its confederates and subalterns. They mean
to resume, and Mr. Biddle means that they shall not. Henceforth two
flags will be seen, hoisted from two great cities. The New York flag
will have the word resumption inscribed upon it; the Philadelphia
flag will bear the inscription of non-resumption, and destruction to
all resuming banks.
I have carefully observed the conduct of the leading banks in the
United States. The New York banks, and the principal deposit banks,
had a cause for stopping which no others can plead, or did plead.
I announced that cause, not once, but many times, on this floor;
not only during the passage of the distribution law, but during the
discussion of those famous land bills, which passed this chamber;
and one of which ordered a peremptory distribution of sixty-four
millions, by not only taking what was in the Treasury, but by
reaching back, and taking all the proceeds of the land sales for
years preceding. I then declared in my place, and that repeatedly,
that the banks, having lent this money under our instigation, if
called upon to reimburse it in this manner, must be reduced to
the alternative of breaking their customers, or of being broken
themselves. When the New York banks stopped, I made great allowances
for them, but I could not justify others for the rapidity with
which they followed their example; and still less can I justify
them for their tardiness in following the example of the same banks
in resuming. Now that the New York banks have come forward to
redeem their obligations, and have shown that sensibility to their
own honor, and that regard for the punctual performance of their
promises, which once formed the pride and glory of the merchant's
and the banker's character, I feel the deepest anxiety for their
success in the great contest which is to ensue. Their enemy is a
cunning and a powerful one, and as wicked and unscrupulous as it is
cunning and strong. Twelve years ago, the president of that bank
which now forbids other banks to resume, declared in an official
communication to the Finance Committee of this body, "_that there
were but few State banks which the Bank of the United States could
not DESTROY by an exertion of its POWER_." Since that time it has
become more powerful; and, besides its political strength, and
its allied institutions, and its exhaustless mine of resurrection
notes, it is computed by its friends to wield a power of one
hundred and fifty millions of dollars! all at the beck and nod of
one single man! for his automaton directors are not even thought
of! The wielding of this immense power, and its fatal direction to
the destruction of the resuming banks, presents the prospect of
a fearful conflict ahead. Many of the local banks will doubtless
perish in it; many individuals will be ruined; much mischief will be
done to the commerce and to the business of different places; and
all the destruction that is accomplished will be charged upon some
act of the administration--no matter what--for whatever is given
out from the Philadelphia head is incontinently repeated by all the
obsequious followers, until the signal is given to open upon some
new cry.
Sir, the honest commercial banks have resumed, or mean to resume.
They have resumed, not upon the fictitious and delusive credit
of legislative enactments, but upon the solid basis of gold and
silver. The hundred millions of specie which we have accumulated
in the country has done the business. To that hundred millions
the country is indebted for this early, easy, proud and glorious
resumption!--and here let us do justice to the men of this
day--to the policy of General Jackson--and to the success of
the experiments--to which we are indebted for these one hundred
millions. Let us contrast the events and effects of the stoppages
in 1814, and in 1819, with the events and effects of the stoppage
in 1837, and let us see the difference between them, and the causes
of that difference. The stoppage of 1814 compelled the government
to use depreciated bank notes during the remainder of the war, and
up to the year 1817. Treasury notes, even bearing a large interest,
were depreciated ten, twenty, thirty per cent. Bank notes were at an
equal depreciation. The losses to the government from depreciated
paper in loans alone, during the war, were computed by a committee
of the House of Representatives at eighty millions of dollars.
Individuals suffered in the same proportion; and every transaction
of life bore the impress of the general calamity. Specie was not
to be had. There was, nationally speaking, none in the country.
The specie standard was gone; the measure of values was lost; a
fluctuating paper money, ruinously depreciated, was the medium of
all exchanges. To extricate itself from this deplorable condition,
the expedient of a National Bank was resorted to--that measure of so
much humiliation, and of so much misfortune to the republican party.
For the moment it seemed to give relief, and to restore national
prosperity; but treacherous and delusive was the seeming boon. The
banks resumed--relapsed--and every evil of the previous suspension
returned upon the country with increased and aggravated force.
Politicians alone have taken up this matter and have proposed, for
the first time since the foundation of the government--for the first
time in 48 years--to compel the government to receive paper money
for its dues. The pretext is, to aid the banks in resuming! This,
indeed, is a marvellous pretty conception! Aid the banks to resume!
Why, sir, we cannot prevent them from resuming. Every solvent,
commercial bank in the United States either has resumed, or has
declared its determination to do so in the course of the year. The
insolvent, and the political banks, which did not mean to resume,
will have to follow the New York example, or die! Mr. Biddle's bank
must follow the New York lead, or die! The good banks are with the
country: the rest we defy. The political banks may resume or not,
as they please, or as they dare. If they do not, they die! Public
opinion, and the laws of the land, will exterminate them. If the
president of the miscalled Bank of the United States has made a
mistake in recommending indefinite non-resumption, and in proposing
to establish a confederation of broken banks, and has found out his
mistake, and wants a pretext for retreating, let him invent one.
There is no difficulty in the case. Any thing that the government
does, or does not--any thing that has happened, will happen, or can
happen--will answer the purpose. Let the president of the Bank of
the United States give out a tune: incontinently it will be sung by
every bank man in the United States; and no matter how ridiculous
the ditty may be, it will be celebrated as superhuman music.
But an enemy lies in wait for them! one that foretells their
destruction, is able to destroy them, and which looks for its own
success in their ruin. The report of the committee of the New York
banks expressly refers to "_acts of deliberate hostility_" from a
neighboring institution as a danger which the resuming banks might
have to dread. The reference was plain to the miscalled Bank of
the United States as the source of this danger. Since that time an
insolent and daring threat has issued from Philadelphia, bearing
the marks of its bank paternity, openly threatening the resuming
banks of New York with destruction. This is the threat: "_Let the
banks of the Empire State come up from their Elba, and enjoy their
hundred days of resumption; a Waterloo awaits them, and a St.
Helena is prepared for them._" Here is a direct menace, and coming
from a source which is able to make good what it threatens. Without
hostile attacks, the resuming banks have a perilous process to go
through. The business of resumption is always critical. It is a case
of impaired credit, and a slight circumstance may excite a panic
which may be fatal to the whole. The public having seen them stop
payment, can readily believe in the mortality of their nature, and
that another stoppage is as easy as the former. On the slightest
alarm--on the stoppage of a few inconsiderable banks, or on the
noise of a groundless rumor--a general panic may break out. _Sauve
qui peut_--save himself who can--becomes the cry with the public;
and almost every bank may be run down. So it was in England after
the long suspension there from 1797 to 1823; so it was in the United
States after the suspension from 1814 to 1817; in each country a
second stoppage ensued in two years after resumption; and these
second stoppages are like relapses to an individual after a spell of
sickness: the relapse is more easily brought on than the original
disease, and is far more dangerous.
The banks in England _suspended_ in 1797--they _broke_ in 1825;
in the United States it was a _suspension_ during the war, and a
_breaking_ in 1819-20. So it may be again with us. There is imminent
danger to the resuming banks, without the pressure of premeditated
hostility; but, with that hostility, their prostration is almost
certain. The Bank of the United States can crush hundreds on any day
that it pleases. It can send out its agents into every State of the
Union, with sealed orders to be opened on a given day, like captains
sent into different seas; and can break hundreds of local banks
within the same hour, and over an extent of thousands of miles. It
can do this with perfect ease--the more easily with resurrection
notes--and thus excite a universal panic, crush the resuming banks,
and then charge the whole upon the government. This is what it can
do; this is what it has threatened; and stupid is the bank, and
doomed to destruction, that does not look out for the danger, and
fortify against it. In addition to all these dangers, the senator
from Kentucky, the author of the resolution himself, tells you that
these banks must fail again! he tells you they will fail! and in
the very same moment he presses the compulsory reception of all the
notes on all these banks upon the federal treasury! What is this but
a proposition to ruin the finances--to bankrupt the Treasury--to
disgrace the administration--to demonstrate the incapacity of the
State banks to serve as the fiscal agents of the government, and to
gain a new argument for the creation of a national bank, and the
elevation of the bank party to power? This is the clear inference
from the proposition; and viewing it in this light, I feel it to
be my duty to expose, and to repel it, as a proposition to inflict
mischief and disgrace upon the country.
But to return to the point, the contrast between the effects and
events of former bank stoppages, and the effects and events of
the present one. The effects of the former were to sink the price
of labor and of property to the lowest point, to fill the States
with stop laws, relief laws, property laws, and tender laws; to
ruin nearly all debtors, and to make property change hands at
fatal rates; to compel the federal government to witness the heavy
depreciation of its treasury notes, to receive its revenues in
depreciated paper; and, finally, to submit to the establishment of
a national bank as the means of getting it out of its deplorable
condition--that bank, the establishment of which was followed by
the seven years of the greatest calamity which ever afflicted the
country; and from which calamity we then had to seek relief from the
tariff, and not from more banks. How different the events of the
present time! The banks stopped in May, 1837; they resume in May,
1838. Their paper depreciated but little; property, except in a few
places, was but slightly affected; the price of produce continued
good; people paid their debts without sacrifices; treasury notes,
in defiance of political and moneyed combinations to depress them,
kept at or near par; in many places above it; the government was
never brought to receive its revenues in depreciated paper; and
finally all good banks are resuming in the brief space of a year;
and no national bank has been created. Such is the contrast between
the two periods; and now, sir, what is all this owing to? what
is the cause of this great difference in two similar periods of
bank stoppages? It is owing to our gold bill of 1834, by which we
corrected the erroneous standard of gold, and which is now giving us
an avalanche of that metal; it is owing to our silver bill of the
same year, by which we repealed the disastrous act of 1819, against
the circulation of foreign silver, and which is now spreading the
Mexican dollars all over the country; it is owing to our movements
against small notes under twenty dollars; to our branch mints, and
the increased activity of the mother mint; to our determination to
revive the currency of the constitution, and to our determination
not to fall back upon the local paper currencies of the States for
a national currency. It was owing to these measures that we have
passed through this bank stoppage in a style so different from what
has been done heretofore. It is owing to our "_experiments_" on
the currency--to our "_humbug_" of a gold and silver currency--to
our "_tampering_" with the monetary system--it is owing to these
that we have had this signal success in this last stoppage, and
are now victorious over all the prophets of woe, and over all the
architects of mischief. These _experiments_, this _humbugging_,
and this _tampering_, has increased our specie in six years from
twenty millions to one hundred millions; and it is these one hundred
millions of gold and silver which have sustained the country and
the government under the shock of the stoppage--has enabled the
honest solvent banks to resume, and will leave the insolvent and
political banks without excuse or justification for not resuming.
Our experiments--I love the word, and am sorry that gentlemen of
the opposition have ceased to repeat it--have brought an avalanche
of gold and silver into the country; it is saturating us with the
precious metals, it has relieved and sustained the country; and
now when these experiments have been successful--have triumphed
over all opposition--gentlemen cease their ridicule, and go to
work with their paper-money resolutions to force the government to
use paper, and thereby to drive off the gold and silver which our
policy has brought into the country, destroy the specie basis of the
banks, give us an exclusive paper currency again, and produce a new
expansion and a new explosion.
Justice to the men of this day requires these things to be stated.
They have avoided the errors of 1811. They have avoided the pit
into which they saw their predecessors fall. Those who prevented
the renewal of the bank charter in 1811, did nothing else but
prevent its renewal; they provided no substitute for the notes of
the bank; did nothing to restore the currency of the constitution;
nothing to revive the gold currency; nothing to increase the specie
of the country. They fell back upon the exclusive use of local bank
notes, without even doing any thing to strengthen the local banks,
by discarding their paper under twenty dollars. They fell back upon
the local banks; and the consequence was, the total prostration,
the utter helplessness, the deplorable inability of the government
to take care of itself, or to relieve and restore the country, when
the banks failed. Those who prevented the recharter of the second
Bank of the United States had seen all this; and they determined to
avoid such error and calamity. They set out to revive the national
gold currency, to increase the silver currency, and to reform and
strengthen the banking system. They set out to do these things;
and they have done them. Against a powerful combined political and
moneyed confederation, they have succeeded; and the one hundred
millions of gold and silver now in the country attests the greatness
of their victory, and insures the prosperity of the country against
the machinations of the wicked and the factious.
CHAPTER XXII.
MR. CLAY'S RESOLUTION IN FAVOR OF RESUMING BANKS, AND MR.
BENTON'S REMARKS UPON IT.
After the New York banks had resolved to recommence specie payments,
and before the day arrived for doing so, Mr. Clay submitted a
resolution in the Senate to promote resumption by making the notes
of the resuming banks receivable in payment of all dues to the
federal government. It was clearly a movement in behalf of the
delinquent banks, as those of New York, and others, had resolved
to return to specie payments without requiring any such condition.
Nevertheless he placed the banks of the State of New York in the
front rank for the benefits to be received under his proposed
measure. They had undertaken to recommence payments, he said, not
from any ability to do so, but from compulsion under a law of the
State. The receivability of their notes in payment of all federal
dues would give them a credit and circulation which would prevent
their too rapid return for redemption. So of others. It would be a
help to all in getting through the critical process of resumption;
and in helping them would benefit the business and prosperity of the
country. He thought it wise to give that assistance; but reiterated
his opinion that, nothing but the establishment of a national
bank would effectually remedy the evils of a disordered currency,
and permanently cure the wounds under which the country was now
suffering. Mr. Benton replied to Mr. Clay, and said:
This resolution of the senator from Kentucky [Mr. CLAY], is to aid
the banks to resume--to aid, encourage, and enable them to resume.
This is its object, as declared by its mover; and it is offered
here after the leading banks have resumed, and when no power can
even prevent the remaining solvent banks from resuming. Doubtless,
immortal glory will be acquired by this resolution! It can be
heralded to all corners of the country, and celebrated in all manner
of speeches and editorials, as the miraculous cause of an event
which had already occurred! Yes, sir--already occurred! for the
solvent banks have resumed, are resuming, and will resume. Every
solvent bank in the United States will have resumed in a few months,
and no efforts of the insolvents and their political confederates
can prevent it. In New York the resumption is general; in
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, and New Jersey, it is partial;
and every where the solvent banks are preparing to redeem the pledge
which they gave when they stopped--_that of resuming whenever New
York did_. The insolvent and political banks will not resume at all,
or, except for a few weeks, to fail again, make a panic and a new
run upon the resuming banks--stop them, if possible, then charge it
upon the administration, and recommence their lugubrious cry for a
National Bank.
The resumption will take place. The masses of gold and silver
pouring into the country under the beneficent effects of General
Jackson's hard-money policy, will enable every solvent bank to
resume; a moral sense, and a fear of consequences, will compel them
to do it. The importations of specie are now enormous, and equalling
every demand, if it was not suppressed. There can be no doubt but
that the quantity of specie in the country is equal to the amount
of bank notes in circulation--that they are dollar for dollar--that
the country is better off for money at this day than it ever was
before, though shamefully deprived of the use of gold and silver by
the political and insolvent part of the banks and their confederate
politicians.
The solvent banks will resume, and Congress cannot prevent them
if it tried. They have received the aid which they need in the
$100,000,000 of gold and silver which now relieves the country, and
distresses the politicians who predicted no relief, until a national
bank was created. Of the nine hundred banks in the country, there
are many which never can resume, and which should not attempt it,
except to wind up their affairs. Many of these are rotten to the
core, and will fall to pieces the instant they are put to the specie
test. Some of them even fail now for rags; several have so failed
in Massachusetts and Ohio, to say nothing of those called wild
cats--the progeny of a general banking law in Michigan. We want a
resumption to discriminate between banks, and to save the community
from impositions.
We wanted specie, and we have got it. Five years ago--at the veto
session of 1832--there were but twenty millions in the country.
So said the senator from Massachusetts who has just resumed his
seat [Mr. WEBSTER]. We have now, or will have in a few weeks, one
hundred millions. This is the salvation of the country. It compels
resumption, and has defeated all the attempts to scourge the country
into a submission to a national bank. While that one hundred
millions remains, the country can place at defiance the machinations
of the Bank of the United States, and its confederate politicians,
to perpetuate the suspension, and to continue the reign of rags and
shin-plasters. Their first object is to get rid of these hundred
millions, and all schemes yet tried have failed to counteract the
Jacksonian policy. Ridicule was tried first; deportation of specie
was tried next; a forced suspension has been continued for a year;
the State governments and the people were vanquished, still the
specie came in, because the federal government created a demand
for it. This firm demand has frustrated all the schemes to drive
off specie, and to deliver up the country to the dominion of the
paper-money party. This demand has been the stumbling block of that
party; and this resolution now comes to remove that stumbling block.
It is the most revolting proposition ever made in this Congress! It
is a flagrant violation of the constitution, by making paper money
a tender both to and from the government. It is fraught with ruin
and destruction to the public property, the public Treasury, and the
public creditors. The notes of nine hundred banks are to be received
into the Treasury, and disbursed from the Treasury. They are to be
paid out as well as paid in. The ridiculous proviso of willingness
to receive them on the part of the public creditor is an insult to
him; for there is no choice--it is that or nothing. The disbursing
officer does not offer hard money with one hand, and paper with the
other, and tell the creditor to take his choice. No! he offers paper
or nothing! To talk of willingness, when there is no choice, is
insult, mockery and outrage. Great is the loss of popularity which
this administration has sustained from paying out depreciated paper;
great the deception which has been practised upon the government
in representing this paper as being willingly received. Necessity,
and not good will, ruled the creditor; indignation, resentment, and
execrations on the administration, were the thanks with which he
received it. This has disgraced and injured the administration more
than all other causes put together; it has lost it tens of thousands
of true friends. It is now getting into a condition to pay hard
money; and this resolution comes to prevent such payment, and to
continue and to perpetuate the ruinous paper-money payments. Defeat
the resolution, and the government will quickly pay all demands upon
it in gold and silver, and will recover its popularity; pass it, and
paper money will continue to be paid out, and the administration
will continue to lose ground.
The resolution proposes to make the notes of 900 banks the currency
of the general government, and the mover of the resolution tells
you, at the same time, that all these banks will fail! that they
cannot continue specie payments if they begin! that nothing but a
national bank can hold them up to specie payments, and that we have
no such bank. This is the language of the mover; it is the language,
also, of all his party; more than that--it is the language of Mr.
Biddle's letter--that letter which is the true exposition of the
principles and policy of the opposition party. Here, then, is a
proposition to compel the administration, by law, to give up the
public lands for the paper of banks which are to fail--to fill the
Treasury with the paper of such banks--and to pay out such paper to
the public creditors. This is the proposition, and it is nothing but
another form of accomplishing what was attempted in this chamber
a few weeks ago, namely, a direct receipt of irredeemable paper
money! That proposition was too naked and glaring; it was too rank
and startling; it was rebuked and repulsed. A circuitous operation
is now to accomplish what was then too rashly attempted by a direct
movement. Receive the notes of 900 banks for the lands and duties;
these 900 banks will all fail again;--so says the mover, because
there is no king bank to regulate them. We have then lost our lands
and revenues, and filled our Treasury with irredeemable paper. This
is just the point aimed at by the original proposition to receive
irredeemable paper in the first instance: it ends in the reception
of such paper. If the resolution passes, there will be another
explosion: for the receivability of these notes for the public
dues, and especially for the public lands, will run out another
vast expansion of the paper system--to be followed, of course, by
another general explosion. The only way to save the banks is to
hold them down to specie payments. To do otherwise, and especially
to do what this resolution proposes, is to make the administration
the instrument of its own disgrace and degradation--to make it join
in the ruin of the finances and the currency--in the surrender of
the national domain for broken bank paper--and in producing a new
cry for a national bank, as the only remedy for the evils it has
produced.
[The measure proposed by Mr. CLAY was defeated, and the _experiment_
of a specie currency for the government was continued.]
CHAPTER XXIII.
RESUMPTION BY THE PENNSYLVANIA UNITED STATES BANK; AND OTHERS
WHICH FOLLOWED HER LEAD.
The resumption by the New York banks had its effect. Their example
was potent, either to suspend or resume. All the banks in the Union
had followed their example in stopping specie payments: more than
half of them followed them in recommencing payments. Those which
did not recommence became obnoxious to public censure, and to the
suspicion of either dishonesty or insolvency. At the head of this
delinquent class stood the Bank of the United States, justly held
accountable by the public voice for the delinquency of all the rest.
Her position became untenable. She was compelled to descend from it;
and, making a merit of necessity, she affected to put herself at the
head of a general resumption; and in pursuance of that idea invited,
in the month of July, through a meeting of the Philadelphia banks, a
general meeting in that city on the 25th of that month, to consult
and fix a time for resumption. A few banks sent delegates; others
sent letters, agreeing to whatever might be done. In all there were
one hundred and forty delegates, or letters, from banks in nine
States; and these delegates and letters forming themselves into
a general convention of banks, passed a resolution for a general
resumption on the 13th of August ensuing. And thus ended this
struggle to act upon the government through the distresses of the
country, and coerce it into a repeal of the specie circular--into
a recharter of the United States Bank--the restoration of the
deposits--and the adoption of the notes of this bank for a national
currency. The game had been overplayed. The public saw through it,
and derived a lesson from it which put bank and state permanently
apart, and led to the exclusive use of gold and silver by the
federal government; and the exclusive keeping of its own moneys
by its own treasurers. All right-minded people rejoiced at the
issue of the struggle; but there were some that well knew that the
resumption on the part of the Bank of the United States was hollow
and deceptive--that she had no foundations, and would stop again,
and for ever I said this to Mr. Van Buren at the time, and he gave
the opinion I expressed a better acceptance than he had accorded to
the previous one in February, 1837. Parting from him at the end of
the session, 1838-'39, I said to him, this bank would stop before we
meet again; that is to say, before I should return to Congress. It
did so, and for ever. At meeting him the ensuing November, he was
the first to remark upon the truth of these predictions.
CHAPTER XXIV.
PROPOSED ANNEXATION OF TEXAS: MR. PRESTON'S MOTION AND SPEECH:
EXTRACTS.
The republic of Texas had now applied for admission into the federal
Union, as one of its States. Its minister at Washington, Memucan
Hunt, Esq., had made the formal application to our executive
government. That was one obstacle in the way of annexation removed.
It was no longer an insult to her to propose to annex her; and she
having consented, it referred the question to the decision of the
United States. But there was still another objection, and which
was insuperable: Texas was still at war with Mexico; and to annex
her was to annex the war--a consequence which morality and policy
equally rejected. MR. PRESTON, of South Carolina, brought in a
resolution on the subject--not for annexation, but for a legislative
expression in favor of the measure, as a basis for a tripartite
treaty between the United States, Mexico and Texas; so as to
effect the annexation by the consent of all parties, to avoid all
cause of offence; and unite our own legislative with the executive
authority in accomplishing the measure. In support of this motion,
he delivered a speech which, as showing the state of the question
at the time, and presenting sound views, and as constituting a link
in the history of the Texas annexation, is here introduced--some
extracts to exhibit its leading ideas.
"The proposition which I now submit in regard to this prosperous
and self-dependent State would be indecorous and presumptuous,
had not the lead been given by Texas herself. It appears by
the correspondence of the envoy extraordinary of that republic
with our own government, that the question of annexation on
certain terms and conditions has been submitted to the people
of the republic, and decided in the affirmative by a very
large majority; whereupon, and in pursuance of instructions
from his government, he proposes to open a negotiation for the
accomplishment of that object. The correspondence has been
communicated upon a call from the House of Representatives, and
thus the proposition becomes a fit subject for the deliberation
of Congress. Nor is it proposed by my resolution, Mr. President,
to do any thing which could be justly construed into cause
of offence by Mexico. The terms of the resolution guard our
relations with that republic; and the spirit in which it is
conceived is entirely averse to any compromise of our national
faith and honor, for any object, of whatever magnitude.
More especially would I have our intercourse with Mexico
characterized by fair dealing and moderation, on account of her
unfortunate condition, resulting from a long-continued series
of intestine dissensions, which all who have not been born to
liberty must inevitably encounter in seeking for it. As long,
therefore, as the pretensions of Mexico are attempted to be
asserted by actual force, or as long as there is any reasonable
prospect that she has the power and the will to resubjugate
Texas, I do not propose to interfere. My own deliberate
conviction, to be sure, is, that that period has already passed;
and I beg leave to say that, in my judgment, there is more
danger of an invasion and conquest of Mexico by Texas, than that
this last will ever be reannexed to Mexico.
"I disavow, Mr. President, all hostile purposes, or even ill
temper, towards Mexico; and I trust that I impugn neither
the policy nor principles of the administration. I therefore
feel myself at liberty to proceed to the discussion of the
points made in the resolution, entirely disembarrassed of
any preliminary obstacle, unless, indeed, the mode by which
so important an act is to be effected may be considered as
interposing a difficulty. If the object itself be within the
competency of this government, as I shall hereafter endeavor
to show, and both parties consent, every means mutually agreed
upon would establish a joint obligation. The acquisition of
new territory has heretofore been effected by treaty, and
this mode of proceeding in regard to Texas has been proposed
by her minister; but I believe it would comport more with
the importance of the measure, that both branches of the
government should concur, the legislature expressing a previous
opinion; and, this being done, all difficulties, of all kinds
whatsoever, real or imaginary, might be avoided by a treaty
tripartite between Mexico, Texas, and the United States, in
which the assent and confirmation of Mexico (for a pecuniary
consideration, if you choose) might be had, without infringing
the acknowledged independence and free agency of Texas.
"The treaty, Mr. President, of 1819, was a great oversight
on the part of the Southern States. We went into it blindly,
I must say. The great importance of Florida, to which the
public mind was strongly awakened at that time by peculiar
circumstances, led us precipitately into a measure by which we
threw a gem away that would have bought ten Floridas. Under any
circumstances, Florida would have been ours in a short time;
but our impatience induced us to purchase it by a territory ten
times as large--a hundred times as fertile, and to give five
millions of dollars into the bargain. Sir, I resign myself to
what is done; I acquiesce in the inexorable past; I propose
no wild and chimerical revolution in the established order of
things, for the purpose of remedying what I conceive to have
been wrong originally. But this I do propose: that we should
seize the fair and just occasion now presented to remedy the
mistake which was made in 1819; that we should repair as far as
we can the evil effect of a breach of the constitution; that we
should re-establish the integrity of our dismembered territory,
and get back into our Union, by the just and honorable means
providentially offered to us, that fair and fertile province
which, in an evil hour, we severed from the confederacy.
"But the boundary line established by the treaty of 1819 not
only deprives us of this extensive and fertile territory, but
winds with "a deep indent" upon the valley of the Mississippi
itself, running upon the Red River and the Arkansas. It places
a foreign nation in the rear of our Mississippi settlements,
and brings it within a stone's throw of that great outlet which
discharges the commerce of half the Union. The mouth of the
Sabine and the mouth of the Mississippi are of a dangerous
vicinity. The great object of the purchase of Louisiana was to
remove all possible interference of foreign States in the vast
commerce of the outlet of so many States. By the cession of
Texas, this policy was, to a certain extent, compromised.
"The committee, it appears to me, has been led to erroneous
conclusions on this subject by a fundamental mistake as to the
nature and character of our government; a mistake which has
pervaded and perverted all its reasoning, and has for a long
time been the abundant source of much practical mischief in the
action of this government, and of very dangerous speculation.
The mistake lies in considering this, as to its nature and
powers, a consolidated government of one people, instead of a
confederated government of many States. There is no one single
act performed by the people of the United States, under the
constitution, _as one people_. Even in the popular branch of
Congress this distinction is maintained. A certain number of
delegates is assigned to each State, and the people of each
State elect for their own State. When the functionaries of the
government assemble here, they have no source of power but
the constitution, which prescribes, defines, and limits their
action, and constitutes them, in their aggregate capacity, a
trust or agency, for the performance of certain duties confided
to them by various States or communities. This government is,
therefore, a confederacy of sovereign States, associating
themselves together for mutual advantages. They originally came
together as sovereign States, having no authority and pretending
to no power of reciprocal control. North Carolina and Rhode
Island stood off for a time, refusing to join the confederacy,
and at length came into it by the exercise of a sovereign
discretion. So too of Missouri, who was a State fully organized
and perfect, and self-governed, before she was a State of this
Union; and, in the very nature of things, this has been the
case with all the States heretofore admitted, and must always
continue to be so. Where, then, is the difficulty of admitting
another State into this confederacy? The power to admit new
States is expressly given. "New States may be admitted by the
Congress into this Union." By the very terms of the grant, they
must be _States_ before they are admitted; when admitted, they
become States _of the Union_. The terms, restrictions, and
principles upon which new States are to be received, are matters
to be regulated by Congress, under the constitution.
"Heretofore, in the acquisition of Louisiana and Florida, France
and Spain both stipulated that the inhabitants of the ceded
territories should be incorporated in the Union of the United
States as soon as may be consistent with the principles of
the federal constitution, and admitted to all the privileges,
rights, and immunities of the citizens of the United States.
In compliance with this stipulation, Louisiana, Arkansas, and
Missouri have been admitted into the Union, and at no distant
day Florida will be. Now, if we contract with France and Spain
for the admission of States, why shall we not with Texas? If
France can sell to us her subjects and her territory, why cannot
the people of Texas give themselves and their territory to us?
Is it more consistent with our republican notions that men and
territory can be transferred by the arbitrary will of a monarch,
for a price, than that a free people may be associated with us
by mutual consent?
"It is supposed that there is a sort of political impossibility,
resulting from the nature of things, to effect the proposed
union. The committee says that "the measure is in fact the union
of _two_ independent governments." Certainly the _union_ of
twenty-seven "independent governments;" but the committee adds,
that it should rather be termed the dissolution of both, and the
formation of a new one, which, whether founded on the same or
another written constitution, is, as to its identity, different
from either. This can only be effected by the _summum jus_, &c.
"A full answer to this objection, even if many others were not
at hand, as far as Texas is concerned, is contained in the fact
that the _summum jus_ has been exercised.
"Her citizens, by a unanimous vote, have decided in favor of
annexation; and, according to the admission of the committee,
this is sufficiently potent to dissolve their government, and
to surrender themselves to be absorbed by ours. To receive this
augmentation of our territory and population, manifestly does
not dissolve this government, or even remodel it. Its identity
is not disturbed. There is no appeal necessary to the _summum
jus populi_ for such a political arrangement on our part,
even if the _summum jus populi_ could be predicated of this
government, which it cannot. Now, it is very obvious that two
free States may associate for common purposes, and that these
common purposes may be multiplied in number or increased in
importance at the discretion of the parties. They may establish
a common agency for the transaction of their business; and this
may include a portion or all of their political functions.
The new creation may be an agency if created by States, or a
government if created by the people; for the people have a right
to abolish and create governments. Does any one doubt whether
Texas could rejoin the republic of Mexico? Why not, then,
_re_join this republic?
"No one doubts that the States now composing this Union might
have joined Great Britain after the declaration of independence.
The learned committee would not contend that there was a
political impossibility in the union of Scotland and England,
or of Ireland and Britain; or that, in the nature of things, it
would be impossible for Louisiana, if she were a sovereign State
out of this Union, to join with the sovereign State of Texas in
forming a new government.
"There is no point of view in which the proposition for
annexation can be considered, that any serious obstacle in point
of form presents itself. If this government be a confederation
of States, then it is proposed to add another State to the
confederacy. If this government be a consolidation, then it
is proposed to add to it additional territory and population.
That we can annex, and afterwards admit, the cases of Florida
and Louisiana prove. We can, therefore, deal with the people of
Texas for the territory of Texas, and the people can be secured
in the rights and privileges of the constitution, as were the
subjects of Spain and France.
"The Massachusetts legislature experience much difficulty in
ascertaining the mode of action by which the proposed annexation
can be effected, and demand "in what form would be the
practical exercise of the supposed power? In what department
does it lie?" The progress of events already, in a great
measure, answers this objection. Texas has taken the initiative.
Her minister has introduced the subject to that department
which is alone capable of receiving communications from foreign
governments, and the executive has submitted the correspondence
to Congress. The resolutions before you propose an expression
of opinion by Congress, which, if made, the executive will
doubtless address itself earnestly, in conjunction with the
authorities of Texas, to the consummation of the joint wishes of
the parties, which can be accomplished by treaty, emanating from
one department of this government, to be carried into effect by
the passage of all needful laws by the legislative department,
and by the exercise of the express power of Congress to admit
new States."
The proposition of Mr. Preston did not prevail; the period for the
annexation of Texas had not yet arrived. War still existing between
Mexico and Texas--the _status_ of the two countries being that of
war, although hostilities hardly existed--a majority of the Senate
deemed it unadvisable even to take the preliminary steps towards
annexation which his resolution proposed. A motion to lay the
proposition on the table prevailed, by a vote of 24 to 14.
CHAPTER XXV.
DEBATE BETWEEN MR. CLAY AND MR. CALHOUN, PERSONAL AND POLITICAL,
AND LEADING TO EXPOSITIONS AND VINDICATIONS OF PUBLIC CONDUCT
WHICH BELONG TO HISTORY.
For seven years past Mr. Calhoun, while disclaiming connection
with any party, had acted on leading measures with the opposition,
headed by Messrs. Clay and Webster. Still disclaiming any such
connection, he was found at the extra session co-operating with
the administration. His co-operation with the opposition had given
it the victory in many eventful contests in that long period;
his co-operation with the Van Buren administration might turn
the tide of victory. The loss or gain of a chief who in a nearly
balanced state of parties, could carry victory to the side which
he espoused, was an event not to be viewed without vexation by
the party which he left. Resentment was as natural on one side as
gratification was on the other. The democratic party had made no
reproaches--(I speak of the debates in Congress)--when Mr. Calhoun
left them; they debated questions with him as if there had been no
cause for personal complaint. Not so with the opposition now when
the course of his transit was reversed, and the same event occurred
to themselves. They took deeply to heart this withdrawal of one of
their leaders, and his appearance on the other side. It created
a feeling of personal resentment against Mr. Calhoun which had
manifested itself in several small side-blows at the extra session;
and it broke out into systematic attack at the regular one. Some
sharp passages took place between himself and Mr. Webster, but not
of a kind to lead to any thing historical. He (Mr. Webster) was
but slightly inclined towards that kind of speaking which mingles
personality with argument, and lessens the weight of the adversary
argument by reducing the weight of the speaker's character. Mr.
Clay had a turn that way; and, certainly, a great ability for it.
Invective, mingled with sarcasm, was one of the phases of his
oratory. He was supreme at a _philippic_ (taken in the sense of
Demosthenes and Cicero), where the political attack on a public
man's measure was to be enforced and heightened by a personal attack
on his conduct. He owed much of his fascinating power over his
hearers to the exercise of this talent--always so captivating in a
popular assembly, and in the galleries of the Senate; not so much
so in the Senate itself; and to him it naturally fell to become the
organ of the feelings of his party towards Mr. Calhoun. And very
cordially, and carefully, and amply, did he make preparation for it.
The storm had been gathering since September: it burst in February.
It had been evidently waiting for an occasion: and found it in the
first speech of Mr. Calhoun, of that session, in favor of Mr. Van
Buren's recommendation for an independent treasury and a federal
hard-money currency. This speech was delivered the 15th of February,
and was strictly argumentative and parliamentary, and wholly
confined to its subject. Four days thereafter Mr. Clay answered it;
and although ready at an extemporaneous speech, he had the merit,
when time permitted, of considering well both the matter and the
words of what he intended to deliver. On this occasion he had had
ample time; for the speech of Mr. Calhoun could not be essentially
different from the one he delivered on the same subject at the
extra session; and the personal act which excited his resentment
was of the same date. There had been six months for preparation;
and fully had preparation been made. The whole speech bore the
impress of careful elaboration and especially the last part; for
it consisted of two distinct parts--the first, argumentative, and
addressed to the measure before the Senate: and was in fact, as
well as in name, a reply. The second part was an attack, under the
name of a reply, and was addressed to the personal conduct of Mr.
Calhoun, reproaching him with his desertion (as it was called),
and taunting him with the company he had got into--taking care to
remind him of his own former sad account of that company: and then,
launching into a wider field, he threw up to him all the imputed
political delinquencies of his life for near twenty years--skipping
none from 1816 down to the extra session;--although he himself had
been in close political friendship with this alleged delinquent
during the greater part of that long time. Mr. Calhoun saw at once
the advantage which this general and sweeping assault put into his
hands. Had the attack been confined to the mere circumstance of
quitting one side and joining the other, it might have been treated
as a mere personality; and, either left unnoticed, or the account
settled at once with some ready words of retort and justification.
But in going beyond the act which gave the offence--beyond the
cause of resentment, which was recent, and arraigning a member on
the events of almost a quarter of a century of public life, he
went beyond the limits of the occasion, and gave Mr. Calhoun the
opportunity of explaining, or justifying, or excusing all that
had ever been objected to him; and that with the sympathy in the
audience with which attack for ever invests the rights of defence.
He saw his advantage, and availed himself of it. Though prompt at a
reply, he chose to make none in a hurry. A pause ensued Mr. Clay's
conclusion, every one deferring to Mr. Calhoun's right of reply. He
took the floor, but it was only to say that he would reply at his
leisure to the senator from Kentucky.
He did reply, and at his own good time, which was at the end of
twenty days; and in a way to show that he had "smelt the lamp," not
of Demades, but of Demosthenes, during that time. It was profoundly
meditated and elaborately composed: the matter solid and condensed;
the style chaste, terse and vigorous; the narrative clear; the
logic close; the sarcasm cutting: and every word bearing upon the
object in view. It was a masterly oration, and like Mr. Clay's
speech, divided into two parts; but the second part only seemed
to occupy his feelings, and bring forth words from the heart as
well as from the head. And well it might! He was speaking, not
for life, but for character! and defending public character, in
the conduct which makes it, and on high points of policy, which
belonged to history--defending it before posterity and the present
age, impersonated in the American Senate, before which he stood,
and to whom he appealed as judges while invoking as witnesses.
He had a high occasion, and he felt it; a high tribunal to plead
before, and he rejoiced in it; a high accuser, and he defied him;
a high stake to contend for, his own reputation: and manfully,
earnestly, and powerfully did he defend it. He had a high example
both in oratory, and in the analogies of the occasion, before him;
and well had he looked into that example. I happened to know that
in this time he refreshed his reading of the Oration on the Crown;
and, as the delivery of his speech showed, not without profit.
Besides its general cast, which was a good imitation, there were
passages of a vigor and terseness--of a power and simplicity--which
would recall the recollection of that masterpiece of the oratory
of the world. There were points of analogy in the cases as well
as in the speeches, each case being that of one eminent statesman
accusing another, and before a national tribunal, and upon the
events of a public life. More happy than the Athenian orator, the
American statesman had no foul imputations to repel. Different from
Æschines and Demosthenes, both himself and Mr. Clay stood above
the imputation of corrupt action or motive. If they had faults,
and what public man is without them? they were the faults of lofty
natures--not of sordid souls; and they looked to the honors of their
country--not its plunder--for their fair reward.
When Mr. Calhoun finished, Mr. Clay instantly arose, and
rejoined--his rejoinder almost entirely directed to the personal
part of the discussion, which from its beginning had been the
absorbing part. Much stung by Mr. Calhoun's reply, who used the
sword as well as the buckler, and with a keen edge upon it, he was
more animated and sarcastic in the rejoinder than in the first
attack. Mr. Calhoun also rejoined instantly. A succession of brief
and rapid rejoinders took place between them (chiefly omitted in
this work), which seemed running to infinity, when Mr. Calhoun,
satisfied with what he had done, pleasantly put an end to it by
saying, he saw the senator from Kentucky was determined to have
the last word; and he would yield it to him. Mr. Clay, in the same
spirit, disclaimed that desire; and said no more. And thus the
exciting debate terminated with more courtesy than that with which
it had been conducted.
In all contests of this kind there is a feeling of violated decorum
which makes each party solicitous to appear on the defensive, and
for that purpose to throw the blame of commencing on the opposite
side. Even the one that palpably throws the first stone is yet
anxious to show that it was a defensive throw; or at least provoked
by previous wrong. Mr. Clay had this feeling upon him, and knew that
the _onus_ of making out a defensive case fell upon him; and he
lost no time in endeavoring to establish it. He placed his defence
in the forepart of the attack. At the very outset of the personal
part of his speech he attended to this essential preliminary, and
found the justification, as he believed, in some expressions of Mr.
Calhoun in his sub-treasury speech; and in a couple of passages
in a letter he had written on a public occasion, after his return
from the extra session--commonly called the Edgefield letter. In
the speech he believed he found a reproach upon the patriotism of
himself and friends in not following his (Mr. Calhoun's) "_lead_"
in support of the administration financial and currency measures;
and in the letter, an impeachment of the integrity and patriotism
of himself and friends if they got into power; and also an avowal
that his change of sides was for selfish considerations. The first
reproach, that of lack of patriotism in not following Mr. Calhoun's
lead, he found it hard to locate in any definite part of the
speech; and had to rest it upon general expressions. The others,
those founded upon passages in the letter, were definitely quoted;
and were in these terms: "_I could not back and sustain those in
such opposition in whose wisdom, firmness and patriotism I had no
reason to confide."--"It was clear, with our joint forces (whigs
and nullifiers) we could utterly overthrow and demolish them; but
it was not less clear that the victory would enure, not to us, but
exclusively to the benefit of our allies, and their cause._" These
passages were much commented upon, especially in the rejoinders; and
the whole letter produced by Mr. Calhoun, and the meaning claimed
for them fully stated by him.
In the speeches for and against the crown we see Demosthenes
answering what has not been found in the speech of Eschines: the
same anomaly took place in this earnest debate, as reported between
Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun. The latter answers much which is not found
in the published speech to which he is replying. It gave rise to
some remark between the speakers during the rejoinders. Mr. Calhoun
said he was replying to the speech as spoken. Mr. Clay said it was
printed under his supervision--as much as to say he sanctioned the
omissions. The fact is, that with a commendable feeling, he had
softened some parts, and omitted others; for that which is severe
enough in speaking, becomes more so in writing; and its omission
or softening is a tacit retraction, and honorable to the cool
reflection which condemns what passion, or heat, had prompted. But
Mr. Calhoun did not accept the favor: and, neither party desiring
quarter, the one answered what had been dropt, and the other
re-produced it, with interest. In his rejoinders, Mr. Clay supplied
all that had been omitted--and made additions to it.
This contest between two eminent men, on a theatre so elevated, in
which the stake to each was so great, and in which each did his
best, conscious that the eye of the age and of posterity was upon
him, was an event in itself, and in their lives. It abounded with
exemplifications of all the different sorts of oratory of which
each was master: on one side--declamation, impassioned eloquence,
vehement invective, taunting sarcasm: on the other--close reasoning,
chaste narrative, clear statement, keen retort. Two accessories
of such contests (disruptions of friendships), were missing,
and well--the pathetic and the virulent. There was no crying, or
blackguarding in it--nothing like the weeping scene between Fox and
Burke, when the heart overflowed with tenderness at the recollection
of former love, now gone forever; nor like the virulent one when the
gall, overflowing with bitterness, warned an ancient friend never to
return as a spy to the camp which he had left as a deserter.
There were in the speeches of each some remarkable passages, such
only as actors in the scenes could furnish, and which history will
claim. Thus: Mr. Clay gave some inside views of the concoction
of the famous compromise act of 1833; which, so far as they go,
correspond with the secret history of the same concoction as given
in one of the chapters on that subject in the first volume of this
work. Mr. Clay's speech is also remarkable for the declaration
that the protective system, which he so long advocated, was never
intended to be permanent: that its only design was to give temporary
encouragement to infant manufactures: and that it had fulfilled its
mission. Mr. Calhoun's speech was also remarkable for admitting
the power, and the expediency of incidental protection, as it was
called; and on this ground he justified his support of the tariff
of 1816--so much objected against him. He also gave his history
of the compromise of 1833, attributing it to the efficacy of
nullification and of the military attitude of South Carolina: which
brought upon him the relentless sarcasm of Mr. Clay; and occasioned
his explanation of his support of a national bank in 1816. He was
chairman of the committee which reported the charter for that bank,
and gave it the support which carried it through; with which he
was reproached after he became opposed to the bank. He explained
the circumstances under which he gave that support--such as I had
often heard him state in conversation; and which always appeared
to me to be sufficient to exempt him from reproach. At the same
time (and what is but little known), he had the merit of opposing,
and probably of defeating, a far more dangerous bank--one of fifty
millions (equivalent to one hundred and twenty millions now),
and founded almost wholly upon United States stocks--imposingly
recommended to Congress by the then secretary of the Treasury, Mr.
Alexander J. Dallas. The analytical mind of Mr. Calhoun, then one
of the youngest members, immediately solved this monster proposition
into its constituent elements; and his power of generalization
and condensation, enabled him to express its character in two
words--_lending our credit to the bank for nothing, and borrowing
it back at six per cent. interest_. As an alternative, and not
as a choice, he supported the national bank that was chartered,
after twice defeating the monster bank of fifty millions founded
on paper; for that monster was twice presented to Congress, and
twice repulsed. The last time it came as a currency measure--as a
bank to create a national currency; and as such was referred to a
select committee on national currency, of which Mr. Calhoun was
chairman. He opposed it, and fell into the support of the bank
which was chartered. Strange that in this search for a national
bank, the currency of the constitution seemed to enter no one's
head. The revival of the gold currency was never suggested; and in
that oblivion of gold, and still hunting a substitute in paper, the
men who put down the first national bank did their work much less
effectually that those who put down the second one.
The speech of each of these senators, so far as they constitute
the personal part of the debate, will be given in a chapter of its
own: the rejoinders being brief, prompt, and responsive each to
the other, will be put together in another chapter. The speeches
of each, having been carefully prepared and elaborated, may be
considered as fair specimens of their speaking powers--the style
of each different, but each a first class speaker in the branch of
oratory to which he belonged. They may be read with profit by those
who would wish to form an idea of the style and power of these
eminent orators. Manner, and all that is comprehended under the head
of delivery, is a different attribute; and there Mr. Clay had an
advantage, which is lost in transferring the speech to paper. Some
of Mr. Calhoun's characteristics of manner may be seen in these
speeches. He eschewed the studied exordiums and perorations, once
so much in vogue, and which the rhetorician's rules teach how to
make. A few simple words to announce the beginning, and the same to
show the ending of his speech, was about as much as he did in that
way; and in that departure from custom he conformed to what was
becoming in a business speech, as his generally were; and also to
what was suitable to his own intellectual style of speaking. He also
eschewed the trite, familiar, and unparliamentary mode (which of
late has got into vogue) of referring to a senator as, "my friend,"
or, "the distinguished," or, "the eloquent," or, "the honorable,"
&c. He followed the written rule of parliamentary law; which is
also the clear rule of propriety, and referred to the member by his
sitting-place in the Senate, and the State from which he came. Thus:
"the senator from Kentucky who sits farthest from me;" which was a
sufficient designation to those present, while for the absent, and
for posterity the name (Mr. Clay) would be put in brackets. He also
addressed the body by the simple collective phrase, "senators;"
and this was, not accident, or fancy, but system, resulting from
convictions of propriety; and he would allow no reporter to alter it.
Mr. Calhoun laid great stress upon his speech in this debate, as
being the vindication of his public life; and declared, in one of
his replies to Mr. Clay, that he rested his public character upon
it, and desired it to be read by those who would do him justice. In
justice to him, and as being a vindication of several measures of
his mentioned in this work, not approvingly, a place is here given
to it.
This discussion between two eminent men, growing out of support
and opposition to the leading measures of Mr. Van Buren's
administration, indissolubly connects itself with the passage of
those measures; and gives additional emphasis and distinction to the
era of the crowning policy which separated bank and state--made the
government the keeper of its own money--repulsed paper money from
the federal treasury--filled the treasury to bursting with solid
gold; and did more for the prosperity of the country than any set of
measures from the foundation of the government.
CHAPTER XXVI.
DEBATE BETWEEN MR. CLAY AND MR. CALHOUN: MR. CLAY'S SPEECH:
EXTRACTS.
"Who, Mr. President, are the most conspicuous of those who
perseveringly pressed this bill upon Congress and the American
people? Its drawer is the distinguished gentleman in the white house
not far off (Mr. VAN BUREN); its indorser is the distinguished
senator from South Carolina, here present. What the drawer thinks
of the indorser, his cautious reserve and stifled enmity prevent us
from knowing. But the frankness of the indorser has not left us in
the same ignorance with respect to his opinion of the drawer. He has
often expressed it upon the floor of the Senate. On an occasion not
very distant, denying him any of the noble qualities of the royal
beast of the forest, he attributed to him those which belong to the
most crafty, most skulking, and the meanest of the quadruped tribe.
Mr. President, it is due to myself to say, that I do not altogether
share with the senator from South Carolina in this opinion of the
President of the United States. I have always found him, in his
manners and deportment, civil, courteous, and gentlemanly; and he
dispenses, in the noble mansion which he now occupies, one worthy
the residence of the chief magistrate of a great people, a generous
and liberal hospitality. An acquaintance with him of more than
twenty years' duration has inspired me with a respect for the man,
although, I regret to be compelled to say, I detest the magistrate.
"The eloquent senator from South Carolina has intimated that
the course of my friends and myself, in opposing this bill, was
unpatriotic, and that we ought to have followed in his lead; and,
in a late letter of his, he has spoken of his alliance with us,
and of his motives for quitting it. I cannot admit the justice of
his reproach. We united, if, indeed, there were any alliance in
the case, to restrain the enormous expansion of executive power;
to arrest the progress of corruption; to rebuke usurpation; and to
drive the Goths and Vandals from the capital; to expel Brennus and
his horde from Rome, who, when he threw his sword into the scale, to
augment the ransom demanded from the mistress of the world, showed
his preference for gold; that he was a hard-money chieftain. It was
by the much more valuable metal of iron that he was driven from
her gates. And how often have we witnessed the senator from South
Carolina, with woful countenance, and in doleful strains, pouring
forth touching and mournful eloquence on the degeneracy of the
times, and the downward tendency of the republic? Day after day, in
the Senate, have we seen the displays of his lofty and impassioned
eloquence. Although I shared largely with the senator in his
apprehension for the purity of our institutions, and the permanency
of our civil liberty, disposed always to look at the brighter side
of human affairs, I was sometimes inclined to hope that the vivid
imagination of the senator had depicted the dangers by which we were
encompassed in somewhat stronger colors than they justified.
"The arduous contest in which we were so long engaged was about
to terminate in a glorious victory. The very object for which the
alliance was formed was about to be accomplished. At this critical
moment the senator left us; he left us for the very purpose of
preventing the success of the common cause. He took up his musket,
knapsack, and shot-pouch, and joined the other party. He went,
horse, foot, and dragoon; and he himself composed the whole corps.
He went, as his present most distinguished ally commenced with his
expunging resolution, _solitary and alone_. The earliest instance
recorded in history, within my recollection, of an ally drawing
off his forces from the combined army, was that of Achilles at the
siege of Troy. He withdrew, with all his troops, and remained in
the neighborhood, in sullen and dignified inactivity. But he did
not join the Trojan forces; and when, during the progress of the
siege, his faithful friend fell in battle, he raised his avenging
arm, drove the Trojans back into the gates of Troy, and satiated his
vengeance by slaying Priam's noblest and dearest son, the finest
hero in the immortal Iliad. But Achilles had been wronged, or
imagined himself wronged, in the person of the fair and beautiful
Briseis. We did no wrong to the distinguished senator from South
Carolina. On the contrary, we respected him, confided in his great
and acknowledged ability, his uncommon genius, his extensive
experience, his supposed patriotism; above all, we confided in
his stern and inflexible fidelity. Nevertheless, he left us, and
joined our common opponents, distrusting and distrusted. He left
us, as he tells us in the Edgefield letter, because the victory
which our common arms were about to achieve, was not to enure to
him and his party, but exclusively to the benefit of his allies and
their cause. I thought that, actuated by patriotism (that noblest
of human virtues), we had been contending together for our common
country, for her violated rights, her threatened liberties, her
prostrate constitution. Never did I suppose that personal or party
considerations entered into our views. Whether, if victory shall
ever again be about to perch upon the standard of the spoils party
(the denomination which the senator from South Carolina has so often
given to his present allies), he will not feel himself constrained,
by the principles on which he has acted, to leave them, because it
may not enure to the benefit of himself and his party, I leave to
be adjusted between themselves.
"The speech of the senator from South Carolina was plausible,
ingenious, abstract, metaphysical, and generalizing. It did not
appear to me to be adapted to the bosoms and business of human life.
It was aerial, and not very high up in the air, Mr. President,
either--not quite as high as Mr. Clayton was in his last ascension
in his balloon. The senator announced that there was a single
alternative, and no escape from one or the other branch of it.
He stated that we must take the bill under consideration, or the
substitute proposed by the senator from Virginia. I do not concur
in that statement of the case. There is another course embraced in
neither branch of the senator's alternative; and that course is to
do nothing,--always the wisest when you are not certain what you
ought to do. Let us suppose that neither branch of the alternative
is accepted, and that nothing is done. What, then, would be the
consequence? There would be a restoration of the law of 1789, with
all its cautious provisions and securities, provided by the wisdom
of our ancestors, which has been so trampled upon by the late and
present administrations. By that law, establishing the Treasury
department, the treasure of the United States is to be received,
kept, and disbursed by the treasurer, under a bond with ample
security, under a large penalty fixed by law, and not left, as this
bill leaves it, to the uncertain discretion of a Secretary of the
Treasury. If, therefore, we were to do nothing, that law would be
revived; the treasurer would have the custody, as he ought to have,
of the public money, and doubtless he would make special deposits
of it in all instances with safe and sound State banks; as in some
cases the Secretary of the Treasury is now obliged to do. Thus, we
should have in operation that very special deposit system, so much
desired by some gentlemen, by which the public money would remain
separate and unmixed with the money of banks.
"There is yet another course, unembraced by either branch of the
alternative presented by the senator from South Carolina; and that
is, to establish a bank of the United States, constituted according
to the old and approved method of forming such an institution,
tested and sanctioned by experience; a bank of the United States
which should blend public and private interests, and be subject
to public and private control; united together in such manner
as to present safe and salutary checks against all abuses. The
senator mistakes his own abandonment of that institution as ours.
I know that the party in power has barricaded itself against the
establishment of such a bank. It adopted, at the last extra session,
the extraordinary and unprecedented resolution, that the people of
the United States should not have such a bank, although it might be
manifest that there was a clear majority of them demanding it. But
the day may come, and I trust is not distant, when the will of the
people must prevail in the councils of her own government; and when
it does arrive, a bank will be established.
"The senator from South Carolina reminds us that we denounced the
pet bank system; and so we did, and so we do. But does it therefore
follow that, bad as that system was, we must be driven into the
acceptance of a system infinitely worse? He tells us that the bill
under consideration takes the public funds out of the hands of the
Executive, and places them in the hands of the law. It does no such
thing. They are now without law, it is true, in the custody of the
Executive; and the bill proposes by law to confirm them in that
custody, and to convey new and enormous powers of control to the
Executive over them. Every custodary of the public funds provided
by the bill is a creature of the Executive, dependent upon his
breath, and subject to the same breath for removal, whenever the
Executive--from caprice, from tyranny, or from party motives--shall
choose to order it. What safety is there for the public money,
if there were a hundred subordinate executive officers charged
with its care, whilst the doctrine of the absolute unity of the
whole executive power, promulgated by the last administration, and
persisted in by this, remains unrevoked and unrebuked?
"Whilst the senator from South Carolina professes to be the friend
of State banks, he has attacked the whole banking system of the
United States. He is their friend; he only thinks they are all
unconstitutional! Why? Because the coining power is possessed by the
general government; and that coining power, he argues, was intended
to supply a currency of the precious metals; but the State banks
absorb the precious metals, and withdraw them from circulation,
and, therefore, are in conflict with the coining power. That power,
according to my view of it, is nothing but a naked authority to
stamp certain pieces of the precious metals, in fixed proportions of
alloy and pure metal prescribed by law; so that their exact value
be known. When that office is performed, the power is _functus
officio_; the money passes out of the mint, and becomes the lawful
property of those who legally acquire it. They may do with it as
they please,--throw it into the ocean, bury it in the earth, or melt
it in a crucible, without violating any law. When it has once left
the vaults of the mint, the law maker has nothing to do with it, but
to protect it against those who attempt to debase or counterfeit,
and, subsequently, to pass it as lawful money. In the sense in which
the senator supposes banks to conflict with the coining power,
foreign commerce, and especially our commerce with China, conflicts
with it much more extensively.
"The distinguished senator is no enemy to the banks; he merely
thinks them injurious to the morals and industry of the country.
He likes them very well, but he nevertheless believes that they
levy a tax of twenty-five millions annually on the industry of the
country! The senator from South Carolina would do the banks no
harm; but they are deemed by him highly injurious to the planting
interest! According to him, they inflate prices, and the poor
planter sells his productions for hard money, and has to purchase
his supplies at the swollen prices produced by a paper medium. The
senator tells us that it has been only within a few days that he
has discovered that it is illegal to receive bank notes in payment
of public dues. Does he think that the usage of the government
under all its administrations, and with every party in power,
which has prevailed for nigh fifty years, ought to be set aside
by a novel theory of his, just dreamed into existence, even if it
possess the merit of ingenuity? The bill under consideration, which
has been eulogized by the senator as perfect in its structure and
details, contains a provision that bank notes shall be received
in diminished proportions, during a term of six years. He himself
introduced the identical principle. It is the only part of the bill
that is emphatically his. How, then, can he contend that it is
unconstitutional to receive bank notes in payment of public dues? I
appeal from himself to himself."
"The doctrine of the senator in 1816 was, as he now states
it, that bank notes being in fact received by the executive,
although contrary to law, it was constitutional to create a Bank
of the United States. And in 1834, finding that bank which was
constitutional in its inception, but had become unconstitutional
in its progress, yet in existence, it was quite constitutional to
propose, as the senator did, to continue it twelve years longer."
"The senator and I began our public career nearly together; we
remained together throughout the war. We agreed as to a Bank of
the United States--as to a protective tariff--as to internal
improvements; and lately as to those arbitrary and violent measures
which characterized the administration of General Jackson. No two
men ever agreed better together in respect to important measures of
public policy. We concur in nothing now."
CHAPTER XXVII.
DEBATE BETWEEN MR. CLAY AND MR. CALHOUN: MR. CALHOUN'S SPEECH;
EXTRACTS.
"I rise to fulfil a promise I made some time since, to notice at
my leisure the reply of the senator from Kentucky farthest from me
[Mr CLAY], to my remarks, when I first addressed the Senate on the
subject now under discussion.
"On comparing with care the reply with the remarks, I am at a loss
to determine whether it is the most remarkable for its omissions
or misstatements. Instead of leaving not a hair in the head of my
arguments, as the senator threatened (to use his not very dignified
expression), he has not even attempted to answer a large, and not
the least weighty, portion; and of that which he has, there is
not one fairly stated, or fairly answered. I speak literally, and
without exaggeration; nor would it be difficult to establish to the
letter what I assert, if I could reconcile it to myself to consume
the time of the Senate in establishing a long series of negative
propositions, in which they could take but little interest, however
important they may be regarded by the senator and myself. To avoid
so idle a consumption of the time, I propose to present a few
instances of his misstatements, from which the rest may be inferred;
and, that I may not be suspected of having selected them, I shall
take them in the order in which they stand in his reply.
[The argumentative part omitted.]
"But the senator did not restrict himself to a reply to my
arguments. He introduced personal remarks, which neither
self-respect, nor a regard to the cause I support, will permit
me to pass without notice, as adverse as I am to all personal
controversies. Not only my education and disposition, but, above
all, my conception of the duties belonging to the station I occupy,
indisposes me to such controversies. We are sent here, not to
wrangle, or indulge in personal abuse, but to deliberate and decide
on the common interests of the States of this Union, as far as they
have been subjected by the constitution to our jurisdiction. Thus
thinking and feeling, and having perfect confidence in the cause
I support, I addressed myself, when I was last up, directly and
exclusively to the understanding, carefully avoiding every remark
which had the least personal or party bearing. In proof of this, I
appeal to you, senators, my witnesses and judges on this occasion.
But it seems that no caution on my part could prevent what I was so
anxious to avoid. The senator, having no pretext to give a personal
direction to the discussion, made a premeditated and gratuitous
attack on me. I say having no pretext; for there is not a shadow
of foundation for the assertion that I called on him and his party
to follow my lead, at which he seemed to take offence, as I have
already shown. I made no such call, or any thing that could be
construed into it. It would have been impertinent, in the relation
between myself and his party, at any stage of this question; and
absurd at that late period, when every senator had made up his
mind. As there was, then, neither provocation nor pretext, what
could be the motive of the senator in making the attack? It could
not be to indulge in the pleasure of personal abuse--the lowest
and basest of all our passions; and which is so far beneath the
dignity of the senator's character and station. Nor could it be
with the view to intimidation. The senator knows me too long, and
too well, to make such an attempt. I am sent here by constituents
as respectable as those he represents, in order to watch over their
peculiar interests, and take care of the general concern; and if I
were capable of being deterred by any one, or any consequence, in
discharging my duty, from denouncing what I regarded as dangerous or
corrupt, or giving a decided and zealous support to what I thought
right and expedient, I would, in shame and confusion, return my
commission to the patriotic and gallant State I represent, to be
placed in more resolute and trustworthy hands.
"If, then, neither the one nor the other of these be the motive,
what, I repeat, can it be? In casting my eyes over the whole surface
I can see but one, which is, that the senator, despairing of the
sufficiency of his reply to overthrow my arguments, had resorted to
personalities, in the hope, with their aid, to effect what he could
not accomplish by main strength. He well knows that the force of
an argument on moral or political subjects depends greatly on the
character of him who advanced it; and that to cast suspicion on his
sincerity or motive, or to shake confidence in his understanding, is
often the most effectual mode to destroy its force. Thus viewed, his
personalities may be fairly regarded as constituting a part of his
reply to my argument; and we, accordingly, find the senator throwing
them in front, like a skilful general, in order to weaken my
arguments before he brought on his main attack. In repelling, then,
his personal attacks, I also defend the cause which I advocate. It
is against that his blows are aimed and he strikes at it through me,
because he believes his blows will be the more effectual.
"Having given this direction to his reply, he has imposed on me a
double duty to repel his attacks: duty to myself, and to the cause
I support. I shall not decline its performance; and when it is
discharged, I trust I shall have placed my character as far beyond
the darts which he has hurled at it, as my arguments have proved
to be above his abilities to reply to them. In doing this, I shall
be compelled to speak of myself. No one can be more sensible than
I am how odious it is to speak of one's self. I shall endeavor to
confine myself within the limits of the strictest propriety; but if
any thing should escape me that may wound the most delicate ear,
the odium ought in justice to fall not on me, but the senator, who,
by his unprovoked and wanton attack, has imposed on me the painful
necessity of speaking of myself.
"The leading charge of the senator--that on which all the others
depend, and which, being overthrown, they fall to the ground--is
that I have gone over; have left his side, and joined the other. By
this vague and indefinite expression, I presume he meant to imply
that I had either changed my opinion, or abandoned my principle,
or deserted my party. If he did not mean one, or all; if I have
changed neither opinions, principles, nor party, then the charge
meant nothing deserving notice. But if he intended to imply, what
I have presumed he did, I take issue on the fact--I meet and repel
the charge. It happened, fortunately for me, fortunately for the
cause of truth and justice, that it was not the first time that I
had offered my sentiments on the question now under consideration.
There is scarcely a single point in the present issue on which I
did not explicitly express my opinion, four years ago, in my place
here, when the removal of the deposits and the questions connected
with it were under discussion--so explicitly as to repel effectually
the charge of any change on my part; and to make it impossible for
me to pursue any other course than I have without involving myself
in gross inconsistency. I intend not to leave so important a point
to rest on my bare assertion. What I assert stands on record, which
I now hold in my possession, and intend, at the proper time, to
introduce and read. But, before I do that, it will be proper I
should state the questions now at issue, and my course in relation
to them; so that, having a clear and distinct perception of them,
you may, senators, readily and satisfactorily compare and determine
whether my course on the present occasion coincides with the
opinions I then expressed.
"There are three questions, as is agreed by all, involved in the
present issue: Shall we separate the government from the banks, or
shall we revive the league of State banks, or create a national
bank? My opinion and course in reference to each are well known.
I prefer the separation to either of the others; and, as between
the other two, I regard a national bank as a more efficient, and
a less corrupting fiscal agent than a league of State banks. It
is also well known that I have expressed myself on the present
occasion hostile to the banking system, as it exists; and against
the constitutional power of making a bank, unless on the assumption
that we have the right to receive and treat bank-notes as cash in
our fiscal operations, which I, for the first time, have denied on
the present occasion. Now, I entertained and expressed all these
opinions, on a different occasion, four years ago, except the right
of receiving bank-notes, in regard to which I then reserved my
opinion; and if all this should be fully and clearly established
by the record, from speeches delivered and published at the time,
the charge of the senator must, in the opinion of all, however
prejudiced, sink to the ground. I am now prepared to introduce, and
have the record read. I delivered two speeches in the session of
1833-'34, one on the removal of the deposits, and the other on the
question of the renewal of the charter of the late bank. I ask the
secretary to turn to the volume lying before him, and read the three
paragraphs marked in my speech on the deposits. I will thank him
to raise his voice, and read slowly, so that he may be distinctly
heard; and I must ask you, senators, to give your attentive hearing;
for on the coincidence between my opinions then and my course now,
my vindication against this unprovoked and groundless charge rests.
"[The secretary of the Senate read as requested.]
"Such were my sentiments, delivered four years since, on the
question of the removal of the deposits, and now standing on record;
and I now call your attention senators, while they are fresh in
your minds, and before other extracts are read, to the opinions I
then entertained and expressed, in order that you may compare them
with those that I have expressed, and the course I have pursued on
the present occasion. In the first place, I then expressed myself
explicitly and decidedly against the banking system, and intimated,
in language too strong to be mistaken, that, if the question
was then bank or no bank, as it now is, as far as government is
concerned, I would not be found on the side of the bank. Now, I
ask, I appeal to the candor of all, even the most prejudiced, is
there any thing in all this contradictory to my present opinions
or course? On the contrary, having entertained and expressed these
opinions, could I, at this time, when the issue I then supposed
is actually presented, have gone against the separation without
gross inconsistency? Again, I then declared myself to be utterly
opposed to a combination or league of State banks, as being the
most efficient and corrupting fiscal agent the government could
select, and more objectionable than a bank of the United States.
I again appeal, is there a sentiment or a word in all this
contradictory to what I have said, or done, on the present occasion?
So far otherwise, is there not a perfect harmony and coincidence
throughout, which, considering the distance of time and the
difference of the occasion, is truly remarkable; and this extending
to all the great and governing questions now at issue?
"To prove all this I again refer to the record. If it shall appear
from it that my object was to disconnect the government gradually
and cautiously from the banking system, and with that view, and
that only, I proposed to use the Bank of the United States for a
short time, and that I explicitly expressed the same opinions then
as I now have on almost every point connected with the system; I
shall not only have vindicated my character from the charge of the
senator from Kentucky, but shall do more, much more to show that
I did all an individual, standing alone, as I did, could do to
avert the present calamities: and, of course, I am free from all
responsibility for what has since happened. I have shortened the
extracts, as far as was possible to do justice to myself, and have
left out much that ought, of right, to be read in my defence, rather
than to weary the Senate. I know how difficult it is to command
attention to reading of documents; but I trust that this, where
justice to a member of the body, whose character has been assailed,
without the least provocation, will form an exception. The extracts
are numbered, and I will thank the secretary to pause at the end of
each, unless otherwise desired.
"[The secretary read as requested.]
"But the removal of the deposits was not the only question discussed
at that remarkable and important session. The charter of the United
States Bank was then about to expire. The senator from Massachusetts
nearest to me [Mr. WEBSTER], then at the head of the committee on
finance, suggested, in his place, that he intended to introduce a
bill to renew the charter. I clearly perceived that the movement, if
made, would fail; and that there was no prospect of doing any thing
to arrest the danger approaching, unless the subject was taken up
on the broad question of the currency; and that if any connection
of the government with the banks could be justified at all, it must
be in that relation. I am not among those who believe that the
currency was in a sound condition when the deposits were removed
in 1834. I then believed, and experience has proved I was correct,
that it was deeply and dangerously diseased; and that the most
efficient measures were necessary to prevent the catastrophe which
has since fallen on the circulation of the country. There was then
not more than one dollar in specie, on an average, in the banks,
including the United States Bank and all, for six of bank notes in
circulation; and not more than one in eleven compared to liabilities
of the banks; and this while the United States Bank was in full and
active operation; which proves conclusively that its charter ought
not to be renewed, if renewed at all, without great modifications.
I saw also that the expansion of the circulation, great as it then
was, must still farther increase; that the disease lay deep in the
system; that the terms on which the charter of the Bank of England
was renewed would give a western direction to specie, which, instead
of correcting the disorder, by substituting specie for bank notes in
our circulation, would become the basis of new banking operations
that would greatly increase the swelling tide. Such were my
conceptions then, and I honestly and earnestly endeavored to carry
them into effect, in order to prevent the approaching catastrophe.
"The political and personal relations between myself and the senator
from Massachusetts [Mr. WEBSTER], were then not the kindest. We
stood in opposition at the preceding session on the great question
growing out of the conflict between the State I represented and
the general government, which could not pass away without leaving
unfriendly feelings on both sides; but where duty is involved, I am
not in the habit of permitting my personal relations to interfere.
In my solicitude to avoid coming dangers, I sought an interview,
through a common friend, in order to compare opinions as to the
proper course to be pursued. We met, and conversed freely and fully,
but parted without agreeing. I expressed to him my deep regret
at our disagreement, and informed him that, although I could not
agree with him, I would throw no embarrassment in his way; but
should feel it to be my duty, when he made his motion to introduce
a bill to renew the charter of the bank, to express my opinion
at large on the state of the currency and the proper course to
be pursued; which I accordingly did. On that memorable occasion
I stood almost alone. One party supported the league of State
banks, and the other the United States Bank, the charter of which
the senator from Massachusetts [Mr. WEBSTER.] proposed to renew
for six years. Nothing was left me but to place myself distinctly
before the country on the ground I occupied, which I did fully and
explicitly in the speech I delivered on the occasion. In justice
to myself, I ought to have every word of it read on the present
occasion. It would of itself be a full vindication of my course.
I stated and enlarged on all the points to which I have already
referred; objected to the recharter as proposed by the mover; and
foretold that what has since happened would follow, unless something
effectual was done to prevent it. As a remedy, I proposed to use the
Bank of the United States as a temporary expedient, fortified with
strong guards, in order to resist and turn back the swelling tide of
circulation.
"After having so expressed myself, which clearly shows that my
object was to use the bank for a time in such a manner as to break
the connection with the system, without a shock to the country or
currency, I then proceed and examine the question, whether this
could be best accomplished by the renewal of the charter of the
United States Bank, or through a league of State banks. After
concluding what I had to say on the subject, in my deep solicitude
I addressed the three parties in the Senate separately, urging
such motives as I thought best calculated to act on them; and
pressing them to join me in the measure suggested, in order to avert
approaching danger. I began with my friends of the State rights
party, and with the administration. I have taken copious extracts
from the address to the first, which will clearly prove how exactly
my opinions then and now coincide on all questions connected with
the banks. I now ask the secretary to read the extract numbered two.
"[The secretary read accordingly.]
"I regret to trespass on the patience of the Senate, but I wish,
in justice to myself, to ask their attention to one more, which,
though not immediately relating to the question under consideration,
is not irrelevant to my vindication. I not only expressed my
opinions freely in relation to the currency and the bank, in the
speech from which such copious extracts have been read, but had the
precaution to define my political position distinctly in reference
to the political parties of the day, and the course I would pursue
in relation to each. I then, as now, belonged to the party to
which it is my glory ever to have been attached exclusively; and
avowed, explicitly, that I belonged to neither of the two parties,
opposition or administration, then contending for superiority; which
of itself ought to go far to repel the charge of the senator from
Kentucky, that I have gone over from one party to the other. The
secretary will read the last extract.
"[The secretary read.]
"Such, senators, are my recorded sentiments in 1834. They are full
and explicit on all the questions involved in the present issue,
and prove, beyond the possibility of doubt, that I have changed no
opinion, abandoned no principle, nor deserted any party. I stand now
on the ground I stood then, and, of course, if my relations to the
two opposing parties are changed--if I now act with those I then
opposed, and oppose those with whom I then acted, the change is
not in me. I, at least, have stood still. In saying this, I accuse
none of changing. I leave others to explain their position, now and
then, if they deem explanation necessary. But, if I may be permitted
to state my opinion, I would say that the change is rather in the
questions and the circumstances, than in the opinions or principles
of either of the parties. The opposition were then, and are now,
national bank men, and the administration, in like manner, were
anti-national bank, and in favor of a league of State banks; while
I preferred then, as now, the former to the latter, and a divorce
from banks to either. When the experiment of the league failed, the
administration were reduced to the option between a national bank
and a divorce. They chose the latter, and such, I have no reason
to doubt, would have been their choice, had the option been the
same four years ago. Nor have I any doubt, had the option been then
between a league of banks and divorce, the opposition then, as now,
would have been in favor of the league. In all this there is more
apparent than real change. As to myself, there has been neither. If
I acted with the opposition and opposed the administration then, it
was because I was openly opposed to the removal of the deposits and
the league of banks, as I now am; and if I now act with the latter
and oppose the former, it is because I am now, as then, in favor
of a divorce, and opposed to either a league of State banks or a
national bank, except, indeed, as the means of effecting a divorce
gradually and safely. What, then, is my offence? What but refusing
to abandon my first choice, the divorce from the banks, because the
administration has selected it, and of going with the opposition for
a national bank, to which I have been and am still opposed? That is
all; and for this I am charged with going over--leaving one party
and joining the other.
"Yet, in the face of all this, the senator has not only made the
charge, but has said, in his place, that he heard, for the first
time in his life, at the extra session, that I was opposed to a
national bank! I could place the senator in a dilemma from which
there is no possibility of escape. I might say to him, you have
either forgot, or not, what I said in 1834. If you have not, how
can you justify yourself in making the charge you have? But if you
have--if you have forgot what is so recent, and what, from the
magnitude of the question and the importance of the occasion, was
so well calculated to impress itself on your memory, what possible
value can be attached to your recollection or opinions, as to my
course on more remote and less memorable occasions, on which you
have undertaken to impeach my conduct? He may take his choice.
"Having now established by the record that I have changed no
opinion, abandoned no principle, nor deserted any party, the charge
of the senator, with all the aspersions with which he accompanied
it, falls prostrate to the earth. Here I might leave the subject,
and close my vindication. But I choose not. I shall follow the
senator up, step by step, in his unprovoked, and I may now add,
groundless attack, with blows not less decisive and victorious.
"The senator next proceeded to state, that in a certain document
(if he named it, I did not hear him) I assigned as the reason why I
could not join in the attack on the administration, that the benefit
of the victory would not enure to myself, or my party; or, as he
explained himself, because it would not place myself and them in
power. I presume he referred to a letter, in answer to an invitation
to a public dinner, offered me by my old and faithful friends and
constituents of Edgefield, in approbation of my course at the extra
session.
"[Mr. CLAY. I do.]
"The pressure of domestic engagements would not permit me to accept
their invitation; and, in declining it, I deemed it due to them and
myself to explain my course, in its political and party bearing,
more fully than I had done in debate. They had a right to know my
reasons, and I expressed myself with the frankness due to the long
and uninterrupted confidence that had ever existed between us.
"Having made these explanatory remarks, I now proceed to meet
the assertion of the senator. I again take issue on the fact. I
assigned no such reason as the senator attributes to me. I never
dreamed nor thought of such a one; nor can any force of construction
extort such from what I said. No; my object was not power or place,
either for myself or party. I was far more humble and honest. It was
to save ourselves and our principles from being absorbed and lost in
a party, more numerous and powerful; but differing from us on almost
every principle and question of policy.
"When the suspension of specie payments took place in May last
(not unexpected to me), I immediately turned my attention to the
event earnestly, considering it as an event pregnant with great and
lasting consequences. Reviewing the whole ground, I saw nothing to
change in the opinions and principles I had avowed in 1834; and I
determined to carry them out, as far as circumstances and my ability
would enable me. But I saw that my course must be influenced by
the position which the two great contending parties might take in
reference to the question. I did not doubt that the opposition
would rally either on a national bank, or a combination of State
banks, with Mr. Biddle's at the head; but I was wholly uncertain
what course the administration would adopt, and remained so until
the message of the President was received and read by the secretary
at his table. When I saw he went for a divorce, I never hesitated
a moment. Not only my opinions and principles long entertained,
and, as I have shown, fully expressed years ago, but the highest
political motives, left me no alternative. I perceived at once
that the object, to accomplish which we had acted in concert with
the opposition, had ceased: Executive usurpations had come to an
end for the present: and that the struggle with the administration
was no longer for power, but to save themselves. I also clearly
saw, that if we should unite with the opposition in their attack
on the administration, the victory over them, in the position they
occupied, would be a victory over us and our principles. It required
no sagacity to see that such would be the result. It was as plain
as day. The administration had taken position, as I have shown,
on the very ground I occupied in 1834; and which the whole State
rights party had taken at the same time in the other House, as its
journals will prove. The opposition, under the banner of the bank,
were moving against them for the very reason that they had taken the
ground they did.
"Now, I ask, what would have been the result if we had joined in the
attack? No one can now doubt that the victory over those in power
would have been certain and decisive, nor would the consequences
have been the least doubtful. The first fruit would have been a
national bank. The principles of the opposition, and the very object
of the attack, would have necessarily led to that. We would have
been not only too feeble to resist, but would have been committed
by joining in the attack with its avowed object to go for one, while
those who support the administration would have been scattered in
the winds. We should then have had a bank--that is clear; nor is
it less certain, that in its train there would have followed all
the consequences which have and ever will follow, when tried--high
duties, overflowing revenue, extravagant expenditures, large
surpluses; in a word, all those disastrous consequences which have
well near overthrown our institutions, and involved the country
in its present difficulties. The influence of the institution,
the known principles and policy of the opposition, and the utter
prostration of the administration party, and the absorption of ours,
would have led to these results as certainly as we exist.
"I now appeal, senators, to your candor and justice, and ask,
could I, having all these consequences before me, with my known
opinions and that of the party to which I belong, and to which only
I owe fidelity, have acted differently from what I did? Would not
any other course have justly exposed me to the charge of having
abandoned my principles and party, with which I am now accused
so unjustly? Nay, would it not have been worse than folly--been
madness in me, to have taken any other? And yet, the grounds which
I have assumed in this exposition are the very _reasons_ assigned
in my letter, and which the senator has perverted most unfairly and
unjustly into the pitiful, personal, and selfish reason, which he
has attributed to me. Confirmative of what I say, I again appeal
to the record. The secretary will read the paragraph marked in my
Edgefield letter, to which, I presume, the senator alluded.
"[The secretary of the Senate reads:]
"As soon as I saw this state of things, I clearly perceived that a
very important question was presented for our determination, which
we were compelled to decide forthwith--shall we continue our joint
attack with the Nationals on those in power, in the new position
which they have been compelled to occupy? It was clear, with our
joint forces, we could utterly overthrow and demolish them; but it
was not less clear that the victory would enure, not to us, but
exclusively to the benefit of our allies and their cause. They were
the most numerous and powerful, and the point of assault on the
position which the party to be assaulted had taken in relation to
the banks, would have greatly strengthened the settled principles
and policy of the National party, and weakened, in the same degree,
ours. They are, and ever have been, the decided advocates of a
national bank; and are now in favor of one with a capital so ample
as to be sufficient to control the State institutions, and to
regulate the currency and exchanges of the country. To join them
with their avowed object in the attack to overthrow those in power,
on the ground they occupied against a bank, would, of course, not
only have placed the government and country in their hands without
opposition, but would have committed us, beyond the possibility of
extrication, for a bank; and absorbed our party in the ranks of
the National Republicans. The first fruits of the victory would
have been an overshadowing National Bank, with an immense capital,
not less than from fifty to a hundred millions; which would have
centralized the currency and exchanges, and with them the commerce
and capital of the country, in whatever section the head of the
institution might be placed. The next would be the indissoluble
union of the political opponents, whose principles and policy are so
opposite to ours, and so dangerous to our institutions, as well as
oppressive to us.
"I now ask, is there any thing in this extract which will warrant
the construction that the senator has attempted to force on it? Is
it not manifest that the expression on which he fixes, that the
victory would enure, not to us, but exclusively to the benefit of
the opposition, alludes not to power or place, but to principle
and policy? Can words be more plain? What then becomes of all the
aspersions of the senator, his reflections about selfishness and
the want of patriotism, and his allusions and illustrations to give
them force and effect? They fall to the ground without deserving a
notice, with his groundless accusation.
"But, in so premeditated and indiscriminate an attack, it could
not be expected that my motives would entirely escape; and we
accordingly find the senator very charitably leaving it to time to
disclose my motive for going over. Leave it to time to disclose my
motive for going over! I who have changed no opinion, abandoned
no principle, and deserted no party: I, who have stood still, and
maintained my ground against every difficulty, to be told that it
is left to time to disclose my motive! The imputation sinks to the
earth with the groundless charge on which it rests. I stamp it with
scorn in the dust. I pick up the dart, which fell harmless at my
feet. I hurl it back. What the senator charges on me unjustly, _he
has actually done_. He went over on a memorable occasion, and did
not leave it to time to disclose his motive.
"The senator next tells us that I bore a character for stern
fidelity; which he accompanied with remarks implying that I had
forfeited it by my course on the present occasion. If he means
by stern fidelity a devoted attachment to duty and principle,
which nothing can overcome, the character is, indeed, a high
one; and I trust, not entirely unmerited. I have, at least, the
authority of the senator himself for saying that it belonged to
me before the present occasion, and it is, of course, incumbent
on him to show that I have since forfeited it. He will find the
task a Herculean one. It would be by far more easy to show the
opposite; that, instead of forfeiting, I have strengthened my title
to the character; instead of abandoning any principles, I have
firmly adhered to them; and that too, under the most appalling
difficulties. If I were to select an instance in the whole course
of my life on which, above all others, to rest my claim to the
character which the senator attributed to me, it would be this very
one, which he has selected to prove that I have forfeited it.
"I acted with the full knowledge of the difficulties I had to
encounter, and the responsibility I must incur. I saw a great and
powerful party, probably the most powerful in the country, eagerly
seizing on the catastrophe which had befallen the currency, and
the consequent embarrassments that followed, to displace those in
power, against whom they had been long contending. I saw that,
to stand between them and their object, I must necessarily incur
their deep and lasting displeasure. I also saw that, to maintain
the administration in the position they had taken--to separate
the government from the banks, I would draw down on me, with the
exception of some of the southern banks, the whole weight of that
extensive, concentrated, and powerful interest--the most powerful
by far of any in the whole community; and thus I would unite
against me a combination of political and moneyed influence almost
irresistible. Nor was this all. I could not but see that, however
pure and disinterested my motives, and however consistent my course
with all I had ever said or done, I would be exposed to the very
charges and aspersions which I am now repelling. The ease with which
they could be made, and the temptation to make them, I saw were too
great to be resisted by the party morality of the day--as groundless
as I have demonstrated them. But there was another consequence that
I could not but foresee, far more painful to me than all others.
I but too clearly saw that, in so sudden and complex a juncture,
called on as I was to decide on my course instantly, as it were, on
the field of battle, without consultation, or explaining my reasons,
I would estrange for a time many of my political friends, who had
passed through with me so many trials and difficulties, and for whom
I feel a brother's love. But I saw before me the path of duty, and,
though rugged, and hedged on all sides with these and many other
difficulties, I did not hesitate a moment to take it. After I had
made up my mind as to my course, in a conversation with a friend
about the responsibility I would assume, he remarked that my own
State might desert me. I replied that it was not impossible; but
the result has proved that I under-estimated the intelligence and
patriotism of my virtuous and noble State. I ask her pardon for the
distrust implied in my answer; but I ask with assurance it will be
granted, on the grounds I shall put it--that, in being prepared to
sacrifice her confidence, as dear to me as light and life, rather
than disobey on this great question, the dictates of my judgment
and conscience, I proved myself worthy of being her representative.
"But if the senator, in attributing to me stern fidelity, meant,
not devotion to principle, but to party, and especially the party
of which he is so prominent a member, my answer is, that I never
belonged to his party, nor owed it any fidelity; and, of course,
could forfeit, in reference to it, no character for fidelity. It
is true, we acted in concert against what we believed to be the
usurpations of the Executive; and it is true that, during the time,
I saw much to esteem in those with whom I acted, and contracted
friendly relations with many; which I shall not be the first
to forget. It is also true that a common party designation was
applied to the opposition in the aggregate--not, however, with my
approbation; but it is no less true that it was universally known
that it consisted of two distinct parties, dissimilar in principle
and policy, except in relation to the object for which they had
united: the national republican party, and the portion of the State
rights party which had separated from the administration, on the
ground that it had departed from the true principles of the original
party. That I belonged exclusively to that detached portion, and
to neither the opposition nor administration party, I prove by my
explicit declaration, contained in one of the extracts read from
my speech on the currency in 1834. That the party generally, and
the State which I represent in part, stood aloof from both of
the parties, may be established from the fact that they refused
to mingle in the party and political contests of the day. My
State withheld her electoral vote in two successive presidential
elections; and, rather than to bestow it on either the senator from
Kentucky, or the distinguished citizen whom he opposed, in the first
of those elections, she threw her vote on a patriotic citizen of
Virginia, since deceased, of her own politics; but who was not a
candidate; and, in the last, she refused to give it to the worthy
senator from Tennessee near me (Judge WHITE), though his principles
and views of policy approach so much nearer to hers than that of the
party to which the senator from Kentucky belongs.
"And here, Mr. President, I avail myself of the opportunity to
declare my present political position, so that there may be no
mistake hereafter. I belong to the old Republican State Rights party
of '98. To that, and that alone, I owe fidelity, and by that I
shall stand through every change, and in spite of every difficulty.
Its creed is to be found in the Kentucky resolutions, and Virginia
resolutions and report; and its policy is to confine the action of
this government within the narrowest limits compatible with the
peace and security of these States, and the objects for which the
Union was expressly formed. I, as one of that party, shall support
all who support its principles and policy, and oppose all who oppose
them. I have given, and shall continue to give, the administration
a hearty and sincere support on the great question now under
discussion, because I regard it as in strict conformity to our creed
and policy; and shall do every thing in my power to sustain them
under the great responsibility which they have assumed. But let me
tell those who are more interested in sustaining them than myself,
that the danger which threatens them lies not here, but in another
quarter. This measure will tend to uphold them, if they stand fast,
and adhere to it with fidelity. But, if they wish to know where the
danger is, let them look to the fiscal department of the government.
I said, years ago, that we were committing an error the reverse of
the great and dangerous one that was committed in 1828, and to which
we owe our present difficulties, and all we have since experienced.
Then we raised the revenue greatly, when the expenditures were about
to be reduced by the discharge of the public debt; and now we have
doubled the disbursements, when the revenue is rapidly decreasing;
an error, which, although probably not so fatal to the country, will
prove, if immediate and vigorous measures be not adopted, far more
so to those in power.
"But the senator did not confine his attack to my conduct and
motives in reference to the present question. In his eagerness to
weaken the cause I support, by destroying confidence in me, he made
an indiscriminate attack on my intellectual faculties, which he
characterized as metaphysical, eccentric, too much of genius, and
too little common sense; and of course wanting a sound and practical
judgment.
"Mr. President, according to my opinion, there is nothing of which
those who are endowed with superior mental faculties ought to be
more cautious, than to reproach those with their deficiency to
whom Providence has been less liberal. The faculties of our mind
are the immediate gift of our Creator, for which we are no farther
responsible than for their proper cultivation, according to our
opportunities, and their proper application to control and regulate
our actions. Thus thinking, I trust I shall be the last to assume
superiority on my part, or reproach any one with inferiority on his;
but those who do not regard the rule, when applied to others, cannot
expect it to be observed when applied to themselves. The critic must
expect to be criticised; and he who points out the faults of others,
to have his own pointed out.
"I cannot retort on the senator the charge of being metaphysical.
I cannot accuse him of possessing the powers of analysis and
generalization, those higher faculties of the mind (called
metaphysical by those who do not possess them), which decompose
and resolve into their elements the complex masses of ideas that
exist in the world of mind--as chemistry does the bodies that
surround us in the material world; and without which those deep
and hidden causes which are in constant action, and producing such
mighty changes in the condition of society, would operate unseen
and undetected. The absence of these higher qualities of the mind
is conspicuous throughout the whole course of the senator's public
life. To this it may be traced that he prefers the specious to the
solid, and the plausible to the true. To the same cause, combined
with an ardent temperament, it is owing that we ever find him
mounted on some popular and favorite measure, which he whips along,
cheered by the shouts of the multitude, and never dismounts till
he has rode it down. Thus, at one time, we find him mounted on the
protective system, which he rode down; at another, on internal
improvement; and now he is mounted on a bank, which will surely
share the same fate, unless those who are immediately interested
shall stop him in his headlong career. It is the fault of his mind
to seize on a few prominent and striking advantages, and to pursue
them eagerly without looking to consequences. Thus, in the case
of the protective system, he was struck with the advantages of
manufactures; and, believing that high duties was the proper mode of
protecting them, he pushed forward the system, without seeing that
he was enriching one portion of the country at the expense of the
other; corrupting the one and alienating the other; and, finally,
dividing the community into two great hostile interests, which
terminated in the overthrow of the system itself. So, now, he looks
only to a uniform currency, and a bank as the means of securing it,
without once reflecting how far the banking system has progressed,
and the difficulties that impede its farther progress; that banking
and politics are running together to their mutual destruction; and
that the only possible mode of saving his favorite system is to
separate it from the government.
"To the defects of understanding, which the senator attributes to
me, I make no reply. It is for others, and not me, to determine the
portion of understanding which it has pleased the Author of my being
to bestow on me. It is, however, fortunate for me, that the standard
by which I shall be judged is not the false, prejudiced, and, as I
have shown, unfounded opinion which the senator has expressed; but
my acts. They furnish materials, neither few nor scant, to form a
just estimate of my mental faculties. I have now been more than
twenty-six years continuously in the service of this government,
in various stations, and have taken part in almost all the great
questions which have agitated this country during this long and
important period. Throughout the whole I have never followed events,
but have taken my stand in advance, openly and freely avowing my
opinions on all questions, and leaving it to time and experience
to condemn or approve my course. Thus acting, I have often, and on
great questions, separated from those with whom I usually acted,
and if I am really so defective in sound and practical judgment
as the senator represents, the proof, if to be found any where,
must be found in such instances, or where I have acted on my sole
responsibility. Now, I ask, in which of the many instances of the
kind is such proof to be found? It is not my intention to call to
the recollection of the Senate all such; but that you, senators, may
judge for yourselves, it is due in justice to myself, that I should
suggest a few of the most prominent, which at the time were regarded
as the senator now considers the present; and then, as now, because
where duty is involved, I would not submit to party trammels.
"I go back to the commencement of my public life, the war session,
as it was usually called, of 1812, when I first took my seat in
the other House, a young man, without experience to guide me, and
I shall select, as the first instance, the Navy. At that time the
administration and the party to which I was strongly attached
were decidedly opposed to this important arm of service. It was
considered anti-republican to support it; but acting with my then
distinguished colleague, Mr. Cheves, who led the way, I did not
hesitate to give it my hearty support, regardless of party ties.
Does this instance sustain the charge of the senator?
"The next I shall select is the restrictive system of that day, the
embargo, the non-importation and non-intercourse acts. This, too,
was a party measure which had been long and warmly contested, and
of course the lines of party well drawn. Young and inexperienced as
I was, I saw its defects, and resolutely opposed it, almost alone
of my party. The second or third speech I made, after I took my
seat, was in open denunciation of the system; and I may refer to the
grounds I then assumed, the truth of which have been confirmed by
time and experience, with pride and confidence. This will scarcely
be selected by the senator to make good his charge.
"I pass over other instances, and come to Mr. Dallas's bank
of 1814-15. That, too, was a party measure. Banking was then
comparatively but little understood, and it may seem astonishing,
at this time, that such a project should ever have received any
countenance or support. It proposed to create a bank of $50,000,000,
to consist almost entirely of what was called then the war stocks;
that is, the public debt created in carrying on the then war. It was
provided that the bank should not pay specie during the war, and
for three years after its termination, for carrying on which it was
to lend the government the funds. In plain language, the government
was to borrow back its own credit from the bank, and pay to the
institution six per cent. for its use. I had scarcely ever before
seriously thought of banks or banking, but I clearly saw through
the operation, and the danger to the government and country; and,
regardless of party ties or denunciations, I opposed and defeated
it in the manner I explained at the extra session. I then subjected
myself to the very charge which the senator now makes; but time has
done me justice, as it will in the present instance.
"Passing the intervening instances, I come down to my administration
of the War Department, where I acted on my own judgment and
responsibility. It is known to all, that the department, at
that time, was perfectly disorganized, with not much less than
$50,000,000 of outstanding and unsettled accounts; and the greatest
confusion in every branch of service. Though without experience, I
prepared, shortly after I went in, the bill for its organization,
and on its passage I drew up the body of rules for carrying the act
into execution; both of which remain substantially unchanged to this
day. After reducing the outstanding accounts to a few millions, and
introducing order and accountability in every branch of service,
and bringing down the expenditure of the army from four to two and
a half millions annually, without subtracting a single comfort from
either officer or soldier, I left the department in a condition that
might well be compared to the best in any country. If I am deficient
in the qualities which the senator attributes to me, here in this
mass of details and business it ought to be discovered. Will he look
to this to make good his charge?
"From the war department I was transferred to the Chair which you
now occupy. How I acquitted myself in the discharge of its duties, I
leave it to the body to decide, without adding a word. The station,
from its leisure, gave me a good opportunity to study the genius of
the prominent measure of the day, called then the American system;
of which I profited. I soon perceived where its errors lay, and
how it would operate. I clearly saw its desolating effects in one
section, and corrupting influence in the other; and when I saw that
it could not be arrested here, I fell back on my own State, and a
blow was given to a system destined to destroy our institutions, if
not overthrown, which brought it to the ground. This brings me down
to the present times, and where passions and prejudices are yet too
strong to make an appeal, with any prospect of a fair and impartial
verdict. I then transfer this, and all my subsequent acts, including
the present, to the tribunal of posterity; with a perfect confidence
that nothing will be found, in what I have said or done, to impeach
my integrity or understanding.
"I have now, senators, repelled the attacks on me. I have settled
the account and cancelled the debt between me and my accuser. I
have not sought this controversy, nor have I shunned it when forced
on me. I have acted on the defensive, and if it is to continue,
which rests with the senator, I shall throughout continue so to
act. I know too well the advantage of my position to surrender it.
The senator commenced the controversy, and it is but right that he
should be responsible for the direction it shall hereafter take. Be
his determination what it may, I stand prepared to meet him."
CHAPTER XXVIII.
DEBATE BETWEEN MR. CLAY AND MR. CALHOUN REJOINDERS BY EACH.
MR. CLAY:--"As to the personal part of the speech of the senator
from South Carolina, I must take the occasion to say that no man
is more sincerely anxious to avoid all personal controversy than
myself. And I may confidently appeal to the whole course of my life
for the confirmation of that disposition. No man cherishes less than
I do feelings of resentment; none forgets or forgives an injury
sooner than I do. The duty which I had to perform in animadverting
upon the public conduct and course of the senator from South
Carolina was painful in the extreme; but it was, nevertheless, a
public duty; and I shrink from the performance of no duty required
at my hands by my country. It was painful, because I had long
served in the public councils with the senator from South Carolina,
admired his genius, and for a great while had been upon terms of
intimacy with him. Throughout my whole acquaintance with him, I
have constantly struggled to think well of him, and to ascribe to
him public virtues. Even after his famous summerset at the extra
session, on more than one occasion I defended his motives when he
was assailed; and insisted that it was uncharitable to attribute to
him others than those which he himself avowed. This I continued to
do, until I read this most extraordinary and exceptionable letter:
[Here Mr. Clay held up and exhibited to the Senate the Edgefield
letter, dated at Fort Hill, November 3, 1837:] a letter of which I
cannot speak in merited terms, without a departure from the respect
which I owe to the Senate and to myself. When I read that letter,
sir, its unblushing avowals, and its unjust reproaches cast upon
my friends and myself, I was most reluctantly compelled to change
my opinion of the honorable senator from South Carolina. One so
distinguished as he is, cannot expect to be indulged with speaking
as he pleases of others, without a reciprocal privilege. He cannot
suppose that he may set to the right or the left, cut in and out,
and _chasse_, among principles and parties as often as he pleases,
without animadversion. I did, indeed, understand the senator to
say, in his former speech, that we, the whigs, were unwise and
_unpatriotic_ in not uniting with him in supporting the bill under
consideration. But in that Edgefield letter, among the motives which
he assigns for leaving us, I understand him to declare that he could
not 'back and sustain those in such opposition, in whose wisdom,
firmness, and patriotism, I have no reason to confide.'
"After having written and published to the world such a letter as
that, and after what has fallen from the senator, in the progress
of this debate, towards my political friends, does he imagine that
he can persuade himself and the country that he really occupies, on
this occasion, a defensive attitude? In that letter he says:
"'I clearly saw that our bold and vigorous attacks had made
a deep and successful impression. State interposition had
overthrown the protective tariff, and with it the American
system, and put a stop to the congressional usurpation; and the
joint attacks of our party, and that of our old opponents, the
national republicans, had effectually brought down the power of
the Executive, and arrested its encroachments for the present.
It was for that purpose we had united. True to our principle of
opposition to the encroachment of power, from whatever quarter
it might come, we did not hesitate, after overthrowing the
protective system, and arresting legislative usurpation, to join
the authors of that system, in order to arrest the encroachments
of the Executive, although we differed as widely as the poles on
almost every other question, and regarded the usurpation of the
Executive but as a necessary consequence of the principles and
policy of our new allies.'
"State interposition!--that is as I understand the senator from
South Carolina; nullification, he asserts, overthrew the protective
tariff and the American system. And can that senator, knowing what
he knows, and what I know, deliberately make such an assertion here?
I had heard similar boasts before, but did not regard them, until I
saw them coupled in this letter with the imputation of a purpose on
the part of my friends to disregard the compromise, and revive the
high tariff. Nullification, Mr. President, overthrew the protective
policy! No, sir. The compromise was not extorted by the terror of
nullification. Among other more important motives that influenced
its passage, it was a compassionate concession to the imprudence
and impotency of nullification! The danger from nullification
itself excited no more apprehension than would be felt by seeing a
regiment of a thousand boys, of five or six years of age, decorated
in brilliant uniforms, with their gaudy plumes and tiny muskets,
marching up to assault a corps of 50,000 grenadiers, six feet high.
At the commencement of the session of 1832, the senator from South
Carolina was in any condition other than that of dictating terms.
Those of us who were then here must recollect well his haggard
looks and his anxious and depressed countenance. A highly estimable
friend of mine, Mr. J. M. Clayton, of Delaware, alluding to the
possibility of a rupture with South Carolina, and declarations of
President Jackson with respect to certain distinguished individuals
whom he had denounced and proscribed, said to me, on more than one
occasion, referring to the senator from South Carolina and some of
his colleagues, "They are clever fellows, and it will never do to
let old Jackson hang them." Sir, this disclosure is extorted from me
by the senator.
"So far from nullification having overthrown the protective policy,
in assenting to the compromise, it expressly sanctioned the
constitutional power which it had so strongly controverted, and
perpetuated it. There is protection from one end to the other in
the compromise act; modified and limited it is true, but protection
nevertheless. There is protection, adequate and abundant protection,
until the year 1842; and protection indefinitely beyond it. Until
that year, the biennial reduction of duties is slow and moderate,
such as was perfectly satisfactory to the manufacturers. Now, if
the system were altogether unconstitutional, as had been contended,
how could the senator vote for a bill which continued it for nine
years? Then, beyond that period, there is the provision for cash
duties, home valuations, a long and liberal list of free articles,
carefully made out by my friend from Rhode Island (Mr. KNIGHT),
expressly for the benefit of the manufacturers; and the power of
discrimination, reserved also for their benefit; within the maximum
rate of duty fixed in the act. In the consultations between the
senator and myself in respect to the compromise act, on every point
upon which I insisted he gave way. He was for a shorter term than
nine years, and more rapid reduction. I insisted, and he yielded.
He was for fifteen instead of twenty per cent. as the maximum duty;
but yielded. He was against any discrimination within the limited
range of duties for the benefit of the manufacturers; but consented.
To the last he protested against home valuation, but finally gave
way. Such is the compromise act; and the Senate will see with what
propriety the senator can assert that nullification had overthrown
the protective tariff and the American system. Nullification! which
asserted the extraordinary principle that one of twenty-four members
of a confederacy, by its separate action, could subvert and set
aside the expressed will of the whole! Nullification! a strange,
impracticable, incomprehensible doctrine, that partakes of the
character of the metaphysical school of German philosophy, or would
be worthy of the puzzling theological controversies of the middle
ages.
"No one, Mr. President, in the commencement of the protective
policy, ever supposed that it was to be perpetual. We hoped
and believed that temporary protection extended to our infant
manufactures, would bring them up, and enable them to withstand
competition with those of Europe. We thought, as the wise French
minister did, who, when urged by a British minister to consent
to the equal introduction into the two countries of their
respective productions, replied that free trade might be very well
for a country whose manufactures had reached perfection, but was
not entirely adapted to a country which wished to build up its
manufactures. If the protective policy were entirely to cease in
1842, it would have existed twenty-six years from 1816, or 18 from
1824; quite as long as, at either of those periods, its friends
supposed might be necessary. But it does not cease then, and I
sincerely hope that the provisions contained in the compromise act
for its benefit beyond that period, will be found sufficient for
the preservation of all our interesting manufactures. For one, I
am willing to adhere to, and abide by the compromise in all its
provisions, present and prospective, if its fair operation is
undisturbed. The Senate well knows that I have been constantly in
favor of a strict and faithful adherence to the compromise act.
I have watched and defended it on all occasions. I desire to see
it faithfully and inviolably maintained. The senator, too, from
South Carolina, alleging that the South were the weaker party, has
hitherto united with me in sustaining it. Nevertheless, he has left
us, as he tells us in his Edgefield letter, because he apprehended
that our principles would lead us to the revival of a high tariff.
"The senator from South Carolina proceeds, in his Edgefield letter,
to say:
"'I clearly perceived that a very important question was
presented for our determination, which we were compelled to
decide forthwith: shall we continue our joint attack with the
nationals on those in power, in the new position which they have
been compelled to occupy? It was clear that, with our joint
forces, we could utterly overthrow and demolish them. But it was
not less clear that _the victory would enure not to us_, but
exclusively to the benefit of our allies and their cause.'
"Thus it appears that in a common struggle for the benefit of our
whole country, the senator was calculating upon the party advantages
which would result from success. He quit us because he apprehended
that he and his party would be absorbed by us. Well, what is to be
their fate in his new alliance? Is there no absorption there? Is
there no danger that the senator and his party will be absorbed by
the administration party? Or does he hope to absorb that? Another
motive avowed in the letter, for his desertion of us, is, that
'it would also give us the chance of effecting what is still more
important to us, the union of the entire South.' What sort of an
union of the South does the senator wish? Is not the South already
united as a part of the common confederacy? Does he want any other
union of it? I wish he would explicitly state. I should be glad,
also, if he would define what he means by the South. He sometimes
talks of the plantation or staple States. Maryland is partly a
staple State. Virginia and North Carolina more so. And Kentucky and
Tennessee have also staple productions. Are all these States parts
of _his_ South? I fear, Mr. President, that the political geography
of the senator comprehends a much larger South than that South
which is the object of his particular solicitude; and that, to find
the latter, we should have to go to South Carolina; and, upon our
arrival there, trace him to Fort Hill. This is the disinterested
senator from South Carolina!
"But he has left no party, and joined no party! No! None. With the
daily evidences before us of his frequent association, counselling
and acting with the other party, he would tax our credulity too much
to require us to believe that he has formed no connection with it.
He may stand upon his reserved rights; but they must be mentally
reserved, for they are not obvious to the senses. Abandoned no
party? Why this letter proclaims his having quitted us, and assigns
his reasons for doing it; one of which is, that we are in favor of
that national bank which the senator himself has sustained about
twenty-four years of the twenty-seven that he has been in public
life. Whatever impression the senator may endeavor to make without
the Senate upon the country at large, no man within the Senate,
who has eyes to see, or ears to hear, can mistake his present
position and party connection. If, in the speech which I addressed
to the Senate on a former day, there had been a single fact stated
which was not perfectly true, or an inference drawn which was not
fully warranted, or any description of his situation which was
incorrect, no man would enjoy greater pleasure than I should do in
rectifying the error. If, in the picture which I portrayed of the
senator and his course, there be any thing which can justly give
him dissatisfaction, he must look to the original and not to the
painter. The conduct of an eminent public man is a fair subject for
exposure and animadversion. When I addressed the Senate before, I
had just perused this letter. I recollected all its reproaches and
imputations against us, and those which were made or implied in
the speech of the honorable senator were also fresh in my memory.
Does he expect to be allowed to cast such imputations, and make
such reproaches against others without retaliation? Holding myself
amenable for my public conduct, I choose to animadvert upon his,
and upon that of others, whenever circumstances, in my judgment,
render it necessary; and I do it under all just responsibility which
belongs to the exercise of such a privilege.
"The senator has thought proper to exercise a corresponding
privilege towards myself; and, without being very specific, has
taken upon himself to impute to me the charge of going over upon
some occasion, and that in a manner which left my motive no
matter of conjecture. If the senator mean to allude to the stale
and refuted calumny of George Kremer, I assure him I can hear it
without the slightest emotion; and if he can find any fragment of
that rent banner to cover his own aberrations, he is perfectly
at liberty to enjoy all the shelter which it affords. In my case
there was no going over about it; I was a member of the House of
Representatives, and had to give a vote for one of three candidates
for the presidency. Mr. Crawford's unfortunate physical condition
placed him out of the question. The choice was, therefore,
limited to the venerable gentleman from Massachusetts, or to the
distinguished inhabitant of the hermitage. I could give but one
vote; and, accordingly, as I stated on a former occasion, I gave the
vote which, before I left Kentucky, I communicated to my colleague
[Mr. CRITTENDEN], it was my intention to give in the contingency
which happened. I have never for one moment regretted the vote
I then gave. It is true, that the legislature of Kentucky had
requested the representatives from that State to vote for General
Jackson; but my own immediate constituents, I knew well, were
opposed to his election, and it was their will, and not that of the
legislature, according to every principle applicable to the doctrine
of instructions, which I was to deposit in the ballot-box. It is
their glory and my own never to have concurred in the elevation of
General Jackson. They ratified and confirmed my vote, and every
representative that they have sent to Congress since, including my
friend, the present member, has concurred with me in opposition to
the election and administration of General Jackson.
"If my information be not entirely incorrect, and there was any
going over in the presidential election which terminated in
February, 1825, the senator from South Carolina--and not I--went
over. I have understood that the senator, when he ceased to be
in favor of himself,--that is, after the memorable movement made
in Philadelphia by the present minister to Russia (Mr. DALLAS),
withdrawing his name from the canvass, was the known supporter of
the election of Mr. Adams. What motives induced him afterwards to
unite in the election of General Jackson, I know not. It is not my
habit to impute to others uncharitable motives, and I leave the
senator to settle that account with his own conscience and his
country. No, sir, I have no reproaches to make myself, and feel
perfectly invulnerable to any attack from others, on account of any
part which I took in the election of 1825. And I look back with
entire and conscious satisfaction upon the whole course of the
arduous administration which ensued.
"The senator from South Carolina thinks it to be my misfortune to
be always riding some hobby, and that I stick to it till I ride
it down. I think it is his never to stick to one long enough. He
is like a courier who, riding from post to post, with relays of
fresh horses, when he changes his steed, seems to forget altogether
the last which he had mounted. Now, it is a part of my pride and
pleasure to say, that I never in my life changed my deliberate
opinion upon any great question of national policy but once, and
that was twenty-two years ago, on the question of the power to
establish a bank of the United States. The change was wrought by the
sad and disastrous experience of the want of such an institution,
growing out of the calamities of war. It was a change which I made
in common with Mr. Madison, two governors of Virginia, and the great
body of the republican party, to which I have ever belonged.
"The distinguished senator sticks long to no hobby. He was once
gayly mounted on that of internal improvements. We rode that
double--the senator before, and I behind him. He quietly slipped
off, leaving me to hold the bridle. He introduced and carried
through Congress in 1816, the bill setting apart the large bonus
of the Bank of the United States for internal improvements. His
speech, delivered on that occasion, does not intimate the smallest
question as to the constitutional power of the government, but
proceeds upon the assumption of its being incontestable. When he
was subsequently in the department of war, he made to Congress a
brilliant report, sketching as splendid and magnificent a scheme of
internal improvements for the entire nation, as ever was presented
to the admiration and wonder of mankind.
"No, sir, the senator from South Carolina is free from all reproach
of sticking to hobbies. He was for a bank of the United States in
1816. He proposed, supported, and with his accustomed ability,
carried through the charter. He sustained it upon its admitted
grounds of constitutionality, of which he never once breathed the
expression of a doubt. During the twenty years of its continuance
no scruple ever escaped from him as to the power to create it. And
in 1834, when it was about to expire, he deliberately advocated
the renewal of its term for twelve years more. How profound he may
suppose the power of analysis to be, and whatever opinion he may
entertain of his own metaphysical faculty,--can he imagine that any
plain, practical, common sense man can ever comprehend how it is
constitutional to prolong an unconstitutional bank for twelve years?
He may have all the speeches he has ever delivered read to us in an
audible voice by the secretary, and call upon the Senate attentively
to hear them, beginning with his speech in favor of a bank of the
United States in 1816, down to his speech _against_ a bank of the
United States, delivered the other day, and he will have made no
progress in his task. I do not speak this in any unkind spirit, but
I will tell the honorable senator when he will be consistent. He
will be so, when he resolves henceforward, during the residue of
his life, never to pronounce the word again. We began our public
career nearly together; we remained together throughout the war and
down to the peace. We agreed as to a bank of the United States--as
to a protective tariff--as to internal improvements--and lately,
as to those arbitrary and violent measures which characterized the
administration of General Jackson. No two prominent public men ever
agreed better together in respect to important measures of national
policy. We concur now in nothing. We separate for ever."
Mr. CALHOUN. "The senator from Kentucky says that the sentiments
contained in my Edgefield letter then met his view for the first
time, and that he read that document with equal pain and amazement.
Now it happens that I expressed these self-same sentiments just as
strongly in 1834, in a speech which was received with unbounded
applause by that gentleman's own party; and of which a vast number
of copies were published and circulated throughout the United States.
"But the senator tells us that he is among the most constant men
in this world. I am not in the habit of charging others with
inconsistency; but one thing I will say, that if the gentleman has
not changed _his principles_, he has most certainly changed _his
company_; for, though he boasts of setting out in public life a
republican of the school of '98, he is now surrounded by some of the
most distinguished members of the old federal party. I do not desire
to disparage that party. I always respected them as men, though
I believed their political principles to be wrong. Now, either
the gentleman's associates have changed, or he has; for they are
now together, though belonging formerly to different and opposing
parties--parties, as every one knows, directly opposed to each other
in policy and principles.
"He says I was in favor of the tariff of 1816, and took the lead in
its support. He is certainly mistaken again. It was in charge of my
colleague and friend, Mr. Lowndes, chairman then of the committee
of Ways and Means, as a revenue measure only. I took no other part
whatever but to deliver an off-hand speech, at the request of a
friend. The question of protection, as a constitutional question,
was not touched at all. It was not made, if my memory serves me, for
some years after. As to protection, I believe little of it, except
what all admit was incidental to revenue, was contained in the
act of 1816. As to my views in regard to protection at that early
period, I refer to my remarks in 1813, when I opposed a renewal
of the non-importation act, expressly on the ground of its giving
too much protection to the manufacturers. But while I declared,
in my place, that I was opposed to it on that ground, I at the
same time stated that I would go as far as I could with propriety,
when peace returned, to protect the capital which the war and the
extreme policy of the government had turned into that channel. The
senator refers to my report on internal improvement, when I was
secretary of war; but, as usual with him, forgets to tell that I
made it in obedience to a resolution of the House, to which I was
bound to answer, and that I expressly stated I did not involve
the constitutional question; of which the senator may now satisfy
himself, if he will read the latter part of the report. As to the
bonus bill, it grew out of the recommendation of Mr. Madison in his
last message; and although I proposed that the bonus should be set
apart for the purpose of internal improvement, leaving it to be
determined thereafter, whether we had the power, or the constitution
should be amended, in conformity to Mr. Madison's recommendation.
I did not touch the question to what extent Congress might possess
the power; and when requested to insert a direct recognition of the
power by some of the leading members, I refused, expressly on the
ground that, though I believed it existed, I had not made up my mind
how far it extended. As to the bill, it was perfectly constitutional
in my opinion then, and which still remains unchanged, to set aside
the fund proposed, and with the object intended, but which could not
be used without specific appropriations thereafter.
"In my opening remarks to-day, I said the senator's speech was
remarkable, both for its omissions and mistakes; and the senator
infers, with his usual inaccuracy, that I alluded to a difference
between his spoken and printed speech, and that I was answering the
latter. In this he was mistaken; I hardly ever read a speech, but
reply to what is said here in debate. I know no other but the speech
delivered here.
"As to the arguments of each of us, I am willing to leave them to
the judgment of the country: his speech and arguments, and mine,
will be read with the closer attention and deeper interest in
consequence of this day's occurrence. It is all I ask."
Mr. CLAY. "It is very true that the senator had on other occasions,
besides his Edgefield letter, claimed that the influence arising
from the interference of his own State had effected the tariff
compromise. Mr. C. had so stated the fact when up before. But in the
Edgefield letter the senator took new ground, he denounced those
with whom he had been acting, as persons in whom he could have
no confidence, and imputed to them the design of renewing a high
tariff and patronizing extravagant expenditures, as the natural
consequences of the establishment of a bank of the United States,
and had presented this as a reason for his recent course. When, said
Mr. C., I saw a charge like this, together with an imputation of
unworthy motives, and all this deliberately written and published,
I could not but feel very differently from what I should have done
under a mere casual remark.
"But the senator says, that if I have not changed principles, I
have at least got into strange company. Why really, Mr. President,
the gentleman has so recently changed his relations that he seems
to have forgotten into what company he has fallen himself. He says
that some of my friends once belonged to the federal party. Sir, I
am ready to go into an examination with the honorable senator at
any time, and then we shall see if there are not more members of
that same old federal party amongst those whom the senator has so
recently joined, than on our side of the house. The plain truth
is, that it is the old federal party with whom he is now acting.
For all the former grounds of difference which distinguished that
party, and were the great subjects of contention between them
and the republicans, have ceased from lapse of time and change
of circumstances, with the exception of one, and that is the
maintenance and increase of executive power. This was a leading
policy of the federal party. A strong, powerful, and energetic
executive was its favorite tenet. The leading members of that party
had come out of the national convention with an impression that
under the new constitution the executive arm was too weak. The
danger they apprehended was, that the executive would be absorbed by
the legislative department of the government; and accordingly the
old federal doctrine was that the Executive must be upheld, that its
influence must be extended and strengthened; and as a means to this,
that its patronage must be multiplied. And what, I pray, is at this
hour the leading object of that party, which the senator has joined,
but this very thing? It was maintained in the convention by Mr.
Madison, that to remove a public officer without valid cause, would
rightfully subject a president of the United States to impeachment.
But now not only is no reason required, but the principle is
maintained that no reason can be asked. A is removed and B is put in
his place, because such is the pleasure of the president.
"The senator is fond of the record. I should not myself have gone
to it but for the infinite gravity and self-complacency with which
he appeals to it in vindication of his own consistency. Let me then
read a little from one of the very speeches in 1834, from which he
has so liberally quoted, and called upon the secretary to read so
loud, and the Senate to listen so attentively:
"'But there is in my opinion a strong, if not an insuperable
objection against resorting to this measure, resulting from
the _fact_ that an exclusive receipt of specie in the treasury
would, to give it efficacy, and to prevent extensive speculation
and fraud, require an entire disconnection on the part of the
government, with the banking system, in all its forms, and
a resort to the strong box, as the means of preserving and
guarding its funds--a means, if practicable at all in the
present state of things, liable to the objection of being _far
less safe, economical, and efficient, than the present_.'"
"Here is a strong denunciation of that very system he is now
eulogising to the skies. Here he deprecates a disconnection with
all banks as a most disastrous measure; and, as the strongest
argument against it, says that it will necessarily lead to the
antiquated policy of the strong box. Yet, now the senator thinks the
strong box system the wisest thing on earth. As to the acquiescence
of the honorable senator in measures deemed by him unconstitutional,
I only regret that he suddenly stopped short in his acquiescence.
He was, in 1816, at the head of the finance committee, in the other
House, having been put there by myself, _acquiescing_ all the while
in the doctrines of a bank, as perfectly sound, and reporting to
that effect. He acquiesced for nearly twenty years, not a doubt
escaping from him during the whole time. The year 1834 comes: the
deposits are seized, the currency turned up side down, and the
senator comes forward and proposes as a remedy a continuation of the
Bank of the United States for twelve years--here acquiescing once
more; and as he tells us, in order to save the country. But if the
salvation of the country would justify his acquiescence in 1816 and
in 1834, I can only regret that he did not find it in his heart to
acquiesce once more in what would have remedied all our evils.
"In regard to the tariff of 1816, has the senator forgotten the
dispute at that time about the protection of the cotton manufacture?
The very point of that dispute was, whether we had a right to
give protection or not. He admits the truth of what I said, that
the constitutional question as to the power of the government to
protect our own industry was never raised before 1820 or 1822. It
was but first hinted, then controverted, and soon after expanded
into nullification, although the senator had supported the tariff of
1816 on the very ground that we had power. I do not now recollect
distinctly his whole course in the legislature, but he certainly
introduced the bonus bill in 1816, and sustained it by a speech on
the subject of internal improvements, which neither expresses nor
implies a doubt of the constitutional power. But why set apart a
bonus, if the government had no power to make internal improvements?
If he wished internal improvements, but conscientiously believed
them unconstitutional, why did he not introduce a resolution
proposing to amend the constitution? Yet he offered no such thing.
When he produced his splendid report from the war department,
what did he mean? Why did he tantalize us with that bright and
gorgeous picture of canals and roads, and piers and harbors, if
it was unconstitutional for us to touch the plan with one of our
fingers? The senator says in reply, that this report did not broach
the constitutional question. True. But why? Is there any other
conclusion than that he did not entertain himself any doubt about
it? What a most extraordinary thing would it be, should the head
of a department, in his official capacity, present a report to
both houses of Congress, proposing a most elaborate plan for the
internal improvement of the whole union, accompanied by estimates
and statistical tables, when he believed there was no power in
either house to adopt any part of it. The senator dwells upon his
consistency: I can tell him when he will be consistent--and that is
when he shall never pronounce that word again."
Mr. CALHOUN. "As to the tariff of 1816, I never denied that Congress
have the power to impose a protective tariff for the purpose of
revenue; and beyond that the tariff of 1816 did not go one inch. The
question of the constitutionality of the protective tariff was never
raised till some time afterwards.
"As to what the senator says of executive power, I, as much as he,
am opposed to its augmentation, and I will go as far in preventing
it as any man in this House. I maintain that the executive and
judicial authorities should have no discretionary power, and as soon
as they begin to exercise such power, the matter should be taken
up by Congress. These opinions are well grounded in my mind, and I
will go as far as any in bringing the Executive to this point. But,
I believe, the Executive is now outstripped by the congressional
power. He is for restricting the one. I war upon both.
"The senator says I assigned as a reason of my course at the extra
session that I suspected that he and the gentleman with whom he
acted would revive the tariff. I spoke not of the tariff, but a
national bank. I believe that banks naturally and assuredly ally
themselves to taxes on the community. The higher the taxes the
greater their profits; and so it is with regard to a surplus and the
government disbursements. If the banking power is on the side of a
national bank, I see in that what may lead to all the consequences
which I have described; and I oppose institutions that are likely
to lead to such results. When the bank should receive the money of
the government, it would ally itself to taxation, and it ought to
be resisted on that ground. I am very glad that the question is
now fairly met. The fate of the country depends on the point of
separation; if there be a separation between the government and
banks, the banks will be on the republican side in opposition to
taxes; if they unite, they will be in favor of the exercise of the
taxing power.
"The senator says I acquiesced in the use of the banks because
the banks existed. I did so because the connection existed. The
banks were already used as depositories of the government, and it
was impossible at once to reverse that state of things. I went on
the ground that the banks were a necessary evil. The State banks
exist; and would not he be a madman that would annihilate them
because their respective bills are uncurrent in distant parts of the
country? The work of creating them is done, and cannot be reversed;
when once done, it is done for ever.
"I was formerly decided in favor of separating the banks and the
government, but it was impossible then to make it, and it would
have been followed by nothing but disaster. The senator says the
separation already exists; but it is only contingent; whenever the
banks resume, the connection will be legally restored. In 1834 I
objected to the sub-treasury project, and I thought it not as safe
as the system now before us. But it turns out that it was more safe,
as appears from the argument of the senator from Delaware, (Mr.
Bayard.) I was then under the impression that the banks were more
safe but it proves otherwise."
Mr. CLAY. "If the senator would review his speech again, he would
see there a plain and explicit denunciation of a sub-treasury system.
"The distinguished senator from South Carolina (I had almost said
my friend from South Carolina, so lately and so abruptly has he
bursted all amicable relations between us, independent of his habit
of change, I think, when he finds into what federal doctrines and
federal company he has gotten, he will be disposed soon to feel
regret and to return to us,) has not, I am persuaded, weighed
sufficiently the import of the unkind imputations contained in his
Edgefield letter towards his former allies--imputations that their
principles are dangerous to our institutions, and of their want of
firmness and patriotism. I have read that singular letter again and
again, with inexpressible surprise and regret; more, however, if he
will allow me to say so, on his own than on our account.
"Mr. President, I am done; and I sincerely hope that the adjustment
of the account between the senator and myself, just made, may be as
satisfactory to him as I assure him and the Senate it is perfectly
so to me."
Mr. CALHOUN. "I have more to say, but will forbear, as the senator
appears desirous of having the last word."
Mr. CLAY. "Not at all."
* * * * *
The personal debate between Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Clay terminated
for the day, and with apparent good feeling; but only to break
out speedily on a new point, and to lead to further political
revelations important to history. Mr. Calhoun, after a long
alienation, personal as well as political, from Mr. Van Buren,
and bitter warfare upon him, had become reconciled to him in both
capacities, and had made a complimentary call upon him, and had
expressed to him an approbation of his leading measures. All this
was natural and proper after he had become a public supporter of
these measures; but a manifestation of respect and confidence so
decided, after a seven years' perseverance in a warfare so bitter,
could not be expected to pass without the imputation of sinister
motives; and, accordingly, a design upon the presidency as successor
to Mr. Van Buren was attributed to him. The opposition newspapers
abounded with this imputation; and an early occasion was taken in
the Senate to make it the subject of a public debate. Mr. Calhoun
had brought into the Senate a bill to cede to the several States the
public lands within their limits, after a sale of the saleable parts
at graduated prices, for the benefit of both parties--the new States
and the United States. It was the same bill which he had brought
in two years before; but Mr. Clay, taking it up as a new measure,
inquired if it was an administration measure? whether he had brought
it in with the concurrence of the President? If nothing more had
been said Mr. Calhoun could have answered, that it was the same bill
which he had brought in two years before, when he was in opposition
to the administration; and that his reasons for bringing it in were
the same now as then; but Mr. Clay went on to taunt him with his new
relations with the chief magistrate, and to connect the bill with
the visit to Mr. Van Buren and approval of his measures. Mr. Calhoun
saw that the inquiry was only a vehicle for the taunt, and took it
up accordingly in that sense: and this led to an exposition of the
reasons which induced him to join Mr. Van Buren, and to explanations
on other points, which belong to history. Mr. Clay began the debate
thus:
"Whilst up, Mr. Clay would be glad to learn whether the
administration is in favor of or against this measure, or stands
neutral and uncommitted. This inquiry he should not make, if the
recent relations between the senator who introduced this bill
and the head of that administration, continued to exist; but
rumors, of which the city, the circles, and the press are full,
assert that those relations are entirely changed, and have,
within a few days, been substituted by others of an intimate,
friendly, and confidential nature. And shortly after the time
when this new state of things is alleged to have taken place,
the senator gave notice of his intention to move to introduce
this bill. Whether this motion has or has not any connection
with that adjustment of former differences, the public would, he
had no doubt, be glad to know. At all events, it is important to
know in what relation of support, opposition, or neutrality, the
administration actually stands to this momentous measure; and he
[Mr. C.] supposed that the senator from South Carolina, or some
other senator, could communicate the desired information."
Mr. Calhoun, besides vindicating himself, rebuked the indecorum
of making his personal conduct a subject of public remark in the
Senate; and threw back the taunt by reminding Mr. Clay of his own
change in favor of Mr. Adams.
"He said the senator from Kentucky had introduced other, and
extraneous personal matter; and asked whether the bill had
the sanction of the Executive; assigning as a reason for his
inquiry, that, if rumor was to be credited, a change of personal
relation had taken place between the President and myself within
the last few days. He [Mr. C.] would appeal to the Senate
whether it was decorous or proper that his personal relations
should be drawn in question here. Whether he should establish
or suspend personal relations with the President, or any other
person, is a private and personal concern, which belongs to
himself individually to determine on the propriety, without
consulting any one, much less the senator. It was none of his
concern, and he has no right to question me in relation to it.
"But the senator assumes that a change in my personal relations
involves a change of political position; and it is on that he
founds his right to make the inquiry. He judges, doubtless, by
his own experience; but I would have him to understand, said
Mr. C., that what may be true in his own case on a memorable
occasion, is not true in mine. His political course may be
governed by personal considerations; but mine, I trust, is
governed strictly by my principles, and is not at all under the
control of my attachments or enmities. Whether the President is
personally my friend or enemy, has no influence over me in the
discharge of my duties, as, I trust, my course has abundantly
proved. Mr. C. concluded by saying, that he felt that these were
improper topics to introduce here, and that he had passed over
them as briefly as possible."
This retort gave new scope and animation to the debate, and led to
further expositions of the famous compromise of 1833, which was a
matter of concord between them at the time, and of discord ever
since; and which, being much condemned in the first volume of this
work, the authors of it are entitled to their own vindications when
they choose to make them: and this they found frequent occasion to
do. The debate proceeded:
"Mr. Clay contended that his question, as to whether this was
an administration measure or not, was a proper one, as it was
important for the public information. He again referred to
the rumors of Mr. Calhoun's new relations with the President,
and supposed from the declarations of the senator, that these
rumors were true; and that his support, if not pledged, was at
least promised conditionally to the administration. Was it of
no importance to the public to learn that these pledges and
compromises had been entered into?--that the distinguished
senator had made his bow in court, kissed the hand of the
monarch, was taken into favor, and agreed henceforth to support
his edicts?"
This allusion to rumored pledges and conditions on which Mr. Calhoun
had joined Mr. Van Buren, provoked a retaliatory notice of what
the same rumor had bruited at the time that Mr. Clay became the
supporter of Mr. Adams; and Mr. Calhoun said:
"The senator from Kentucky had spoken much of pledges,
understandings, and political compromises, and sudden change of
personal relations. He [said Mr. C.] is much more experienced
in such things than I am. If my memory serves me, and if
rumors are to be trusted, the senator had a great deal to do
with such things, in connection with a distinguished citizen;
now of the other House; and it is not at all surprising, from
his experience then, in his own case, that he should not be
indisposed to believe similar rumors of another now. But whether
his sudden change of personal relations then, from bitter enmity
to the most confidential friendship with that citizen, was
preceded by pledges, understandings, and political compromises
on the part of one or both, it is not for me to say. The country
has long since passed on that."
All this taunt on both sides was mere irritation, having no
foundation in fact. It so happened that the writer of this View,
on each of these occasions (of sudden conjunctions with former
adversaries), stood in a relation to know what took place. In one
case he was confidential with Mr. Clay; in the other with Mr. Van
Buren. In a former chapter he has given his testimony in favor of
Mr. Clay, and against the imputed bargain with Mr. Adams: he can
here give it in favor of Mr. Calhoun. He is entirely certain--as
much so as it is possible to be in supporting a negative--that no
promise, pledge, or condition of any kind, took place between Mr.
Calhoun and Mr. Van Buren, in coming together as they did at this
juncture. How far Mr. Calhoun might have looked to his own chance
of succeeding Mr. Van Buren, is another question, and a fair one.
The succession was certainly open in the democratic line. Those
who stood nearest the head of the party had no desire for the
presidency, but the contrary; and only wished a suitable chief
magistrate at the head of the government--giving him a cordial
support in all patriotic measures; and preserving their independence
by refusing his favors. This allusion refers especially to Mr. Silas
Wright; and if it had not been for a calamitous conflagration, there
might be proof that it would apply to another. Both Mr. Wright and
Mr. Benton refused cabinet appointments from Mr. Van Buren; and
repressed every movement in their favor towards the presidency.
Under such circumstances, Mr. Calhoun might have indulged in a
vision of the democratic succession, after the second term of Mr.
Van Buren, without the slippery and ignominious contrivance of
attempting to contract for it beforehand. There was certainly a talk
about it, and a sounding of public men. Two different friends of Mr.
Calhoun, at two different times and places,--one in Missouri (Thomas
Hudson, Esq.), and the other in Washington (Gov. William Smith,
of Virginia),--inquired of this writer whether he had said that
he could not support Mr. Calhoun for the presidency, if nominated
by a democratic convention? and were answered that he had, and
because Mr. Calhoun was the author of nullification, and of measures
tending to the dissolution of the Union. The answer went into the
newspapers, without the agency of him who gave it, and without the
reasons which he gave: and his opposition was set down to causes
equally gratuitous and unfounded--one, personal ill-will to Mr.
Calhoun; the other, a hankering after the place himself. But to
return to Messrs. Clay and Calhoun. These reciprocal taunts having
been indulged in, the debate took a more elevated turn, and entered
the region of history. Mr. Calhoun continued:
"I will assure the senator, if there were pledges in his case,
there were none in mine. I have terminated my long-suspended
personal intercourse with the President, without the slightest
pledge, understanding, or compromise, on either side. I would
be the last to receive or exact such. The transition from their
former to their present personal relation was easy and natural,
requiring nothing of the kind. It gives me pleasure to say,
thus openly, that I have approved of all the leading measures
of the President, since he took the Executive chair, simply
because they accord with the principles and policy on which I
have long acted, and often openly avowed. The change, then,
in our personal relations, had simply followed that of our
political. Nor was it made suddenly, as the senator charges. So
far from it, more than two years have elapsed since I gave a
decided support to the leading measure of the Executive, and on
which almost all others since have turned. This long interval
was permitted to pass, in order that his acts might give
assurance whether there was a coincidence between our political
views as to the principles on which the government should be
administered, before our personal relations should be changed.
I deemed it due to both thus long to delay the change, among
other reasons to discountenance such idle rumors as the senator
alludes to. That his political course might be judged (said Mr.
CALHOUN) by the object he had in view, and not the suspicion
and jealousy of his political opponents, he would repeat what
he had said, at the last session, was his object. It is, said
he, to obliterate all those measures which had originated in
the national consolidation school of politics, and especially
the senator's famous American system, which he believed to be
hostile to the constitution and the genius of our political
system, and the real source of all the disorders and dangers to
which the country was, or had been, subject. This done, he was
for giving the government a fresh departure, in the direction
in which Jefferson and his associates would give, were they now
alive and at the helm. He stood where he had always stood, on
the old State rights ground. His change of personal relation,
which gave so much concern to the senator, so far from involving
any change in his principles or doctrines, grew out of them."
The latter part of this reply of Mr. Calhoun is worthy of universal
acceptance, and perpetual remembrance. The real source of all the
disorders to which the country was, or had been subject, was in
the system of legislation which encouraged the industry of one
part of the Union at the expense of the other--which gave rise
to extravagant expenditures, to be expended unequally in the two
sections of the Union--and which left the Southern section to pay
the expenses of a system which exhausted her. This remarkable
declaration of Mr. Calhoun was made in 1839--being four years after
the slavery agitation had superseded the tariff agitation,--and
which went back to that system of measures, of which protective
tariff was the main-spring, to find, and truly find, the real source
of all the dangers and disorders of the country--past and present.
Mr. Clay replied:
"He had understood the senator as felicitating himself on
the opportunity which had been now afforded him by Mr. C. of
defining once more his political position; and Mr. C. must say
that he had now defined it very clearly, and had apparently
given it a new definition. The senator now declared that all
the leading measures of the present administration had met his
approbation, and should receive his support. It turned out,
then, that the rumor to which Mr. C. had alluded was true, and
that the senator from South Carolina might be hereafter regarded
as a supporter of this administration, since he had declared
that all its leading measures were approved by him, and should
have his support. As to the allusion which the senator from
South Carolina had made in regard to Mr. C.'s support of the
head of another administration [Mr. ADAMS], it occasioned Mr.
C. no pain whatever. It was an old story, which had long been
sunk in oblivion, except when the senator and a few others
thought proper to bring it up. But what were the facts of that
case? Mr. C. was then a member of the House of Representatives,
to whom three persons had been returned, from whom it was the
duty of the House to make a selection for the presidency. As
to one of those three candidates, he was known to be in an
unfortunate condition, in which no one sympathized with him
more than did Mr. C. Certainly the senator from South Carolina
did not. That gentleman was therefore out of the question as a
candidate for the chief magistracy; and Mr. C. had consequently
the only alternative of the illustrious individual at the
Hermitage, or of the man who was now distinguished in the House
of Representatives, and who had held so many public places with
honor to himself, and benefit to the country. And if there was
any truth in history, the choice which Mr. C. then made was
precisely the choice which the senator from South Carolina had
urged upon his friends. The senator himself had declared his
preference of Adams to Jackson. Mr. C. made the same choice;
and his constituents had approved it from that day to this, and
would to eternity. History would ratify and approve it. Let the
senator from South Carolina make any thing out of that part
of Mr. C.'s public career if he could. Mr. C. defied him. The
senator had alluded to Mr. C. as the advocate of compromise.
Certainly he was. This government itself, to a great extent,
was founded and rested on compromise; and to the particular
compromise to which allusion had been made, Mr. C. thought no
man ought to be more grateful for it than the senator from
South Carolina. But for that compromise, Mr. C. was not at all
confident that he would have now had the honor to meet that
senator face to face in this national capitol."
The allusion in the latter part of this reply was to the President's
declared determination to execute the laws upon Mr. Calhoun if an
_overt_ act of treason should be committed under the nullification
ordinance of South Carolina; and the preparations for which (overt
act) were too far advanced to admit of another step, either
backwards or forwards; and from which most critical condition the
compromise relieved those who were too deeply committed, to retreat
without ruin, or to advance without personal peril. Mr. Calhoun's
reply was chiefly directed to this pregnant allusion.
"The senator from Kentucky has said, Mr. President, that I, of
all men, ought to be grateful to him for the compromise act."
[Mr. CLAY. "I did not say 'to me.'"]
"The senator claims to be the author of that measure, and,
of course, if there be any gratitude due, it must be to him.
I, said Mr. Calhoun, made no allusion to that act; but as
the senator has thought proper to refer to it, and claim my
gratitude, I, in turn, now tell him I feel not the least
gratitude towards him for it. The measure was necessary to save
the senator politically: and as he has alluded to the subject,
both on this and on a former occasion, I feel bound to explain
what might otherwise have been left in oblivion. The senator was
then compelled to compromise to save himself. Events had placed
him flat on his back, and he had no way to recover himself but
by the compromise. This is no after thought. I wrote more than
half a dozen of letters home at the time to that effect. I shall
now explain. The proclamation and message of General Jackson
necessarily rallied around him all the steadfast friends of the
senator's system. They withdrew their allegiance at once from
him, and transferred it to General Jackson. The senator was
thus left in the most hopeless condition, with no more weight
with his former partisans than this sheet of paper (raising
a sheet from his desk). This is not all. The position which
General Jackson had assumed, necessarily attracted towards him
a distinguished senator from Massachusetts, not now here [Mr.
WEBSTER], who, it is clear, would have reaped all the political
honors and advantages of the system, had the contest come to
blows. These causes made the political condition of the senator
truly forlorn at the time. On him rested all the responsibility,
as the author of the system; while all the power and influence
it gave, had passed into the hands of others. Compromise was
the only means of extrication. He was thus forced by the action
of the State, which I in part represent, against his system, by
my counsel to compromise, in order to save himself. I had the
mastery over him on the occasion."
This is historical, and is an inside view of history. Mr. Webster,
in that great contest of nullification, was on the side of President
Jackson, and the supreme defender of his great measure--the
Proclamation of 1833; and the first and most powerful opponent of
the measure out of which it grew. It was a splendid era in his
life--both for his intellect, and his patriotism. No longer the
advocate of classes, or interests, he appeared the great defender
of the Union--of the constitution--of the country--and of the
administration, to which he was opposed. Released from the bonds
of party, and from the narrow confines of class and corporation
advocacy, his colossal intellect expanded to its full proportions
in the field of patriotism, luminous with the fires of genius;
and commanding the homage, not of party, but of country. His
magnificent harangues touched Jackson in his deepest-seated and
ruling feeling--love of country! and brought forth the response
which always came from him when the country was in peril, and
a defender presented himself. He threw out the right hand of
fellowship--treated Mr. Webster with marked distinction--commended
him with public praise--and placed him on the roll of patriots. And
the public mind took the belief, that they were to act together in
future; and that a cabinet appointment, or a high mission, would
be the reward of his patriotic service. (It was the report of such
expected preferment that excited Mr. Randolph (then in no condition
to bear excitement) against General Jackson.) It was a crisis in
the political life of Mr. Webster. He stood in public opposition to
Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun. With Mr. Clay he had a public outbreak
in the Senate. He was cordial with Jackson. The mass of his party
stood by him on the proclamation. He was at a point from which a new
departure might be taken:--one at which he could not stand still:
from which there must be advance, or recoil. It was a case in which
_will_, more than _intellect_, was to rule. He was above Mr. Clay
and Mr. Calhoun in intellect--below them in will. And he was soon
seen co-operating with them (Mr. Clay in the lead), in the great
measure condemning President Jackson. And so passed away the fruits
of the golden era of 1833. It was to the perils of this conjunction
(of Jackson and Webster) that Mr. Calhoun referred, as the forlorn
condition from which the compromise relieved Mr. Clay: and, allowing
to each the benefit of his assertion, history avails herself of
the declarations of each in giving an inside view of personal
motives for a momentous public act. And, without deciding a question
of mastery in the disputed victory, History performs her task in
recording the fact that, in a brief space, both Mr. Calhoun and Mr.
Webster were seen following the lead of Mr. Clay in his great attack
upon President Jackson in the session of 1834-'35.
"Mr. Clay, rejoining, said he had made no allusion to the
compromise bill till it was done by the senator from South
Carolina himself; he made no reference to the events of 1825
until the senator had himself set him the example; and he had
not in the slightest and the most distant manner alluded to
nullification until after the senator himself had called it
up. The senator ought not to have introduced that subject,
especially when he had gone over to the authors of the force
bill and the proclamation. The senator from South Carolina
said that he [Mr. C.] was flat on his back, and that he was my
master. Sir, I would not own him as my slave. He my master! and
I compelled by him! And, as if it were impossible to go far
enough in one paragraph, he refers to certain letters of his own
to prove that I was flat on my back! and, that I was not only on
my back, but another senator and the President had robbed me!
I was flat on my back, and unable to do any thing but what the
senator from South Carolina permitted me to do!
"Why, sir, [said Mr. C.] I gloried in my strength, and was
compelled to introduce the compromise bill; and compelled, too,
by the senator, not in consequence of the weakness, but of the
strength, of my position. If it was possible for the senator
from South Carolina to introduce one paragraph without showing
the egotism of his character, he would not now acknowledge that
he wrote letters home to show that he (Mr. C.) was flat on
his back, while he was indebted to him for that measure which
relieved him from the difficulties in which he was involved.
Now, what was the history of the case? Flat as he was on his
back, Mr. C. said he was able to produce that compromise, and
to carry it through the Senate, in opposition to the most
strenuous exertions of the gentleman who, the senator from
South Carolina said, had supplanted him, and in spite of his
determined and unceasing opposition. There was (said Mr. C.)
a sort of necessity operating on me to compel me to introduce
that measure. No necessity of a personal character influenced
him; but considerations involving the interests, the peace
and harmony of the whole country, as well as of the State of
South Carolina, directed him in the course he pursued. He saw
the condition of the senator from South Carolina and that of
his friends; he saw the condition to which he had reduced the
gallant little State of South Carolina by his unwise and
dangerous measures; he saw, too, that we were on the eve of a
civil war; and he wished to save the effusion of blood--the
blood of our own fellow-citizens. That was one reason why he
introduced the compromise bill. There was another reason that
powerfully operated on him. The very interest that the tariff
laws were enacted to protect--so great was the power of the then
chief magistrate, and so rapidly was that power increasing--was
in danger of being sacrificed. He saw that the protective system
was in danger of being swept away entirely, and probably at
the next session of Congress, by the tremendous power of the
individual who then filled the Executive chair; and he felt that
the greatest service that he could render it, would be to obtain
for it 'a lease for a term of years,' to use an expression that
had been heretofore applied to the compromise bill. He saw the
necessity that existed to save the protective system from the
danger which threatened it. He saw the necessity to advance
the great interests of the nation, to avert civil war, and to
restore peace and harmony to a distracted and divided country;
and it was therefore that he had brought forward this measure.
The senator from South Carolina, to betray still further and
more strikingly the characteristics which belonged to him, said,
that in consequence of his (Mr. C.'s) remarks this very day, all
obligations towards him on the part of himself (Mr. CALHOUN),
of the State of South Carolina, and the whole South, were
cancelled. And what right had the senator to get up and assume
to speak of the whole South, or even of South Carolina herself?
If he was not mistaken in his judgment of the political signs of
the times, and if the information which came to him was to be
relied on, a day would come, and that not very distant neither,
when the senator would not dare to rise in his place and presume
to speak as he had this day done, as the organ of the gallant
people of the State he represented."
The concluding remark of Mr. Clay was founded on the belief,
countenanced by many signs, that the State of South Carolina
would not go with Mr. Calhoun in support of Mr. Van Buren; but he
was mistaken. The State stood by her distinguished senator, and
even gave her presidential vote for Mr. Van Buren at the ensuing
election--being the first time she had voted in a presidential
election since 1829. Mr. Grundy, and some other senators, put an end
to this episodical and personal debate by turning the Senate to a
vote on the bill before it.
CHAPTER XXIX.
INDEPENDENT TREASURY, OR, DIVORCE OF BANK AND STATE: PASSED IN
THE SENATE: LOST IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
This great measure consisted of two distinct parts: 1. The _keeping_
of the public moneys: 2. The hard money currency in which they
were to be paid. The two measures together completed the system
of financial reform recommended by the President. The adoption of
either of them singly would be a step--and a step going half the
distance--towards establishing the whole system: and as it was well
supposed that some of the democratic party would balk at the hard
money payments, it was determined to propose the measures singly.
With this view the committee reported a bill for the Independent
Treasury--that is to say, for the keeping of the government moneys
by its own officers--without designating the currency to be paid
to them. But there was to be a loss either way; for unless the
hard money payments were made a part of the act in the first
instance, Mr. Calhoun and some of his friends could not vote
for it. He therefore moved an amendment to that effect; and the
hard money friends of the administration supporting his motion,
although preferring that it had not been made, and some others
voting for it as making the bill obnoxious to some other friends
of the administration, it was carried; and became a part of the
bill. At the last moment, and when the bill had been perfected as
far as possible by its friends, and the final vote on its passage
was ready to be taken, a motion was made to strike out that
section--and carried--by the helping vote of some of the friends of
the administration--as was well remarked by Mr. Calhoun. The vote
was, for striking out--_Messrs._ Bayard, Buchanan, Clay of Kentucky,
Clayton (Jno. M.), Crittenden, Cuthbert, Davis of Mississippi,
Fulton, Grundy, Knight, McKean, Merrick, Morris, Nicholas, Prentiss,
Preston, Rives, Robbins, Robinson, Ruggles, Sevier, Smith of
Indiana, Southard, Spence, Swift, Talmadge, Tipton, Wall, White,
Webster, Williams--31. On the other hand only twenty-one senators
voted for retaining the clause. They were--_Messrs._ Allen, of
Ohio, Benton, Brown of North Carolina, Calhoun, Clay of Alabama,
Hubbard of New Hampshire, King of Alabama, Linn of Missouri, Lumpkin
of Georgia, Lyon of Michigan, Mouton of Louisiana, Niles, Norvell,
Franklin Pierce, Roane of Virginia, Smith of Connecticut, Strange
of North Carolina, Trotter of Mississippi, Robert J. Walker, Silas
Wright, Young of Illinois--21.
This section being struck from the bill, Mr. Calhoun could no longer
vote for it; and gave his reasons, which justice to him requires to
be preserved in his own words:
"On the motion of the senator from Georgia (Mr. CUTHBERT), the
23d section, which provides for the collection of the dues of
the government in specie, was struck out, with the aid of a
few on this side, and the entire opposition to the divorce on
the other. That section provided for the repeal of the joint
resolution of 1816, which authorizes the receipt of bank notes
as cash in the dues of the public. The effects of this will be,
should the bill pass in its present shape, that the government
will collect its revenue and make its disbursements exclusively
in bank notes; as it did before the suspension took place in
May last. Things will stand precisely as they did then, with
but a single exception, that the public deposits will be made
with the officers of the government instead of the banks, under
the provision of the deposit act of 1836. Thus far is certain.
All agree that such is the fact; and such the effect of the
passage of this bill as it stands. Now, he intended to show
conclusively, that the difference between depositing the public
money with the public officers, or with the banks themselves,
was merely nominal, as far as the operation and profits of the
banks were concerned; that they would not make one cent less
profit, or issue a single dollar less, if the deposits be kept
by the officers of the government instead of themselves; and, of
course, that the system would be equally subject to expansions
and contractions, and equally exposed to catastrophes like the
present, in the one, as the other, mode of keeping.
"But he had other and insuperable objections. In giving the bill
originally his support, he was governed by a deep conviction
that the total separation of the government and the banks was
indispensable. He firmly believed that we had reached a point
where the separation was absolutely necessary to save both
government and banks. He was under a strong impression that the
banking system had reached a point of decrepitude--that great
and important changes were necessary to save it and prevent
convulsions; and that the first step was a perpetual separation
between them and the government. But there could be, in his
opinion, no separation--no divorce--without collecting the
public dues in the legal and constitutional currency of the
country. Without that, all would prove a perfect delusion; as
this bill would prove should it pass. We had no constitutional
right to treat the notes of mere private corporations as cash;
and if we did, nothing would be done.
"These views, and many others similar, he had openly
expressed, in which the great body of the gentlemen around
him had concurred. We stand openly pledged to them before the
country and the world. We had fought the battle manfully and
successfully. The cause was good, and having stood the first
shock, nothing was necessary, but firmness; standing fast on
our position to ensure victory--a great and glorious victory
in a noble cause, which was calculated to effect a more
important reformation in the condition of society than any in
our time--he, for one, could not agree to terminate all those
mighty efforts, at this and the extra session, by returning to
a complete and perfect reunion with the banks in the worst and
most dangerous form. He would not belie all that he had said and
done, by voting for the bill as it now stood amended; and to
terminate that which was so gloriously begun, in so miserable
a farce. He could not but feel deeply disappointed in what he
had reason to apprehend would be the result--to have all our
efforts and labor thrown away, and the hopes of the country
disappointed. All would be lost! No; he expressed himself too
strongly. Be the vote what it may, the discussion would stand.
Light had gone abroad. The public mind had been aroused, for the
first time, and directed to this great subject. The intelligence
of the country is every where busy in exploring its depths and
intricacies, and would not cease to investigate till all its
labyrinths were traced. The seed that has been sown will sprout
and grow to maturity; the revolution that has been begun will go
through, be our course what it may."
The vote was then taken on the passage of the bill, and it was
carried--by the lean majority of two votes, which was only the
difference of one voter. The affirmative vote was: Messrs. Allen,
Benton, Brown, Clay of Alabama, Cuthbert, Fulton, Hubbard, King,
Linn, Lumpkin, Lyon, Morris, Mouton, Niles, Norvell, Pierce, Roane,
Robinson, Sevier, Smith of Connecticut, Strange, Trotter, Walker,
Wall, Williams, Wright, Young--27. The negatives were: Messrs.
Bayard, Buchanan, Calhoun, Clay of Kentucky, Clayton, Crittenden,
Davies, Grundy, Knight, McKean, Merrick, Nicholas, Prentiss,
Preston, Rives, Robbins, Ruggles, Smith of Indiana, Southard,
Spence, Swift, Talmadge, Tipton, Webster, Hugh L. White--25.
The act having passed the Senate by this slender majority was sent
to the House of Representatives; where it was lost by a majority of
14. This was a close vote in a house of 236 present; and the bill
was only lost by several friends of the administration voting with
the entire opposition. But a great point was gained. Full discussion
had been had upon the subject, and the public mind was waked up to
it.
CHAPTER XXX.
PUBLIC LANDS: GRADUATION OF PRICE: PRE-EMPTION SYSTEM: TAXATION
WHEN SOLD.
For all the new States composed territory belonging, or chiefly
so to the federal government, the Congress of the United States
became the local legislature, that is to say, in the place of a
local legislature in all the legislation that relates to the primary
disposition of the soil. In the old States this legislation belonged
to the State legislatures, and might have belonged to the new States
in virtue of their State sovereignty except by the "_compacts_"
with the federal government at the time of their admission into the
Union, in which they bound themselves, in consideration of land
and money grants deemed equivalent to the value of the surrendered
rights, not to interfere with the primary disposition of the public
lands, nor to tax them while remaining unsold, nor for five years
thereafter. These grants, though accepted as equivalents in the
infancy of the States, were soon found to be very far from it, even
in a mere moneyed point of view, independent of the evils resulting
from the administration of domestic local questions by a distant
national legislature. The taxes alone for a few years on the public
lands would have been equivalent to all the benefits derived from
the grants in the compacts. Composed of citizens from the old States
where a local legislature administered the public lands according
to the local interests--selling lands of different qualities for
different prices, according to its quality--granting pre-emptions
and donations to first settlers--and subjecting all to taxation as
soon as it became public property; it was a national feeling to
desire the same advantages; and for this purpose, incessant, and
usually vain efforts were made to obtain them from Congress. At
this session (1837-'38) a better progress was made, and bills passed
for all the purposes through the Senate.
1. The graduation bill. This measure had been proposed for twelve
years, and the full system embraced a plan for the speedy and final
extinction of the federal title to all the lands within the new
States. Periodical reductions of price at the rate of 25 cents
per acre until reduced to 25 cents: a preference in the purchase
to actual settlers, constituting a pre-emption right: donations
to destitute settlers: and the cession of the refuse to States in
which they lay:--these were the provisions which constituted the
system and which were all contained in the first bills. But finding
it impossible to carry all the provisions of the system in any one
bill, it became necessary to secure what could be obtained. The
graduation-bill was reduced to one feature--reduction of price; and
that limited to two reductions, bringing down the price at the first
reduction to one dollar per acre: at the next 75 cents per acre. In
support of this bill Mr. Benton made a brief speech, from which the
following are some passages:
"The bill comes to us now under more favorable auspices than
it has ever done before. The President recommends it, and the
Treasury needs the money which it will produce. A gentleman
of the opposition [Mr. CLAY], reproaches the President for
inconsistency in making this recommendation; he says that he
voted against it as senator heretofore, and recommends it as
President now. But the gentleman forgets so tell us that Mr.
Van Buren, when a member of the Senate, spoke in favor of the
general object of the bill from the first day it was presented,
and that he voted in favor of one degree of reduction--a
reduction of the price of the public lands to one dollar per
acre--the last session that he served here. Far from being
inconsistent, the President, in this recommendation, has only
carried out to their legitimate conclusions the principles which
he formerly expressed, and the vote which he formerly gave.
"The bill, as modified on the motions of the senators from
Tennessee and New Hampshire [Messrs. GRUNDY and HUBBARD] stands
shorn of half its original provisions. Originally it embraced
four degrees of reduction, it now contains but two of those
degrees. The two last--the fifty cent, and the twenty-five
cent reductions, have been cut off. I made no objection to
the motions of those gentlemen. I knew them to be made in a
friendly spirit; I knew also that the success of their motions
was necessary to the success of any part of the bill. Certainly
I would have preferred the whole--would have preferred the four
degrees of reduction. But this is a case in which the homely
maxim applies, that half a loaf is better than no bread. By
giving up half the bill, we may gain the other half; and sure
I am that our constituents will vastly prefer half to nothing.
The lands may now be reduced to one dollar for those which
have been five years in market, and to seventy-five cents for
those which have been ten years in market. The rest of the
bill is relinquished for the present, not abandoned for ever.
The remaining degrees of reduction will be brought forward
hereafter, and with a better prospect of success, after the
lands have been picked and culled over under the prices of the
present bill. Even if the clauses had remained which have been
struck out, on the motions of the gentlemen from Tennessee and
New Hampshire, it would have been two years from December next,
before any purchases could have been made under them. They
were not to take effect until December, 1840. Before that time
Congress will twice sit again; and if the present bill passes,
and is found to work well, the enactment of the present rejected
clauses will be a matter of course.
"This is a measure emphatically for the benefit of the
agricultural interest--that great interest, which he declared
to be the foundation of all national prosperity, and the
backbone, and substratum of every other interest--which was,
in the body politic, front rank for service, and rear rank for
reward--which bore nearly all the burthens of government while
carrying the government on its back--which was the fountain of
good production, while it was the pack-horse of burthens, and
the broad shoulders which received nearly all losses--especially
from broken banks. This bill was for them; and, in voting for
it, he had but one regret, and that was, that it did not go far
enough--that it was not equal to their merits."
The bill passed by a good majority--27 to 16; but failed to be
acted upon in the House of Representatives, though favorably
reported upon by its committee on the public lands.
2. The pre-emptive system. The provisions of the bill were
simple, being merely to secure the privilege of first purchase
to the settler on any lands to which the Indian title had been
extinguished; to be paid for at the minimum price of the public
lands at the time. A senator from Maryland, Mr. Merrick, moved to
amend the bill by confining its benefits to citizens of the United
States--excluding unnaturalized foreigners. Mr. Benton opposed this
motion, in a brief speech.
"He was entirely opposed to the amendment of the senator from
Maryland (Mr. MERRICK). It proposed something new in our
legislation. It proposed to make a distinction between aliens
and citizens in the acquisition of property. Pre-emption rights
had been granted since the formation of the government; and no
distinction, until now, had been proposed, between the persons,
or classes of persons, to whom they were granted. No law had yet
excluded aliens from the acquisition of a pre-emption right, and
he was entirely opposed to commencing a system of legislation
which was to affect the property rights of the aliens who came to
our country to make it their home. Political rights rested on a
different basis. They involved the management of the government,
and it was right that foreigners should undergo the process of
naturalization before they acquired the right of sharing in the
government. But the acquisition of property was another affair. It
was a private and personal affair. It involved no question but that
of the subsistence, the support, and the comfortable living of the
alien and his family. Mr. B. would be against the principle of the
proposed amendment in any case, but he was particularly opposed to
this case. Who were the aliens whom it proposed to affect? Not those
who are described as paupers and criminals, infesting the purlieus
of the cities, but those who had gone to the remote new States,
and to the remote parts of those States, and into the depths of
the wilderness, and there commenced the cultivation of the earth.
These were the description of aliens to be affected; and if the
amendment was adopted, they would be excluded from a pre-emption
right in the soil they were cultivating, and made to wait until
they were naturalized. The senator from Maryland (Mr. MERRICK),
treats this as a case of bounty. He treats the pre-emption right as
a bounty from the government, and says that aliens have no right
to this bounty. But, is this correct? Is the pre-emption a bounty?
Far from it. In point of money, the pre-emptioner pays about as
much as any other purchaser. He pays the government price, one
dollar and twenty-five cents; and the table of land sales proves
that nobody pays any more, or so little more that it is nothing in
a national point of view. One dollar twenty-seven and a half cents
per acre is the average of all the sales for fifteen years. The
twenty millions of acres sold to speculators in the year 1836, all
went at one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre. The pre-emption
then is not a bounty, but a sale, and a sale for full price, and,
what is more, for solid money; for pre-emptioners pay with gold and
silver, and not with bank credits. Numerous were the emigrants from
Germany, France, Ireland, and other countries, now in the West, and
especially in Missouri, and he (Mr. B.) had no idea of imposing any
legal disability upon them in the acquisition of property. He wished
them all well. If any of them had settled upon the public lands, so
much the better. It was an evidence of their intention to become
citizens, and their labor upon the soil would add to its product and
to the national wealth."
The motion of Mr. Merrick was rejected by a majority of 13. The
yeas were: Messrs. Bayard, Clay of Kentucky, Clayton, Crittenden,
Davis, Knight, Merrick, Prentiss, Preston, Rives, Robbins, Smith,
of Indiana, Southard, Spence, Tallmadge, Tipton, 15. The nays were:
Messrs. Allen, Benton, Brown, Buchanan, Calhoun, Clay, of Alabama,
Cuthbert, Fulton, Grundy, Hubbard, King, Linn, Lumpkin, Lyon,
Mouton, Nicholas, Niles, Nowell, Pierce, Roane, Robinson, Sevier,
Walker, Webster, White, Williams, Wright, Young, of Illinois, (28.)
The bill being then put to the vote, was passed by a majority of 14.
3. Taxation of public lands when sold. When the United States first
instituted their land system, the sales were upon credit, at a
minimum price of two dollars, payable in four equal annual payments,
with a liability to revert if there should be any failure in the
payments. During that time it was considered as public land, nor
was the title passed until the patent issued--which might be a
year longer. Five years, therefore, was the period fixed, during
which the land so sold should be exempt from taxation by the State
in which it lay. This continued to be the mode of sale, until the
year 1821, when the credit was changed for the cash system, and the
minimum price reduced to one dollar twenty-five cents per acre.
The reason for the five years exemption from state taxation had
then ceased, but the compacts remaining unaltered, the exemption
continued. Repeated applications were made to Congress to consent
to the modification of the compacts in that article; but always in
vain. At this session the application was renewed on the part of the
new States; and with success in the Senate, where the bill for that
purpose passed nearly unanimously, the negatives being but four, to
wit: Messrs. Brown, Clay of Kentucky, Clayton, Southard. Being sent
to the H. R. it remained there without action till the end of the
session.
CHAPTER XXXI.
SPECIE BASIS FOR BANKS: ONE THIRD OF THE AMOUNT OF LIABILITIES
THE LOWEST SAFE PROPORTION: SPEECH OF MR. BENTON ON THE
RECHARTER OF THE DISTRICT BANKS.
This is a point of great moment--one on which the public mind
has not been sufficiently awakened in this country, though well
understood and duly valued in England. The charters of banks in the
United States are usually drawn on this principle, that a certain
proportion of the capital, and sometimes the whole of it, shall be
paid up in gold or silver before the charter shall take effect.
This is the usual provision, without any obligation on the bank to
retain any part of this specie after it gets into operation; and
this provision has too often proved to be illusory and deceptive.
In many cases, the banks have borrowed the requisite amount for a
day, and then returned it; in many other cases, the proportion of
specie, though paid up in good faith, is immediately lent out, or
parted with. The result to the public is about the same in both
cases; the bank has little or no specie, and its place is supplied
by the notes of other banks. The great vice of the banking system in
the United States is in banking upon paper--upon the paper of each
other--and treating this paper as cash. This may be safe among the
banks themselves; it may enable them to settle with one another, and
to liquidate reciprocal balances; but to the public it is nothing.
In the event of a run upon a bank, or a general run upon all banks,
it is specie, and not paper, that is wanted. It is specie, and not
paper, which the public want, and must have.
The motion of the senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. BUCHANAN] is
intended to remedy this vice in these District banks; it is
intended to impose an obligation on these banks to keep in their
vaults a quantum of specie bearing a certain proportion to the
amount of their immediate liabilities in circulation and deposits.
The gentleman's motion is well intended, but it is defective in
two particulars: first, in requiring the proportion to be the
one-fourth, instead of the one-third, and next, in making it apply
to the private deposits only. The true proportion is one-third, and
this to apply to all the circulation and deposits, except those
which are special. This proportion has been fixed for a hundred
years at the Bank of England; and just so often as that bank has
fallen below this proportion, mischief has occurred. This is the
sworn opinion of the present Governor of the Bank of England, and of
the directors of that institution. Before Lord Althorpe's committee
in 1832, Mr. Horsley Palmer, the Governor of the Bank, testified in
these words:
"'The average proportion, as already observed, of coin and
bullion which the bank thinks it prudent to keep on hand, is at
the rate of a third of the total amount of all her liabilities,
including deposits as well as issues.' Mr. George Ward Norman,
a director of the bank, states the same thing in a different
form of words. He says: 'For a full state of the circulation
and the deposits, say twenty-one millions of notes and six
millions of deposits, making in the whole twenty-seven millions
of liabilities, the proper sum in coin and bullion for the
bank to retain is nine millions.' Thus, the average proportion
of one-third between the specie on hand and the circulation
and deposits, must be considered as an established principle
at that bank, which is quite the largest, and amongst the
oldest--probably, the very oldest bank of circulation in the
world."
The Bank of England is not merely required to keep on hand,
in bullion, the one-third of its immediate liabilities; it is
bound also to let the country see that it has, or has not, that
proportion on hand. By an act of the third year of William IV., it
is required to make quarterly publications of the average of the
weekly liabilities of the bank, that the public may see whenever
it descends below the point of safety. Here is the last of these
publications, which is a full exemplification of the rule and the
policy which now governs that bank:
Quarterly average of the weekly liabilities and assets of the
Bank of England, from the 12th December, 1837, to the 6th of
March, 1838, both inclusive, published pursuant to the act 3 and
William IV., cap. 98:
Liabilities. Assets.
Circulation, £18,600,000 Securities, £22,792,900
Deposits, 11,535,000 Bullion, 10,015,000
----------- -----------
£30,135,000 £30,807,000
_London, March 12._
According to this statement, the Bank of England is now safe; and,
accordingly, we see that she is acting upon the principle of having
bullion enough, for she is shipping gold to the United States.
The proportion in England is one-third. The bank relies upon its
debts and other resources for the other two-thirds, in the event
of a run upon it. This is the rule in that bank which has more
resources than any other bank in the world; which is situated in
the moneyed metropolis of the world--the richest merchants its
debtors, friends and customers--and the Government of England its
debtor and backer, and always ready to sustain it with exchequer
bills, and with every exertion of its credit and means. Such a bank,
so situated and so aided, still deems it necessary to its safety
to keep in hand always the one-third in bullion of the amount of
its immediate liabilities. Now, if the proportion of one-third is
necessary to the safety of such a bank, with such resources, how is
it possible for our banks, with their meagre resources and small
array of friends, to be safe with a less proportion?
This is the rule at the Bank of England, and just as often as it has
been departed from, the danger of that departure has been proved.
It was departed from in 1797, when the proportion sunk to the
one-seventh; and what was the result? The stoppage of the banks, and
of all the banks in England, and a suspension of specie payments
for six-and-twenty years! It was departed from again about a year
ago, when the proportion sunk to one-eighth nearly; and what was the
result? A death struggle between the paper systems of England and
the United States, in which our system was sacrificed to save hers.
Her system was saved from explosion! but at what cost?--at what cost
to us, and to herself?--to us a general stoppage of all the banks
for twelve months; to the English, a general stagnation of business,
decline of manufactures, and of commerce, much individual distress,
and a loss of two millions sterling of revenue to the Crown. The
proportion of one-third may then be assumed as the point of safety
in the Bank of England; less than that proportion cannot be safe
in the United States. Yet the senator from Pennsylvania proposes
less--he proposes the one-fourth; and proposes it, not because
he feels it to be the right proportion, but from some feeling of
indulgence or forbearance to this poor District. Now, I think that
this is a case in which kind feelings can have no place, and that
the point in question is one upon which there can be no compromise.
A bank is a bank, whether made in a district or a State; and a bank
ought to be safe, whether the stockholders be rich or poor. Safety
is the point aimed at, and nothing unsafe should be tolerated.
There should be no giving and taking below the point of safety.
Experienced men fix upon the one-third as the safe proportion; we
should not, therefore, take a less proportion. Would the gentleman
ask to let the water in the boiler of a steamboat sink one inch
lower, when the experienced captain informed him that it had already
sunk as low as it was safe to go? Certainly not. So of these banks.
One-third is the point of safety; let us not tamper with danger by
descending to the one-fourth.
When a bank stops payment, the first thing we see is an exposition
of its means, and a declaration of ultimate ability to pay all
its debts. This is nothing to the holders of its notes. Immediate
ability is the only ability that is of any avail to them. The fright
of some, and the necessity of others, compel them to part with their
notes. Cool, sagacious capitalists can look to ultimate ability,
and buy up the notes from the necessitous and the alarmed. To them
ultimate ability is sufficient; to the community it is nothing.
It is, therefore, for the benefit of the community that the banks
should be required to keep always on hand the one-third of their
circulation and deposits; they are then trusted for two-thirds, and
this is carrying credit far enough. If pressed by a run, it is as
much as a bank can do to make up the other two-thirds out of the
debts due to her. Three to one is credit enough, and it is profit
enough. If a bank draws interest upon three dollars when it has but
one, this is eighteen per cent., and ought to content her. A citizen
cannot lend his money for more than six per cent., and cannot the
banks be contented with eighteen? Must they insist upon issuing four
dollars, or even five, upon one, so as to draw twenty-four or thirty
per cent.; and thus, after paying their officers vast salaries, and
accommodating friends with loans on easy terms, still make enough
out of the business community to cover all expenses and all losses:
and then to divide larger profits than can be made at any other
business?
The issuing of currency is the prerogative of sovereignty. The real
sovereign in this country--the government--can only issue a currency
of the actual dollar: can only issue gold and silver--and each
piece worth its face. The banks which have the privilege of issuing
currency issue paper; and not content with two more dollars out for
one that is, they go to five, ten, twenty--failing of course on the
first run; and the loss falling upon the holders of its notes--and
especially the holders of the small notes.
We now touch a point, said Mr. B., vital to the safety of banking,
and I hope it will neither be passed over without decision, nor
decided in an erroneous manner. We had up the same question two
years ago, in the discussion of the bill to regulate the keeping
of the public moneys by the local deposit banks. A senator from
Massachusetts (Mr. WEBSTER) moved the question; he (Mr. B.)
cordially concurred in it; and the proportion of _one-fourth_ was
then inserted. He (Mr. B.) had not seen at that time the testimony
of the governor and directors of the Bank of England, fixing on
the _one-third_ as the proper proportion, and he presumed that the
senator from Massachusetts (Mr. W.) had not then seen it, as on
another occasion he quoted it with approbation, and stated it to
be the proportion observed at the Bank of the United States. The
proportion of one-fourth was then inserted in the deposit bill;
it was an erroneous proportion, but even that proportion was not
allowed to stand. After having been inserted in the bill, it was
struck out; and it was left to the discretion of the Secretary of
the Treasury to fix the proportion. To this I then objected, and
gave my reasons for it. I was for fixing the proportion, because
I held it vital to the safety of the deposit banks; I was against
leaving it to the secretary, because it was a case in which the
inflexible rule of law, and not the variable dictate of individual
discretion should be exercised; and because I was certain that no
secretary could be relied upon to compel the banks to _toe the
mark_, when Congress itself had flinched from the task of making
them do it. My objections were unavailing. The proportion was struck
out of the bill; the discretion of the secretary to fix it was
substituted; and that discretion it was impossible to exercise with
any effect over the banks. They were, that is to say, many of them
were, far beyond the mark then; and at the time of the issuing of
the Treasury order in July, 1836, there were deposit banks, whose
proportion of specie in hand to their immediate liabilities was as
one to twenty, one to thirty, one to forty, and even one to fifty!
The explosion of all such banks was inevitable. The issuing of
the Treasury order improved them a little: they began to increase
their specie, and to diminish their liabilities; but the gap was
too wide--the chasm was too vast to be filled: and at the touch of
pressure, all these banks fell like nine-pins! They tumbled down in
a heap, and lay there, without the power of motion, or scarcely of
breathing. Such was the consequence of our error in omitting to fix
the proper proportion of specie in hand to the liabilities of our
deposit banks: let us avoid that error in the bill now before us.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH: COMPARATIVE PROSPERITY: SOUTHERN
DISCONTENT: ITS TRUE CAUSE.
To show the working of the federal government is the design of
this View--show how things are done under it and their effects;
that the good may be approved and pursued, the evil condemned and
avoided, and the machine of government be made to work equally
for the benefit of the whole Union, according to the wise and
beneficent intent of its founders. It thus becomes necessary to
show its working in the two great Atlantic sections, originally
sole parties to the Union--the North and the South--complained of
for many years on one part as unequal and oppressive, and made so
by a course of federal legislation at variance with the objects of
the confederation and contrary to the intent or the words of the
constitution.
The writer of this View sympathized with that complaint; believed it
to be, to much extent, well founded; saw with concern the corroding
effect it had on the feelings of patriotic men of the South; and
often had to lament that a sense of duty to his own constituents
required him to give votes which his judgment disapproved and his
feelings condemned. This complaint existed when he came into the
Senate; it had, in fact, commenced in the first years of the federal
government, at the time of the assumption of the State debts, the
incorporation of the first national bank, and the adoption of the
funding system; all of which drew capital from the South to the
North. It continued to increase; and, at the period to which this
chapter relates, it had reached the stage of an organized sectional
expression in a voluntary convention of the Southern States. It had
often been expressed in Congress, and in the State legislatures,
and habitually in the discussions of the people; but now it took
the more serious form of joint action, and exhibited the spectacle
of a part of the States assembling sectionally to complain formally
of the unequal, and to them, injurious operation of the common
government, established by common consent for the common good, and
now frustrating its object by departing from the purposes of its
creation. The convention was called commercial, and properly, as the
grievance complained of was in its root commercial, and a commercial
remedy was proposed.
It met at Augusta, Georgia, and afterwards at Charleston, South
Carolina; and the evil complained of and the remedy proposed were
strongly set forth in the proceedings of the body, and in addresses
to the people of the Southern and Southwestern States. The changed
relative condition of the two sections of the country, before and
since the Union, was shown in their general relative depression
or prosperity since that event, and especially in the reversed
condition of their respective foreign import trade. In the colonial
condition the comparison was wholly in favor of the South; under the
Union wholly against it. Thus, in the year 1760--only sixteen years
before the Declaration of Independence--the foreign imports into
Virginia were £850,000 sterling, and into South Carolina £555,000;
while into New York they were only £189,000, into Pennsylvania
£490,000; and into all the New England Colonies collectively only
£561,000.
These figures exhibit an immense superiority of commercial
prosperity on the side of the South in its colonial state, sadly
contrasting with another set of figures exhibited by the convention
to show its relative condition within a few years after the Union.
Thus, in the year 1821, the imports into New York had risen to
$23,000,000--being about seventy times its colonial import at about
an equal period before the adoption of the constitution; and those
of South Carolina stood at $3,000,000--which, for all practical
purposes, may be considered the same that they were in 1760.
Such was the difference--the reversed conditions--of the
two sections, worked between them in the brief space of two
generations--within the actual lifetime of some who had seen their
colonial conditions. The proceedings of the convention did not
stop there, but brought down the comparison (under this commercial
aspect) to near the period of its own sitting--to the actual period
of the highest manifestation of Southern discontent, in 1832--when
it produced the enactment of the South Carolina nullifying
ordinance. At that time all the disproportions between the foreign
commerce of the two sections had inordinately increased. The New
York imports (since 1821) had more than doubled; the Virginia had
fallen off one-half; South Carolina two-thirds. The actual figures
stood: New York fifty-seven millions of dollars, Virginia half a
million, South Carolina one million and a quarter.
This was a disheartening view, and rendered more grievous by the
certainty of its continuation, the prospect of its aggravation, and
the conviction that the South (in its great staples) furnished
the basis for these imports; of which it received so small a
share. To this loss of its import trade, and its transfer to the
North, the convention attributed, as a primary cause, the reversed
conditions of the two sections--the great advance of one in wealth
and improvements--the slow progress and even comparative decline of
the other; and, with some allowance for the operation of natural
or inherent causes, referred the effect to a course of federal
legislation unwarranted by the grants of the constitution and the
objects of the Union, which subtracted capital from one section
and accumulated it in the other:--protective tariff, internal
improvements, pensions, national debt, two national banks, the
funding system and the paper system; the multiplication of offices,
profuse and extravagant expenditure, the conversion of a limited
into an almost unlimited government; and the substitution of power
and splendor for what was intended to be a simple and economical
administration of that part of their affairs which required a
general head.
These were the points of complaint--abuses--which had led to the
collection of an enormous revenue, chiefly levied on the products
of one section of the Union and mainly disbursed in another. So
far as northern advantages were the result of fair legislation for
the accomplishment of the objects of the Union, all discontent or
complaint was disclaimed. All knew that the superior advantages of
the North for navigation would give it the advantage in foreign
commerce; but it was not expected that these facilities would
operate a monopoly on one side and an extinction on the other; nor
was that consequence allowed to be the effect of these advantages
alone, but was charged to a course of legislation not warranted
by the objects of the Union, or the terms of the constitution,
which created it. To this course of legislation was attributed
the accumulation of capital in the North, which had enabled that
section to monopolize the foreign commerce which was founded upon
southern exports; to cover one part with wealth while the other was
impoverished; and to make the South tributary to the North, and
suppliant to it for a small part of the fruits of their own labor.
Unhappily there was some foundation for this view of the case;
and in this lies the root of the discontent of the South and its
dissatisfaction with the Union, although it may break out upon
another point. It is in this belief of an incompatibility of
interest, from the perverted working of the federal government, that
lies the root of southern discontent, and which constitutes the
danger to the Union, and which statesmen should confront and grapple
with; and not in any danger to slave property, which has continued
to aggrandize in value during the whole period of the cry of danger,
and is now of greater price than ever was known before; and such as
our ancestors would have deemed fabulous. The sagacious Mr. Madison
knew this--knew where the danger to the Union lay, when, in the 86th
year of his age, and the last of his life, and under the anguish
of painful misgivings, he wrote (what is more fully set out in the
previous volume of this work) these portentous words:
"_The visible susceptibility to the contagion of nullification
in the Southern States, the sympathy arising from known causes,
and the inculcated impression of a permanent incompatibility
of interest between the North and the South, may put it in the
power of popular leaders, aspiring to the highest stations, to
unite the South, on some critical occasion, in some course of
action of which nullification may be the first step, secession
the second, and a farewell separation the last._"
So viewed the evil, and in his last days, the great surviving
founder of the Union--seeing, as he did, in this inculcated
impression of a permanent incompatibility of interest between the
two sections, the fulcrum or point of support, on which disunion
could rest its lever, and parricidal hands build its schemes.
What has been published in the South and adverted to in this View
goes to show that an incompatibility of interest between the two
sections, though not inherent, has been produced by the working of
the government--not its fair and legitimate, but its perverted and
unequal working.
This is the evil which statesmen should see and provide against.
Separation is no remedy; exclusion of Northern vessels from Southern
ports is no remedy; but is disunion itself--and upon the very
point which caused the Union to be formed. Regulation of commerce
between the States, and with foreign nations, was the cause of the
formation of the Union. Break that regulation, and the Union is
broken; and the broken parts converted into antagonist nations,
with causes enough of dissension to engender perpetual wars, and
inflame incessant animosities. The remedy lies in the right working
of the constitution; in the cessation of unequal legislation in
the reduction of the inordinate expenses of the government; in
its return to the simple, limited, and economical machine it was
intended to be; and in the revival of fraternal feelings, and
respect for each other's rights and just complaints; which would
return of themselves when the real cause of discontent was removed.
The conventions of Augusta and Charleston proposed their remedy
for the Southern depression, and the comparative decay of which
they complained. It was a fair and patriotic remedy--that
of becoming their own exporters, and opening a direct trade
in their own staples between Southern and foreign ports.
It was recommended--attempted--failed. Superior advantages
for navigation in the North--greater aptitude of its people
for commerce--established course of business--accumulated
capital--continued unequal legislation in Congress; and increasing
expenditures of the government, chiefly disbursed in the North,
and defect of seamen in the South (for mariners cannot be made
of slaves), all combined to retain the foreign trade in the
channel which had absorbed it; and to increase it there with the
increasing wealth and population of the country, and the still
faster increasing extravagance and profusion of the government. And
now, at this period (1855), the foreign imports at New York are
$195,000,000; at Boston $58,000,000; in Virginia $1,250,000; in
South Carolina $1,750,000.
This is what the dry and naked figures show. To the memory and
imagination it is worse; for it is a tradition of the Colonies that
the South had been the seat of wealth and happiness, of power and
opulence; that a rich population covered the land, dispensing a
baronial hospitality, and diffusing the felicity which themselves
enjoyed; that all was life, and joy, and affluence then. And this
tradition was not without similitude to the reality, as this
writer can testify; for he was old enough to have seen (after the
Revolution) the still surviving state of Southern colonial manners,
when no traveller was allowed to go to a tavern, but was handed over
from family to family through entire States; when holidays were
days of festivity and expectation, long prepared for, and celebrated
by master and slave with music and feasting, and great concourse of
friends and relatives; when gold was kept in desks or chests (after
the downfall of continental paper) and weighed in scales, and lent
to neighbors for short terms without note, interest, witness, or
security; and on bond and land security for long years and lawful
usance: and when petty litigation was at so low an ebb that it
required a fine of forty pounds of tobacco to make a man serve as
constable.
The reverse of all this was now seen and felt,--not to the whole
extent which fancy or policy painted--but to extent enough to
constitute a reverse, and to make a contrast, and to excite the
regrets which the memory of past joys never fails to awaken. A
real change had come, and this change, the effect of many causes,
was wholly attributed to one--the unequal working of the Federal
Government--which gave all the benefits of the Union to the North,
and all its burdens to the South. And that was the point on which
Southern discontent broke out--on which it openly rested until 1835;
when it was shifted to the danger of slave property.
Separation is no remedy for these evils, but the parent of far
greater than either just discontent or restless ambition would fly
from. To the South the Union is a political blessing; to the North
it is both a political and a pecuniary blessing; to both it should
be a social blessing. Both sections should cherish it, and the
North most. The story of the boy that killed the goose that laid
the golden egg every day, that he might get all the eggs at once,
was a fable; but the Northern man who could promote separation by
any course of wrong to the South would convert that fable into
history--his own history--and commit a folly, in a mere profit and
loss point of view, of which there is no precedent except in fable.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
PROGRESS OF THE SLAVERY AGITATION: MR. CALHOUN'S APPROVAL OF THE
MISSOURI COMPROMISE
This portentous agitation, destined to act so seriously on the
harmony, and possibly on the stability of the Union, requires to
be noted in its different stages, that responsibility may follow
culpability, and the judgment of history fall where it is due, if
a deplorable calamity is made to come out of it. In this point
of view the movements for and against slavery in the session of
1837-'38 deserve to be noted, as of disturbing effect at the time;
and as having acquired new importance from subsequent events. Early
in the session a memorial was presented in the Senate from the
General Assembly of Vermont, remonstrating against the annexation
of Texas to the United States, and praying for the abolition of
slavery in the District of Columbia--followed by many petitions from
citizens and societies in the Northern States to the same effect;
and, further, for the abolition of slavery in the Territories--for
the abolition of the slave trade between the States--and for the
exclusion of future slave States from the Union.
There was but little in the state of the country at that time to
excite an anti-slavery feeling, or to excuse these disturbing
applications to Congress. There was no slave territory at that time
but that of Florida; and to ask to abolish slavery there, where it
had existed from the discovery of the continent, or to make its
continuance a cause for the rejection of the State when ready for
admission into the Union, and thus form a free State in the rear
of all the great slave States, was equivalent to praying for a
dissolution of the Union. Texas, if annexed, would be south of 36°
30', and its character, in relation to slavery, would be fixed by
the Missouri compromise line of 1820. The slave trade between the
States was an affair of the States, with which Congress had nothing
to do; and the continuance of slavery in the District of Columbia,
so long as it existed in the adjacent States of Virginia and
Maryland, was a point of policy in which every Congress, and every
administration, had concurred from the formation of the Union; and
in which there was never a more decided concurrence than at present.
The petitioners did not live in any Territory, State, or district
subject to slavery. They felt none of the evils of which they
complained--were answerable for none of the supposed sin which they
denounced--were living under a general government which acknowledged
property in slaves--and had no right to disturb the rights of the
owner: and they committed a cruelty upon the slave by the additional
rigors which their pernicious interference brought upon him.
The subject of the petitions was disagreeable in itself; the
language in which they were couched was offensive; and the
wantonness of their presentation aggravated a proceeding
sufficiently provoking in the civilest form in which it could be
conducted. Many petitions were in the same words, bearing internal
evidence of concert among their signers; many were signed by women,
whose proper sphere was far from the field of legislation; all
united in a common purpose, which bespoke community of origin, and
the superintendence of a general direction. Every presentation gave
rise to a question and debate, in which sentiments and feelings
were expressed and consequences predicted, which it was painful to
hear. While almost every senator condemned these petitions, and the
spirit in which they originated, and the language in which they were
couched, and considered them as tending to no practical object, and
only calculated to make dissension and irritation, there were others
who took them in a graver sense, and considered them as leading to
the inevitable separation of the States. In this sense Mr. Calhoun
said:
"He had foreseen what this subject would come to. He knew its
origin, and that it lay deeper than was supposed. It grew out
of a spirit of fanaticism which was daily increasing, and, if
not met _in limine_, would by and by dissolve this Union. It was
particularly our duty to keep the matter out of the Senate--out
of the halls of the National Legislature. These fanatics were
interfering with what they had no right. Grant the reception
of these petitions, and you will next be asked to act on them.
He was for no conciliatory course, no temporizing; instead of
yielding one inch, he would rise in opposition; and he hoped
every man from the South would stand by him to put down this
growing evil. There was but one question that would ever destroy
this Union, and that was involved in this principle. Yes; this
was potent enough for it, and must be early arrested if the
Union was to be preserved. A man must see little into what is
going on if he did not perceive that this spirit was growing,
and that the rising generation was becoming more strongly imbued
with it. It was not to be stopped by reports on paper, but by
action, and very decided action."
The question which occupied the Senate was as to the most judicious
mode of treating these memorials, with a view to prevent their
evil effects: and that was entirely a question of policy, on which
senators disagreed who concurred in the main object. Some deemed
it most advisable to receive and consider the petitions--to refer
them to a committee--and subject them to the adverse report which
they would be sure to receive; as had been done with the Quakers'
petitions at the beginning of the government. Others deemed it
preferable to refuse to receive them. The objection urged to this
latter course was, that it would mix up a new question with the
slavery agitation which would enlist the sympathies of many who did
not co-operate with the Abolitionists--the question of the right
of petition; and that this new question, mixing with the other,
might swell the number of petitioners, keep up the applications
to Congress, and perpetuate an agitation which would otherwise
soon die out. Mr. CLAY, and many others were of this opinion; Mr.
CALHOUN and his friends thought otherwise; and the result was, so
far as it concerned the petitions of individuals and societies, what
it had previously been--a half-way measure between reception and
rejection--a motion to lay the question of reception on the table.
This motion, precluding all discussion, got rid of the petitions
quietly, and kept debate out of the Senate. In the case of the
memorial from the State of Vermont, the proceeding was slightly
different in form, but the same in substance. As the act of a
State, the memorial was received; but after reception was laid on
the table. Thus all the memorials and petitions were disposed of
by the Senate in a way to accomplish the two-fold object, first,
of avoiding discussion; and, next, condemning the object of the
petitioners. It was accomplishing all that the South asked; and
if the subject had rested at that point, there would have been
nothing in the history of this session, on the slavery agitation,
to distinguish it from other sessions about that period: but the
subject was revived; and in a way to force discussion, and to
constitute a point for the retrospect of history.
Every memorial and petition had been disposed of according to the
wishes of the senators from the slaveholding States; but Mr. Calhoun
deemed it due to those States to go further, and to obtain from the
Senate declarations which should cover all the questions of federal
power over the institution of slavery: although he had just said
that paper reports would do no good. For that purpose, he submitted
a series of resolves--six in number--which derive their importance
from their comparison, or rather contrast, with others on the same
subject presented by him in the Senate ten years later; and which
have given birth to doctrines and proceedings which have greatly
disturbed the harmony of the Union, and palpably endangered its
stability. The six resolutions of this period ('37-'38) undertook to
define the whole extent of the power delegated by the States to the
federal government on the subject of slavery; to specify the acts
which would exceed that power; and to show the consequences of doing
any thing not authorized to be done--always ending in a dissolution
of the Union. The first four of these related to the States; about
which, there being no dispute, there was no debate. The sixth,
without naming Texas, was prospective, and looked forward to a case
which might include her annexation; and was laid upon the table to
make way for an express resolution from Mr. Preston on the same
subject. The fifth related to the territories, and to the District
of Columbia, and was the only one which excited attention, or has
left a surviving interest. It was in these words:
"_Resolved_, That the intermeddling of any State, or States,
or their citizens, to abolish slavery in this District, or any
of the territories, on the ground or under the pretext that it
is immoral or sinful, or the passage of any act or measure of
Congress with that view, would be a direct and dangerous attack
on the institutions of all the slaveholding States."
The dogma of "no power in Congress to legislate upon the existence
of slavery in territories" had not been invented at that time;
and, of course, was not asserted in this resolve, intended by
its author to define the extent of the federal legislative power
on the subject. The resolve went upon the existence of the power,
and deprecated its abuse. It put the District of Columbia and
the territories into the same category, both for the exercise of
the power and the consequences to result from the intermeddling
of States or citizens, or the passage of any act of Congress to
abolish slavery in either; and this was admitting the power in
the territory, as in the District; where it is an express grant
in the grant of all legislative power. The intermeddling and
the legislation were deprecated in both solely on the ground
of inexpediency. Mr. Clay believed this inexpediency to rest
upon different grounds in the District and in the territory of
Florida--the only territory in which slavery then existed, and to
which Mr. Calhoun's resolution could apply. He was as much opposed
as any one to the abolition of slavery in either of these places,
but believed that a different reason should be given for each,
founded in their respective circumstances; and, therefore, submitted
an amendment, consisting of two resolutions--one applicable to the
District, the other to the territory. In stating the reasons why
slavery should not be abolished in Florida, he quoted the Missouri
compromise line of 1820. This was objected to by other senators, on
the ground that that line did not apply to Florida, and that her
case was complete without it. Of that opinion was the Senate, and
the clause was struck out. This gave Mr. Calhoun occasion to speak
of that compromise, and of his own course in relation to it; in the
course of which he declared himself to have been favorable to that
memorable measure at the time it was adopted, but opposed to it now,
from having experienced its ill effect in encouraging the spirit of
abolitionism:
"He was glad that the portion of the amendment which referred
to the Missouri compromise had been struck out. He was not a
member of Congress when that compromise was made, but it is
due to candor to state that his impressions were in its favor;
but it is equally due to it to say that, with his present
experience and knowledge of the spirit which then, for the first
time, began to disclose itself, he had entirely changed his
opinion. He now believed that it was a dangerous measure, and
that it has done much to rouse into action the present spirit.
Had it then been met with uncompromising opposition, such as
a then distinguished and sagacious member from Virginia [Mr.
RANDOLPH], now no more, opposed to it, abolition might have
been crushed for ever in its birth. He then thought of Mr.
Randolph as, he doubts not, many think of him now who have not
fully looked into this subject, that he was too unyielding--too
uncompromising--too impracticable; but he had been taught his
error, and took pleasure in acknowledging it."
This declaration is explicit. It is made in a spirit of candor, and
as due to justice. It is a declaration spontaneously made, not an
admission obtained on interrogatories. It shows that Mr. Calhoun
was in favor of the compromise at the time it was adopted, and had
since changed his opinions--"entirely changed" them, to use his
own words--not on constitutional, but expedient grounds. He had
changed upon experience, and upon seeing the dangerous effects of
the measure. He had been taught his error, and took pleasure in
acknowledging it. He blamed Mr. Randolph then for having been too
uncompromising; but now thought him sagacious; and believed that
if the measure had met with uncompromising opposition at the time,
it would have crushed for ever the spirit of abolitionism. All
these are reasons of expediency, derived from after-experience, and
excludes the idea of any constitutional objection. The establishment
of the Missouri compromise line was the highest possible exercise of
legislative authority over the subject of slavery in a territory.
It abolished it where it legally existed. It for ever forbid it
where it had legally existed for one hundred years. Mr. Randolph
was the great opponent of the compromise. He gave its friends all
their trouble. It was then he applied the phrase, so annoying and
destructive to its northern supporters--"dough face,"--a phrase
which did them more harm than the best-reasoned speech. All the
friends of the compromise blamed his impracticable opposition;
and Mr. Calhoun, in joining in that blame, placed himself in the
ranks of the cordial friends of the measure. This abolition and
prohibition extended over an area large enough to make a dozen
States; and of all this Mr. Calhoun had been in favor; and now had
nothing but reasons of expediency, and they _ex post facto_, against
it. His expressed belief now was, that the measure was dangerous--he
does not say unconstitutional, but dangerous--and this corresponds
with the terms of his resolution then submitted; which makes the
intermeddling to abolish slavery in the District or territories, or
any act or measure of Congress to that effect, a "dangerous" attack
on the institutions of the slaveholding States. Certainly the idea
of the unconstitutionality of such legislation had not then entered
his head. The substitute resolve of Mr. Clay differed from that
of Mr. Calhoun, in changing the word "intermeddling" to that of
"interference;" and confining that word to the conduct of citizens,
and making the abolition or attempted abolition of slavery in the
District an injury to its own inhabitants as well as to the States;
and placing its protection under the faith implied in accepting its
cession from Maryland and Virginia. It was in these words:
"That the interference by the citizens of any of the States,
with the view to the abolition of slavery in this District,
is endangering the rights and security of the people of the
District; and that any act or measure of Congress, designed
to abolish slavery in this District, would be a violation of
the faith implied in the cessions by the States of Virginia
and Maryland--a just cause of alarm to the people of the
slaveholding States--and have a direct and inevitable tendency
to disturb and endanger the Union."
The vote on the final adoption of the resolution was:
"YEAS--Messrs. Allen, Bayard, Benton, Black, Brown, Buchanan,
Calhoun, Clay, of Alabama, Clay, of Kentucky, Thomas Clayton,
Crittenden, Cuthbert, Fulton, Grundy, Hubbard, King, Lumpkin, Lyon,
Nicholas, Niles, Norvell, Franklin Pierce, Preston, Rives, Roane,
Robinson, Sevier, Smith, of Connecticut, Strange, Tallmadge, Tipton,
Walker, White, Williams, Wright, Young.
"NAYS--Messrs. Davis, Knight, McKean, Morris, Prentiss, Smith, of
Indiana, Swift, Webster."
The second resolution of Mr. Clay applied to slavery in a territory
where it existed, and deprecated any attempt to abolish it in
such territory, as alarming to the slave States, and as violation
of faith towards its inhabitants, unless they asked it; and in
derogation of its right to decide the question of slavery for itself
when erected into a State. This resolution was intended to cover the
case of Florida, and ran thus:
"_Resolved_, That any attempt of Congress to abolish slavery
in any territory of the United States in which it exists would
create serious alarm and just apprehension in the States
sustaining that domestic institution, and would be a violation
of good faith towards the inhabitants of any such territory who
have been permitted to settle with, and hold, slaves therein;
because the people of any such territory have not asked for
the abolition of slavery therein; and because, when any such
territory shall be admitted into the Union as a State, the
people thereof shall be entitled to decide that question
exclusively for themselves."
And the vote upon it was--
"YEAS--Messrs. Allen, Bayard, Benton, Black, Brown, Buchanan,
Calhoun, Clay, of Alabama, Clay, of Kentucky, Crittenden, Cuthbert,
Fulton, Grundy, Hubbard, King, Lumpkin, Lyon, Merrick, Nicholas,
Niles, Norvell, Franklin Pierce, Preston, Rives, Roane, Robinson,
Sevier, Smith, of Connecticut, Strange, Tipton, Walker, White,
Williams, Wright, and Young.
"NAYS--Messrs. Thomas Clayton, Davis, Knight, McKean, Prentiss,
Robbins, Smith, of Indiana, Swift, and Webster."
The few senators who voted against both resolutions chiefly
did so for reasons wholly unconnected with their merits; some
because opposed to any declarations on the subject, as abstract
and inoperative; others because they dissented from the reasons
expressed, and preferred others: and the senators from Delaware (a
slave State) because they had a nullification odor about them, as
first introduced. Mr. Calhoun voted for both, not in preference to
his own, but as agreeing to them after they had been preferred by
the Senate; and so gave his recorded assent to the doctrines they
contained. Both admit the constitutional power of Congress over
the existence of slavery both in the district and the territories,
but deprecate its abolition where it existed for reasons of high
expediency: and in this view it is believed nearly the entire
Senate concurred; and quite the entire Senate on the constitutional
point--there being no reference to that point in any part of the
debates. Mr. Webster probably spoke the sentiments of most of those
voting with him, as well as his own, when he said:
"If the resolutions set forth that all domestic institutions,
except so far as the constitution might interfere, and any
intermeddling therewith by a State or individual, was contrary
to the spirit of the confederacy, and was thereby illegal and
unjust, he would give them his hearty and cheerful support; and
would do so still if the senator from South Carolina would
consent to such an amendment; but in their present form he must
give his vote against them."
The general feeling of the Senate was that of entire repugnance
to the whole movement--that of the petitions and memorials on the
one hand, and Mr. Calhoun's resolutions on the other. The former
were quietly got rid of, and in a way to rebuke, as well as to
condemn their presentation; that is to say, by motions (sustained
by the body) to lay them on the table. The resolutions could not so
easily be disposed of, especially as their mover earnestly demanded
discussion, spoke at large, and often, himself; "and desired to make
the question, on their rejection or adoption, a _test_ question."
They were abstract, leading to no result, made discussion where
silence was desirable, frustrated the design of the Senate in
refusing to discuss the abolition petitions, gave them an importance
to which they were not entitled, promoted agitation, embarrassed
friendly senators from the North, placed some in false positions;
and brought animadversions from many. Thus, Mr. Buchanan:
"I cannot believe that the senator from South Carolina has taken
the best course to attain these results (quieting agitation).
This is the great centre of agitation; from this capital it
spreads over the whole Union. I therefore deprecate a protracted
discussion of the question here. It can do no good, but may do
much harm, both in the North and in the South. The senators
from Delaware, although representing a slaveholding State, have
voted against these resolutions because, in their opinion, they
can detect in them the poison of nullification. Now, I can see
no such thing in them, and am ready to avow in the main they
contain nothing but correct political principles, to which I am
devoted. But what then? These senators are placed in a false
position, and are compelled to vote against resolutions the
object of which they heartily approve. Again, my friend, the
senator from New Jersey (Mr. Wall), votes against them because
they are political abstractions of which he thinks the Senate
ought not to take cognizance, although he is as much opposed to
abolition, and as willing to maintain the constitutional rights
of the South as any senator upon this floor. Other senators
believe the right of petition has been endangered; and until
that has been established they will not vote for any resolutions
on the subject. Thus we stand: and those of us in the North
who must sustain the brunt of the battle are forced into false
positions. Abolition thus acquires force by bringing to its aid
the right of petition, and the hostility which exists at the
North against the doctrines of nullification. It is in vain
to say that these principles are not really involved in the
question. This may be, and in my opinion is, true; but why,
by our conduct here, should we afford the abolitionists such
plausible pretexts? The fact is, and it cannot be disguised,
that those of us in the Northern States who have determined
to sustain the rights of the slave States at every hazard
are placed in a most embarrassing situation. We are almost
literally between two fires. Whilst in front we are assailed by
the abolitionists, our own friends in the South are constantly
driving us into positions where their enemies and our enemies
may gain important advantages."
And thus Mr. Crittenden:
"If the object of these resolutions was to produce peace, and
allay excitement, it appeared to him that they were not very
likely to accomplish such a purpose. More vague and general
abstractions could hardly have been brought forward, and they
were more calculated to produce agitation and stir up discontent
and bad blood than to do any good whatever. Such he knew was
the general opinion of Southern men, few of whom, however
they assented to the abstractions, approved of this method of
agitating the subject. The mover of these resolutions relies
mainly on two points to carry the Senate with him: first, he
reiterates the cry of danger to the Union; and, next, that if
he is not followed in this movement he urges the inevitable
consequence of the destruction of the Union. It is possible the
gentleman may be mistaken. It possibly might not be exactly true
that, to save the Union, it was necessary to follow him. On the
contrary, some were of opinion, and he for one was much inclined
to be of the same view, that to follow the distinguished mover
of these resolutions--to pursue the course of irritation,
agitation, and intimidation which he chalked out--would be the
very best and surest method that could be chalked out to destroy
this great and happy Union."
And thus Mr. Clay:
"The series of resolutions under consideration has been
introduced by the senator from South Carolina, after he and
other senators from the South had deprecated discussion on the
delicate subject to which they relate. They have occasioned
much discussion, in which hitherto I have not participated. I
hope that the tendency of the resolutions may be to allay the
excitement which unhappily prevails in respect to the abolition
of slavery; but I confess that, taken altogether, and in
connection with other circumstances, and especially considering
the manner in which their author has pressed them on the Senate,
I fear that they will have the opposite effect; and particularly
at the North, that they may increase and exasperate instead of
diminishing and assuaging the existing agitation."
And thus Mr. Preston, of South Carolina:
"His objections to the introduction of the resolutions were
that they allowed ground for discussion; and that the subject
ought never to be allowed to enter the halls of the legislative
assembly, was always to be taken for granted by the South; and
what would abstract propositions of this nature effect?"
And thus Mr. Strange, of North Carolina:
"What did they set forth but abstract principles, to which the
South had again and again certified? What bulwark of defence was
needed stronger than the constitution itself? Every movement
on the part of the South only gave additional strength to
her opponents. The wisest, nay, the only safe, course was to
remain quiet, though prepared at the same time to resist all
aggression. Questions like this only tended to excite angry
feelings. The senator from South Carolina (Mr. CALHOUN) charged
him with '_preaching_' to one side. Perhaps he had sermonized
too long for the patience of the Senate; but then he had
_preached_ to all sides. It was the agitation of the question in
any form, or shape, that rendered it dangerous. Agitating this
question in any shape was ruinous to the South."
And thus Mr. Richard H. Bayard, of Delaware:
"Though he denounced the spirit of abolition as dangerous and
wicked in the extreme, yet he did not feel himself authorized
to vote for the resolutions. If the doctrines contained in them
were correct, then nullification was correct; and if passed
might hereafter be appealed to as a precedent in favor of that
doctrine; though he acquitted the senator [Mr. CALHOUN] of
having the most remote intention of smuggling in any thing in
relation to that doctrine under cover of these resolutions."
Mr. Calhoun, annoyed by so much condemnation of his course, and
especially from those as determined as himself to protect the slave
institution where it legally existed, spoke often and warmly; and
justified his course from the greatness of the danger, and the fatal
consequences to the Union if it was not arrested.
"I fear (said Mr. C.) that the Senate has not elevated its
view sufficiently to comprehend the extent and magnitude of
the existing danger. It was perhaps his misfortune to look too
much to the future, and to move against dangers at too great
a distance, which had involved him in many difficulties and
exposed him often to the imputation of unworthy motives. Thus
he had long foreseen the immense surplus revenue which a false
system of legislation must pour into the Treasury, and the fatal
consequences to the morals and institutions of the country
which must follow. When nothing else could arrest it he threw
himself, with his State, into the breach, to arrest dangers
which could not otherwise be arrested; whether wisely or not he
left posterity to judge. He now saw with equal clearness--as
clear as the noonday sun--the fatal consequences which must
follow if the present disease be not timely arrested. He would
repeat again what he had so often said on this floor. This was
the only question of sufficient magnitude and potency to divide
this Union; and divide it it would, or drench the country in
blood, if not arrested. He knew how much the sentiment he had
uttered would be misconstrued and misrepresented. There were
those who saw no danger to the Union in the violation of all its
fundamental principles, but who were full of apprehension when
danger was foretold or resisted, and who held not the authors of
the danger, but those who forewarned or opposed it, responsible
for consequences."
"But the cry of disunion by the weak or designing had no
terror for him. If his attachment to the Union was less, he
might tamper with the deep disease which now afflicts the body
politic, and keep silent till the patient was ready to sink
under its mortal blows. It is a cheap, and he must say but too
certain a mode of acquiring the character of devoted attachment
to the Union. But, seeing the danger as he did, he would be a
traitor to the Union and those he represented to keep silence.
The assaults daily made on the institutions of nearly one
half of the States of this Union by the other--institutions
interwoven from the beginning with their political and social
existence, and which cannot be other than that without their
inevitable destruction--will and must, if continued, _make
two people of one_ by destroying every sympathy between
the two great sections--obliterating from their hearts the
recollection of their common danger and glory--and implanting
in their place a mutual hatred, more deadly than ever existed
between two neighboring people since the commencement of the
human race. He feared not the circulation of the thousands of
incendiary and slanderous publications which were daily issued
from an organized and powerful press among those intended
to be vilified. They cannot penetrate our section; that
was not the danger; it lay in a different direction. Their
circulation in the non-slaveholding States was what was to be
dreaded. It was infusing a deadly poison into the minds of
the rising generation, implanting in them feelings of hatred,
the most deadly hatred, instead of affection and love, for
one half of this Union, to be returned, on their part, with
equal detestation. The fatal, the immutable consequences,
if not arrested, and that without delay, were such as he had
presented. The first and desirable object is to arrest it in
the non-slaveholding States; to meet the disease where it
originated and where it exists; and the first step to this is to
find some common constitutional ground on which a rally, with
that object, can be made. These resolutions present the ground,
and the only one, on which it can be made. The only remedy is
in the State rights doctrines; and if those who profess them
in slaveholding States do not rally on them as their political
creed, and organize as a party against the fanatics in order to
put them down, the South and West will be compelled to take the
remedy into their own hands. They will then stand justified in
the sight of God and man; and what in that event will follow
no mortal can anticipate. Mr. President (said Mr. C.), we are
reposing on a volcano. The Senate seems entirely ignorant of
the state of feeling in the South. The mail has just brought
us intelligence of a most important step taken by one of the
Southern States in connection with this subject, which will give
some conception of the tone of feeling which begins to prevail
in that quarter."
It was such speaking as this that induced some votes against the
resolutions. All the senators were dissatisfied at the constant
exhibition of the same remedy (disunion), for all the diseases of
the body politic; but the greater part deemed it right, if they
voted at all, to vote their real sentiments. Many were disposed to
lay the resolutions on the table, as the disturbing petitions had
been; but it was concluded that policy made it preferable to vote
upon them.
Mr. BENTON did not speak in this debate. He believed, as others
did, that discussion was injurious; that it was the way to keep
up and extend agitation, and the thing above all others which the
abolitionists desired. Discussion upon the floor of the American
Senate was to them the concession of an immense advantage--the
concession of an elevated and commanding theatre for the display
and dissemination of their doctrines. It gave them the point to
stand upon from which they could reach every part of the Union;
and it gave them the _Register of the Debates_, instead of their
local papers, for their organ of communication. Mr. Calhoun was a
fortunate customer for them.
The Senate, in laying all their petitions and the memorial of
Vermont on the table without debate, signified its desire to
yield them no such advantage. The introduction of Mr. Calhoun's
resolution frustrated that desire, and induced many to do what they
condemned. Mr. Benton took his own sense of the proper course, in
abstaining from debate, and confining the expression of his opinions
to the delivery of votes: and in that he conformed to the _sense_ of
the Senate, and the _action_ of the House of Representatives. Many
hundreds of these petitions were presented in the House, and quietly
laid upon the table (after a stormy scene, and the adoption of a
new rule), under motions to that effect; and this would have been
the case in the Senate, had it not been for the resolutions, the
introduction of which was so generally deprecated.
The part of this debate which excited no attention at the time,
but has since acquired a momentous importance, is that part in
which Mr. Calhoun declared his favorable disposition to the
Missouri compromise, and his condemnation of Mr. Randolph (its
chief opponent), for opposing it; and his change of opinion since,
not for unconstitutionality, but because he believed it to have
become dangerous in encouraging the spirit of abolitionism. This
compromise was the highest, the most solemn, the most momentous,
the most emphatic assertion of Congressional power over slavery in
a territory which had ever been made, or could be conceived. It
not only abolished slavery where it legally existed; but for ever
prohibited it where it had long existed, and that over an extent
of territory larger than the area of all the Atlantic slave States
put together: and thus yielding to the free States the absolute
predominance in the Union.
Mr. Calhoun was for that resolution in 1820,--blamed those who
opposed it; and could see no objection to it in 1838 but the
encouragement it gave to the spirit of abolitionism. Nine years
afterwards (session of 1846-'47) he submitted other resolutions
(five in number) on the same power of Congress over slavery
legislation in the territories; in which he denied the power,
and asserted that any such legislation to the prejudice of the
slaveholding emigrants from the States, in preventing them from
removing, with their slave property, to such territory, "would be
a violation of the constitution and the rights of the States from
which such citizens emigrated, and a derogation of that perfect
equality which belongs to them as members of this Union; _and would
tend directly to subvert the Union itself_."
These resolutions, so new and startling in their doctrines--so
contrary to their antecessors, and to the whole course of the
government--were denounced by the writer of this View the instant
they were read in the Senate, and, being much discountenanced by
other senators, they were never pressed to a vote in that body; but
were afterwards adopted by some of the slave State legislatures. One
year afterwards, in a debate on the Oregon territorial bill, and on
the section which proposed to declare the anti-slavery clause of
the ordinance of 1787 to be in force in that territory, Mr. Calhoun
denied the power of Congress to make any such declaration, or in any
way to legislate upon slavery in a territory. He delivered a most
elaborate and thoroughly considered speech on the subject, in the
course of which he laid down three propositions:
1. That Congress had no power to legislate upon slavery in a
territory, so as to prevent the citizens of slaveholding States
from removing into it with their slave property. 2. That Congress
had no power to delegate such authority to a territory. 3. That
the territory had no such power in itself (thus leaving the
subject of slavery in a territory without any legislative power
over it at all). He deduced these dogmas from a new insight into
the constitution, which, according to this fresh introspection,
recognized slavery as a national institution, and carried that part
of itself (by its own vigor) into all the territories; and protected
slavery there: _ergo_, neither Congress, nor its deputed territorial
legislature, nor the people of the territory during their
territorial condition, could any way touch the subject--either to
affirm, or disaffirm the institution. He endeavored to obtain from
Congress a crutch to aid these lame doctrines in limping into the
territories by getting the constitution voted into them, as part of
their organic law; and, failing in that attempt (repeatedly made),
he took position on the ground that the constitution went into these
possessions of itself, so far as slavery was concerned, it being a
national institution.
These three propositions being in flagrant conflict with the
power exercised by Congress in the establishment of the Missouri
compromise line (which had become a tradition as a Southern
measure, supported by Southern members of Congress, and sanctioned
by the cabinet of Mr. Monroe, of which Mr. Calhoun was a member),
the fact of that compromise and his concurrence in it was
immediately used against him by Senator Dix, of New York, to
invalidate his present opinions.
Unfortunately he had forgotten this cabinet consultation, and his
own concurrence in its decision--believing fully that no such thing
had occurred, and adhering firmly to the new dogma of total denial
of all constitutional power in Congress to legislate upon slavery in
a territory. This brought up recollections to sustain the tradition
which told of the consultation--to show that it took place--that its
voice was unanimous in favor of the compromise; and, consequently,
that Mr. Calhoun himself was in favor of it. Old writings were
produced:
_First_, a _fac simile_ copy of an original paper in Mr. Monroe's
handwriting, found among his manuscripts, dated March 4, 1820 (two
days before the approval of the Missouri compromise act), and
indorsed: "Interrogatories--Missouri--to the Heads of Departments
and the Attorney-General;" and containing within two questions:
"1. Has Congress a right, under the powers vested in it by the
constitution, to make a regulation prohibiting slavery in a
territory? 2. Is the 8th section of the act which passed both Houses
of Congress on the 3d instant for the admission of Missouri into
the Union, consistent with the constitution?" _Secondly_, the draft
of an original letter in Mr. Monroe's handwriting, but without
signature, date, or address, but believed to have been addressed
to General Jackson, in which he says: "The question which lately
agitated Congress and the public has been settled, as you have
seen, by the passage of an act for the admission of Missouri as a
State, unrestricted, and Arkansas, also, when it reaches maturity;
and the establishment of the parallel of 36 degrees 30 minutes as a
line north of which slavery is prohibited, and permitted south of
it. I took the opinion, in writing, of the administration as to the
constitutionality of restraining territories, which was explicit
in favor of it, and, as it was, that the 8th section of the act
was applicable to territories only, and not to States when they
should be admitted into the Union." _Thirdly_, an extract from
the diary of Mr. John Quincy Adams, under date of the 3d of March,
1820, stating that the President on that day assembled his cabinet
to ask their opinions on the two questions mentioned--which the
whole cabinet immediately answered unanimously, and affirmatively;
that on the 5th he sent the questions in writing to the members
of his cabinet, to receive their written answers, to be filed
in the department of State; and that on the 6th he took his own
answer to the President, to be filed with the rest--all agreeing
in the affirmative, and only differing some in assigning, others
not assigning reasons for his opinion. The diary states that the
President signed his approval of the Missouri act on the 6th (which
the act shows he did), and requested Mr. Adams to have all the
opinions filed in the department of State.
Upon this evidence it would have rested without question that Mr.
Monroe's cabinet had been consulted on the constitutionality of
the Missouri compromise line, and that all concurred in it, had
it not been for the denial of Mr. Calhoun in the debate on the
Oregon territorial bill. His denial brought out this evidence;
and, notwithstanding its production and conclusiveness, he adhered
tenaciously to his disbelief of the whole occurrence and especially
the whole of his own imputed share in it. Two circumstances,
specious in themselves, favored this denial: _first_, that no such
papers as those described by Mr. Adams were to be found in the
department of State; _secondly_, that in the original draft of Mr.
Monroe's letter it had first been written that the affirmative
answers of his cabinet to his two interrogatories were "_unanimous_"
which word had been crossed out and "_explicit_" substituted.
With some these two circumstances weighed nothing against the
testimony of two witnesses, and the current corroborating incidents
of tradition. In the lapse of twenty-seven years, and in the changes
to which our cabinet officers and the clerks of departments are
subjected, it was easy to believe that the papers had been mislaid
or lost--far easier than to believe that Mr. Adams could have been
mistaken in the entry made in his diary at the time. And as to the
substitution of "explicit" for "unanimous," that was known to be
necessary in order to avoid the violation of the rule which forbid
the disclosure of individual opinions in the cabinet consultations.
With others, and especially with the political friends of Mr.
Calhoun, they were received as full confirmation of his denial,
and left them at liberty to accept his present opinions as those
of his whole life, uninvalidated by previous personal discrepancy,
and uncounteracted by the weight of a cabinet decision under Mr.
Monroe: and accordingly the new-born dogma of _no power in Congress
to legislate upon the existence of slavery in the territories_
became an article of political faith, incorporated in the creed, and
that for action, of a large political party. What is now brought
to light of the proceedings in the Senate in '37-'38 shows this to
have been a mistake--that Mr. Calhoun admitted the power in 1820,
when he favored the compromise and blamed Mr. Randolph for opposing
it; that he admitted it again in 1838, when he submitted his own
resolutions, and voted for those of Mr. Clay. It so happened that
no one recollected these proceedings of '37-'38 at the time of the
Oregon debate of '47-'48. The writer of this View, though possessing
a memory credited as tenacious, did not recollect them, nor remember
them at all, until found among the materials collected for this
history--a circumstance which he attributes to his repugnance to the
whole debate, and taking no part in the proceedings except to vote.
The cabinet consultation of 1820 was not mentioned by Mr. Calhoun in
his avowal of 1838, nor is it necessary to the object of this View
to pursue his connection with that private executive counselling.
The only material inquiry is as to his approval of the Missouri
compromise at the time it was adopted; and that is fully established
by himself.
It would be a labor unworthy of history to look up the conduct
of any public man, and trace him through shifting scenes, with
a mere view to personal effect--with a mere view to personal
disparagement, by showing him contradictory and inconsistent at some
period of his course. Such a labor would be idle, unprofitable,
and derogatory; but, when a change takes place in a public man's
opinions which leads to a change of conduct, and into a new line of
action disastrous to the country, it becomes the duty of history to
note the fact, and to expose the contradiction--not for personal
disparagement--but to counteract the force of the new and dangerous
opinion.
In this sense it becomes an obligatory task to show the change, or
rather changes, in Mr. Calhoun's opinions on the constitutional
power of Congress over the existence of slavery in the national
territories; and these changes have been great--too great to admit
of followers if they had been known. _First_, fully admitting the
power, and justifying its exercise in the largest and highest
possible case. _Next_, admitting the power, but deprecating its
exercise in certain limited, specified, qualified cases. _Then_,
denying it in a limited and specified case. _Finally_, denying
the power any where, and every where, either in Congress, or in
the territorial legislature as its delegate, or in the people as
sovereign. The last of these mutations, or rather the one before
the last (for there are but few who can go the whole length of
the three propositions in the Oregon speech), has been adopted
by a large political party and acted upon; and with deplorable
effect to the country. Holding the Missouri compromise to have
been unconstitutional, they have abrogated it as a nullity; and in
so doing have done more to disturb the harmony of this Union, to
unsettle its foundations, to shake its stability, and to prepare
the two halves of the Union for parting, than any act, or all acts
put together, since the commencement of the federal government.
This lamentable act could not have been done,--could not have found
a party to do it,--if Mr. Calhoun had not changed his opinion on
the constitutionality of the Missouri compromise line; or if he
could have recollected in 1848 that he approved that line in 1820;
and further remembered, that he saw nothing unconstitutional in it
as late as 1838. The change being now shown, and the imperfection
of his memory made manifest by his own testimony, it becomes
certain that the new doctrine was an after-thought, disowned by
its antecedents--a figment of the brain lately hatched--and which
its author would have been estopped from promulgating if these
antecedents had been recollected. History now pleads them as an
estoppel against his followers.
Mr. Monroe, in his letter to General Jackson, immediately after the
establishment of the Missouri compromise, said that that compromise
settled the slavery agitation which threatened to break up the
Union. Thirty-four years of quiet and harmony under that settlement
bear witness to the truth of these words, spoken in the fulness
of patriotic gratitude at seeing his country escape from a great
danger. The year 1854 has seen the abrogation of that compromise;
and with its abrogation the revival of the agitation, and with a
force and fury never known before: and now may be seen in fact what
was hypothetically foreseen by Mr. Calhoun in 1838, when, as the
fruit of this agitation, he saw the destruction of all sympathy
between the two sections of the Union--obliteration from the memory
of all proud recollections of former common danger and glory--hatred
in the hearts of the North and the South, more deadly than ever
existed between two neighboring nations. May we not have to witness
the remainder of his prophetic vision--"TWO PEOPLE MADE OF ONE!"
P.S.--After this chapter had been written, the author received
authentic information that, during the time that John M. Clayton,
Esq. of Delaware, was Secretary of State under President Taylor
(1849-50), evidence had been found in the Department of State, of
the fact, that the opinion of Mr. Calhoun and of the rest of Mr.
Monroe's cabinet, had been filed there. In consequence a note of
inquiry was addressed to Mr. Clayton, who answered (under date of
July 19th, 1855) as follows:
"In reply to your inquiry I have to state that I have no
recollection of having ever met with Mr. Calhoun's answer to Mr.
Monroe's cabinet queries, as to the constitutionality of the
Missouri compromise. It had not been found while I was in the
department of state, as I was then informed: but the archives of
the department disclose the fact, that Mr. Calhoun, and other
members of the cabinet, did answer Mr. Monroe's questions. It
appears by an index that these answers were filed among the
archives of that department. I was told they had been abstracted
from the records, and could not be found; but I did not make a
search for them myself. I have never doubted that Mr. Calhoun
at least acquiesced in the decision of the cabinet of that day.
Since I left the Department of State I have heard it rumored
that Mr. Calhoun's answer to Mr. Monroe's queries had been
found; but I know not upon what authority the statement was
made."
CHAPTER XXXIV.
DEATH OF COMMODORE RODGERS, AND NOTICE OF HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER.
My idea of the perfect naval commander had been formed from history,
and from the study of such characters as the Von Tromps and De
Ruyters of Holland, the Blakes of England, and the De Tourvilles
of France--men modest and virtuous, frank and sincere, brave and
patriotic, gentle in peace, terrible in war; formed for high
command by nature; and raising themselves to their proper sphere
by their own exertions from low beginnings. When I first saw
Commodore RODGERS, which was after I had reached senatorial age and
station, he recalled to me the idea of those model admirals; and
subsequent acquaintance confirmed the impression then made. He was
to me the complete impersonation of my idea of the perfect naval
commander--person, mind, and manners; with the qualities for command
grafted on the groundwork of a good citizen and good father of a
family; and all lodged in a frame to bespeak the seaman and the
officer.
His very figure and face were those of the naval hero--such as we
conceive from naval songs and ballads; and, from the course of life
which the sea officer leads--exposed to the double peril of waves
and war, and contending with the storms of the elements as well as
with the storm of battle. We associate the idea of bodily power with
such a life; and when we find them united--the heroic qualities in
a frame of powerful muscular development--we experience a gratified
feeling of completeness, which fulfils a natural expectation, and
leaves nothing to be desired. And when the same great qualities are
found, as they often are, in the man of slight and slender frame, it
requires some effort of reason to conquer a feeling of surprise at a
combination which is a contrast, and which presents so much power in
a frame so little promising it; and hence all poets and orators, all
painters and sculptors, all the dealers in imaginary perfections,
give a corresponding figure of strength and force to the heroes they
create.
Commodore Rodgers needed no help from the creative imagination
to endow him with the form which naval heroism might require. His
person was of the middle height, stout, square, solid, compact;
well-proportioned; and combining in the perfect degree the idea of
strength and endurance with the reality of manly comeliness--the
statue of Mars, in the rough state, before the conscious chisel had
lent the last polish. His face, stern in the outline, was relieved
by a gentle and benign expression--grave with the overshadowing of
an ample and capacious forehead and eyebrows. Courage need not be
named among the qualities of Americans; the question would be to
find one without it. His skill, enterprise, promptitude and talent
for command, were shown in the war of 1812 with Great Britain; in
the _quasi_ war of 1799 with the French Republic--_quasi_ only as it
concerned political relations, real as it concerned desperate and
brilliant combats at sea; and in the Mediterranean wars with the
Barbary States, when those States were formidable in that sea and
held Europe under tribute; and which tribute from the United States
was relinquished by Tripoli and Tunis at the end of the war with
these States--Commodore Rodgers commanding at the time as successor
to Barron and Preble. It was at the end of this war, 1804, so
valiantly conducted and so triumphantly concluded, that the reigning
Pope, Pius the Seventh, publicly declared that America had done more
for Christendom against the Barbary States, than all the powers of
Europe combined.
He was first lieutenant on the Constellation when that frigate,
under Truxton, vanquished and captured the French frigate Insurgent;
and great as his merit was in the action, where he showed himself to
be the proper second to an able commander, it was greater in what
took place after it; and in which steadiness, firmness, humanity,
vigilance, endurance, and seamanship, were carried to their highest
pitch; and in all which his honors were shared by the then stripling
midshipman, afterwards the brilliant Commodore Porter.
The Insurgent having struck, and part of her crew been transferred
to the Constellation, Lieut. Rodgers and Midshipman Porter were
on board the prize, superintending the transfer, when a tempest
arose--the ships parted--and dark night came on. There were still
one hundred and seventy-three French prisoners on board. The
two young officers had but eleven men--thirteen in all--to guard
thirteen times their number; and work a crippled frigate at the
same time, and get her into port. And nobly did they do it. For
three days and nights did these thirteen (though fresh from a bloody
conflict which strained every faculty and brought demands for rest),
without sleep or repose, armed to the teeth, watching with eye and
ear, stand to the arduous duty--sailing their ship, restraining
their prisoners, solacing the wounded--ready to kill, and hurting
no one. They did not sail at random, or for the nearest port; but,
faithful to the orders of their commander, given under different
circumstances, steered for St. Kitts, in the West Indies--arrived
there safely--and were received with triumph and admiration.
Such an exploit equalled any fame that could be gained in battle;
for it brought into requisition all the qualities for command which
high command requires; and foreshadowed the future eminence of these
two young officers. What firmness, steadiness, vigilance, endurance,
and courage--far above that which the battle-field requires! and one
of these young officers, a slight and slender lad, as frail to the
look as the other was powerful; and yet each acting his part with
the same heroic steadiness and perseverance, coolness and humanity!
They had no irons to secure a single man. The one hundred and
seventy-three French were loose in the lower hold, a sentinel only
at each gangway; and vigilance, and readiness to use their arms,
the only resource of the little crew. If history has a parallel to
this deed I have not seen it; and to value it in all its extent,
it must be remembered that these prisoners were Frenchmen--their
inherent courage exalted by the frenzy of the revolution--themselves
fresh from a murderous conflict--the decks of the ship still red
and slippery with the blood of their comrades; and they with a
right, both legal and moral, to recover their liberty if they could.
These three days and nights, still more than the victory which
preceded them, earned for Rodgers the captaincy, and for Porter the
lieutenancy, with which they were soon respectively honored.
American cruisers had gained credit in the war of the Revolution,
and in the _quasi_ war with the French Republic; and American
squadrons had bearded the Barbary Powers in their dens, after
chasing their piratical vessels from the seas: but a war with Great
Britain, with her one thousand and sixty vessels of war on her naval
list, and above seven hundred of these for service, her fleets
swelled with the ships of all nations, exalted with the idea of
invincibility, and one hundred and twenty guns on the decks of her
first-class men-of-war--any naval contest with such a power, with
seventeen vessels for the sea, ranging from twelve to forty-four
guns (which was the totality which the American naval register could
then show), seemed an insanity. And insanity it would have been with
even twenty times as many vessels, and double their number of guns,
if naval battles with rival fleets had been intended. Fortunately
we had naval officers at that time who understood the virtue of
cruising, and believed they could do what Paul Jones and others had
done during the war of the Revolution.
Political men believed nothing could be done at sea but to lose
the few vessels which we had; that even cruising was out of the
question. Of our seventeen vessels, the whole were in port but one;
and it was determined to keep them there, and the one at sea with
them, if it had the luck to get in. I am under no obligation to
make the admission, but I am free to acknowledge, that I was one of
those who supposed that there was no salvation for our seventeen
men-of-war but to run them as far up the creek as possible, place
them under the guns of batteries, and collect camps of militia about
them, to keep off the British. This was the policy at the day of the
declaration of the war; and I have the less concern to admit myself
to have been participator in the delusion, because I claim the merit
of having profited from experience--happy if I could transmit the
lesson to posterity. Two officers came to Washington--Bainbridge
and Stewart. They spoke with Mr. Madison, and urged the feasibility
of cruising. One-half of the whole number of the British men-of-war
were under the class of frigates, consequently no more than matches
for some of our seventeen; the whole of her merchant marine (many
thousands) were subject to capture. Here was a rich field for
cruising; and the two officers, for themselves and brothers, boldly
proposed to enter it.
Mr. Madison had seen the efficiency of cruising and privateering,
even against Great Britain, and in our then infantile condition,
during the war of the Revolution; and besides was a man of sense,
and amenable to judgment and reason. He listened to the two
experienced and valiant officers; and, without consulting Congress,
which perhaps would have been a fatal consultation (for multitude of
counsellors is not the council for _bold_ decision), reversed the
policy which had been resolved upon; and, in his supreme character
of constitutional commander of the army and navy, ordered every ship
that could cruise to get to sea as soon as possible. This I had from
Mr. Monroe, and it is due to Mr. Madison to tell it, who, without
pretending to a military character, had the merit of sanctioning
this most vital war measure.
Commodore Rodgers was then in New York, in command of the President
(44), intended for a part of the harbor defence of that city. Within
one hour after he had received his cruising orders, he was under
way. This was the 21st of June. That night he got information of the
Jamaica fleet (merchantmen), homeward bound; and crowded all sail
in the direction they had gone, following the Gulf Stream towards
the east of Newfoundland. While on this track, on the 23d, a British
frigate was perceived far to the northeast, and getting further off.
It was a nobler object than a fleet of merchantmen, and chase was
immediately given her, and she gained upon; but not fast enough to
get alongside before night.
It was four o'clock in the evening, and the enemy in range of the
bow-chasers. Commodore Rodgers determined to cripple her, and
diminish her speed; and so come up with her. He pointed the first
gun himself, and pointed it well. The shot struck the frigate in
her rudder coat, drove through her stern frame, and passed into
the gun-room. It was the first gun fired during the war; and was
no waste of ammunition. Second Lieutenant Gamble, commander of the
battery, pointed and discharged the second--hitting and damaging
one of the enemy's stern chasers. Commodore Rodgers fired the
third--hitting the stern again, and killing and wounding six men.
Mr. Gamble fired again. The gun bursted! killing and wounding
sixteen of her own men, blowing up the Commodore--who fell with a
broken leg upon the deck. The pause in working the guns on that
side, occasioned by this accident, enabled the enemy to bring some
stern guns to bear, and to lighten his vessel to increase her speed.
He cut away his anchors, stove and threw overboard his boats, and
started fourteen tons of water. Thus lightened, he escaped. It was
the Belvidera, 36 guns, Captain Byron. The President would have
taken her with all ease if she had got alongside; and of that the
English captain showed himself duly, and excusably sensible.
The frigate having escaped, the Commodore, regardless of his broken
leg, hauled up to its course in pursuit of the Jamaica fleet, and
soon got information that it consisted of eighty-five sail, and was
under convoy of four men-of-war; one of them a two-decker, another
a frigate; and that he was on its track. Passing Newfoundland
and finding the sea well sprinkled with the signs of West India
fruit--orange peels, cocoanut shells, pine-apple rinds, &c.--the
Commodore knew himself to be in the wake of the fleet, and made
every exertion to come up with it before it could reach the chops of
the channel: but in vain. When almost in sight of the English coast,
and no glimpse obtained of the fleet, he was compelled to tack, run
south: and, after an extended cruise, return to the United States.
The Commodore had missed the two great objects of his ambition--the
fleet and the frigate; but the cruise was not barren either
in material or moral results. Seven British merchantmen were
captured--one American recaptured--the English coast had been
approached. With impunity an American frigate--one of those
insultingly styled "fir-built, with a bit of striped bunting at her
mast-head,"--had almost looked into that narrow channel which is
considered the sanctum of a British ship. An alarm had been spread,
and a squadron of seven men-of-war (four of them frigates and one a
sixty-four gun ship) were assembled to capture him; one of them the
Belvidera, which had escaped at the bursting of the President's gun,
and spread the news of her being at sea.
It was a great honor to Commodore Rodgers to send such a squadron
to look after him; and became still greater to Captain Hull, in
the Constitution, who escaped from it after having been almost
surrounded by it. It was evening when this captain began to fall
in with that squadron, and at daylight found himself almost
encompassed by it--three ahead and four astern. Then began that
chase which continued seventy-two hours, in which seven pursued
one, and seemed often on the point of closing on their prize; in
which every means of progress, from reefed topsails to kedging and
towing, was put into requisition by either party--the one to escape,
the other to overtake; in which the stern-chasers of one were
often replying to the bow-chasers of the other; and the greatest
precision of manoeuvring required to avoid falling under the
guns of some while avoiding those of others; and which ended with
putting an escape on a level with a great victory. Captain Hull
brought his vessel safe into port, and without the sacrifice of her
equipment--not an anchor having been cut away, boat stove, or gun
thrown overboard to gain speed by lightening the vessel. It was
a brilliant result, with all the moral effects of victory, and a
splendid vindication of the policy of cruising--showing that we had
seamanship to escape the force which we could not fight.
Commodore Rodgers made another extended cruise during this war, a
circuit of eight thousand miles, traversing the high seas, coasting
the shores of both continents, searching wherever the cruisers
or merchantmen of the enemy were expected to be found; capturing
what was within his means, avoiding the rest. A British government
packet, with nearly $300,000 in specie, was taken; many merchantmen
were taken; and, though an opportunity did not offer to engage a
frigate of equal or nearly equal force, and to gain one of those
electrifying victories for which our cruisers were so remarkable,
yet the moral effect was great--demonstrating the ample capacity
of an American frigate to go where she pleased in spite of the
"thousand ships of war" of the assumed mistress of the seas;
carrying damage and alarm to the foe, and avoiding misfortune to
itself.
At the attempt of the British upon Baltimore Commodore Rodgers was
in command of the maritime defences of that city, and, having no
means of contending with the British fleet in the bay, he assembled
all the seamen of the ships-of-war and of the flotilla, and entered
judiciously into the combinations for the land defence.
Humane feeling was a characteristic of this brave officer, and
was verified in all the relations of his life, and in his constant
conduct. Standing on the bank of the Susquehanna river, at Havre
de Grace, one cold winter day, the river flooded and filled with
floating ice, he saw (with others), at a long distance, a living
object--discerned to be a human being--carried down the stream. He
ventured in, against all remonstrance, and brought the object safe
to shore. It was a colored woman--to him a human being, doomed to
a frightful death unless relieved; and heroically relieved at the
peril of his own life. He was humane in battle. That was shown in
the affair of the Little Belt--chased, hailed, fought (the year
before the war), and compelled to answer the hail, and tell who she
was, with expense of blood, and largely; but still the smallest
possible quantity that would accomplish the purpose. The encounter
took place in the night, and because the British captain would
not answer the American hail. Judging from the inferiority of her
fire that he was engaged with an unequal antagonist, the American
Commodore suspended his own fire, while still receiving broadsides
from his arrogant little adversary; and only resumed it when
indispensable to his own safety, and the enforcement of the question
which he had put. An answer was obtained after thirty-one had been
killed or wounded on board the British vessel; and this at six
leagues from the American coast: and, the doctrine of no right to
stop a vessel on the high seas to ascertain her character not having
been then invented, no political consequence followed this bloody
enforcement of maritime police--exasperated against each other as
the two nations were at the time.
At the death of Decatur, killed in that lamentable duel, I have
heard Mr. Randolph tell, and he alone could tell it, of the agony of
Rodgers as he stood over his dying friend, in bodily contention with
his own grief--convulsed within, calm without; and keeping down the
struggling anguish of the soul by dint of muscular power.
That feeling heart was doomed to suffer a great agony in the
untimely death of a heroic son, emulating the generous devotion
of the father, and perishing in the waves, in vain efforts to
save comrades more exhausted than himself; and to whom he nobly
relinquished the means of his own safety. It was spared another
grief of a kindred nature (not having lived to see it), in the
death of another heroic son, lost in the sloop-of-war Albany, in one
of those calamitous founderings at sea in which the mystery of an
unseen fate deepens the shades of death, and darkens the depths of
sorrow--leaving the hearts of far distant friends a prey to a long
agony of hope and fear--only to be solved in an agony still deeper.
Commodore Rodgers died at the head of the American navy, without
having seen the rank of Admiral established in our naval service,
for which I voted when senator, and hoped to have seen conferred on
him, and on others who have done so much to exalt the name of their
country; and which rank I deem essential to the good of the service,
even in the cruising system I deem alone suitable to us.
CHAPTER XXXV.
ANTI-DUELLING ACT.
The death of Mr. Jonathan Cilley, a representative in Congress from
the State of Maine, killed in a duel with rifles, with Mr. Graves
of Kentucky, led to the passage of an act with severe penalties
against duelling, in the District of Columbia, or out of it upon
agreement within the District. The penalties were--death to all the
survivors, when any one was killed: a five years imprisonment in
the penitentiary for giving or accepting a challenge. Like all acts
passed under a sudden excitement, this act was defective, and more
the result of good intentions than of knowledge of human nature.
Passions of the mind, like diseases of the body, are liable to break
out in a different form when suppressed in the one they had assumed.
No physician suppresses an eruption without considering what is to
become of the virus which is escaping, if stopped and confined to
the body: no legislator should suppress an evil without considering
whether a worse one is at the same time planted. I was a young
member of the general assembly of Tennessee (1809), when a most
worthy member (Mr. Robert C. Foster), took credit to himself for
having put down billiard tables in Nashville. Another most worthy
member (General Joseph Dixon) asked him how many card tables he
had put up in their place? This was a side of the account to which
the suppressor of billiard tables had not looked: and which opened
up a view of serious consideration to every person intrusted with
the responsible business of legislation--a business requiring so
much knowledge of human nature, and so seldom invoking the little we
possess. It has been on my mind ever since; and I have had constant
occasions to witness its disregard--and seldom more lamentably
than in the case of this anti-duelling act. It looked to one evil,
and saw nothing else. It did not look to the assassinations, under
the pretext of self-defence, which were to rise up in place of the
regular duel. Certainly it is deplorable to see a young man, the
hope of his father and mother--a ripe man, the head of a family--an
eminent man, necessary to his country--struck down in the duel; and
should be prevented if possible. Still this deplorable practice is
not so bad as the bowie knife, and the revolver, and their pretext
of self-defence--thirsting for blood. In the duel, there is at
least consent on both sides, with a preliminary opportunity for
settlement, with a chance for the law to arrest them, and room for
the interposition of friends as the affair goes on. There is usually
equality of terms; and it would not be called an affair of honor, if
honor was not to prevail all round; and if the satisfying a point
of honor, and not vengeance, was the end to be attained. Finally,
in the regular duel, the principals are in the hands of the seconds
(for no man can be made a second without his consent); and as both
these are required by the duelling code (for the sake of fairness
and humanity), to be free from ill will or grudge towards the
adversary principal, they are expected to terminate the affair as
soon as the point of honor is satisfied--and, the less the injury,
so much the better. The only exception to these rules is, where the
principals are in such relations to each other as to admit of no
accommodation, and the injury such as to admit of no compromise. In
the knife and revolver business, all this is different. There is
no preliminary interval for settlement--no chance for officers of
justice to intervene--no room for friends to interpose. Instead of
equality of terms, every advantage is sought. Instead of consent,
the victim is set upon at the most unguarded moment. Instead of
satisfying a point of honor, it is vengeance to be glutted. Nor
does the difference stop with death. In the duel, the unhurt
principal scorns to continue the combat upon his disabled adversary:
in the knife and revolver case, the hero of these weapons continues
firing and stabbing while the prostrate body of the dying man gives
a sign of life. In the duel the survivor never assails the character
of the fallen: in the knife and revolver case, the first movement of
the victor is to attack the character of his victim--to accuse him
of an intent to murder; and to make out a case of self-defence, by
making out a case of premeditated attack against the other. And in
such false accusation, the French proverb is usually verified--_the
dead and the absent are always in the wrong_.
The anti-duelling act did not suppress the passions in which
duels originate: it only suppressed one mode, and that the least
revolting, in which these passions could manifest themselves. It did
not suppress the homicidal intent--but gave it a new form: and now
many members of Congress go into their seats with deadly weapons
under their garments--ready to insult with foul language, and
prepared to kill if the language is resented. The act should have
pursued the homicidal intent into whatever form it might assume;
and, therefore, should have been made to include all unjustifiable
homicides.
The law was also mistaken in the nature of its penalties: they
are not of a kind to be enforced, if incurred. It is in vain to
attempt to punish more ignominiously, and more severely, a duel
than an assassination. The offences, though both great, are of very
different degrees; and human nature will recognize the difference
though the law may not: and the result will be seen in the conduct
of juries, and in the temper of the pardoning power. A species of
penalty unknown to the common law, and rejected by it, and only
held good when a man was the vassal of his lord--the dogma that the
private injury to the family is merged in the public wrong--this
species of penalty (amends to the family) is called for by the
progress of homicides in our country; and not as a substitute for
the death penalty, but cumulative. Under this dogma, a small injury
to a man's person brings him a moneyed indemnity; in the greatest
of all injuries, that of depriving a family of its support and
protector, no compensation is allowed. This is preposterous, and
leads to deadly consequences. It is cheaper now to kill a man, than
to hurt him; and, accordingly, the preparation is generally to kill,
and not to hurt. The frequency, the wantonness, the barbarity, the
cold-blooded cruelty, and the demoniac levity with which homicides
are committed with us, have become the opprobrium of our country.
An incredible number of persons, and in all parts of the country,
seem to have taken the code of Draco for their law, and their own
will for its execution--kill for every offence. The death penalty,
prescribed by divine wisdom, is hardly a scare-crow. Some States
have abolished it by statute--some communities, virtually, by a
mawkish sentimentality: and every where, the jury being the judge
of the law as well as of the fact, find themselves pretty much
in a condition to do as they please. And unanimity among twelve
being required, as in the English law, instead of a concurrence of
three-fifths in fifteen, as in the Scottish law, it is in the power
of one or two men to prevent a conviction, even in the most flagrant
cases. In this deluge of bloodshed some new remedy is called for
in addition to the death penalty; and it may be best found in the
principle of compensation to the family of the slain, recoverable in
every case where the homicide was not justifiable under the written
laws of the land. In this wide-spread custom of carrying deadly
weapons, often leading to homicides where there was no previous
intent, some check should be put on a practice so indicative of
a bad heart--a heart void of social duty, and fatally bent on
mischief; and this check may be found in making the fact of having
such arms on the person an offence in itself, _prima facie_ evidence
of malice, and to be punished cumulatively by the judge; and that
without regard to the fact whether used or not in the affray.
The anti-duelling act of 1839 was, therefore, defective in not
pursuing the homicidal offence into all the new forms it might
assume; in not giving damages to a bereaved family--and not
punishing the carrying of the weapon, whether used or not--only
accommodating the degree of punishment to the more or less use
that had been made of it. In the Halls of Congress it should
be an offence, in itself, whether drawn or not, subjecting the
offender to all the penalties for a high misdemeanor--removal from
office--disqualification to hold any office of trust or profit under
the United States--and indictment at law besides.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
SLAVERY AGITATION IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, AND RETIRING
OF SOUTHERN MEMBERS FROM THE HALL.
The most angry and portentous debate which had yet taken place in
Congress, occurred at this time in the House of Representatives.
It was brought on by Mr. William Slade, of Vermont, who, besides
presenting petitions of the usual abolition character, and moving
to refer them to a committee, moved their reference to a select
committee, with instructions to report a bill in conformity to
their prayer. This motion, inflammatory and irritating in itself,
and without practical legislative object, as the great majority of
the House was known to be opposed to it, was rendered still more
exasperating by the manner of supporting it. The mover entered into
a general disquisition on the subject of slavery, all denunciatory,
and was proceeding to speak upon it in the State of Virginia,
and other States, in the same spirit, when Mr. Legare, of South
Carolina, interposed, and--
"Hoped the gentleman from Vermont would allow him to make a
few remarks before he proceeded further. He sincerely hoped
that gentleman would consider well what he was about before he
ventured on such ground, and that he would take time to consider
what might be its probable consequences. He solemnly entreated
him to reflect on the possible results of such a course, which
involved the interests of a nation and a continent. He would
warn him, not in the language of defiance, which all brave and
wise men despised, but he would warn him in the language of a
solemn sense of duty, that if there was 'a spirit aroused in the
North in relation to this subject,' that spirit would encounter
another spirit in the South full as stubborn. He would tell
them that, when this question was forced upon the people of the
South, they would be ready to take up the gauntlet. He concluded
by urging on the gentleman from Vermont to ponder well on his
course before he ventured to proceed."
Mr. Slade continued his remarks when Mr. Dawson of Georgia, asked
him for the floor, that he might move an adjournment--evidently to
carry off the storm which he saw rising. Mr. Slade refused to yield
it; so the motion to adjourn could not be made. Mr. Slade continued,
and was proceeding to answer his own inquiry put to himself--_what
was Slavery?_ when Mr. Dawson again asked for the floor, to make has
motion of adjournment. Mr. Slade refused it: a visible commotion
began to pervade the House--members rising, clustering together, and
talking with animation. Mr. Slade continued, and was about reading
a judicial opinion in one of the Southern States which defined
a slave to be a chattel--when Mr. Wise called him to order for
speaking beside the question--the question being upon the abolition
of slavery in the District of Columbia, and Mr. Slade's remarks
going to its legal character, as property in a State. The Speaker,
Mr. John White, of Kentucky, sustained the call, saying it was not
in order to discuss the subject of slavery in any of the States.
Mr. Slade denied that he was doing so, and said he was merely
quoting a Southern judicial decision as he might quote a legal
opinion delivered in Great Britain. Mr. Robertson, of Virginia,
moved that the House adjourn. The Speaker pronounced the motion
(and correctly), out of order, as the member from Vermont was in
possession of the floor and addressing the House. He would, however,
suggest to the member from Vermont, who could not but observe the
state of the House, to confine himself strictly to the subject of
his motion. Mr. Slade went on at great length, when Mr. Petrikin,
of Pennsylvania, called him to order; but the Chair did not
sustain the call. Mr. Slade went on, quoting from the Declaration
of Independence, and the constitutions of the several States, and
had got to that of Virginia, when Mr. Wise called him to order for
reading papers without the leave of the House. The Speaker decided
that no paper, objected to, could be read without the leave of the
House. Mr. Wise then said:
"That the gentleman had wantonly discussed the abstract question
of slavery, going back to the very first day of the creation,
instead of slavery as it existed in the District, and the powers
and duties of Congress in relation to it. He was now examining
the State constitutions to show that as it existed in the States
it was against them, and against the laws of God and man. This
was out of order."
Mr. Slade explained, and argued in vindication of his course, and
was about to read a memorial of Dr. Franklin, and an opinion of Mr.
Madison on the subject of slavery--when the reading was objected
to by Mr. Griffin, of South Carolina; and the Speaker decided they
could not be read without the permission of the House. Mr. Slade,
without asking the permission of the House, which he knew would not
be granted, assumed to understand the prohibition as extending only
to himself personally, said--"_Then I send them to the clerk: let
him read them._" The Speaker decided that this was equally against
the rule. Then Mr. Griffin withdrew the objection, and Mr. Slade
proceeded to read the papers, and to comment upon them as he went
on, and was about to go back to the State of Virginia, and show what
had been the feeling there on the subject of slavery previous to
the date of Dr. Franklin's memorial: Mr. Rhett, of South Carolina,
inquired of the Chair what the opinions of Virginia fifty years
ago had to do with the case? The Speaker was about to reply, when
Mr. Wise rose with warmth, and said--"He has discussed the whole
abstract question of slavery: of slavery in Virginia: of slavery
in my own district: and I now ask all my colleagues to retire with
me from this hall." Mr. Slade reminded the Speaker that he had not
yielded the floor; but his progress was impeded by the condition
of the House, and the many exclamations of members, among whom Mr.
Halsey, of Georgia, was heard calling on the Georgia delegation to
withdraw with him; and Mr. Rhett was heard proclaiming, that the
South Carolina members had already consulted together, and agreed
to have a meeting at three o'clock in the committee room of the
District of Columbia. Here the Speaker interposed to calm the House,
standing up in his place and saying:
"The gentleman from Vermont had been reminded by the Chair that
the discussion of slavery, as existing within the States, was
not in order; when he was desirous to read a paper and it was
objected to, the Chair had stopped him; but the objection had
been withdrawn, and Mr. Slade had been suffered to proceed; he
was now about to read another paper, and objection was made; the
Chair would, therefore, take the question on permitting it to be
read."
Many members rose, all addressing the Chair at the same time, and
many members leaving the hall, and a general scene of noise and
confusion prevailing. Mr. Rhett succeeded in raising his voice above
the roar of the tempest which raged in the House, and invited the
entire delegations from all the slave States to retire from the
hall forthwith, and meet in the committee room of the District of
Columbia. The Speaker again essayed to calm the House, and again
standing up in his place, he recapitulated his attempts to preserve
order, and vindicated the correctness of his own conduct--seemingly
impugned by many. What his personal feelings were on the subject
(he was from a slave State), might easily be conjectured. He
had endeavored to enforce the rules. Had it been in his power
to restrain the discussion, he should promptly have exercised
the power; but it was not. Mr. Slade, continuing, said the paper
which he wished to read was of the continental Congress of 1774.
The Speaker was about to put the question on leave, when Mr. Cost
Johnson, of Maryland, inquired whether it would be in order to force
the House to vote that the member from Vermont be not permitted to
proceed? The Speaker replied it would not. Then Mr. James J. McKay,
of North Carolina--a clear, coolheaded, sagacious man--interposed
the objection which headed Mr. Slade. There was a rule of the House,
that when a member was called to order, he should take his seat; and
if decided to be out of order, he should not be allowed to speak
again, except on the leave of the House. Mr. McKay judged this to be
a proper occasion for the enforcement of that rule; and stood up and
said:
"That the gentleman had been pronounced out of order in
discussing slavery in the States; and the rule declared that
when a member was so pronounced by the Chair, he should take
his seat, and if any one objected to his proceeding again, he
should not do so, unless by leave of the House. Mr. McKay did
now object to the gentleman from Vermont proceeding any farther."
Redoubled noise and confusion ensued--a crowd of members rising
and speaking at once--who eventually yielded to the resounding
blows of the Speaker's hammer upon the lid of his desk, and his
apparent desire to read something to the House, as he held a book
(recognized to be that of the rules) in his hand. Obtaining quiet,
so as to enable himself to be heard, he read the rule referred to
by Mr. McKay; and said that, as objection had now, for the first
time, been made under that rule to the gentleman's resuming his
speech, the Chair decided that he could not do so without the leave
of the House. Mr. Slade attempted to go on: the Speaker directed
him to take his seat until the question of leave should be put.
Then, Mr. Slade, still keeping on his feet, asked leave to proceed
as in order, saying he would not discuss slavery in Virginia. On
that question Mr. Allen, of Vermont, asked the yeas and nays. Mr.
Rencher, of North Carolina, moved an adjournment. Mr. Adams, and
many others, demanded the yeas and nays on this motion, which were
ordered, and resulted in 106 yeas, and 63 nays--some fifty or sixty
members having withdrawn. This opposition to adjournment was one
of the worst features of that unhappy day's work--the only effect
of keeping the House together being to increase irritation, and
multiply the chances for an outbreak. From the beginning Southern
members had been in favor of it, and essayed to accomplish it,
but were prevented by the tenacity with which Mr. Slade kept
possession of the floor: and now, at last, when it was time to
adjourn any way--when the House was in a condition in which no good
could be expected, and great harm might be apprehended, there were
sixty-three members--being nearly one-third of the House--willing to
continue it in session. They were:
"Messrs. Adams, Alexander, H. Allen, J. W. Allen, Aycrigg,
Bell, Biddle, Bond, Borden, Briggs, Wm. B. Calhoun, Coffin,
Corwin, Cranston, Curtis, Cushing, Darlington, Davies, Dunn,
Evans, Everett, Ewing I. Fletcher, Fillmore, Goode, Grennell,
Haley, Hall, Hastings, Henry, Herod, Hoffman, Lincoln, Marvin,
S. Mason, Maxwell, McKennan, Milligan, M. Morris, C. Morris,
Naylor, Noyes, Ogle, Parmenter, Patterson, Peck, Phillips,
Potts, Potter, Rariden, Randolph, Reed, Ridgway, Russel,
Sheffer, Sibley, Slade, Stratton, Tillinghast, Toland, A. S.
White, J. White, E. Whittlesey--63."
The House then stood adjourned; and as the adjournment was being
pronounced, Mr. Campbell of South Carolina, stood up on a chair, and
calling for the attention of members, said:
"He had been appointed, as one of the Southern delegation, to
announce that all those gentlemen who represented slaveholding
States, were invited to attend the meeting now being held in the
District committee room."
Members from the slave-holding States had repaired in large numbers
to the room in the basement, where they were invited to meet.
Various passions agitated them--some violent. Extreme propositions
were suggested, of which Mr. Rhett, of South Carolina, in a letter
to his constituents, gave a full account of his own--thus:
"In a private and friendly letter to the editor of the
Charleston Mercury amongst other events accompanying the
memorable secession of the Southern members from the hall of the
House of Representatives, I stated to him, that I had prepared
two resolutions, drawn as amendments to the motion of the
member from Vermont, whilst he was discussing the institution
of slavery in the South, 'declaring, that the constitution
having failed to protect the South in the peaceable possession
and enjoyment of their rights and peculiar institutions, it was
expedient that the Union should be dissolved; and the other,
appointing a committee of two members from each State, to report
upon the best means of peaceably dissolving it.' They were
intended as amendments to a motion, to refer with instructions
to report a bill, abolishing slavery in the District of
Columbia. I expected them to share the fate, which inevitably
awaited the original motion, so soon as the floor could have
been obtained, viz., to be laid upon the table. My design in
presenting them, was, to place before Congress and the people,
what, in my opinion, was the true issue upon this great and
vital question; and to point out the course of policy by which
it should be met by the Southern States."
But extreme counsels did not prevail. There were members present,
who well considered that, although the provocation was great, and
the number voting for such a firebrand motion was deplorably large,
yet it was but little more than the one-fourth of the House, and
decidedly less than one half of the members from the free States: so
that, even if left to the free State vote alone, the motion would
have been rejected. But the motion itself, and the manner in which
it was supported, was most reprehensible--necessarily leading to
disorder in the House, the destruction of its harmony and capacity
for useful legislation, tending to a sectional segregation of the
members, the alienation of feeling between the North and the South;
and alarm to all the slaveholding States. The evil required a
remedy, but not the remedy of breaking up the Union; but one which
might prevent the like in future, while administering a rebuke upon
the past. That remedy was found in adopting a proposition to be
offered to the House, which, if agreed to, would close the door
against any discussion upon abolition petitions in future, and
assimilate the proceedings of the House, in that particular, to
those of the Senate. This proposition was put into the hands of Mr.
Patton, of Virginia, to be offered as an amendment to the rules at
the opening of the House the next morning. It was in these words:
"_Resolved_, That all petitions, memorials, and papers, touching
the abolition of slavery or the buying, selling, or transferring
of slaves, in any State, District, or Territory, of the United
States, be laid on the table, without being debated, printed,
read, or referred, and that no further action whatever shall be
had thereon."
Accordingly, at the opening of the House, Mr. Patton asked leave to
submit the resolution--which was read for information. Mr. Adams
objected to the grant of leave. Mr. Patton then moved a suspension
of the rules--which motion required two-thirds to sustain it; and,
unless obtained, this salutary remedy for an alarming evil (which
was already in force in the Senate) could not be offered. It was a
test motion, and on which the opponents of abolition agitation in
the House required all their strength: for unless two to one, they
were defeated. Happily the two to one were ready, and on taking the
yeas and nays, demanded by an abolition member (to keep his friends
to the track, and to hold the free State anti-abolitionists to their
responsibility at home), the result stood 135 yeas to 60 nays--the
full two-thirds, and fifteen over. The yeas on this important
motion, were:
Messrs. Hugh J. Anderson, John T. Andrews, Charles G. Atherton,
William Beatty, Andrew Beirne, John Bell, Bennet Bicknell,
Richard Biddle, Samuel Birdsall, Ratliff Boon, James W. Bouldin,
John C. Brodhead, Isaac H. Bronson, Andrew D. W. Bruyn, Andrew
Buchanan, John Calhoun, C. C. Cambreleng, Wm. B. Campbell,
John Campbell, Timothy J. Carter, Wm. B. Carter, Zadok Casey,
John Chambers, John Chaney, Reuben Chapman, Richard Cheatham,
Jonathan Cilley, John F. H. Claiborne, Jesse F. Cleaveland, Wm.
K. Clowney, Walter Coles, Thomas Corwin, Robert Craig, John W.
Crocket, Samuel Cushman, Edmund Deberry, John I. De Graff, John
Dennis, George C. Dromgoole, John Edwards, James Farrington,
John Fairfield, Jacob Fry, jr., James Garland, James Graham,
Seaton Grantland, Abr'm P. Grant, William J. Graves. Robert H.
Hammond, Thomas L. Hamer, James Harlan, Albert G. Harrison,
Richard Hawes, Micajah T. Hawkins, Charles E. Haynes, Hopkins
Holsey, Orrin Holt, George W. Hopkins, Benjamin C. Howard,
Edward B. Hubley, Jabez Jackson, Joseph Johnson, Wm. Cost
Johnson, John W. Jones, Gouverneur Kemble, Daniel Kilgore, John
Klingensmith, jr., Joab Lawler, Hugh S. Legare, Henry Logan,
Francis S. Lyon, Francis Mallory, James M. Mason, Joshua L.
Martin, Abram P. Maury, Wm. L. May, James J. McKay, Robert
McClellan, Abraham McClelland, Charles McClure, Isaac McKim,
Richard H. Menefee, Charles F. Mercer, Wm. Montgomery, Ely
Moore, Wm. S. Morgan, Samuel W. Morris, Henry A. Muhlenberg,
John L. Murray, Wm. H. Noble, John Palmer, Amasa J. Parker,
John M. Patton, Lemuel Paynter, Isaac S. Pennybacker, David
Petrikin, Lancelot Phelps, Arnold Plumer, Zadock Pratt, John H.
Prentiss, Luther Reily, Abraham Rencher, John Robertson, Samuel
T. Sawyer, Augustine H. Shepperd, Charles Shepard, Ebenezer J.
Shields, Matthias Sheplor, Francis O. J. Smith, Adam W. Snyder,
Wm. W. Southgate, James B. Spencer, Edward Stanly, Archibald
Stuart, Wm. Stone, John Taliaferro, Wm. Taylor, Obadiah Titus,
Isaac Toucey, Hopkins L. Turney, Joseph R. Underwood, Henry
Vail, David D. Wagener, Taylor Webster, Joseph Weeks, Albert S.
White, John White, Thomas T. Whittlesey, Lewis Williams, Sherrod
Williams, Jared W. Williams, Joseph L. Williams, Christ'r H.
Williams, Henry A. Wise, Archibald Yell.
The nays were:
Messrs. John Quincy Adams, James Alexander, jr., Heman Allen,
John W. Allen, J. Banker Aycrigg, Wm. Key Bond, Nathaniel B.
Borden, George N. Briggs, Wm. B. Calhoun, Charles D. Coffin,
Robert B. Cranston, Caleb Cushing, Edward Darlington, Thomas
Davee, Edward Davies, Alexander Duncan, George H. Dunn, George
Evans, Horace Everett, John Ewing, Isaac Fletcher, Millard
Filmore, Henry A. Foster, Patrick G. Goode, George Grennell,
jr., Elisha Haley, Hiland Hall, Alexander Harper, Wm. S.
Hastings, Thomas Henry, Wm. Herod, Samuel Ingham, Levi Lincoln,
Richard P. Marvin, Samson Mason, John P. B. Maxwell, Thos. M. T.
McKennan, Mathias Morris, Calvary Morris, Charles Naylor, Joseph
C. Noyes, Charles Ogle, Wm. Parmenter, Wm. Patterson, Luther
C. Peck, Stephen C. Phillips, David Potts, jr., James Rariden,
Joseph F. Randolph, John Reed, Joseph Ridgway, David Russell,
Daniel Sheffer, Mark H. Sibley, Wm. Slade, Charles C. Stratton,
Joseph L. Tillinghast, George W. Toland, Elisha Whittlesey,
Thomas Jones Yorke.
This was one of the most important votes ever delivered in the
House. Upon its issue depended the quiet of the House on one hand,
or on the other, the renewal, and perpetuation of the scenes of the
day before--ending in breaking up all deliberation, and all national
legislation. It was successful, and that critical step being safely
over, the passage of the resolution was secured--the free State
friendly vote being itself sufficient to carry it: but, although
the passage of the resolution was secured, yet resistance to it
continued. Mr. Patton rose to recommend his resolution as a peace
offering, and to prevent further agitation by demanding the previous
question. He said:
"He had offered this resolution in the spirit of peace and
harmony. It involves (said Mr. P.), so far as I am concerned,
and so far as concerns some portion of the representatives of
the slaveholding States, a concession; a concession which we
make for the sake of peace, harmony, and union. We offer it in
the hope that it may allay, not exasperate excitement; we desire
to extinguish, not to kindle a flame in the country. In that
spirit, sir, without saying one word in the way of discussion;
without giving utterance to any of those emotions which swell in
my bosom at the recollection of what took place here yesterday,
I shall do what I have never yet done since I have been a member
of this House, and which I have very rarely sustained, when done
by others: I move the previous question."
Then followed a scene of disorder, which thus appears in the
Register of Debates:
"Mr. Adams rose and said. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman precedes
his resolution--(Loud cries of 'Order! order!' from all parts of
the hall.) Mr. A. He preceded it with remarks--('Order! order!')
"The Chair reminded the gentleman that it was out of order to
address the House after the demand for the previous question.
"Mr. Adams. I ask the House--(continued cries of 'Order!' which
completely drowned the honorable member's voice.)"
Order having been restored, the next question was--"Is the demand
for the previous question seconded?"--which seconding would
consist of a majority of the whole House--which, on a division,
quickly showed itself. Then came the further question--"_Shall
the main question be now put?_"--on which the yeas and nays were
demanded, and taken; and ended in a repetition of the vote of the
same 63 against it. The main question was then put, and carried;
but again, on yeas and nays, to hold free State members to their
responsibility; showing the same 63 in the negative, with a few
additional votes from free State members, who, having staked
themselves on the vital point of suspending the rules, saw no use in
giving themselves further trouble at home, by giving an unnecessary
vote in favor of stifling abolition debate. In this way, the ranks
of the 63 were increased to 74.
Thus was stifled, and in future prevented in the House, the
inflammatory debates on these disturbing petitions. It was the great
session of their presentation--being offered by hundreds, and signed
by hundreds of thousands of persons--many of them women, who forgot
their sex and their duties, to mingle in such inflammatory work;
some of them clergymen, who forgot their mission of peace, to stir
up strife among those who should be brethren. Of the pertinacious
63, who backed Mr. Slade throughout, the most notable were Mr.
Adams, who had been President of the United States--Mr. Fillmore,
who became so--and Mr. Caleb Cushing, who eventually became as ready
to abolish all impediments to the general diffusion of slavery, as
he then was to abolish slavery itself in the District of Columbia.
It was a portentous contest. The motion of Mr. Slade was, not for an
inquiry into the expediency of abolishing slavery in the District of
Columbia (a motion in itself sufficiently inflammatory), but to get
the command of the House to bring in a bill for that purpose--which
would be a decision of the question. His motion failed. The storm
subsided; and very few of the free State members who had staked
themselves on the issue, lost any thing among their constituents for
the devotion which they had shown to the Union.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
ABOLITIONISTS CLASSIFIED BY MR. CLAY ULTRAS DENOUNCED: SLAVERY
AGITATORS NORTH AND SOUTH EQUALLY DENOUNCED AS DANGEROUS TO THE
UNION.
"It is well known to the Senate, said Mr. Clay, that I have thought
that the most judicious course with abolition petitions has not been
of late pursued by Congress. I have believed that it would have been
wisest to have received and referred them, without opposition, and
to have reported against their object in a calm and dispassionate
and argumentative appeal to the good sense of the whole community.
It has been supposed, however, by a majority of Congress that it
was most expedient either not to receive the petitions at all, or,
if formally received, not to act definitively upon them. There is
no substantial difference between these opposite opinions, since
both look to an absolute rejection of the prayer of the petitioners.
But there is a great difference in the form of proceeding; and,
Mr. President, some experience in the conduct of human affairs has
taught me to believe that a neglect to observe established forms
is often attended with more mischievous consequences than the
infliction of a positive injury. We all know that, even in private
life, a violation of the existing usages and ceremonies of society
cannot take place without serious prejudice. I fear, sir, that
the abolitionists have acquired a considerable apparent force by
blending with the object which they have in view a collateral and
totally different question arising out of an alleged violation of
the right of petition. I know full well, and take great pleasure
in testifying, that nothing was remoter from the intention of the
majority of the Senate, from which I differed, than to violate the
right of petition in any case in which, according to its judgment,
that right could be constitutionally exercised, or where the object
of the petition could be safely or properly granted. Still, it must
be owned that the abolitionists have seized hold of the fact of
the treatment which their petitions have received in Congress, and
made injurious impressions upon the minds of a large portion of the
community. This, I think, might have been avoided by the course
which I should have been glad to have seen pursued.
"And I desire now, Mr. President, to advert to some of those topics
which I think might have been usefully embodied in a report by a
committee of the Senate, and which, I am persuaded, would have
checked the progress, if it had not altogether arrested the efforts
of abolition. I am sensible, sir, that this work would have been
accomplished with much greater ability, and with much happier
effect, under the auspices of a committee, than it can be by me.
But, anxious as I always am to contribute whatever is in my power
to the harmony, concord, and happiness of this great people, I
feel myself irresistibly impelled to do whatever is in my power,
incompetent as I feel myself to be, to dissuade the public from
continuing to agitate a subject fraught with the most direful
consequences.
"There are three classes of persons opposed, or apparently opposed,
to the continued existence of slavery in the United States. The
first are those who, from sentiments of philanthropy and humanity,
are conscientiously opposed to the existence of slavery, but who
are no less opposed, at the same time, to any disturbance of the
peace and tranquillity of the Union, or the infringement of the
powers of the States composing the confederacy. In this class may
be comprehended that peaceful and exemplary society of 'Friends,'
one of whose established maxims is, an abhorrence of war in all its
forms, and the cultivation of peace and good-will amongst mankind.
The next class consists of apparent abolitionists--that is, those
who, having been persuaded that the right of petition has been
violated by Congress, co-operate with the abolitionists for the sole
purpose of asserting and vindicating that right. And the third class
are the real ultra-abolitionists, who are resolved to persevere in
the pursuit of their object at all hazards, and without regard to
any consequences, however calamitous they may be. With them the
rights of property are nothing; the deficiency of the powers of the
general government is nothing; the acknowledged and incontestable
powers of the States are nothing; civil war, a dissolution of the
Union, and the overthrow of a government in which are concentrated
the fondest hopes of the civilized world, are nothing. A single
idea has taken possession of their minds, and onward they pursue
it, overlooking all barriers, reckless and regardless of all
consequences. With this class, the immediate abolition of slavery
in the District of Columbia, and in the territory of Florida, the
prohibition of the removal of slaves from State to State, and the
refusal to admit any new State, comprising within its limits the
institution of domestic slavery, are but so many means conducing
to the accomplishment of the ultimate but perilous end at which
they avowedly and boldly aim; are but so many short stages in
the long and bloody road to the distant goal at which they would
finally arrive. Their purpose is abolition, universal abolition,
peaceably if it can, forcibly if it must. Their object is no longer
concealed by the thinnest veil; it is avowed and proclaimed. Utterly
destitute of constitutional or other rightful power, living in
totally distinct communities, as alien to the communities in which
the subject on which they would operate resides, so far as concerns
political power over that subject, as if they lived in Africa or
Asia, they nevertheless promulgate to the world their purpose to be
to manumit forthwith, and without compensation, and without moral
preparation, three millions of negro slaves, under jurisdictions
altogether separated from those under which they live.
"I have said that immediate abolition of slavery in the District
of Columbia and in the territory of Florida, and the exclusion of
new States, were only means towards the attainment of a much more
important end. Unfortunately, they are not the only means. Another,
and much more lamentable one is that which this class is endeavoring
to employ, of arraying one portion against another portion of the
Union. With that view, in all their leading prints and publications,
the alleged horrors of slavery are depicted in the most glowing and
exaggerated colors, to excite the imaginations and stimulate the
rage of the people in the free States against the people in the
slave States. The slaveholder is held up and represented as the
most atrocious of human beings. Advertisements of fugitive slaves
to be sold are carefully collected and blazoned forth, to infuse a
spirit of detestation and hatred against one entire and the largest
section of the Union. And like a notorious agitator upon another
theatre (Mr. Daniel O'Connell), they would hunt down and proscribe
from the pale of civilized society the inhabitants of that entire
section. Allow me, Mr. President, to say, that whilst I recognize
in the justly wounded feelings of the Minister of the United States
at the court of St. James much to excuse the notice which he was
provoked to take of that agitator, in my humble opinion, he would
better have consulted the dignity of his station and of his country
in treating him with contemptuous silence. That agitator would
exclude us from European society--he who himself can only obtain a
contraband admission, and is received with scornful repugnance into
it! If he be no more desirous of our society than we are of his, he
may rest assured that a state of eternal non-intercourse will exist
between us. Yes, sir, I think the American Minister would have best
pursued the dictates of true dignity by regarding the language of
that member of the British House of Commons as the malignant ravings
of the plunderer of his own country, and the libeller of a foreign
and kindred people.
"But the means to which I have already adverted are not the only
ones which this third class of ultra-Abolitionists are employing to
effect their ultimate end. They began their operations by professing
to employ only persuasive means in appealing to the humanity, and
enlightening the understandings, of the slaveholding portion of
the Union. If there were some kindness in this avowed motive, it
must be acknowledged that there was rather a presumptuous display
also of an assumed superiority in intelligence and knowledge. For
some time they continued to make these appeals to our duty and our
interest; but impatient with the slow influence of their logic upon
our stupid minds, they recently resolved to change their system
of action. To the agency of their powers of persuasion, they now
propose to substitute the powers of the ballot box; and he must be
blind to what is passing before us, who does not perceive that the
inevitable tendency of their proceedings is, if these should be
found insufficient, to invoke, finally, the more potent powers of
the bayonet.
"Mr. President, it is at this alarming stage of the proceedings
of the ultra-Abolitionists that I would seriously invite every
considerate man in the country solemnly to pause, and deliberately
to reflect, not merely on our existing posture, but upon that
dreadful precipice down which they would hurry us. It is because
these ultra-Abolitionists have ceased to employ the instruments of
reason and persuasion, have made their cause political, and have
appealed to the ballot box, that I am induced, upon this occasion,
to address you.
"There have been three epochs in the history of our country at
which the spirit of abolition displayed itself. The first was
immediately after the formation of the present federal government.
When the constitution was about going into operation, its powers
were not well understood by the community at large, and remained
to be accurately interpreted and defined. At that period numerous
abolition societies were formed, comprising not merely the Society
of Friends, but many other good men. Petitions were presented to
Congress, praying for the abolition of slavery. They were received
without serious opposition, referred, and reported upon by a
committee. The report stated that the general government had no
power to abolish slavery as it existed in the several States, and
that these States themselves had exclusive jurisdiction over the
subject. The report was generally acquiesced in, and satisfaction
and tranquillity ensued; the abolition societies thereafter limiting
their exertions, in respect to the black population, to offices of
humanity within the scope of existing laws.
"The next period when the subject of slavery and abolition,
incidentally, was brought into notice and discussion, was on the
memorable occasion of the admission of the State of Missouri into
the Union. The struggle was long, strenuous, and fearful. It is too
recent to make it necessary to do more than merely advert to it, and
to say, that it was finally composed by one of those compromises
characteristic of our institutions, and of which the constitution
itself is the most signal instance.
"The third is that in which we now find ourselves, and to which
various causes have contributed. The principal one, perhaps, is
British emancipation in the islands adjacent to our continent.
Confounding the totally different cases of the powers of the British
Parliament and those of our Congress, and the totally different
conditions of the slaves in the British West India Islands and the
slaves in the sovereign and independent States of this confederacy,
superficial men have inferred from the undecided British experiment
the practicability of the abolition of slavery in these States.
All these are different. The powers of the British Parliament are
unlimited, and often described to be omnipotent. The powers of the
American Congress, on the contrary, are few, cautiously limited,
scrupulously excluding all that are not granted, and above all,
carefully and absolutely excluding all power over the existence
or continuance of slavery in the several States. The slaves, too,
upon which British legislation operated, were not in the bosom of
the kingdom, but in remote and feeble colonies, having no voice in
Parliament. The West India slaveholder was neither representative,
or represented in that Parliament. And while I most fervently
wish complete success to the British experiment of the West India
emancipation, I confess that I have fearful forebodings of a
disastrous termination. Whatever it may be, I think it must be
admitted that, if the British Parliament treated the West India
slaves as freemen, it also treated the West India freemen as slaves.
If instead of these slaves being separated by a wide ocean from
the parent country, three or four millions of African negro slaves
had been dispersed over England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and
their owners had been members of the British Parliament--a case
which would have presented some analogy to our own country--does any
one believe that it would have been expedient or practical to have
emancipated them, leaving them to remain, with all their embittered
feelings, in the United kingdom, boundless as the powers of the
British government are?
"Other causes have conspired with the British example to produce the
existing excitement from abolition. I say it with profound regret,
and with no intention to occasion irritation here or elsewhere,
that there are persons in both parts of the Union who have sought
to mingle abolition with politics, and to array one portion of the
Union against the other. It is the misfortune of free countries
that, in high party times, a disposition too often prevails to seize
hold of every thing which can strengthen the one side or weaken
the other. Prior to the late election of the present President of
the United States, he was charged with being an abolitionist, and
abolition designs were imputed to many of his supporters. Much as
I was opposed to his election, and am to his administration, I
neither shared in making or believing the truth of the charge. He
was scarcely installed in office before the same charge was directed
against those who opposed his election.
"It is not true--I rejoice that it is not true--that either of
the two great parties in this country has any design or aim at
abolition. I should deeply lament if it were true. I should
consider, if it were true, that the danger to the stability of our
system would be infinitely greater than any which does, I hope,
actually exist. Whilst neither party can be, I think, justly accused
of any abolition tendency or purpose, both have profited, and
both been injured, in particular localities, by the accession or
abstraction of abolition support. If the account were fairly stated,
I believe the party to which I am opposed has profited much more,
and been injured much less, than that to which I belong. But I am
far, for that reason, from being disposed to accuse our adversaries
of abolitionism."
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
BANK OF THE UNITED STATES: RESIGNATION OF MR. BIDDLE: FINAL
SUSPENSION.
On the first of January of this year this Bank made an exposition
of its affairs to the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, as required
by its charter, in which its assets aggregated $66,180,396; and its
liabilities aggregated $33,180,855: the exposition being verified by
the usual oaths required on such occasions.
On the 30th of March following Mr. Biddle resigned his place as
president of the Bank, giving as a reason for it that, "_the affairs
of the institution were in a state of great prosperity, and no
longer needed his services_."
On the same day the board of directors in accepting the resignation,
passed a resolve declaring that the President Biddle had left the
institution "_prosperous in all its relations, strong in its ability
to promote the interest of the community, cordial with other banks,
and secure in the esteem and respect of all connected with it at
home or abroad_."
On the 9th of October the Bank closed her doors upon her creditors,
under the mild name of suspension--never to open them again.
In the month of April preceding, when leaving Washington to return
to Missouri, I told the President there would be another suspension,
headed by the Bank of the United States, before we met again: at my
return in November it was his first expression to remind me of that
conversation; and to say it was the second time I had foreseen these
suspensions, and warned him of them. He then jocularly said, don't
predict so any more. I answered I should not; for it was the last
time this Bank would suspend.
Still dominating over the moneyed systems of the South and West,
this former colossal institution was yet able to carry along with
her nearly all the banks of one-half of the Union: and using her
irredeemable paper against the solid currency of the New York and
other Northern banks, and selling fictitious bills on Europe, she
was able to run them hard for specie--curtail their operations--and
make panic and distress in the money market. At the same time
by making an imposing exhibition of her assets, arranging a
reciprocal use of their notes with other suspended banks, keeping
up an apparent par value for her notes and stocks by fictitious
and collusive sales and purchases, and above all, by her political
connection with the powerful opposition--she was enabled to keep
the field as a bank, and as a political power: and as such to act
an effective part in the ensuing presidential election. She even
pretended to have become stronger since the time when Mr. Biddle
left her so prosperous; and at the next exposition of her affairs
to the Pennsylvania legislature (Jan. 1, 1840), returned her assets
at $74,603,142; her liabilities at $36,959,539, and her surplus at
$37,643,603. This surplus, after paying all liabilities, showed the
stock to be worth a premium of $2,643,603. And all this duly sworn
to.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
FIRST SESSION TWENTY-SIXTH CONGRESS: MEMBERS: ORGANIZATION:
POLITICAL MAP OF THE HOUSE.
_Members of the Senate_.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.--Henry Hubbard, Franklin Pierce.
MAINE.--John Ruggles, Reuel Williams.
MASSACHUSETTS.--John Davis. Daniel Webster.
VERMONT.--Sam'l Prentiss, Sam'l S. Phelps.
RHODE ISLAND.--Nehemiah R. Knight, N. F. Dixon.
CONNECTICUT.--Thaddeus Betts, Perry Smith.
NEW YORK.--Silas Wright, N. P. Tallmadge.
NEW JERSEY.--Sam'l L. Southard, Garret D. Wall.
PENNSYLVANIA.--James Buchanan, Daniel Sturgeon.
DELAWARE.--Thomas Clayton.
MARYLAND.--John S. Spence, Wm. D. Merrick.
VIRGINIA.--William H. Roane.
NORTH CAROLINA.--Bedford Brown, R. Strange.
SOUTH CAROLINA.--John C. Calhoun, Wm. Campbell Preston.
GEORGIA.--Wilson Lumpkin, Alfred Cuthbert.
KENTUCKY.--Henry Clay, John J. Crittenden.
TENNESSEE.--Hugh L. White, Alex. Anderson.
OHIO.--William Allen, Benjamin Tappan.
INDIANA.--Oliver H. Smith, Albert S. White.
MISSISSIPPI.--Robert J. Walker, John Henderson.
LOUISIANA.--Robert C. Nicholas, Alexander
Mouton.
ILLINOIS.--John M. Robinson, Richard M.
Young.
ALABAMA.--Clement C. Clay, Wm. Rufus
King.
MISSOURI.--Thomas H. Benton, Lewis F.
Linn.
ARKANSAS.--William S. Fulton, Ambrose
Sevier.
MICHIGAN.--John Norvell, Augustus S. Porter.
_Members of the House of Representatives._
MAINE.--Hugh J. Anderson, Nathan Clifford,
Thomas Davee, George Evans, Joshua A. Lowell,
Virgil D. Parris, Benjamin Randall, Albert
Smith.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.--Charles G. Atherton,
Edmund Burke, Ira A. Eastman, Tristram Shaw,
Jared W. Williams.
CONNECTICUT.--Joseph Trumbull, William
L. Storrs, Thomas W. Williams, Thomas B.
Osborne, Truman Smith, John H. Brockway.
VERMONT.--Hiland Hall, William Slade,
Horace Everett, John Smith, Isaac Fletcher.
MASSACHUSETTS.--Abbot Lawrence, Leverett
Saltonstall, Caleb Cushing, William Parmenter,
Levi Lincoln, [Vacancy,] George N. Briggs,
William B. Calhoun, William S. Hastings, Henry
Williams, John Reed, John Quincy Adams.
RHODE ISLAND.--Chosen by general ticket.
Joseph L. Tillinghast, Robert B. Cranston.
NEW YORK.--Thomas B. Jackson, James de
la Montayne, Ogden Hoffman, Edward Curtis,
Moses H. Grinnell, James Monroe, Gouverneur
Kemble, Charles Johnson, Nathaniel Jones,
Rufus Palen, Aaron Vanderpoel, John Ely,
Hiram P. Hunt, Daniel D. Barnard, Anson
Brown, David Russell, Augustus C. Hand, John
Fine, Peter J. Wagoner, Andrew W. Doig,
John G. Floyd, David P. Brewster, Thomas C.
Crittenden, John H. Prentiss, Judson Allen,
John C. Clark, S. B. Leonard, Amasa Dana,
Edward Rogers, Nehemiah H. Earl, Christopher
Morgan, Theron R. Strong, Francis P. Granger,
Meredith Mallory, Seth M. Gates, Luther C.
Peck, Richard P. Marvin, Millard Fillmore,
Charles F. Mitchell.
NEW JERSEY.--Joseph B. Randolph, Peter
D. Vroom, Philemon Dickerson, William R.
Cooper, Daniel B. Ryall, Joseph Kille.
PENNSYLVANIA.--William Beatty, Richard
Biddle, James Cooper, Edward Davies, John
Davis, John Edwards, Joseph Fornance, John
Galbraith, James Gerry, Robert H. Hammond,
Thomas Henry, Enos Hook, Francis James,
George M. Keim, Isaac Leet, Albert G. Marchand,
Samuel W. Morris, George McCulloch,
Charles Naylor, Peter Newhard, Charles Ogle,
Lemuel Paynter, David Petrikin, William S.
Ramsey, John Sergeant, William Simonton,
George W. Toland, David D. Wagener.
DELAWARE.--Thomas Robinson, jr.
MARYLAND.--James Carroll, John Dennis,
Solomon Hillen, jr., Daniel Jenifer, William
Cost Johnson, Francis Thomas, Philip F.
Thomas, John T. H. Worthington.
VIRGINIA.--Linn Banks, Andrew Beirne,
John M. Botts, Walter Coles, Robert Craig,
George C. Dromgoole, James Garland, William
L. Goggin, John Hill, Joel Holleman, George
W. Hopkins, Robert M. T. Hunter, Joseph
Johnson, John W. Jones, William Lucas,
Charles F. Mercer, Francis E. Rives, Green B.
Samuels, Lewis Steinrod, John Taliaferro, Henry
A. Wise.
NORTH CAROLINA.--Jesse A. Bynum, Henry
W. Connor, Edmund Deberry, Charles Fisher,
James Graham, Micajah T. Hawkins, John
Hill, James J. McKay, William Montgomery,
Kenneth Rayner, Charles Shepard, Edward
Stanly, Lewis Williams.
SOUTH CAROLINA.--Sampson H. Butler, John
Campbell, John K. Griffin, Isaac E. Holmes,
Francis W. Pickens, R. Barnwell Rhett, James
Rogers, Thomas B. Sumter, Waddy Thompson,
jr.
GEORGIA.--Julius C. Alford, Edward J.
Black, Walter T. Colquitt, Mark A. Cooper,
William C. Dawson, Richard W. Habersham,
Thomas B. King, Eugenius A. Nisbet, Lott
Warren.
ALABAMA.--R. H. Chapman, David Hubbard,
George W. Crabb, Dixon H. Lewis, James Dillett.
LOUISIANA.--Edward D. White, Edward
Chinn, Rice Garland.
MISSISSIPPI.--A. G. Brown, J. Thompson.
MISSOURI.--John Miller, John Jameson.
ARKANSAS.--Edward Cross.
TENNESSEE.--William B. Carter, Abraham
McClellan, Joseph L. Williams, Julius W.
Blackwell, Hopkins L. Turney, William B.
Campbell, John Bell, Meredith P. Gentry,
Harvey M. Watterson, Aaron V. Brown, Cave
Johnson, John W. Crockett, Christopher H.
Williams.
KENTUCKY.--Linn Boyd, Philip Triplett, Joseph
Underwood, Sherrod Williams, Simeon W.
Anderson, Willis Green, John Pope, William J.
Graves, John White, Richard Hawes, L. W.
Andrews, Garret Davis, William O. Butler.
OHIO.--Alexander Duncan, John B. Weller,
Patrick G. Goode, Thomas Corwin, William
Doane, Calvary Morris, William K. Bond, Joseph
Ridgway, William Medill, Samson Mason,
Isaac Parish, Jonathan Taylor, D. P. Leadbetter,
George Sweeny, John W. Allen, Joshua
R. Giddings, John Hastings, D. A. Starkweather,
Henry Swearingen.
MICHIGAN.--Isaac E. Crary.
INDIANA.--Geo. H. Proffit, John Davis, John
Carr, Thomas Smith, James Rariden, Wm. W.
Wick, T. A. Howard.
ILLINOIS.--John Reynolds, Zadok Casey,
John T. Stuart.
The organization of the House was delayed for many days by a case
of closely and earnestly contested election from the State of New
Jersey. Five citizens, to wit: John B. Aycrigg, John B. Maxwell,
William Halsted, Thomas C. Stratton, Thomas Jones Yorke, had
received the governor's certificate as duly elected: five other
citizens, to wit: Philemon Dickerson, Peter D. Vroom, Daniel B.
Ryall, William R. Cooper, John Kille, claimed to have received
a majority of the lawful votes given in the election: and each
set demanded admission as representatives. No case of contested
election was ever more warmly disputed in the House. The two sets
of claimants were of opposite political parties: the House was
nearly divided: five from one side and added to the other would
make a difference of ten votes: and these ten might determine its
character. The first struggle was on the part of the members holding
the certificates claiming to be admitted, and to act as members,
until the question of _right_ should be decided; and as this would
give them a right to vote for speaker, it might have had the effect
of deciding that important election: and for this point a great
struggle was made by the whig party. The democracy could not ask
for the immediate admission of the five democratic claimants, as
they only presented a case which required to be examined before it
could be decided. Their course was to exclude both sets, and send
them equally before the committee of contested elections; and in
the mean time, a resolution to proceed with the organization of
the House was adopted after an arduous and protracted struggle, in
which every variety of parliamentary motion was exhausted by each
side to accomplish its purpose; and, at the end of three months
it was referred to the committee to report which five of the ten
contestants had received the greatest number of legal votes. This
was putting the issue on the rights of the voters--on the broad
and popular ground of choice by the people: and was equivalent to
deciding the question in favor of the democratic contestants, who
held the certificate of the Secretary of State that the majority of
votes returned to his office was in their favor,--counting the votes
of some precincts which the governor and council had rejected for
illegality in holding the elections. As the constitutional judge
of the election, qualifications and returns of its own members, the
House disregarded the decision of the governor and council; and,
deferring to the representative principle, made the decision turn,
not upon the conduct of the officers holding the election, but upon
the rights of the voters.
This strenuous contest was not terminated until the 10th of
March--nearly one hundred days from the time of its commencement.
The five democratic members were then admitted to their seats.
In the mean time the election for speaker had been brought on by
a vote of 118 to 110--the democracy having succeeded in bringing
on the election after a total exhaustion of every parliamentary
manoeuvre to keep it off. Mr. John W. Jones, of Virginia, was
the democratic nominee: Mr. Jno. Bell, of Tennessee, was nominated
on the part of the whigs. The whole vote given in was 235, making
118 necessary to a choice. Of these, Mr. Jones received 118: Mr.
Bell, 102. Twenty votes were scattered, of which 11, on the whig
side, went to Mr. Dawson of Georgia; and 9 on the democratic side
were thrown upon three southern members. Had any five of these
nine voted for Mr. Jones, it would have elected him: while the
eleven given to Mr. Dawson would not have effected the election
of Mr. Bell. It was clear the democracy had the majority, for the
contested election from New Jersey having been sent to a committee,
and neither set of the contestants allowed to vote, the question
became purely and simply one of party: but there was a fraction in
each party which did not go with the party to which it belonged:
and hence, with a majority in the House to bring on the election,
and a majority voting in it, the democratic nominee lacked five
of the number requisite to elect him. The contest was continued
through five successive ballotings without any better result for
Mr. Jones, and worse for Mr. Bell; and it became evident that there
was a fraction of each party determined to control the election. It
became a question with the democratic party what to do? The fraction
which did not go with the party were the friends of Mr. Calhoun, and
although always professing democratically had long acted with the
whigs, and had just returned to the body of the party against which
they had been acting. The election was in their hands, and they gave
it to be known that if one of their number was taken, they would
vote with the body of the party and elect him: and Mr. Dixon H.
Lewis, of Alabama, was the person indicated. The extreme importance
of having a speaker friendly to the administration induced all the
leading friends of Mr. Van Buren to go into this arrangement, and
to hold a caucus to carry it into effect. The caucus was held: Mr.
Lewis was adopted as the candidate of the party: and, the usual
resolves of unanimity having been adopted, it was expected to elect
him on the first trial. He was not, however, so elected; nor on the
second trial; nor on the third; nor on any one up to the seventh:
when, having never got a higher vote than Mr. Jones, and falling
off to the one-half of it, he was dropped; and but few knew how the
balk came to pass. It was thus: The writer of this View was one
of a few who would not capitulate to half a dozen members, known
as Mr. Calhoun's friends, long separated from the party, bitterly
opposing it, just returning to it, and undertaking to govern it by
constituting themselves into a balance wheel between the two nearly
balanced parties. He preferred a clean defeat to any victory gained
by such capitulation. He was not a member of the House, but had
friends there who thought as he did; and these he recommended to
avoid the caucus, and remain unbound by its resolves; and when the
election came on, vote as they pleased: which they did: and enough
of them throwing away their votes upon those who were no candidates,
thus prevented the election of Mr. Lewis: and so returned upon the
little fraction of pretenders the lesson which they had taught.
It was the same with the whig party. A fraction of its members
refused to support the regular candidate of the party; and after
many fruitless trials to elect him, he was abandoned--Mr. Robert M.
T. Hunter, of Virginia, taken up, and eventually elected. He had
voted with the whig party in the New Jersey election case--among
the scattering in the votes for speaker; and was finally elected by
the full whig vote, and a few of the scattering from the democratic
ranks. He was one of the small band of Mr. Calhoun's friends; so
that that gentleman succeeded in governing the whig election of
speaker, after failing to govern that of the democracy.
In looking over the names of the candidates for speaker it will be
seen that the whole were Southern men--no Northern man being at
any time put in nomination, or voted for. And this circumstance
illustrates a pervading system of action between the two sections
from the foundation of the government--the southern going for the
honors, the northern for the benefits of the government. And each
has succeeded, but with the difference of a success in a solid and
in an empty pursuit. The North has become rich upon the benefits of
the government: the South has grown lean upon its honors.
This arduous and protracted contest for speaker, and where the
issue involved the vital party question of the organization of the
House, and where every member classified himself by a deliberate
and persevering series of votes, becomes important in a political
classification point of view, and is here presented in detail as the
political map of the House--taking the first vote as showing the
character of the whole.
1. Members voting for Mr. Jones: 113.
Judson Allen, Hugh J. Anderson, Charles G. Atherton, Linn Banks,
William Beatty, Andrew Beirne, Julius W. Blackwell, Linn Boyd,
David P. Brewster, Aaron V. Brown, Albert G. Brown, Edmund
Burke, Sampson H. Butler, William O. Butler, Jesse A. Bynum,
John Carr, James Carroll, Zadok Casey, Reuben Chapman, Nathan
Clifford, Walter Coles, Henry W. Connor, Robert Craig, Isaac E.
Crary, Edward Cross, Amasa Dana, Thomas Davee, John Davis, John
W. Davis, William Doan, Andrew W. Doig, George C. Dromgoole,
Alexander Duncan, Nehemiah H. Earl, Ira A. Eastman, John Ely,
John Fine, Isaac Fletcher, John G. Floyd, Joseph Fornance,
John Galbraith, James Gerry, Robert H. Hammond, Augustus C.
Hand, John Hastings, Micajah T. Hawkins, John Hill of North
Carolina, Solomon Hillen jr., Joel Holleman, Enos Hook, Tilghman
A. Howard, David Hubbard, Thomas B. Jackson, John Jameson,
Joseph Johnson, Cave Johnson, Nathaniel Jones, George M. Keim,
Gouverneur Kemble, Daniel P. Leadbetter, Isaac Leet, Stephen
B. Leonard, Dixon H. Lewis, Joshua A. Lowell, William Lucas,
Abraham McLellan, George McCulloch, James J. McKay, Meredith
Mallory, Albert G. Marchand, William Medill, John Miller, James
D. L. Montanya, William Montgomery, Samuel W. Morris, Peter
Newhard, Isaac Parrish, William Parmenter, Virgil D. Parris,
Lemuel Paynter, David Petrikin, Francis W. Pickens, John H.
Prentiss, William S. Ramsey, John Reynolds, R. Barnwell Rhett,
Francis E. Rives, Thomas Robinson jr., Edward Rodgers, Green
B. Samuels, Tristram Shaw, Charles Shepard, Albert Smith, John
Smith, Thomas Smith, David A. Starkweather, Lewis Steenrod,
Theron R. Strong, Henry Swearingen, George Sweeny, Jonathan
Taylor, Francis Thomas, Philip F. Thomas, Jacob Thompson,
Hopkins L. Turney, Aaron Vanderpoel, David D. Wagner, Harvey M.
Watterson, John B. Weller, William W. Wick, Jared W. Williams,
Henry Williams, John T. H. Worthington.
2. Members voting for Mr. Bell: 102.
John Quincy Adams, John W. Allen, Simeon H. Anderson, Landaff
W. Andrews, Daniel D. Barnard, Richard Biddle, William K. Bond,
John M. Botts, George N. Briggs, John H. Brockway, Anson Brown,
William B. Calhoun, William B. Campbell, William B. Carter,
Thomas W. Chinn, Thomas C. Chittenden, John C. Clark, James
Cooper, Thomas Corwin, George W. Crabb, Robt. B. Cranston, John
W. Crockett, Edward Curtis, Caleb Cushing, Edward Davies, Garret
Davis, William C. Dawson, Edmund Deberry, John Dennis, James
Dellet, John Edwards, George Evans, Horace Everett, Millard
Fillmore, Rice Garland, Seth M. Gates, Meredith P. Gentry,
Joshua R. Giddings, William L. Goggin, Patrick G. Goode, James
Graham, Francis Granger, Willis Green, William J. Graves, Moses
H. Grinnell, Hiland Hall, William S. Hastings, Richard Hawes,
Thomas Henry, John Hill of Virginia, Ogden Hoffman, Hiram P.
Hunt, Francis James, Daniel Jenifer, Charles Johnston, William
Cost Johnson, Abbott Lawrence, Levi Lincoln, Richard P. Marvin,
Samson Mason, Charles F. Mercer, Charles F. Mitchell, James
Monroe, Christopher Morgan, Calvary Morris, Charles Naylor,
Charles Ogle, Thomas B. Osborne, Rufus Palen, Luther C. Peck,
John Pope, George H. Proffit, Benjamin Randall, Joseph F.
Randolph, James Rariden, Kenneth Rayner, John Reed, Joseph
Ridgway, David Russell, Leverett Saltonstall, John Sergeant,
William Simonton, William Slade, Truman Smith, Edward Stanly,
William L. Storrs, John T. Stuart, John Taliaferro, Joseph L.
Tillinghast, George W. Toland, Philip Triplett, Joseph Trumbull,
Joseph R. Underwood, Peter J. Wagner, Edward D. White, John
White, Thomas W. Williams, Lewis Williams, Joseph L. Williams,
Christopher H. Williams, Sherrod Williams, Henry A. Wise.
3. Scattering: 20.
The following named members voted for William C. Dawson, of Georgia.
Julius C. Alford, John Bell, Edward J. Black, Richard W.
Habersham, George W. Hopkins, Hiram P. Hunt, William Cost
Johnson, Thomas B. King, Eugenius A. Nisbet, Waddy Thompson,
jr., Lott Warren.
The following named members voted for Dixon H. Lewis, of Alabama:
John Campbell, Mark A. Cooper, John K. Griffin, John W. Jones,
Walter T. Colquitt.
The following named members voted for Francis W. Pickens, of South
Carolina:
Charles Fisher, Isaac E. Holmes, Robert M. T. Hunter, James
Rogers, Thomas B. Sumter.
James Garland voted for George W. Hopkins, of Virginia.
Charles Ogle voted for Robert M. T. Hunter, of Virginia.
CHAPTER XL.
FIRST SESSION OF THE TWENTY-SIXTH CONGRESS: PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.
The President met with firmness the new suspension of the banks of
the southern and western half of the Union, headed by the Bank of
the United States. Far from yielding to it he persevered in the
recommendation of his great measures, found in their conduct new
reasons for the divorce of Bank and State, and plainly reminded
the delinquent institutions with a total want of the reasons for
stopping payment which they had alleged two years before. He said:
"It now appears that there are other motives than a want
of public confidence under which the banks seek to justify
themselves in a refusal to meet their obligations. Scarcely
were the country and government relieved, in a degree, from
the difficulties occasioned by the general suspension of
1837, when a partial one, occurring within thirty months of
the former, produced new and serious embarrassments, though
it had no palliation in such circumstances as were alleged in
justification of that which had previously taken place. There
was nothing in the condition of the country to endanger a
well-managed banking institution; commerce was deranged by no
foreign war; every branch of manufacturing industry was crowned
with rich rewards; and the more than usual abundance of our
harvests, after supplying our domestic wants, had left our
granaries and storehouses filled with a surplus for exportation.
It is in the midst of this, that an irredeemable and depreciated
paper currency is entailed upon the people by a large portion
of the banks. They are not driven to it by the exhibition of a
loss of public confidence; or of a sudden pressure from their
depositors or note-holders, but they excuse themselves by
alleging that the current of business, and exchange with foreign
countries, which draws the precious metals from their vaults,
would require, in order to meet it, a larger curtailment of
their loans to a comparatively small portion of the community,
than it will be convenient for them to bear, or perhaps safe for
the banks to exact. The plea has ceased to be one of necessity.
Convenience and policy are now deemed sufficient to warrant
these institutions in disregarding their solemn obligations.
Such conduct is not merely an injury to individual creditors,
but it is a wrong to the whole community, from whose liberality
they hold most valuable privileges--whose rights they violate,
whose business they derange, and the value of whose property
they render unstable and insecure. It must be evident that this
new ground for bank suspensions, in reference to which their
action is not only disconnected with, but wholly independent
of, that of the public, gives a character to their suspensions
more alarming than any which they exhibited before, and greatly
increases the impropriety of relying on the banks in the
transactions of the government."
The President also exposed the dangerous nature of the whole banking
system from its chain of connection and mutual dependence of one
upon another, so as to make the misfortune or criminality of one the
misfortune of all. Our country banks were connected with those of
New York and Philadelphia: they again with the Bank of England. So
that a financial crisis commencing in London extends immediately to
our great Atlantic cities; and thence throughout the States to the
most petty institutions of the most remote villages and counties:
so that the lever which raised or sunk our country banks was in
New York and Philadelphia, while they themselves were worked by a
lever in London; thereby subjecting our system to the vicissitudes
of English banking, and especially while we had a national bank,
which, by a law of its nature, would connect itself with the Bank
of England. All this was well shown by the President, and improved
into a reason for disconnecting ourselves from a moneyed system,
which, in addition to its own inherent vices and fallibilities, was
also subject to the vices, fallibilities, and even inimical designs
of another, and a foreign system--belonging to a power, always our
competitor in trade and manufactures--sometimes our enemy in open
war.
"Distant banks may fail, without seriously affecting those in
our principal commercial cities; but the failure of the latter
is felt at the extremities of the Union. The suspension at
New York, in 1837, was every where, with very few exceptions,
followed, as soon as it was known; that recently at Philadelphia
immediately affected the banks of the South and West in a
similar manner. This dependence of our whole banking system on
the institutions in a few large cities, is not found in the
laws of their organization, but in those of trade and exchange.
The banks at that centre to which currency flows, and where
it is required in payments for merchandise, hold the power of
controlling those in regions whence it comes, while the latter
possess no means of restraining them; so that the value of
individual property, and the prosperity of trade, through the
whole interior of the country, are made to depend on the good or
bad management of the banking institutions in the great seats
of trade on the seaboard. But this chain of dependence does not
stop here. It does not terminate at Philadelphia or New York.
It reaches across the ocean, and ends in London, the centre
of the credit system. The same laws of trade, which give to
the banks in our principal cities power over the whole banking
system of the United States, subject the former, in their turn,
to the money power in Great Britain. It is not denied that the
suspension of the New York banks in 1837, which was followed
in quick succession throughout the Union, was partly produced
by an application of that power; and it is now alleged, in
extenuation of the present condition of so large a portion of
our banks, that their embarrassments have arisen from the same
cause. From this influence they cannot now entirely escape, for
it has its origin in the credit currencies of the two countries;
it is strengthened by the current of trade and exchange, which
centres in London, and is rendered almost irresistible by the
large debts contracted there by our merchants, our banks, and
our States. It is thus that an introduction of a new bank into
the most distant of our villages, places the business of that
village within the influence of the money power in England.
It is thus that every new debt which we contract in that
country, seriously affects our own currency, and extends over
the pursuits of our citizens its powerful influence. We cannot
escape from this by making new banks, great or small, State
or National. The same chains which bind those now existing to
the centre of this system of paper credit, must equally fetter
every similar institution we create. It is only by the extent
to which this system has been pushed of late, that we have been
made fully aware of its irresistible tendency to subject our
own banks and currency to a vast controlling power in a foreign
land; and it adds a new argument to those which illustrate
their precarious situation. Endangered in the first place by
their own mismanagement, and again by the conduct of every
institution which connects them with the centre of trade in our
own country, they are yet subjected, beyond all this, to the
effect of whatever measures, policy, necessity, or caprice, may
induce those who control the credits of England to resort to.
Is an argument required beyond the exposition of these facts,
to show the impropriety of using our banking institutions as
depositories of the public money? Can we venture not only to
encounter the risk of their individual and mutual mismanagement,
but, at the same time, to place our foreign and domestic policy
entirely under the control of a foreign moneyed interest? To
do so is to impair the independence of our government, as the
present credit system has already impaired the independence of
our banks. It is to submit all its important operations, whether
of peace or war, to be controlled or thwarted at first by our
own banks, and then by a power abroad greater than themselves.
I cannot bring myself to depict the humiliation to which this
government and people might be sooner or later reduced, if the
means for defending their rights are to be made dependent upon
those who may have the most powerful of motives to impair them."
These were sagacious views, clearly and strongly presented, and new
to the public. Few had contemplated the evils of our paper system,
and the folly and danger of depending upon it for currency, under
this extended and comprehensive aspect; but all saw it as soon as
it was presented; and this actual dependence of our banks upon that
of England became a new reason for the governmental dissolution of
all connection with them. Happily they were working that dissolution
themselves, and producing that disconnection by their delinquencies
which they were able to prevent Congress from decreeing. An existing
act of Congress forbid the employment of any non-specie paying bank
as a government depository, and equally forbid the use of its paper.
They expected to coerce the government to do both: it did neither:
and the disconnection became complete, even before Congress enacted
it.
The President had recommended, in his first annual message, the
passage of a pre-emption act in the settlement of the public lands,
and of a graduation act to reduce the price of the lands according
to their qualities, governed by the length of time they had been in
market. The former of these recommendations had been acted upon,
and became law; and the President had now the satisfaction to
communicate its beneficial operation.
"On a former occasion your attention was invited to various
considerations in support of a pre-emption law in behalf of the
settlers on the public lands; and also of a law graduating the
prices for such lands as had long been in the market unsold, in
consequence of their inferior quality. The execution of the act
which was passed on the first subject has been attended with
the happiest consequences, in quieting titles, and securing
improvements to the industrious; and it has also, to a very
gratifying extent, been exempt from the frauds which were
practised under previous pre-emption laws. It has, at the same
time, as was anticipated, contributed liberally during the
present year to the receipts of the Treasury. The passage of a
graduation law, with the guards before recommended, would also,
I am persuaded, add considerably to the revenue for several
years, and prove in other respects just and beneficial. Your
early consideration of the subject is, therefore, once more
earnestly requested."
The opposition in Congress, who blamed the administration for
the origin and conduct of the war with the Florida Indians, had
succeeded in getting through Congress an appropriation for a
negotiation with this tribe, and a resolve requesting the President
to negotiate. He did so--with no other effect than to give an
opportunity for renewed treachery and massacre. The message said:
"In conformity with the expressed wishes of Congress, an
attempt was made in the spring to terminate the Florida war by
negotiation. It is to be regretted that these humane intentions
should have been frustrated, and that the efforts to bring
these unhappy difficulties to a satisfactory conclusion should
have failed. But, after entering into solemn engagements with
the Commanding General, the Indians, without any provocation,
recommenced their acts of treachery and murder. The renewal of
hostilities in that Territory renders it necessary that I should
recommend to your favorable consideration the measure proposed
by the Secretary at War (the armed occupation of the Territory)."
With all foreign powers the message had nothing but what was
friendly and desirable to communicate. Nearly every question of
dissension and dispute had been settled under the administration
of his predecessor. The accumulated wrongs of thirty years to the
property and persons of our citizens, had been redressed under
President Jackson. He left the foreign world in peace and friendship
with his country; and his successor maintained the amicable
relations so happily established.
CHAPTER XLI.
DIVORCE OF BANK AND STATE; DIVORCE DECREED.
This measure, so long and earnestly contested, was destined to be
carried into effect at this session; but not without an opposition
on the part of the whig members in each House, which exhausted
both the powers of debate, and the rules and acts of parliamentary
warfare. Even after the bill had passed through all its forms--had
been engrossed for the third reading, and actually been read a third
time and was waiting for the call of the vote, with a fixed majority
shown to be in its favor--the warfare continued upon it, with no
other view than to excite the people against it: for its passage in
the Senate was certain. It was at this last moment that Mr. Clay
delivered one of his impassioned and glowing speeches against it.
"Mr. President, it is no less the duty of the statesman than
the physician, to ascertain the exact state of the body to
which he is to minister before he ventures to prescribe any
healing remedy. It is with no pleasure, but with profound
regret, that I survey the present condition of our country. I
have rarely, I think never, known a period of such universal
and intense distress. The general government is in debt,
and its existing revenue is inadequate to meet its ordinary
expenditure. The States are in debt, some of them largely in
debt, insomuch that they have been compelled to resort to
the ruinous expedient of contracting new loans to meet the
interest upon prior loans; and the people are surrounded with
difficulties; greatly embarrassed, and involved in debt. Whilst
this is, unfortunately, the general state of the country, the
means of extinguishing this vast mass of debt are in constant
diminution. Property is falling in value--all the great staples
of the country are declining in price, and destined, I fear, to
further decline. The certain tendency of this very measure is
to reduce prices. The banks are rapidly decreasing the amount
of their circulation. About one-half of them, extending from
New Jersey to the extreme Southwest, have suspended specie
payments, presenting an image of a paralytic, one moiety of
whose body is stricken with palsy. The banks are without a
head; and, instead of union, concert, and co-operation between
them, we behold jealousy, distrust, and enmity. We have no
currency whatever possessing uniform value throughout the
whole country. That which we have, consisting almost entirely
of the issues of banks, is in a state of the utmost disorder,
insomuch that it varies, in comparison with the specie standard,
from par to fifty per cent. discount. Exchanges, too, are in
the greatest possible confusion, not merely between distant
parts of the Union, but between cities and places in the same
neighborhood. That between our great commercial marts of New
York and Philadelphia, within five or six hours of each other,
vacillating between seven and ten per cent. The products of our
agricultural industry are unable to find their way to market
from the want of means in the hands of traders to purchase
them, or from the want of confidence in the stability of things.
Many of our manufactories stopped or stopping, especially in
the important branch of woollens; and a vast accumulation of
their fabrics on hand, owing to the destruction of confidence
and the wretched state of exchange between different sections
of the Union. Such is the unexaggerated picture of our present
condition. And amidst the dark and dense cloud that surrounds
us, I perceive not one gleam of light. It gives me nothing but
pain to sketch the picture. But duty and truth require that
existing diseases should be fearlessly examined and probed
to the bottom. We shall otherwise be utterly incapable of
conceiving or applying appropriate remedies. If the present
unhappy state of our country had been brought upon the people
by their folly and extravagance, it ought to be borne with
fortitude, and without complaint, and without reproach. But
it is my deliberate judgment that it has not been--that the
people are not to blame--and that the principal causes of
existing embarrassments are not to be traced to them. Sir, it
is not my purpose to waste the time or excite the feelings of
members of the Senate by dwelling long on what I suppose to
be those causes. My object is a better, a higher, and I hope
a more acceptable one--to consider the remedies proposed for
the present exigency. Still, I should not fulfil my whole duty
if I did not briefly say that, in my conscience, I believe our
pecuniary distresses have mainly sprung from the refusal to
recharter the late Bank of the United States; the removal of the
public deposits from that institution; the multiplication of
State banks in consequence; and the Treasury stimulus given to
them to extend their operations; the bungling manner in which
the law, depositing the surplus treasure with the States, was
executed; the Treasury circular; and although last, perhaps not
least, the exercise of the power of the veto on the bill for
distributing, among the States, the net proceeds of the sales of
the public lands."
This was the opening of the speech--the continuation and conclusion
of which was bound to be in harmony with this beginning; and
obliged to fill up the picture so pathetically drawn. It did
so, and the vote being at last taken, the bill passed by a fair
majority--24 to 18. But it had the House of Representatives still
to encounter, where it had met its fate before; and to that House
it was immediately sent for its concurrence. A majority were known
to be for it; but the shortest road was taken to its passage; and
that was under the debate-killing pressure of the previous question.
That question was freely used; and amendment after amendment cut
off; motion after motion stifled; speech after speech suppressed;
the bill carried from stage to stage by a sort of silent struggle
(chiefly interrupted by the repeated process of calling yeas and
nays), until at last it reached the final vote--and was passed--by
a majority, not large, but clear--124 to 107. This was the 30th of
June, that is to say, within twenty days of the end of a session
of near eight months. The previous question, so often abused, now
so properly used (for the bill was an old measure, on which not a
new word was to be spoken, or a vote to be changed, the only effort
being to stave it off until the end of the session), accomplished
this good work--and opportunely; for the next Congress was its
deadly foe.
The bill was passed, but the bitter spirit which pursued it was not
appeased. There is a form to be gone through after the bill has
passed all its three readings--the form of agreeing to its title.
This is as much a matter of course and form as it is to give a child
a name after it is born: and, in both cases, the parents having the
natural right of bestowing the name. But in the case of this bill
the title becomes a question, which goes to the House, and gives to
the enemies of the measure a last chance of showing their temper
towards it: for it is a form in which nothing but temper can be
shown. This is sometimes done by simply voting against the title,
as proposed by its friends--at others, and where the opposition is
extreme, it is done by a motion to amend the title by striking it
out, and substituting another of odium, and this mode of opposition
gives the party opposed to it an opportunity of expressing an
opinion on the merits of the bill itself, compressed into an
essence, and spread upon the journal for a perpetual remembrance.
This was the form adopted on this occasion. The name borne at the
head of the bill was inoffensive, and descriptive. It described the
bill according to its contents, and did it in appropriate and modest
terms. None of the phrases used in debate, such as "Divorce of Bank
and State," "Sub-treasury," "Independent Treasury," &c., and which
had become annoying to the opposition, were employed, but a plain
title of description in these terms: "_An act to provide for the
collection, safe-keeping, and disbursing of the public money._" To
this title Mr. James Cooper, of Pennsylvania, moved an amendment,
in the shape of a substitute, in these words: "_An act to reduce
the value of property, the products of the farmer, and the wages of
labor, to destroy the indebted portions of the community, and to
place the Treasury of the nation in the hands of the President._"
Before a vote could be taken upon this proposed substitute, Mr.
Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, proposed to amend it by adding "_to
enable the public money to be drawn from the public Treasury without
appropriation made by law_," and having proposed this amendment to
Mr. Cooper's amendment, Mr. Cushing began to speak to the contents
of the bill. Then followed a scene in which the parliamentary
history must be allowed to speak for itself.
"Mr. CUSHING then resumed, and said he had moved the amendment
with a view of making a very limited series of remarks pertinent
to the subject. He was then proceeding to show why, in his
opinion, the contents of the bill did not agree with its title,
when
"Mr. _Petrikin_, of Pennsylvania, called him to order.
"The Speaker said the gentleman from Massachusetts had a right
to amend the title of the bill, if it were not a proper title.
He had, therefore, a right to examine the contents of the bill,
to show that the title was improper.
"Mr. PETRIKIN still objected.
"The Speaker said the gentleman from Pennsylvania would be
pleased to reduce his point of order to writing.
"Mr. PROFFIT, of Indiana, called Mr. Petrikin to order; and
after some colloquial debate, the objection was withdrawn.
"Mr. CUSHING then resumed, and appeared very indignant at the
interruption. He wished to know if the measure was to be forced
on the country without affording an opportunity to say a single
word. He said they were at the last act in the drama, but the
end was not yet. Mr. C. then proceeded to give his reasons why
he considered the bill as an unconstitutional measure, as he
contended that it gave the Secretary power to draw on the public
money without appropriations by law. He concluded by observing
that he had witnessed the incubation and hatching of this
_cockatrice_, but he hoped the time was not far distant when the
people would put their feet on the _reptile_ and crush it to the
dust.
"Mr. PICKENS, of South Carolina, then rose, and in a very
animated manner said he had wished to make a few remarks upon
the bill before its passage, but he was now compelled to confine
himself in reply to the very extraordinary language and tone
assumed by the gentleman from Massachusetts. What right had he
to speak of this bill as being forced on the country by "_brutal
numbers_?" That gentleman had defined the bill according to
_his_ conception of it; but he would tell the gentleman, that
the bill would, thank God, deliver this government from the
hands of those who for so many years had lived by _swindling_
the proceeds of honest labor. Yes, said Mr. P., I thank my God
that the hour of our deliverance is now so near, from a system
which has wrung the hard earnings from productive industry for
the benefit of a few irresponsible corporations.
"Sir, I knew the contest would be fierce and bitter. The bill,
in its principles, draws the line between the great _laboring
and landed interests_ of this confederacy, and those who
are identified with _capitalists in stocks_ and live upon
_incorporated credit_. The latter class have lived and fattened
upon the fiscal action of this government, from the _funding
system_ down to the present day--and now they feel like wolves
who have been driven back from the warm blood they have been
lapping for forty years. Well may the gentleman [Mr. CUSHING],
who represents those interests, cry out and exclaim that it is
a bill passed in force by fraud and power--it is the power and
the spirit of a free people determined to redeem themselves and
their government.
"Here the calls to order were again renewed from nearly every
member of the opposition, and great confusion prevailed.
"The Speaker with much difficulty succeeded in restoring
something like order, and as none of those who had so
vociferously called Mr. P. to order, raised any point,
"Mr. PICKENS proceeded with his remarks, and alluding to the
words of Mr. Cushing, that "this was the last act of the drama,"
said this was the first, and not the last act of the drama.
There were great questions that lay behind this, connected with
the fiscal action of the government, and which we will be called
on to decide in the next few years; they were all connected with
one great and complicated system. This was the commencement, and
only a branch of the system.
"Here the cries of order from the opposition were renewed, and
after the storm had somewhat subsided,
"Mr. P. said, rather than produce confusion at that late hour
of the day, when this great measure was so near a triumphant
consummation, and, in spite of all the exertions of its enemies,
was about to become the law of the land, he would not trespass
any longer on the attention of the House. But the gentleman had
said that because the first section had declared what should
constitute the Treasury, and that another section had provided
for keeping portions of the Treasury in other places than the
safes and vaults in the Treasury building of this place; that,
therefore, it was to be inferred that those who were to execute
it would draw money from the Treasury without appropriations
by law, and thus to perpetrate a fraud upon the constitution.
Mr. P. said, let those who are to execute this bill dare to
commit this outrage, and use money for purposes not intended
in appropriations by law, and they would be visited with the
indignation of an outraged and wronged people. It would be too
gross and palpable. Such is not the broad meaning and intention
of the bill. The construction given by the gentleman was a
forced and technical one, and not natural. It was too strained
to be seriously entertained by any one for a moment. He raised
his protest against it.
"Mr. P. regretted the motion admitted of such narrow and
confined debate. He would not delay the passage of the bill
upon so small a point. He congratulated the country that we
had approached the period when the measure was about to be
triumphantly passed into a permanent law of the land. It is
a great measure. Considering the lateness of the hour, the
confusion in the House, and that the gentleman had had the
advantage of an opening speech, he now concluded by demanding
the previous question.
"On this motion the disorder among the opposition was renewed
with tenfold fury, and some members made use of some very hard
words, accompanied by violent gesticulation.
"It was some minutes before any thing approaching order could be
restored.
"The Speaker having called on the sergeant-at-arms to clear the
aisles,
"The call of the previous question was seconded, and the main
question on the amendment to the amendment ordered to be put.
"The motion for the previous question having received a second,
the main question was ordered.
"The question was then taken on Mr. Cushing's amendment to the
amendment, and disagreed to without a count.
"The question recurring on the substitute of Mr. Cooper, of
Pennsylvania, for the original title of the bill,
"Mr. R. GARLAND, of Louisiana, demanded the yeas and nays, which
having been ordered, were--yeas 87, nays 128."
Eighty-seven members voted, on yeas and nays, for Mr. Cooper's
proposed title, which was a strong way of expressing their opinion
of it. For Mr. Cushing's amendment to it, there were too few to
obtain a division of the House; and thus the bill became complete
by getting a name--but only by the summary, silent, and enforcing
process of the previous question. Even the title was obtained by
that process. The passage of this act was the distinguishing glory
of the Twenty-sixth Congress, and the "crowning mercy" of Mr. Van
Buren's administration. Honor and gratitude to the members, and all
the remembrance which this book can give them. Their names were:
IN THE SENATE:--Messrs. Allen of Ohio, Benton, Brown of North
Carolina, Buchanan, Calhoun, Clay of Alabama, Cuthbert of
Georgia, Fulton of Arkansas, Grundy, Hubbard of New Hampshire,
King of Alabama, Linn of Missouri, Lumpkin of Georgia, Mouton of
Louisiana, Norvell of Michigan, Pierce of New Hampshire, Roane
of Virginia, Sevier of Arkansas, Smith of Connecticut, Strange
of North Carolina, Tappan of Ohio, Walker of Mississippi,
Williams of Maine.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:--Messrs. Judson Allen, Hugh
J. Anderson, Charles G. Atherton, William Cost Johnson, Cave
Johnson, Nathaniel Jones, John W. Jones, George M. Keim,
Gouverneur Kemble, Joseph Kille, Daniel P. Leadbetter, Isaac
Leet, Stephen B. Leonard, Dixon H. Lewis, Joshua A. Lowell,
William Lucas, Abraham McClellan, George McCulloch, James J.
McKay, Meredith Mallory, Albert G. Marchand, William Medill,
John Miller, James D. L. Montanya, Linn Banks, William Beatty,
Andrew Beirne, William Montgomery, Samuel W. Morris, Peter
Newhard, Isaac Parrish, William Parmenter, Virgil D. Parris,
Lemuel Paynter, David Petrikin, Francis W. Pickens, John H.
Prentiss, William S. Ramsey, John Reynolds, R. Barnwell Rhett,
Francis E. Rives, Thomas Robinson, Jr., Edward Rogers, James
Rogers, Daniel B. Ryall, Green B. Samuels, Tristram Shaw,
Charles Shepard, Edward J. Black, Julius W. Blackwell, Linn
Boyd, John Smith, Thomas Smith, David A. Starkweather, Lewis
Steenrod, Theron R. Strong, Thomas D. Sumter, Henry Swearingen,
George Sweeney, Jonathan Taylor, Francis Thomas, Philip F.
Thomas, Jacob Thompson, Hopkins L. Turney, Aaron Vanderpoel,
Peter D. Vroom, David D. Wagener, Harvey M. Watterson, John
B. Weller, Jared W. Williams, Henry Williams, John T. H.
Worthington.
CHAPTER XLII.
FLORIDA ARMED OCCUPATION BILL: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH: EXTRACTS.
Armed occupation, with land to the occupant, is the true way of
settling and holding a conquered country. It is the way which has
been followed in all ages, and in all countries, from the time
that the children of Israel entered the promised land, with the
implements of husbandry in one hand, and the weapons of war in the
other. From that day to this, all conquered countries had been
settled in that way. Armed settlement, and a homestead in the soil,
was the principle of the Roman military colonies, by which they
consolidated their conquests. The northern nations bore down upon
the south of Europe in that way: the settlers of the New World--our
pilgrim fathers and all--settled these States in that way: the
settlement of Kentucky and Tennessee was effected in the same way.
The armed settlers went forth to fight, and to cultivate. They
lived in stations first--an assemblage of blockhouses (the Roman
presidium), and emerged to separate settlements afterwards; and
in every instance, an interest in the soil--an inheritance in the
land--was the reward of their enterprise, toil, and danger. The
peninsula of Florida is now prepared for this armed settlement: the
enemy has been driven out of the field. He lurks, an unseen foe, in
the swamps and hammocks. He no longer shows himself in force, or
ventures a combat; but, dispersed and solitary, commits individual
murders and massacres. The country is prepared for armed settlement.
It is the fashion--I am sorry to say it--to depreciate the services
of our troops in Florida--to speak of them as having done nothing;
as having accomplished no object for the country, and acquired no
credit for themselves. This was a great error. The military had done
an immensity there; they had done all that arms could do, and a
great deal that the axe and the spade could do. They had completely
conquered the country; that is to say, they had driven the enemy
from the field; they had dispersed the foe; they had reduced them
to a roving banditti, whose only warfare was to murder stragglers
and families. Let any one compare the present condition of Florida
with what it was at the commencement of the war, and see what a
change has taken place. Then combats were frequent. The Indians
embodied continually, fought our troops, both regulars, militia,
and volunteers. Those hard contests cannot be forgotten. It cannot
be forgotten how often these Indians met our troops in force, or
hung upon the flanks of marching columns, harassing and attacking
them at every favorable point. Now all this is done. For two years
past, we have heard of no such thing. The Indians, defeated in
these encounters, and many of them removed to the West, have now
retired from the field, and dispersed in small parties over the
whole peninsula of Florida. They are dispersed over a superficies of
45,000 square miles, and that area sprinkled all over with haunts
adapted to their shelter, to which they retire for safety like
wild beasts, and emerge again for new mischief. Our military have
then done much; they have done all that military can do; they have
broken, dispersed, and scattered the enemy. They have driven them
out of the field; they have prepared the country for settlement,
that is to say, for armed settlement. There has been no battle, no
action, no skirmish, in Florida, for upwards of two years. The last
combats were at Okeechobee and Caloosahatchee, above two years ago.
There has been no _war_ since that time; nothing but individual
massacres. The country has been waiting for settlers for two years;
and this bill provides for them, and offers them inducements to
settle.
Besides their military labors, our troops have done an immensity of
labor of a different kind. They have penetrated and perforated the
whole peninsula of Florida; they have gone through the _Serbonian
bogs_ of that peninsula; they have gone where the white man's foot
never before was seen to tread; and where no Indian believed it
could ever come. They have gone from the Okeefekonee swamp to the
Everglades; they have crossed the peninsula backwards and forwards,
from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean. They have sounded
every morass, threaded every hammock, traced every creek, examined
every lake, and made the topography of the country as well known as
that of the counties of our States. The maps which the topographical
officers have constructed, and the last of which is in the Report of
the Secretary at War, attest the extent of these explorations, and
the accuracy and minuteness of the surveys and examinations. Besides
all this, the troops have established some hundreds of posts;
they have opened many hundred miles of wagon road; and they have
constructed some thousands of feet of causeways and bridges. These
are great and meritorious labors. They are labors which prepare the
country for settlement; prepare it for the 10,000 armed cultivators
which this bill proposes to send there.
Mr. B. said he paid this tribute cheerfully to the merits of our
military, and our volunteers and militia employed in Florida; the
more cheerfully, because it was the inconsiderate custom of too
many to depreciate the labors of these brave men. He took pleasure,
here in his place, in the American Senate, to do them justice; and
that without drawing invidious comparisons--without attempting to
exalt some at the expense of others. He viewed with a favorable
eye--with friendly feelings--with prepossessions in their favor--all
who were doing their best for their country; and all such--all
who did their best for their country--should have his support and
applause, whether fortune was more or less kind to them, in crowning
their meritorious exertions with success. He took pleasure in doing
all this justice; but his tribute would be incomplete, if he did not
add what was said by the Secretary at War, in his late report, and
also by the immediate commander, General Taylor.
Mr. B. repeated, that the military had done their duty, and deserved
well of their country. They had brought the war to that point, when
there was no longer an enemy to be fought; when there was nothing
left but a banditti to be extirpated. Congress, also, had tried
its policy--the policy of peace and conciliation--and the effort
only served to show the unparalleled treachery and savageism of
the ferocious beasts with which we had to deal. He alluded to the
attempts at negotiation and pacification, tried this summer under
an intimation from Congress. The House of Representatives, at the
last session, voted $5,000 for opening negotiations with these
Indians. When the appropriation came to the Senate, it was objected
to by himself and some others, from the knowledge they had of the
character of these Indians, and their belief that it would end in
treachery and misfortune. The House adhered; the appropriation was
made; the administration acted upon it, as they felt bound to do;
and behold the result of the attempt! The most cruel and perfidious
massacres plotted and contrived while making the treaty itself!
a particular officer selected, and stipulated to be sent to a
particular point, under the pretext of establishing a trading-post,
and as a protector, there to be massacred! a horrible massacre in
reality perpetrated there; near seventy persons since massacred,
including families; the Indians themselves emboldened by our offer
of peace, and their success in treachery; and the whole aspect of
the war made worse by our injudicious attempt at pacification.
Lt. Col. Harney, with a few soldiers and some citizens, was reposing
on the banks of the Caloosahatchee, under the faith of treaty
negotiations, and on treaty ground. He was asleep. At the approach
of daybreak he was roused by the firing and yells of the Indians,
who had got possession of the camp, and killed the sergeant and
more than one-half of his men. Eleven soldiers and five citizens
were killed; eight soldiers and two citizens escaped. Seven of the
soldiers, taking refuge in a small sail-boat, then lying off in the
stream, in which the two citizens fortunately had slept that night,
as soon as possible weighed anchor, and favored by a light breeze,
slipped off unperceived by the Indians. The Colonel himself escaped
with great difficulty, and after walking fifteen miles down the
river, followed by one soldier, came to a canoe, which he had left
there the evening previous, and succeeded, by this means, in getting
on board the sail-boat, where he found those who had escaped in her.
Before he laid down to sleep, the treacherous Chitto Tustenuggee,
partaking his hospitality, lavished proofs of friendship upon him.
Here was an instance of treachery of which there was no parallel
in Indian warfare. With all their treachery, the treaty-ground is
a sacred spot with the Indians; but here, in the very articles of
a treaty itself, they plan a murderous destruction of an officer
whom they solicited to be sent with them as their protector; and,
to gratify all their passions of murder and robbery at once, they
stipulate to have their victims sent to a remote point, with
settlers and traders, as well as soldiers, and with a supply of
goods. All this they arranged; and too successfully did they execute
the plan. And this was the beginning of their _execution_ of the
treaty. Massacres, assassinations, robberies, and house-burnings,
have followed it up, until the suburbs of St. Augustine and
Tallahasse are stained with blood, and blackened with fire. About
seventy murders have since taken place, including the destruction of
the shipwrecked crews and passengers on the southern extremity of
the peninsula.
The plan of Congress has, then, been tried; the experiment of
negotiation has been tried and has ended disastrously and cruelly
for us, and with greatly augmenting the confidence and ferocity of
the enemy. It puts an end to all idea of finishing the war there
by peaceable negotiation. Chastisement is what is due to these
Indians, and what they expect. They mean to keep no faith with the
government, and henceforth they will expect no faith to be reposed
in them. The issue is now made; we have to expel them by force, or
give up forty-five thousand square miles of territory--much of it an
old settled country--to be ravaged by this banditti.
The plan of Congress has been tried, and has ended in disaster; the
military have done all that military can do; the administration
have now in the country all the troops which can be spared for the
purpose. They have there the one-half of our regular infantry, to
wit: four regiments out of eight; they have there the one-half of
our dragoons, to wit: one regiment; they even have there a part of
our artillery, to wit: one regiment; and they have besides, there,
a part of the naval force to scour the coasts and inlets; and, in
addition to all this, ten companies of Florida volunteers. Even the
marines under their accomplished commander (Col. Henderson), and at
his request, have been sent there to perform gallant service, on an
element not their own. No more of our troops can be spared for that
purpose; the West and the North require the remainder, and more than
the remainder. The administration can do no more than it has done
with the means at its command. It is laid under the necessity of
asking other means; and the armed settlers provided for in this bill
are the principal means required. One thousand troops for the war,
is all that is asked in addition to the settlers, in this bill.
This then is the point we are at: To choose between granting
these means, or doing nothing! Yes, sir, to choose between the
recommendations of the administration, and nothing! I say, these, or
nothing; for I presume Congress will not prescribe another attempt
at negotiation; no one will recommend an increase of ten thousand
regular troops; no one will recommend a draft of ten thousand
militia. It is, then, the plan of the administration, or nothing;
and this brings us to the question, whether the government can now
fold its arms, leave the regulars to man their posts, and abandon
the country to the Indians? This is now the question; and to this
point I will direct the observations which make it impossible for
us to abdicate our duty, and abandon the country to the Indians.
I assume it then as a point granted, that Florida cannot be given
up--that she cannot be abandoned--that she cannot be left in her
present state. What then is to be done? Raise an army of ten
thousand men to go there to fight? Why, the men who are there now
can find nobody to fight! It is two years since a fight has been
had; it is two years since we have heard of a fight. Ten men, who
will avoid surprises and ambuscades, can now go from one end of
Florida to the other. As warriors, these Indians no longer appear,
it is only as assassins, as robbers, as incendiaries, that they
lurk about. The country wants settlers, not an army. It has wanted
these settlers for two years; and this bill provides for them, and
offers them the proper inducements to go. And here I take the three
great positions, that this bill is the _appropriate_ remedy; that
it is the _efficient_ remedy; that it is the _cheap_ remedy, for
the cure of the Florida difficulties. It is the appropriate remedy;
for what is now wanted, is not an army to fight, but settlers and
cultivators to retain possession of the country, and to defend their
possessions. We want people to take possession, and keep possession,
and the armed cultivator is the man for that. The blockhouse is the
first house to be built in an Indian country; the stockade is the
first fence to be put up. Within that blockhouse, and a few of them
together--a hollow square of blockhouses, two miles long on each
side, two hundred yards apart, and enclosing a good field--safe
habitations are found for families. The faithful mastiff, to give
notice of the approach of danger, and a few trusty rifles in brave
hands, make all safe. Cultivation and defence then goes hand in
hand. The heart of the Indian sickens when he hears the crowing of
the cock, the barking of the dog, the sound of the axe, and the
crack of the rifle. These are the true evidences of the dominion
of the white man; these are the proof that the owner has come, and
means to stay; and then they feel it to be time for them to go.
While soldiers alone are in the country, they feel their presence to
be temporary; that they are mere sojourners in the land, and sooner
or later must go away. It is the settler alone, the armed settler,
whose presence announces the dominion--the permanent dominion--of
the white man.
It is the most efficient remedy. On this point we can speak with
confidence, for the other remedies have been tried, and have
failed. The other remedies are to catch the Indians, and remove
them; or, to negotiate with them, and induce them to go off. Both
have been tried; both are exhausted. No human being now thinks that
our soldiers can catch these Indians; no one now believes in the
possibility of removing them by treaty. No other course remains to
be tried, but the armed settlement; and that is so obvious, that it
is difficult to see how any one that has read history, or has heard
how this new world was settled, or how Kentucky and Tennessee were
settled, can doubt it.
The peninsula is a desolation. Five counties have been depopulated.
The inhabitants of five counties--the survivors of many
massacres--have been driven from their homes: this bill is intended
to induce them to return, and to induce others to go along with
them. Such inducements to settle and defend new countries have been
successful in all ages and in all nations; and cannot fail to be
effectual with us. _Deliberat Roma, perit Saguntum_, became the
watchword of reproach, and of stimulus to action in the Roman Senate
when the Senate deliberated while a colony was perishing. _Saguntum
perishes while Rome deliberates_: and this is truly the case with
ourselves and Florida. That beautiful and unfortunate territory is
a prey to plunder, fire, and murder. The savages kill, burn and
rob--where they find a man, a house, or an animal in the desolation
which they have made. Large part of the territory is the empty and
bloody skin of an immolated victim.
CHAPTER XLIII.
ASSUMPTION OF THE STATE DEBTS.
About one-half of the States had contracted debts abroad which they
were unable to pay when due, and in many instances were unable to
pay the current annual interest. These debts at this time amounted
to one hundred and seventy millions of dollars, and were chiefly
due in Great Britain. They had been converted into a stock, and
held in shares, and had gone into a great number of hands; and from
defaults in payments were greatly depreciated. The Reverend Sydney
Smith, of witty memory, and amiable withal, was accustomed to lose
all his amiability, but no part of his wit, when he spoke of his
Pennsylvania bonds--which in fact was very often. But there was
another class of these bond-holders who did not exhale their griefs
in wit, caustic as it might be, but looked to more substantial
relief--to an assumption in some form, disguised or open, virtual
or actual, of these debts by the federal government. These British
capitalists, connected with capitalists in the United States,
possessed a weight on this point which was felt in the halls of
Congress. The disguised attempts at this assumption, were in the
various modes of conveying federal money to the States in the
shape of distributing surplus revenue, of dividing the public land
money, and of bestowing money on the States under the fallacious
title of a deposit. But a more direct provision in their behalf was
wanted by these capitalists, and in the course of the year 1839 a
movement to that effect was openly made through the columns of their
regular organ--The London Bankers' Circular, emanating from the most
respectable and opulent house of the Messrs. Baring, Brothers and
Company. At this open procedure on the part of these capitalists, it
was deemed expedient to meet the attempt _in limine_ by a positive
declaration in Congress against the constitutionality, the justice,
and the policy of any such measure. With this view Mr. Benton, at
the commencement of the first session of Congress after the issuing
of the Bankers' Circular, submitted a series of resolutions in the
Senate, which, with some modification, and after an earnest debate,
were passed in that body. These were the resolutions:
"1. That the assumption of such debts either openly, by a
direct promise to pay them, or disguisedly by going security
for their payment, or by creating surplus revenue, or applying
the national funds to pay them, would be a gross and flagrant
violation of the constitution, wholly unwarranted by the letter
or spirit of that instrument, and utterly repugnant to all the
objects and purposes for which the federal Union was formed.
"2. That the debts of the States being now chiefly held by
foreigners, and constituting a stock in foreign markets greatly
depreciated, any legislative attempt to obtain the assumption
or securityship of the United States for their payment, or to
provide for their payment out of the national funds, must have
the effect of enhancing the value of that stock to the amount
of a great many millions of dollars, to the enormous and undue
advantage of foreign capitalists, and of jobbers and gamblers
in stocks; thereby holding out inducement to foreigners to
interfere in our affairs, and to bring all the influences
of a moneyed power to operate upon public opinion, upon our
elections, and upon State and federal legislation, to produce a
consummation so tempting to their cupidity, and so profitable to
their interest.
"3. That foreign interference and foreign influence, in all
ages, and in all countries, have been the bane and curse of free
governments; and that such interference and influence are far
more dangerous, in the insidious intervention of the moneyed
power, than in the forcible invasions of fleets and armies.
"4. That to close the door at once against all applications
for such assumption, and to arrest at their source the vast
tide of evils which would flow from it, it is necessary that
the constituted authorities, without delay, shall RESOLVE and
DECLARE their utter opposition to the proposal contained in
the late London Bankers' Circular in relation to State debts,
contracted for local and State purposes, and recommending to
the Congress of the United States to assume, or guarantee, or
provide for the ultimate payment of said debts."
In the course of the discussion of these resolutions an attempt was
made to amend them, and to reverse their import, by obtaining a
direct vote of the Senate in favor of distributing the public land
revenue among the States to aid them in the payment of these debts.
This proposition was submitted by Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky; and
was in these words: "That it would be just and proper to distribute
the proceeds of the sales of the public lands among the several
States in fair and ratable proportions; and that the condition of
such of the States as have contracted debts is such, at the present
moment of pressure and difficulty, as to render such distribution
especially expedient and important." This proposition received a
considerable support, and was rejected upon yeas and nays--28 to
17. The yeas were Messrs. Betts of Connecticut, Clay of Kentucky,
Crittenden, Davis of Massachusetts, Dixon of Rhode Island, Knight
of Connecticut, Merrick of Maryland, Phelps of Vermont, Porter of
Michigan, Prentiss of Vermont, Ruggles of Maine, Smith of Indiana,
Southard of New Jersey, Spence of Maryland, Tallmadge, Webster,
White of Indiana. The nays were: Messrs. Allen of Ohio, Anderson
of Tennessee, Benton, Bedford Brown, Calhoun, Clay of Alabama,
Alfred Cuthbert, Grundy, Henderson of Mississippi, Hubbard, King of
Alabama, Linn of Missouri, Lumpkin of Georgia, Mouton, Nicholas of
Louisiana, Norvell of Michigan, Pierce, Preston, Roane, Robinson,
Sevier, Strange, Sturgeon, Tappan of Ohio, Wall of New Jersey,
Williams, Wright. As the mover of the resolutions Mr. Benton
supported them in a speech, of which some extracts are given in the
next chapter.
CHAPTER XLIV.
ASSUMPTION OF THE STATE DEBTS: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH: EXTRACTS.
The assumption of the State debts contracted for State purposes has
been for a long time a measure disguisedly, and now is a measure
openly, pressed upon the public mind. The movement in favor of it
has been long going on; opposing measures have not yet commenced.
The assumption party have the start, and the advantage of conducting
the case; and they have been conducting it for a long time, and in
a way to avoid the name of assumption while accomplishing the thing
itself. All the bills for distributing the public land revenue--all
the propositions for dividing surplus revenue--all the refusals
to abolish unnecessary taxes--all the refusals to go on with the
necessary defences of the country--were so many steps taken in the
road to assumption. I know very well that many who supported these
measures had no idea of assumption, and would oppose it as soon
as discovered; but that does not alter the nature of the measures
they supported, and which were so many steps in the road to that
assumption, then shrouded in mystery and futurity, now ripened into
strength, and emboldened into a public disclosure of itself. Already
the State legislatures are occupied with this subject, while we sit
here, waiting its approach.
It is time for the enemies of assumption to take the field, and to
act. It is a case in which they should give, and not receive, the
attack. The President has led the way; he has shown his opinions.
He has nobly done his duty. He has shown the evils of diverting
the general funds from their proper objects--the mischiefs of
our present connection with the paper system of England--and the
dangers of foreign influence from any further connection with it.
In this he has discharged a constitutional and a patriotic duty.
Let the constituted authorities, each in their sphere, follow his
example, and declare their opinions also. Let the Senate especially,
as part of the legislative power--as the peculiar representative
of the States in their sovereign capacity--let this body declare
its sentiments, and, by its resolves and discussions, arrest the
progress of the measure here, and awaken attention to it elsewhere.
As one of the earliest opposers of this measure--as, in fact, the
very earliest opposer of the whole family of measures of which it
is the natural offspring--as having denounced the assumption in
disguise in a letter to my constituents long before the London
Bankers' letter revealed it to the public: as such early, steadfast,
and first denouncer of this measure, I now come forward to oppose it
in form, and to submit the resolves which may arrest it here, and
carry its discussion to the forum of the people.
I come at once to the point, and say that disguised assumption,
in the shape of land revenue distribution, is the form in which
we shall have to meet the danger; and I meet it at once in that
disguise. I say there is no authority in the constitution to raise
money from any branch of the revenue for distribution among the
States, or to distribute that which had been raised for other
purposes. The power of Congress to raise money is not unlimited
and arbitrary, but restricted, and directed to the national
objects named in the constitution. The means, the amount, and the
application, are all limited. The means are direct taxes--duties
on imports--and the public lands; the objects are the support of
the government--the common defence--and the payment of the debts
of the Union: the amount to be raised is of course limited to the
amount required for the accomplishment of these objects. Consonant
to the words and the spirit of the constitution, is the title, the
preamble and the tenor of all the early statutes for raising money;
they all declare the object for which the money is wanted; they
declare the object at the head of the act. Whether it be a loan, a
direct tax, or a duty on imports, the object of the loan, the tax,
or the duty, is stated in the preamble to the act; Congress thus
excusing and justifying themselves for the demand in the very act
of making it, and telling the people plainly what they wanted with
the money. This was the way in all the early statutes; the books are
full of examples; and it was only after money began to be levied
for objects not known to the constitution, that this laudable and
ancient practice was dropped. Among the enumerated objects for
which money can be raised by Congress, is that of paying the debts
of the Union; and is it not a manifest absurdity to suppose that,
while it requires an express grant of power to enable us to pay the
debts of the Union, we can pay those of the States by implication
and by indirection? No, sir, no. There is no constitutional way to
assume these State debts, or to pay them, or to indorse them, or to
smuggle the money to the States for that purpose, under the pretext
of dividing land revenue, or surplus revenue, among them. There is
no way to do it. The whole thing is constitutionally impossible.
It was never thought of by the framers of our constitution. They
never dreamed of such a thing. There is not a word in their work
to warrant it, and the whole idea of it is utterly repugnant and
offensive to the objects and purposes for which the federal Union
was framed.
We have had one assumption in our country and that in a case
which was small in amount, and free from the impediment of a
constitutional objection; but which was attended by such evils as
should deter posterity from imitating the example. It was in the
first year of the federal government; and although the assumed
debts were only twenty millions, and were alleged to have been
contracted for general purposes, yet the assumption was attended
by circumstances of intrigue and corruption, which led to the most
violent dissension in Congress, suspended the business of the two
Houses, drove some of the States to the verge of secession, and
menaced the Union with instant dissolution. Mr. Jefferson, who
was a witness of the scene, and who was overpowered by General
Hamilton, and by the actual dangers of the country, into its
temporary support, thus describes it:
"This game was over (funding the soldiers' certificates), and
another was on the carpet at the moment of my arrival; and to
this I was most ignorantly and innocently made to hold the
candle. This fiscal manoeuvre is well known by the name of
the assumption. Independently of the debts of Congress, the
States had, during the war, contracted separate and heavy debts,
&c. * * * * This money, whether wisely or foolishly spent,
was pretended to have been spent for _general_ purposes, and
ought therefore to be paid from the _general_ purse. But it was
objected, that nobody knew what these debts were, what their
amount, or what their proofs. No matter; we will guess them to
be twenty millions. But of these twenty millions, we do not
know how much should be reimbursed to one State or how much
to another. No matter; we will guess. And so another scramble
was set on foot among the several States, and some got much,
some little, some nothing. * * * * This measure produced the
most bitter and angry contests ever known in Congress, before
or since the union of the States. * * * * The great and trying
question, however, was lost in the House of Representatives.
So high were the feuds excited by this subject, that on its
rejection business was suspended. Congress met and adjourned,
from day to day, without doing any thing, the parties being
too much out of temper to do business together. The Eastern
members particularly, who, with Smith from South Carolina,
were the principal gamblers in these scenes, threatened a
secession and dissolution. * * * * But it was finally agreed
that whatever importance had been attached to the rejection of
this proposition, the preservation of the Union, and of concord
among the States, was more important; and that, therefore, it
would be better that the vote of rejection should be rescinded;
to effect which, some members should change their votes. But
it was observed that this pill would be peculiarly bitter to
the Southern States, and that some concomitant measure should
be adopted to sweeten it a little to them. There had before
been propositions to fix the seat of government either at
Philadelphia, or at Georgetown, on the Potomac; and it was
thought that, by giving it to Philadelphia for ten years, and to
Georgetown permanently afterwards, this might, as an anodyne,
calm in some degree the ferment which might be excited by the
other measure alone. So two of the Potomac members (White and
Lee, but White with a revulsion of stomach almost convulsive)
agreed to change their votes, and Hamilton undertook to carry
the other point; and so the assumption was passed, and twenty
millions of stock divided among the favored States, and thrown
in as a pabulum to the stock-jobbing herd. * * * Still the
machine was not complete; the effect of the funding system and
of the assumption would be temporary; it would be lost with the
loss of the individual members whom it had enriched; and some
engine of influence more permanent must be contrived while these
myrmidons were yet in place to carry it through. This engine was
the Bank of the United States."
What a picture is here presented! Debts assumed in the mass, without
knowing what they were in the gross, or what in detail--Congress
in a state of disorganization, and all business suspended for
many days--secession and disunion openly menaced--compromise of
interests--intrigue--buying and selling of votes--conjunction of
parties to pass two measures together, neither of which could be
passed separately--speculators infesting the halls of legislation,
and openly struggling for their spoil--the funding system a second
time sanctioned and fastened upon the country--jobbers and gamblers
in stocks enriched--twenty millions of additional national debt
created--and the establishment of a national bank insured. Such
were the evils attending a small assumption of twenty millions
of dollars, and that in a case where there was no constitutional
impediment to be evaded or surmounted. For in that case the debts
assumed had been incurred for the general good--for the general
defence during the revolution: in this case they have been incurred
for the local benefit of particular States. Half the States have
incurred none; and are they to be taxed to pay the debts of the rest?
These stocks are now greatly depreciated. Many of the present
holders bought them upon speculation, to take the chance of the
rise. A diversion of the national domain to their payment would
immediately raise them far above par--would be a present of fifty
or sixty cents on the dollar, and of fifty or sixty millions in
the gross--to the foreign holders, and, virtually, a present
of so much public land to them. It is in vain for the bill to
say that the proceeds of the lands are to be divided among the
States. The indebted States will deliver their portion to their
creditors; they will send it to Europe, they will be nothing but
the receivers-general and the sub-treasurers of the bankers and
stockjobbers of London, Paris, and of Amsterdam. The proceeds
of the sales of the lands will go to them. The hard money, wrung
from the hard hand of the western cultivator, will go to these
foreigners; and the whole influence of these foreigners will be
immediately directed to the enhancement of the price of our public
lands, and to the prevention of the passage of all the laws which
go to graduate their price, or to grant pre-emptive rights to the
settlers.
What more unwise and more unjust than to contract debts on long
time, as some of the States have done, thereby invading the rights
and mortgaging the resources of posterity, and loading unborn
generations with debts not their own? What more unwise than all
this, which several of the States have done, and which the effort
now is to make all do? Besides the ultimate burden in the shape
of final payment, which is intended to fall upon posterity, the
present burden is incessant in the shape of annual interest,
and falling upon each generation, equals the principal in every
periodical return of ten or a dozen years. Few have calculated the
devouring effect of annual interest on public debts, and considered
how soon it exceeds the principal. Who supposes that we have paid
near three hundred millions of interest on our late national debt,
the principal of which never rose higher than one hundred and
twenty-seven millions, and remained but a year or two at that? Who
supposes this? Yet it is a fact that we have paid four hundred and
thirty-one millions for principal and interest of that debt; so that
near three hundred millions, or near double the maximum amount of
the debt itself, must have been paid in interest alone; and this at
a moderate interest varying from three to six per cent. and payable
at home. The British national debt owes its existence entirely
to this policy. It was but a trifle in the beginning of the last
century, and might have been easily paid during the reigns of the
first and second George; but the policy was to fund it, that is to
say, to pay the interest annually, and send down the principal to
posterity; and the fruit of that policy is now seen in a debt of
four thousand five hundred millions of dollars, two hundred and
fifty millions of annual taxes, with some millions of people without
bread; while an army, a navy, and a police, sufficient to fight all
Europe, is kept under pay, to hold in check and subordination the
oppressed and plundered ranks of their own population. And this is
the example which the transferrers of the State debt would have us
to imitate, and this the end to which they would bring us!
I do not dilate upon the evils of a foreign influence. They are
written upon the historical page of every free government, from the
most ancient to the most modern: they are among those most deeply
dreaded, and most sedulously guarded against by the founders of the
American Union. The constitution itself contains a special canon
directed against them. To prevent the possibility of this foreign
influence, every species of foreign connection, dependence, or
employment, is constitutionally forbid to the whole list of our
public functionaries. The inhibition is express and fundamental,
that "_no person holding any office of profit or trust under the
United States shall, without the consent of Congress, accept of
any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever,
from any king, prince, or foreign State_." All this was to prevent
any foreign potentate from acquiring partisans or influence in our
government--to prevent our own citizens from being seduced into
the interests of foreign powers. Yet, to what purpose all these
constitutional provisions against petty sovereignties, if we are to
invite the moneyed power which is able to subsidize kings, princes,
and potentates--if we are to invite this new and master power into
the bosom of our councils, give it an interest in controlling public
opinion, in directing federal and State legislation, and in filling
our cities and seats of government with its insinuating agents, and
its munificent and lavish representatives? To what purpose all this
wise precaution against the possibility of influence from the most
inconsiderable German or Italian prince, if we are to invite the
combined bankers of England, France, and Holland, to take a position
in our legislative halls, and by a simple enactment of a few words,
to convert their hundreds of millions into a thousand millions,
and to take a lease of the labor and property of our citizens for
generations to come? The largest moneyed operation which we ever
had with any foreign power, was that of the purchase of Louisiana
from the Great Emperor. That was an affair of fifteen millions. It
was insignificant and contemptible, compared to the hundreds of
millions for which these bankers are now upon us. And are we, while
guarded by the constitution against influence from an emperor and
fifteen millions, to throw ourselves open to the machinations of
bankers, with their hundreds of millions?
CHAPTER XLV.
DEATH OF GENERAL SAMUEL SMITH, OF MARYLAND; AND NOTICE OF HIS
LIFE AND CHARACTER.
He was eighteen years a senator, and nearly as long a member of the
House--near forty years in Congress: which speaks the estimation in
which his fellow-citizens held him. He was thoroughly a business
member, under all the aspects of that character: intelligent, well
informed, attentive, upright; a very effective speaker, without
pretending to oratory: well read: but all his reading subordinate to
common sense and practical views. At the age of more than seventy he
was still one of the most laborious members, both in the committee
room and the Senate: and punctual in his attendance in either place.
He had served in the army of the Revolution, and like most of the
men of that school, and of that date, had acquired the habit of
punctuality, for which Washington was so remarkable--that habit
which denotes a well-ordered mind, a subjection to a sense of duty,
and a considerate regard for others. He had been a large merchant
in Baltimore, and was particularly skilled in matters of finance
and commerce, and was always on committees charged with those
subjects--to which his clear head, and practical knowledge, lent
light and order in the midst of the most intricate statements. He
easily seized the practical points on these subjects, and presented
them clearly and intelligibly to the chamber. Patriotism, honor,
and integrity were his eminent characteristics; and utilitarian the
turn of his mind; and beneficial results the object of his labors.
He belonged to that order of members who, without classing with the
brilliant, are nevertheless the most useful and meritorious. He was
a working member; and worked diligently, judiciously, and honestly,
for the public good. In politics he was democratic, and greatly
relied upon by the Presidents Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. He
was one of the last of the revolutionary stock that served in the
Senate--remaining there until 1833--above fifty years after that
Declaration of Independence which he had helped to make good, with
his sword. Almost octogenarian, he was fresh and vigorous to the
last, and among the most assiduous and deserving members. He had
acquired military reputation in the war of the Revolution, and was
called by his fellow-citizens to take command of the local troops
for the defence of Baltimore, when threatened by the British under
General Ross, in 1814--and commanded successfully--with the judgment
of age and the fire of youth. At his death, his fellow-citizens of
Baltimore erected a monument to his memory--well due to him as one
of her longest and most respected inhabitants, as having been one
of her eminent merchants, often her representative in Congress,
besides being senator; as having defended her both in the war of the
Revolution and in that of 1812; and as having made her welfare and
prosperity a special object of his care in all the situations of his
life, both public and private.
CHAPTER XLVI.
SALT; THE UNIVERSALITY OF ITS SUPPLY; MYSTERY AND INDISPENSABILITY
OF ITS USE; TYRANNY AND IMPIETY OF ITS TAXATION; SPEECH OF MR.
BENTON: EXTRACTS.
It is probable that salt is the most abundant substance of our
globe--that it is more abundant than earth itself. Like other
necessaries of life--like air, and water, and food--it is
universally diffused, and inexhaustibly supplied. It is found in
all climates, and in a great variety of forms. The waters hold
it in solution; the earth contains it in solid masses. Every sea
contains it. It is found in all the boundless oceans which surround
and penetrate the earth, and through all their fathomless depths.
Many inland seas, lakes, ponds, and pools are impregnated with it.
Streams of saline water, in innumerable places, emerging from the
bowels of the earth, approach its surface, and either issue from it
in perennial springs, or are easily reached by wells. In the depths
of the earth itself it is found in solid masses of interminable
extent. Thus inexhaustibly abundant, and universally diffused,
the wisdom and goodness of Providence is further manifested in
the cheapness and facility of the preparation of this necessary
of life, for the use of man. In all the warm latitudes, and
especially between the tropics, nature herself performs the work.
The beams of the sun evaporate the sea water in all the low and
shallow reservoirs, where it is driven by the winds, or admitted
by the art of man; and this evaporation leaves behind a deposit
of pure salt, ready for use, and costing very little more than
the labor of gathering it up. In the interior, and in the colder
latitudes, artificial heat is substituted for the beams of the sun:
the simplest process of boiling is resorted to; and where fuel
is abundant, and especially coal, the preparation of this prime
necessary is still cheap and easy; and from six to ten cents the
real bushel may be considered as the ordinary cost of production.
Such is the bountiful and cheap supply of this article, which a
beneficent Providence has provided for us. The Supreme Ruler of
the Universe has done every thing to supply his creatures with it.
Man, the fleeting shadow of an instant, invested with his little
brief authority, has done much to deprive them of it. In all ages
of the world, and in all countries, salt has been a subject, at
different periods, of heavy taxation, and sometimes of individual
or of government monopoly; and precisely, because being an article
that no man could do without, the government was sure of its tax,
and the monopolizer of his price. Almost all nations, in some period
of their history, have suffered the separate or double infliction
of a tax, and a monopoly on its salt; and, at some period, all have
freed themselves, from one or both. At present, there remain but two
countries which suffer both evils, our America, and the British East
Indies. All others have got rid of the monopoly; many have got rid
of the tax. Among others, the very country from which we copied it,
and the one above all others least able to do without the product of
the tax. England, though loaded with debt, and taxed in every thing,
is now free from the salt tax. Since 1822, it has been totally
suppressed; and this necessary of life is now as free there as air
and water. She even has a statute to guard its price, and common
law to prevent its monopoly.
This act was passed in 1807. The common law of England punishes all
monopolizers, forestallers, and regraters. The Parliament, in 1807,
took cognizance of a reported combination to raise the price of
salt, and examined the manufacturers on oath: and rebuked them.
Mr. B. said that a salt tax was not only politically, but morally
wrong: it was a species of impiety. Salt stood alone amidst the
productions of nature, without a rival or substitute, and the
preserver and purifier of all things. Most nations had regarded
it as a mystic and sacred substance. Among the heathen nations of
antiquity, and with the Jews, it was used in the religious ceremony
of the sacrifices--the head of the victim being sprinkled with salt
and water before it was offered. Among the primitive Christians,
it was the subject of Divine allusions, and the symbol of purity,
of incorruptibility, and of perpetuity. The disciples of Christ
were called "the salt of the earth;" and no language, or metaphor,
could have been more expressive of their character and mission--pure
in themselves, and an antidote to moral, as salt was to material
corruption. Among the nations of the East salt always has been, and
still is, the symbol of friendship, and the pledge of inviolable
fidelity. He that has eaten another's salt, has contracted towards
his benefactor a sacred obligation; and cannot betray or injure him
thereafter, without drawing upon himself (according to his religious
belief) the certain effects of the Divine displeasure. While many
nations have religiously regarded this substance, all have abhorred
its taxation; and this sentiment, so universal, so profound, so
inextinguishable in the human heart, is not to be overlooked by the
legislator.
Mr. B. concluded his speech with declaring implacable war against
this tax, with all its appurtenant abuses, of monopoly in one
quarter of the Union, and of undue advantages in another. He
denounced it as a tax upon the entire economy of NATURE and of
ART--a tax upon man and upon beast--upon life and upon health--upon
comfort and luxury--upon want and superfluity--upon food and
upon raiment--on washing, and on cleanliness. He called it a
heartless and tyrant tax, as inexorable as it was omnipotent and
omnipresent; a tax which no economy could avoid--no poverty could
shun--no privation escape--no cunning elude--no force resist--no
dexterity avert--no curses repulse--no prayers could deprecate. It
was a tax which invaded the entire dominion of human operations,
falling with its greatest weight upon the most helpless, and the
most meritorious; and depriving the nation of benefits infinitely
transcending in value, the amount of its own product. I devote
myself, said Mr. B., to the extirpation of this odious tax, and its
still more odious progeny--_the salt monopoly of the West_. I war
against them while they exist, and while I remain on this floor.
Twelve years have passed away--two years more than the siege of Troy
lasted--since I began this contest. Nothing disheartened by so many
defeats, in so long a time, I prosecute the war with unabated vigor;
and, relying upon the goodness of the cause, firmly calculate upon
ultimate and final success.
CHAPTER XLVII.
PAIRING OFF.
At this time, and in the House of Representatives, was exhibited
for the first time, the spectacle of members "_pairing off_," as
the phrase was; that is to say, two members of opposite political
parties agreeing to absent themselves from the duties of the House,
without the consent of the House, and without deducting their per
diem pay during the time of such voluntary absence. Such agreements
were a clear breach of the rules of the House, a disregard of
the constitution, and a practice open to the grossest abuses. An
instance of the kind was avowed on the floor by one of the parties
to the agreement, by giving as a reason for not voting that he had
"_paired off_" with another member, whose affairs required him to
go home. It was a strange annunciation, and called for rebuke; and
there was a member present who had the spirit to administer it; and
from whom it came with the greatest propriety on account of his age
and dignity, and perfect attention to all his duties as a member,
both in his attendance in the House and in the committee rooms.
That member was Mr. John Quincy Adams, who immediately proposed
to the House the adoption of this resolution: "Resolved, that the
practice first openly avowed at the present session of Congress,
of pairing off, involves, on the part of the members resorting to
it, the violation of the constitution of the United States, of an
express rule of this House, and of the duties of both parties in
the transaction to their immediate constituents, to this House, and
to their country." This resolve was placed on the calendar to take
its turn, but not being reached during the session, was not voted
upon. That was the first instance of this reprehensible practice,
fifty years after the government had gone into operation; but since
then it has become common, and even inveterate, and is carried to
great length. Members pair off, and do as they please--either remain
in the city, refusing to attend to any duty, or go off together to
neighboring cities; or separate; one staying and one going; and the
one that remains sometimes standing up in his place, and telling
the Speaker of the House that he had paired off; and so refusing to
vote. There is no justification for such conduct, and it becomes
a facile way for shirking duty, and evading responsibility. If
a member is under a necessity to go away the rules of the House
require him to ask leave; and the journals of the early Congresses
are full of such applications. If he is compelled to go, it is his
misfortune, and should not be communicated to another. This writer
had never seen an instance of it in the Senate during his thirty
years of service there; but the practice has since penetrated that
body; and "pairing off" has become as common in that House as in the
other, in proportion to its numbers, and with an aggravation of the
evil, as the absence of a senator is a loss to his State of half its
weight. As a consequence, the two Houses are habitually found voting
with deficient numbers--often to the extent of a third--often with a
bare quorum.
In the first age of the government no member absented himself from
the service of the House to which he belonged without first asking,
and obtaining its leave; or, if called off suddenly, a colleague was
engaged to state the circumstance to the House, and ask the leave.
In the journals of the two Houses, for the first thirty years of
the government, there is, in the index, a regular head for "absent
without leave;" and, turning to the indicated page, every such name
will be seen. That head in the index has disappeared in later
times. I recollect no instance of leave asked since the last of the
early members--the Macons, Randolphs, Rufus Kings, Samuel Smiths,
and John Taylors of Caroline--disappeared from the halls of Congress.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
TAX ON BANK NOTES: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH: EXTRACTS:
Mr. Benton brought forward his promised motion for leave to bring
in a bill to tax the circulation of banks and bankers, and of all
corporations, companies or individuals which issued paper currency.
He said nothing was more reasonable than to require the moneyed
interest which was employed in banking, and especially in that
branch of banking which was dedicated to the profitable business
of converting lampblack and rags into money, to contribute to the
support of the government. It was a large interest, very able,
and very proper, to pay taxes, and which paid nothing on their
profitable issues--profitable to them--injurious to the country. It
was an interest which possessed many privileges over the rest of the
community by law; which usurped many others which the laws did not
grant; which, in fact, set the laws and the government at defiance
whenever it pleased; and which, in addition to all these privileges
and advantages, was entirely exempt from federal taxation. While
the producing and laboring classes were all taxed; while these
meritorious classes, with their small incomes, were taxed in their
comforts and necessaries--in their salt, iron, sugar, blankets,
hats, coats and shoes, and so many other articles--the banking
interest, which dealt in hundreds of millions, which manufactured
and monopolized money, which put up and put down prices, and held
the whole country subject to its power, and tributary to its wealth,
paid nothing. This was wrong in itself, and unjust to the rest of
the community. It was an error or mistake in government which he had
long intended to bring to the notice of the Senate and the country;
and he judged the present conjuncture to be a proper time for doing
it. Revenue is wanted. A general revision of the tariff is about to
take place. An adjustment of the taxes for a long period is about to
be made. This is the time to bring forward the banking interest to
bear their share of the public burdens, and the more so, as they are
now in the fact of proving themselves to be a great burden on the
public, and the public mind is beginning to consider whether there
is any way to make them amenable to law and government.
In other countries, Mr. B. said, the banking interest was subject
to taxation. He knew of no country in which banking was tolerated,
except our own, in which it was not taxed. In Great Britain--that
country from which we borrow the banking system--the banking
interest pays its fair and full proportion of the public taxes: it
pays at present near four millions of dollars. It paid in 1836 the
sum of $3,725,400: in 1837 it paid $3,594,300. These were the last
years for which he had seen the details of the British taxation,
and the amounts he had stated comprehended the bank tax upon the
whole united kingdom: upon Scotland and Ireland, as well as upon
England and Wales. It was a handsome item in the budget of British
taxation, and was levied on two branches of the banking business:
on the circulation, and on bills of exchange. In the bill which he
intended to bring forward, the circulation alone was proposed to be
taxed; and, in that respect, the paper system would still remain
more favored here than it was in Great Britain.
In our own country, Mr. B. said, the banking interest had formerly
been taxed, and that in all its branches; in its circulation, its
discounts, and its bills of exchange. This was during the late
war with Great Britain; and though the banking business was then
small compared to what it is now, yet the product of the tax was
considerable, and well worth the gathering: it was about $500,000
per annum. At the end of the war this tax was abolished; while most
of the war taxes, laid at the same time, for the same purpose, and
for the same period, were continued in force; among them the tax
on salt, and other necessaries of life. By a perversion of every
principle of righteous taxation, the tax on banks was abolished,
and that on salt was continued. This has remained the case for
twenty-five years, and it is time to reverse the proceeding. It is
time to make the banks pay and to let salt go free.
Mr. B. next stated the manner of levying the bank tax at present
in Great Britain, which he said was done with great facility and
simplicity. It was a levy of a fixed sum on the average circulation
of the year, which the bank was required to give in for taxation
like any other property, and the amount collected by a distress
warrant if not paid. This simple and obvious method of making the
levy, had been adopted in 1815, and had been followed ever since.
Before that time it was effected through the instrumentality of
a stamp duty; a stamp being required for each note, but with the
privilege of compounding for a gross sum. In 1815 the option of
compounding was dropped: a gross amount was fixed by law as the tax
upon every million of the circulation; and this change in the mode
of collection has operated so beneficially that, though temporary at
first, it has been made permanent. The amount fixed was at the rate
of £3,500 for every million. This was for the circulation only: a
separate, and much heavier tax was laid upon bills of exchange, to
be collected by a stamp duty, without the privilege of composition.
Mr. B. here read, from a recent history of the Bank of England, a
brief account of the taxation of the circulation of that institution
for the last fifty years--from 1790 to the present time. It was at
that time that her circulation began to be taxed, because at that
time only did she begin to have a circulation which displaced the
specie of the country. She then began to issue notes under ten
pounds, having been first chartered with the privilege of issuing
none less than one hundred pounds. It was a century--from 1694 to
1790--before she got down to £5, and afterwards to £2, and to £1;
and from that time the specie basis was displaced, the currency
convulsed, and the banks suspending and breaking. The government
indemnified itself, in a small degree, for the mischiefs of the
pestiferous currency which it had authorized; and the extract which
he was about to read was the history of the taxation on the Bank
of England notes which, commencing at the small composition of
£12,000 per annum, now amounts to a large proportion of the near
four millions of dollars which the paper system pays annually to the
British Treasury. He read:
"The Bank, till lately, has always been particularly favored
in the composition which they paid for stamp duties. In 1791,
they paid composition of £12,000 per annum, in lieu of all
stamps, either on bill or notes. In 1799, on an increase of
the stamp duty, their composition was advanced to £20,000; and
an addition of £4,000 for notes issued under £5, raised the
whole to £24,000. In 1804, an addition of not less than fifty
per cent. was made to the stamp duty; but, although the Bank
circulation of notes under £5 had increased from one and a half
to four and a half millions, the whole composition was only
raised from £24,000 to £32,000. In 1808, there was a further
increase of thirty-three per cent. to the stamp duty, at which
time the composition was raised from £32,000 to £42,000. In both
these instances, the increase was not in proportion even to the
increase of duty; and no allowance whatever was made for the
increase in the amount of the bank circulation. It was not till
the session of 1815, on a further increase of the stamp duty,
that the new principle was established, and the Bank compelled
to pay a composition in some proportion to the amount of their
circulation. The composition is now fixed as follows: Upon the
average circulation of the preceding year, the Bank is to pay at
the rate of £3,500 per million, on their aggregate circulation,
without reference to the different classes and value of their
notes. The establishment of this principle, it is calculated,
caused a saving to the public, in the years 1815 and 1816, of
£70,000. By the neglect of this principle, which ought to have
been adopted in 1799, Mr. Ricardo estimated the public to have
been _losers_, and the Bank consequently _gainers_, of no less a
sum than _half a million_."
Mr. B. remarked briefly upon the equity of this tax, the simplicity
of its levy since 1815, and its large product. He deemed it the
proper model to be followed in the United States, unless we should
go on the principle of copying all that was evil, and rejecting all
that was good in the British paper system. We borrowed the banking
system from the English, with all its foreign vices, and then added
others of our own to it. England has suppressed the pestilence of
notes under £5 (near $25); we retain small notes down to a dollar,
and thence to the fractional parts of a dollar. She has taxed all
notes; and those under £5 she taxed highest while she had them;
we, on the contrary, tax none. The additional tax of £4,000 on the
notes under £5 rested on the fair principle of taxing highest that
which was most profitable to the owner, and most injurious to the
country. The small notes fell within that category, and therefore
paid highest.
Having thus shown that bank circulation was now taxed in Great
Britain, and had been for fifty years, he proceeded to show that
it had also been taxed in the United States. This was in the year
1813. In the month of August of that year, a stamp-act was passed,
applicable to banks and to bankers, and taxing them in the three
great branches of their business, to wit: the circulation, the
discounts, and the bills of exchange. On the circulation, the tax
commenced at one cent on a one dollar note, and rose gradually to
fifty dollars on notes exceeding one thousand dollars; with the
privilege of compounding for a gross sum in lieu of the duty. On
the discounts, the tax began at five cents on notes discounted for
one hundred dollars, and rose gradually to five dollars on notes of
eight thousand dollars and upwards. On bills of exchange, it began
at five cents on bills of fifty dollars, and rose to five dollars on
those of eight thousand dollars and upwards.
Such was the tax, continued Mr. B., which the moneyed interest,
employed in banking, was required to pay in 1813, and which it
continued to pay until 1817. In that year the banks were released
from taxation, while taxes were continued upon all the comforts
and necessaries of life. Taxes are now continued upon articles of
prime necessity--upon salt even--and the question will now go before
the Senate and country, whether the banking interest, which has
now grown so rich and powerful--which monopolizes the money of the
country--beards the government--makes distress or prosperity when
it pleases--the question is now come whether this interest shall
continue to be exempt from tax, while every thing else has to pay.
Mr. B. said he did not know how the banking interest of the present
day would relish a proposition to make them contribute to the
support of the government. He did not know how they would take it;
but he did know how a banker of the old school--one who paid on
sight, according to his promise, and never broke a promise to the
holder of his notes--he did know how _such_ a banker viewed the act
of 1813; and he would exhibit his behavior to the Senate; he spoke
of the late Stephen Girard of Philadelphia; and he would let him
speak for himself by reading some passages from a petition which he
presented to Congress the year after the tax on bank notes was laid.
Mr. B. read:
"That your memorialist has established a bank in the city
of Philadelphia, upon the foundation of his own individual
fortune and credit, and for his own exclusive emolument, and
that he is willing most cheerfully to contribute, in common
with his fellow-citizens throughout the United States, a full
proportion of the taxes which have been imposed for the support
of the national government, according to the profits of his
occupation and the value of his estate; but a construction has
been given to the acts of Congress laying duties on notes of
banks, &c., from which great difficulties have occurred, and
great inequalities daily produced to the disadvantage of his
bank, that were not, it is confidently believed, within the
contemplation of the legislature. And your memorialist having
submitted these considerations to the wisdom of Congress,
respectfully prays, that the act of Congress may be so amended
as to permit the Secretary of the Treasury to enter into a
composition for the stamp duty, in the case of private bankers,
as well as in the case of corporations and companies, or so
as to render the duty equal in its operations upon every
denomination of bankers."
Mr. B. had read these passages from Mr. Girard's petition to
Congress in 1814, _first_, for the purpose of showing the readiness
with which a banker of the old school paid the taxes which the
government imposed upon his business; and, next, to show the very
considerable amount of that tax, which on the circulation alone
amounted to ten thousand dollars on the million. All this, with
the additional tax on the discounts, and on the bills of exchange,
Mr. Girard was entirely willing to pay, provided all paid alike.
All he asked was equality of taxation, and that he might have the
benefit of the same composition which was allowed to incorporated
banks. This was a reasonable request, and was immediately granted by
Congress.
Mr. B. said revenue was one object of his bill: the regulation of
the currency by the suppression of small notes and the consequent
protection of the constitutional currency, was another: and for that
purpose the tax was proposed to be heaviest on notes under twenty
dollars, and to be augmented annually until it accomplished its
object.
CHAPTER XLIX.
LIBERATION OF SLAVES BELONGING TO AMERICAN CITIZENS IN BRITISH
COLONIAL PORTS.
Up to this time, and within a period of ten years, three instances
of this kind had occurred. First, that of the schooner Comet. This
vessel sailed from the District of Columbia in the year 1830,
destined for New Orleans, having, among other things, a number of
slaves on board. Her papers were regular, and the voyage in all
respects lawful. She was stranded on one of the false keys of the
Bahama Islands, opposite to the coast of Florida, and almost in
sight of our own shores. The persons on board, including the slaves,
were taken by the wreckers, against the remonstrance of the captain
and the owners of the slaves, into Nassau, New Providence--one
of the Bahama Islands; where the slaves were forcibly seized and
detained by the local authorities. The second was the case of the
Encomium. She sailed from Charleston in 1834, destined to New
Orleans, on a voyage lawful and regular, and was stranded near the
same place, and with the same fate with the Comet. She was carried
into Nassau, where the slaves were also seized and detained by the
local authorities. The slaves belonged to the Messrs. Waddell of
North Carolina, among the most respectable inhabitants of the State,
and on their way to Louisiana with a view to a permanent settlement
in that State. The third case was that of the Enterprize, sailing
from the District of Columbia in 1835, destined for Charleston,
South Carolina, on a lawful voyage, and with regular papers. She
was forced unavoidably, by stress of weather, into Port Hamilton,
Bermuda Island, where the slaves on board were forcibly seized
and detained by the local authorities. The owners of the slaves,
protesting in vain, at the time, and in every instance, against
this seizure of their property, afterwards applied to their own
government for redress; and after years of negotiation with Great
Britain, redress was obtained in the two first cases--the full
value of the slaves being delivered to the United States, to be
paid to the owners. This was accomplished during Mr. Van Buren's
administration, the negotiation having commenced under that of
President Jackson. Compensation in the case of the Enterprize had
been refused; and the reason given for the distinction in the cases,
was, that the two first happened during the time that slavery
existed in the British West India colonies--the latter after its
abolition there. All these were coasting voyages between one port
of the United States and another, and involved practical questions
of great interest to all the slave States. Mr. Calhoun brought the
question before the Senate in a set of resolutions which he drew up
for the occasion; and which were in these words:
"_Resolved_, That a ship or a vessel on the high seas, in time
of peace, engaged in a lawful voyage, is, according to the laws
of nations, under the exclusive jurisdiction of the State to
which her flag belongs; as much so as if constituting a part of
its own domain.
"_Resolved_, That if such ship or vessel should be forced by
stress of weather, or other unavoidable cause, into the port
of a friendly power, she would, under the same laws, lose none
of the rights appertaining to her on the high seas; but, on
the contrary, she and her cargo and persons on board, with
their property, and all the rights belonging to their personal
relations, as established by the laws of the State to which they
belong, would be placed under the protection which the laws of
nations extend to the unfortunate under such circumstances.
"_Resolved_, That the brig Enterprize, which was forced
unavoidably by stress of weather into Port Hamilton, Bermuda
Island, while on a lawful voyage on the high seas from one port
of the Union to another, comes within the principles embraced in
the foregoing resolutions; and that the seizure and detention of
the negroes on board by the local authority of the island, was
an act in violation of the laws of nations, and highly unjust to
our own citizens to whom they belong."
It was in this latter case that Mr. Calhoun wished to obtain the
judgment of the Senate, and the point he had to argue was, whether
a municipal regulation of Great Britain could alter the law of
nations? Under that law she made indemnity for the slaves liberated
in the two first cases: under her own municipal law she denied it
in the latter case. The distinction taken by the British minister
was, that in the first cases, slavery existing in this British
colony and recognized by law, the persons coming in with their
slaves had a property in them which had been divested: in the latter
case that slavery being no longer recognized in this colony, there
was no property in them after their arrival; and consequently no
rights divested. Mr. Calhoun admitted that would be the case if the
entrance had been voluntary; but denied it where the entrance was
forced; as in this case. His argument was:
"I object not to the rule. If our citizens had no right to
their slaves, at any time after they entered the British
territory--that is, if the mere fact of entering extinguished
all right to them (for that is the amount of the rule)--they
could, of course, have no claim on the British government,
for the plain reason that the local authority, in seizing and
detaining the negroes, seized and detained what, by supposition,
did not belong to them. That is clear enough; but let us see
the application: it is given in a few words. He says: 'Now the
owners of the slaves on board the Enterprize never were lawfully
in possession of those slaves within the British territory;'
assigning for reason, 'that before the Enterprize arrived at
Bermuda, slavery had been abolished in the British empire'--an
assertion which I shall show, in a subsequent part of my
remarks, to be erroneous. From that, and that alone, he comes to
the conclusion, 'that the negroes on board the Enterprize had,
by entering within the British jurisdiction, acquired rights
which the local courts were bound to protect.' Such certainly
would have been the case if they had been brought in, or entered
voluntarily. He who enters voluntarily the territory of another
State, tacitly submits himself, with all his rights, to its
laws, and is as much bound to submit to them as its citizens or
subjects. No one denies that; but that is not the present case.
They entered not voluntarily, but from necessity; and the very
point at issue is, whether the British municipal laws could
divest their owners of property in their slaves on entering
British territory, in cases such as the Enterprize, when the
vessel has been forced into their territory by necessity,
through an act of Providence, to save the lives of those on
board. We deny they can, and maintain the opposite ground:--that
the law of nations in such cases interposes and protects the
vessel and those on board, with their rights, against the
municipal laws of the State, to which they have never submitted,
and to which it would be cruel and inhuman, as well as unjust,
to subject them. Such is clearly the point at issue between the
two governments; and it is not less clear, that it is the very
point assumed by the British negotiator in the controversy."
This is fair reasoning upon the law of the case, and certainly left
the law of nations in full force in favor of the American owners.
The equity of the case was also fully stated and the injury shown to
be of a practical kind, which self-protection required the United
States to prevent for the future. In this sense, Mr. Calhoun argued:
"To us this is not a mere abstract question, nor one simply
relating to the free use of the high seas. It comes nearer home.
It is one of free and safe passage from one port to another of
our Union; as much so to us, as a question touching the free
and safe use of the channels between England and Ireland on the
one side, and the opposite coast of the continent on the other,
would be to Great Britain. To understand its deep importance
to us, it must be borne in mind, that the island of Bermuda
lies but a short distance off our coast, and that the channel
between the Bahama islands and Florida is not less than two
hundred miles in length, and on an average not more than fifty
wide; and that through this long, narrow and difficult channel,
the immense trade between our ports on the Gulf of Mexico and
the Atlantic coast must pass, which, at no distant period,
will constitute more than half of the trade of the Union. The
principle set up by the British government, if carried out to
its full extent, would do much to close this all-important
channel, by rendering it too hazardous for use. She has only to
give an indefinite extension to the principle applied to the
case of the Enterprize, and the work would be done; and why
has she not as good a right to apply it to a cargo of sugar or
cotton, as to the slaves who produced it."
The resolutions were referred to the committee on foreign relations,
which reported them back with some slight alteration, not affecting
or impairing their force; and in that form they were unanimously
adopted by the Senate. Although there was no opposition to them, the
importance of the occasion justified a record of the vote: and they
were accordingly taken by yeas and nays--or rather, by yeas: for
there were no nays. This was one of the occasions on which the mind
loves to dwell, when, on a question purely sectional and Southern,
and wholly in the interest of slave property, there was no division
of sentiment in the American Senate.
CHAPTER L.
RESIGNATION OF SENATOR HUGH LAWSON WHITE OF TENNESSEE: HIS
DEATH: SOME NOTICE OF HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER.
This resignation took place under circumstances, not frequent, but
sometimes occurring in the Senate--that of receiving instructions
from the General Assembly of his State, which either operate as a
censure upon a senator, or require him to do something which either
his conscience, or his honor forbids. Mr. White at this time--the
session of 1839-'40--received instructions from the General Assembly
of his State which affected him in both ways--condemning past
conduct, and prescribing a future course which he could not follow.
He had been democratic from his youth--came into the Senate--had
grown aged--as such: but of late years had voted generally with
the whigs on their leading measures, and classed politically with
them in opposition to Mr. Van Buren. In these circumstances he
received instructions to reverse his course of voting on these
leading measures--naming them; and requiring him to support the
administration of Mr. Van Buren. He consulted his self-respect, as
well as obeyed a democratic principle; and sent in his resignation.
It was the conclusion of a public life which disappointed its whole
previous course. From his youth he had been a popular man, and that
as the fair reward of conduct, without practising an art to obtain
it, or even seeming to know that he was winning it. Bred a lawyer,
and coming early to the bar, he was noted for a probity, modesty and
gravity--with a learning, ability, assiduity and patience--which
marked him for the judicial bench: and he was soon placed upon
it--that of the Superior Court. Afterwards, when the judiciary of
the State was remodelled, he was placed on the bench of the Supreme
Court. It was considered a favor to the public to get him to take
the place. That is well known to the writer of this View, then a
member of the General Assembly of Tennessee, and the author of the
new modelled judiciary. He applied to Judge White, who had at that
time returned to the bar to know if he would take the place; and
considered the new system accredited with the public on receiving
his answer that he would. That was all that he had to do with
getting the appointment: he was elected unanimously by the General
Assembly, with whom the appointment rested. That is about the way
in which he received all his appointments, either from his State,
or from the federal government--merely agreeing to take the office
if it was offered to him; but not always agreeing to accept: often
refusing--as in the case of a cabinet appointment offered him by
President Jackson, his political and personal friend of forty years'
standing. It was long before he would enter a political career, but
finally consented to become senator in the Congress of the United
States: always discharging the duties of an office, when accepted,
with the assiduity of a man who felt himself to be a machine in the
hands of his duty; and with an integrity of purpose which left his
name without spot or stain. It is beautiful to contemplate such
a career; sad to see it set under a cloud in his advanced years.
He became alienated from his old friends, both personally and
politically--even from General Jackson; and eventually fell under
the censure of his State, as above related--that State which, for
more than forty years, had considered it a favor to itself that
he should accept the highest offices in her gift. He resigned in
January, and died in May--his death accelerated by the chagrin of
his spirit; for he was a man of strong feelings, though of such
measured and quiet deportment. His death was announced in the
Senate by the senator who was his colleague at the time of his
resignation--Mr. Alexander Anderson; and the motion for the usual
honors to his memory was seconded by Senator Preston, who pronounced
on the occasion a eulogium on the deceased as just as it was
beautiful.
"I do not know, Mr. President, whether I am entitled to the
honor I am about to assume in seconding the resolutions which
have just been offered by the senator from Tennessee, in
honor of his late distinguished colleague; and yet, sir, I
am not aware that any one present is more entitled to this
melancholy honor, if it belongs to long acquaintance, to sincere
admiration, and to intimate intercourse. If these circumstances
do not entitle me to speak, I am sure every senator will feel,
in the emotions which swell his own bosom, an apology for my
desire to relieve my own, by bearing testimony to the virtues
and talents, the long services and great usefulness, of Judge
White.
"My infancy and youth were spent in a region contiguous to
the sphere of his earlier fame and usefulness. As long as I
can remember any thing, I remember the deep confidence he had
inspired as a wise and upright judge, in which station no man
ever enjoyed a purer reputation, or established a more implicit
reliance in his abilities and honesty. There was an antique
sternness and justness in his character. By a general consent
he was called Cato. Subsequently, at a period of our public
affairs very analogous to the present, he occupied a position
which placed him at the head of the financial institutions of
East Tennessee. He sustained them by his individual character.
The name of Hugh L. White was a guarantee that never failed to
attract confidence. Institutions were sustained by the credit
of an individual, and the only wealth of that individual was
his character. From this more limited sphere of usefulness and
reputation, he was first brought to this more conspicuous stage
as a member of an important commission on the Spanish treaty,
in which he was associated with Mr. Tazewell and Mr. King. His
learning, his ability, his firmness, and industry, immediately
extended the sphere of his reputation to the boundaries of
the country. Upon the completion of that duty, he came into
this Senate. Of his career here, I need not speak. His grave
and venerable form is even now before us--that air of patient
attention, of grave deliberation, of unrelaxed firmness. Here
his position was of the highest--beloved, respected, honored;
always in his place--always prepared for the business in
hand--always bringing to it the treasured reflections of a
sedate and vigorous understanding. Over one department of our
deliberations he exercised a very peculiar control. In the
management of our complex and difficult relations with the
Indians we all deferred to him, and to this he addressed himself
with unsparing labor, and with a wisdom, a patient benevolence,
that justified and vindicated the confidence of the Senate.
"In private life he was amiable and ardent. The current of his
feelings was warm and strong. His long familiarity with public
affairs had not damped the natural ardor of his temperament.
We all remember the deep feeling with which he so recently
took leave of this body, and how profoundly that feeling was
reciprocated. The good will, the love, the respect which we
bestowed upon him then, now give depth and energy to the
mournful feelings with which we offer a solemn tribute to his
memory."
And here this notice would stop if it was the design of this work
merely to write on the outside of history--merely to chronicle
events; but that is not the design. Inside views are the main
design: and this notice of Senator White's life and character would
be very imperfect, and vitally deficient, if it did not tell how
it happened that a man so favored by his State during a long life
should have lost that favor in his last days--received censure from
those who had always given praise--and gone to his grave under a
cloud after having lived in sunshine. The reason is briefly told.
In his advanced age he did the act which, with all old men, is an
experiment; and, with most of them, an unlucky one. He married
again: and this new wife having made an immense stride from the
head of a boarding-house table to the head of a senator's table,
could see no reason why she should not take one step more, and that
comparatively short, and arrive at the head of the presidential
table. This was before the presidential election of 1836. Mr. Van
Buren was the generally accepted democratic candidate: he was
foremost of all the candidates: and the man who is ahead of all the
rest, on such occasions, is pretty sure to have a combination of all
the rest against him. Mr. Van Buren was no exception to this rule.
The whole whig party wished to defeat him: that was a fair wish.
Mr. Calhoun's party wished to defeat him: that was invidious: for
they could not elect Mr. Calhoun by it. Many professing democrats
wished to defeat him, though for the benefit of a whig: and that
was a movement towards the whig camp--where most of them eventually
arrived. All these parties combined, and worked in concert; and
their line of operations was through the vanity of the victim's
wife. They excited her vain hopes. And this modest, unambitious man,
who had spent all his life in resisting office pressed upon him by
his real friends, lost his power of resistance in his old age, and
became a victim to the combination against him--which all saw, and
deplored, except himself. As soon as he was committed, and beyond
extrication, one of the co-operators against him, a whig member of
Congress from Kentucky--a witty, sagacious man of good tact--in
the exultation of his feelings wrote the news to a friend in his
district, who, in a still higher state of exultation, sent it to the
newspapers--thus: "_Judge White is on the track, running gayly, and
won't come off; and if he would, his wife won't let him._" This was
the whole story, briefly and cheerily told--and truly. He ran the
race! without prejudice to Mr. Van Buren--without benefit to the
whig candidates--without support from some who had incited him to
the trial: and with great political and social damage to himself.
Long an inhabitant of the same State with Judge White--indebted to
him for my law license--moving in the same social and political
circle--accustomed to respect and admire him--sincerely friendly
to him, and anxious for his peace and honor, I saw with pain the
progress of the movement against him, and witnessed with profound
grief its calamitous consummation.
CHAPTER LI.
DEATH OF EX-SENATOR HAYNE OF SOUTH CAROLINA: NOTICE OF HIS LIFE
AND CHARACTER.
Nature had lavished upon him all the gifts which lead to eminence
in public, and to happiness, in private life. Beginning with the
person and manners--minor advantages, but never to be overlooked
when possessed--he was entirely fortunate in these accessorial
advantages. His person was of the middle size, slightly above it
in height, well proportioned, flexible and graceful. His face was
fine--the features manly, well formed, expressive, and bordering
on the handsome: a countenance ordinarily thoughtful and serious,
but readily lighting up, when accosted, with an expression of
kindness, intelligence, cheerfulness, and an inviting amiability.
His face was then the reflex of his head and his heart, and ready
for the artist who could seize the moment to paint to the life. His
manners were easy, cordial, unaffected, affable; and his address so
winning, that the fascinated stranger was taken captive at the first
salutation. These personal qualities were backed by those of the
mind--all solid, brilliant, practical, and utilitarian: and always
employed on useful objects, pursued from high motives, and by fair
and open means. His judgment was good, and he exercised it in the
serious consideration of whatever business he was engaged upon, with
an honest desire to do what was right, and a laudable ambition to
achieve an honorable fame. He had a copious and ready elocution,
flowing at will in a strong and steady current, and rich in the
material which constitutes argument. His talents were various, and
shone in different walks of life, not often united: eminent as a
lawyer, distinguished as a senator: a writer as well as a speaker:
and good at the council table. All these advantages were enforced
by exemplary morals; and improved by habits of study, moderation,
temperance, self-control, and addiction to business. There was
nothing holiday, or empty about him--no lying in to be delivered of
a speech of phrases. Practical was the turn of his mind: industry
an attribute of his nature: labor an inherent impulsion, and a
habit: and during his ten years of senatorial service his name was
incessantly connected with the business of the Senate. He was ready
for all work--speaking, writing, consulting--in the committee-room
as well as in the chamber--drawing bills and reports in private,
as well as shining in the public debate, and ready for the social
intercourse of the evening when the labors of the day were over.
A desire to do service to the country, and to earn just fame for
himself, by working at useful objects, brought all these high
qualities into constant, active, and brilliant requisition. To do
good, by fair means, was the labor of his senatorial life; and I can
truly say that, in ten years of close association with him I never
saw him actuated by a sinister motive, a selfish calculation, or an
unbecoming aspiration.
Thus, having within himself so many qualities and requisites for
insuring advancement in life, he also had extrinsic advantages,
auxiliary to talent, and which contribute to success in a public
career. He was well descended, and bore a name dear to the
South--the synonym of honor, courage, and patriotism--memorable for
that untimely and cruel death of one of its revolutionary wearers,
which filled the country with pity for his fate, and horror for
his British executioners. The name of Hayne, pronounced any where
in the South, and especially in South Carolina, roused a feeling
of love and respect, and stood for a passport to honor, until
deeds should win distinction. Powerfully and extensively connected
by blood and marriage, he had the generous support which family
pride and policy extends to a promising scion of the connection.
He had fortune, which gave him the advantage of education, and of
social position, and left free to cultivate his talents, and to
devote them to the public service. Resident in Charleston, still
maintaining its colonial reputation for refined society, and high
and various talent, he had every advantage of enlightened and
elegant association. Twice happily married in congenial families
(Pinckney and Alston), his domestic felicity was kept complete, his
connections extended, and fortune augmented. To crown all, and to
give effect to every gift with which nature and fortune had endowed
him, he had that further advantage, which the Grecian Plutarch never
fails to enumerate when the case permits it, and which he considered
so auxiliary to the advancement of some of the eminent men whose
lives he commemorated--the advantage of being born in a State where
native talent was cherished, and where the community made it a
policy to advance and sustain a promising young man, as the property
of the State, and for the good of the State. Such was, and is, South
Carolina; and the young Hayne had the full benefit of the generous
sentiment. As fast as years permitted, he was advanced in the State
government: as soon as age and the federal constitution permitted,
he came direct to the Senate, without passing through the House of
Representatives; and to such a Senate as the body then was--Rufus
King, John Taylor of Caroline, Mr. Macon, John Gaillard, Edward
Lloyd of Maryland, James Lloyd of Massachusetts, James Barbour of
Virginia, General Jackson, Louis McLane of Delaware, Wm. Pinkney of
Maryland, Littleton Waller Tazewell, Webster, Nathan Sandford, of
New York, M. Van Buren, King of Alabama, Samuel Smith of Maryland,
James Brown, and Henry Johnson of Louisiana; and many others, less
known to fame, but honorable to the Senate from personal decorum,
business talent, and dignity of character. Hayne arrived among
them; and was considered by such men, and among such men, as an
accession to the talent and character of the chamber. I know the
estimate they put upon him, the consideration they had for him,
and the future they pictured for him: for they were men to look
around, and consider who were to carry on the government after they
were gone. But the proceedings of the Senate soon gave the highest
evidence of the degree of consideration in which he was held. In
the very second year of his service, he was appointed to a high
duty--such as would belong to age and long service, as well as to
talent and elevated character. He was made chairman of the select
committee--and select it was--which brought in the bill for the
grants ($200,000 in money, and 24,000 acres of land), to Lafayette;
and as such became the organ of the expositions, as delicate as
they were responsible, which reconciled such grants to the words
and spirit of our constitution, and adjusted them to the merit and
modesty of the receiver: a high function, and which he fulfilled to
the satisfaction of the chamber, and the country.
Six years afterwards he had the great debate with Mr. Webster--a
contest of many days, sustained to the last without losing its
interest--(which bespoke fertility of resource, as well as ability
in both speakers), and in which his adversary had the advantage of
a more ripened intellect, an established national reputation, ample
preparation, the choice of attack, and the goodness of the cause.
Mr. Webster came into that field upon choice and deliberation,
well feeling the grandeur of the occasion; and profoundly studying
his part. He had observed during the summer, the signs in South
Carolina, and marked the proceedings of some public meetings
unfriendly to the Union; and which he ran back to the incubation
of Mr. Calhoun. He became the champion of the constitution and the
Union, choosing his time and occasion, hanging his speech upon a
disputed motion with which it had nothing to do, and which was
immediately lost sight of in the blaze and expansion of a great
national discussion: himself armed and equipped for the contest,
glittering in the panoply of every species of parliamentary and
forensic weapon--solid argument, playful wit, biting sarcasm,
classic allusion; and striking at a new doctrine of South Carolina
origin, in which Hayne was not implicated: but his friends were--and
that made him their defender. The speech was _at_ Mr. Calhoun,
then presiding in the Senate, and without right to reply. Hayne
became his sword and buckler, and had much use for the latter to
cover his friend--hit by incessant blows--cut by many thrusts: but
he understood too well the science of defence in wordy as well
as military digladiation to confine himself to fending off. He
returned, as well as received blows; but all conducted courteously;
and stings when inflicted gently extracted on either side by
delicate compliments. Each morning he returned re-invigorated to
the contest, like Antæus refreshed, not from a fabulous contact with
mother earth, but from a real communion with Mr. Calhoun! the actual
subject of Mr. Webster's attack: and from the well-stored arsenal of
his powerful and subtle mind, he nightly drew auxiliary supplies.
Friends relieved the combatants occasionally; but it was only to
relieve; and the two principal figures remained prominent to the
last. To speak of the issue would be superfluous; but there was much
in the arduous struggle to console the younger senator. To cope with
Webster, was a distinction: not to be crushed by him, was almost
a victory: to rival him in copious and graceful elocution, was to
establish an equality at a point which strikes the masses: and Hayne
often had the crowded galleries with him. But, equal argument! that
was impossible. The cause forbid it, far more than disparity of
force; and reversed positions would have reversed the issue.
I have said elsewhere (Vol. I. of this work), that I deem Mr.
Hayne to have been entirely sincere in professing nullification
at that time only in the sense of the Virginia resolutions of
'98-'99, as expounded by their authors: three years afterwards he
left his place in the Senate to become Governor of South Carolina,
to enforce the nullification ordinance which the General Assembly
of the State had passed, and against which President Jackson put
forth his impressive proclamation. Up to this point, in writing
this notice, the pen had run on with pride and pleasure--pride in
portraying a shining American character: pleasure in recalling
recollections of an eminent man, whom I esteemed--who did me the
honor to call me friend; and with whom I was intimate. Of all
the senators he seemed nearest to me--both young in the Senate,
entering it nearly together; born in adjoining States; not wide
apart in age; a similarity of political principle: and, I may add,
some conformity of tastes and habits. Of all the young generation
of statesmen coming on, I considered him the safest--the most
like William Lowndes; and best entitled to a future eminent lead.
He was democratic, not in the modern sense of the term, as never
bolting a caucus nomination, and never thinking differently from
the actual administration; but on principle, as founded in a
strict, in contradistinction to a latitudinarian construction of
the constitution; and as cherishing simplicity and economy in the
administration of the federal government, in contradistinction to
splendor and extravagance.
With his retiring from the Senate, Mr. Hayne's national history
ceases. He does not appear afterwards upon the theatre of national
affairs: but his practical utilitarian mind, and ardent industry,
found ample and beneficent employment in some noble works of
internal improvement. The railroad system of South Carolina, with
its extended ramifications, must admit him for its founder, from the
zeal he carried into it, and the impulsion he gave it. He died in
the meridian of his life, and in the midst of his usefulness, and in
the field of his labors--in western North Carolina, on the advancing
line of the great iron railway, which is to connect the greatest
part of the South Atlantic with the noblest part of the Valley of
the Mississippi.
The nullification ordinance, which he became Governor of South
Carolina to enforce, was wholly directed against the tariff system
of the time--not merely against a protective tariff, but against
its fruits--undue levy of revenue, extravagant expenditure; and
expenditure in one quarter of the Union of what was levied upon the
other. The levy and expenditure were then some twenty-five millions
of dollars: they are now seventy-five millions: and the South, while
deeply agitated for the safety of slave property--(now as safe, and
more valuable than ever, as proved by the witness which makes no
mistakes, _the market price_)--is quiet upon the evil which produced
the nullification ordinance of 1832: quiet under it, although that
evil is three times greater now than then: and without excuse, as
the present vast expenditure is the mere effect of mad extravagance.
Is this quietude a condemnation of that ordinance? or, is it of the
nature of an imaginary danger which inflames the passions, that it
should supersede the real evil which affects the pocket? If the
Hayne of 1824, and 1832, was now alive, I think his practical and
utilitarian mind would be seeking a proper remedy for the real
grievance, now so much greater than ever; and that he would leave
the fires of an imaginary danger to die out of themselves, for want
of fuel.
CHAPTER LII.
ABOLITION OF SPECIFIC DUTIES BY THE COMPROMISE ACT OF 1833: ITS
ERROR, AND LOSS TO THE REVENUE, SHOWN BY EXPERIENCE.
The introduction of the universal _ad valorem_ system in 1833 was
opposed and deprecated by practical men at the time, as one of those
refined subtleties which, aiming at an ideal perfection, overlooks
the experience of ages, and disregards the warnings of reason.
Specific duties had been the rule--ad valorems the exception--from
the beginning of the collection of custom-house revenue. The
specific duty was a question in the exact sciences, depending upon a
mathematical solution by weight, count, or measure: the ad valorem
presented a question to the fallible judgment of men, sure to be
different at different places; and subject, in addition to the
fallibility of judgment, to the chances of ignorance, indifference,
negligence and corruption. All this was urged against the act at
the time, but in vain. It was a piece of legislation arranged
out of doors--christened a compromise, which was to save the
Union--brought into the House to be passed without alteration: and
was so passed, in defiance of all judgment and reason by the aid
of the votes of those--always a considerable per centum in every
public body--to whom the name of compromise is an irresistible
attraction: amiable men, who would do no wrong of themselves, and
without whom the designing could do but little wrong. Objections
to this pernicious novelty (of universal ad valorems), were in
vain urged then: experience, with her enlightened voice, now came
forward to plead against them. The act had been in force seven
years: it had had a long, and a fair trial: and that safest of all
juries--Time and Experience--now came forward to deliver their
verdict. At this session ('39-'40) a message was sent to the House
of Representatives by the President, covering reports from the
Secretary of the Treasury, and from the Comptroller of the Treasury,
with opinions from the late Attorneys-general of the United States
(Messrs. Benjamin F. Butler and Felix Grundy), and letters from
the collectors of the customs in all the principal Atlantic
ports, all relating to the practical operation of the ad valorem
system, and showing it to be unequal, uncertain, unsafe--diverse
in its construction--injurious to the revenue--open to unfair
practices--and greatly expensive from the number of persons required
to execute it. The whole document may be profitably studied by all
who deprecate unwise and pernicious legislation; but a selection of
a few of the cases of injurious operation which it presents will be
sufficient to give an idea of the whole. Three classes of goods are
selected--silks, linens, and worsted: all staple articles, and so
well known as to be the least susceptible of diversity of judgment;
and yet on which, in the period of four years, a fraction over five
millions of dollars had been lost to the Treasury from diversity of
construction between the Treasury officers and the judiciary--with
the further prospective loss of one million and three-quarters in
the ensuing three years if the act was not amended. The document,
at page 44, states the annual ascertained loss during four years'
operation of the act on these classes of goods, to be:
"In 1835 - $624,356 In 1837 - 463,090
1836 - 847,162 1838 - 428,237
"Making in the four years $2,362,845; and the comptroller
computes the annual prospective loss during the time the act
may remain unaltered, at $800,000. So much for silks; now for
linens. The same page, for the same four years, represents the
annual loss on this article to be:
In 1835 - $370,785 In 1837 - 303,241
1836 - 516,988 1838 - 226,375
"Making the sum of $1,411,389 on this article for the four
years; to which is to be added the estimated sum of $400,000,
for the future annual losses, if the act remains unaltered.
"On worsted goods, for the same time, and on page 45, the report
exhibits the losses thus:
In 1835 - $409,329 In 1837 - 209,391
1836 - 416,832 1838 - 249,590
"Making a total of ascertained loss on this head, in the brief
space of four years, amount to the sum of $1,285,142; with a
computation of a prospective loss of $500,000 per annum, while
the compromise act remains as it is."
Such were the losses from diversity of construction alone on three
classes of goods, in the short space of four years; and these
classes staple goods, composed of a single material. When it
came to articles of mixed material, the diversity became worse.
Custom-house officers disagreed: comptrollers and treasurers
disagreed: attorneys-general disagreed. Courts were referred to,
and their decision overruled all. Many importers stood suits; and
the courts and juries overruled all the officers appointed to
collect the revenue. The government could only collect what they
are allowed. Often, after paying the duty assessed, the party has
brought his action and recovered a large part of it back. So that
this ad valorem system, besides its great expense, its chance
for diversity of opinions among the appraisers, and its openness
to corruption, also gave rise to differences among the highest
administrative and law officers of the government, with resort to
courts of law, in nearly all which the United States was the loser.
CHAPTER LIII.
REFINED SUGAR AND RUM DRAWBACKS: THEIR ABUSE UNDER THE
COMPROMISE ACT OF 1833: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH.
Mr. Benton rose to make the motion for which he had given notice on
Friday last, for leave to bring in a bill to reduce the drawbacks
allowed on the exportation of rum and refined sugars; and the
bounties and allowances to fishing vessels, in proportion to the
reduction which had been made, and should be made, in the duties
upon imported sugars, molasses and salt, upon which these bounties
and allowances were respectively granted.
Mr. B. said that the bill, for the bringing in of which he was about
to ask leave, proposed some material alteration in the act of 1833,
for the modification of the tariff, commonly called the compromise
act; and as that act was held by its friends to be sacred and
inviolable, and entitled to run its course untouched and unaltered,
it became his duty to justify his bill in advance; to give reasons
for it before he ventured to submit the question of leave for its
introduction; and to show, beforehand, that here was great and just
cause for the measure he proposed.
Mr. B. said it would be recollected, by those who were contemporary
with the event, and might be seen by all who should now look into
our legislative history of that day, that he was thoroughly opposed
to the passage of the act of 1833; that he preferred waiting the
progress of Mr. Verplanck's bill; that he opposed the compromise
act, from beginning to end; made speeches against it, which were
not answered; uttered predictions of it, which were disregarded;
proposed amendments to it, which were rejected; showed it to be an
adjournment, not a settlement, of the tariff question; and voted
against it, on its final passage, in a respectable minority of
eighteen. It was not his intention at this time to recapitulate all
the objections which he then made to the act; but to confine himself
to two of those objections, and to those two of them, the truth and
evils of which TIME had developed; and for which evils the public
good demands an immediate remedy to be applied. He spoke of the
drawbacks and allowances founded upon duties, which duties were to
undergo periodical reductions, while the drawbacks and allowances
remained undiminished; and of the vague and arbitrary tenor of the
act, which rendered it incapable of any regular, uniform, or safe
execution. He should confine himself to these two objections; and
proceed to examine them in the order in which they were mentioned.
At page 208 of the Senate journal, session of 1832-33, is seen this
motion: "Moved by Mr. Benton to add to the bill a section in the
following words: '_That all drawbacks allowed on the exportation of
articles manufactured in the United States from materials imported
from foreign countries, and subject to duty, shall be reduced in
proportion to the reduction of duties provided for in this act._'"
The particular application of this clause, as explained and enforced
at the time, was to sugar and molasses, and the refined sugar, and
the rum manufactured from them.
As the laws then stood, and according to the principle of all
drawbacks, the exporters of these refined sugars and rum were
allowed to draw back from the Treasury precisely as much money as
had been paid into the Treasury on the importation of the article
out of which the exported article was manufactured. This was the
principle, and this was the law; and so rigidly was this insisted
upon by the manufacturing and exporting interest, that only four
years before the compromise act, namely, in 1829, the drawback on
refined sugars exported was raised from four to five cents a pound
upon the motion of General Smith, a then senator from Maryland; and
this upon an argument and a calculation made by him to show that the
quantity of raw sugar contained in every pound of refined sugar,
had, in reality, paid five instead of four cents duty. My motion
appeared to me self-evidently just, as the new act, in abolishing
all specific duties, and reducing every thing to an ad valorem duty
of twenty per centum, would reduce the duties on sugar and molasses
eventually to the one-third or the one-fourth of their then amount;
and, unless the drawback should be proportionately reduced, the
exporter of refined sugars and rum, instead of drawing back the
exact amount he had paid into the Treasury, would in reality draw
back three or four times as much as had been paid in. This would be
unjust in itself; and, besides being unjust, would involve a breach
of the constitution, for, so much of the drawback as was not founded
upon the duty, would be a naked bounty paid for nothing out of the
Treasury. I expected my motion to be adopted by a unanimous vote; on
the contrary, it was rejected by a vote of 24 to 18;[2] and I had
to leave it to Time, that slow, but sure witness, to develope the
evils which my arguments had been unable to show, and to enforce
the remedies which the vote of the Senate had rejected. That
witness has come. Time, with his unerring testimony, has arrived.
The act of 1833 has run the greater part of its course, without
having reached its ultimate depression of duties, or developed its
greatest mischiefs; but it has gone far enough to show that it has
done immense injury to the Treasury, and must continue to do it if
a remedy is not applied. Always indifferent to my rhetoric, and
careful of my facts--always leaving oratory behind, and laboring
to establish a battery of facts in front--I have applied at the
fountain head of information--the Treasury Department--for all the
statistics connected with the subject; and the successive reports
which had been received from that department, on the salt duties and
the fishing bounties and allowances, and on the sugar and molasses
duties, and the drawbacks on exported rum and refined sugar, and
which had been printed by the order of the Senate, had supplied the
information which constituted the body of facts which must carry
conviction to the mind of every hearer.
[2] The following was the vote:
YEAS--Messrs. Benton, Buckner, Calhoun, Dallas, Dickerson, Dudley,
Forsyth, Johnston, Kane, King, Rives, Robinson, Seymour, Tomlinson,
Webster, White, Wilkins, and Wright--18.
NAYS--Messrs. Bell, Bibb, Black, Clay, Clayton, Ewing, Foot,
Grundy, Hendricks, Holmes, Knight, Mangum, Miller, Moore, Naudain,
Poindexter, Prentiss, Robbins, Silsbee, Smith, Sprague, Tipton,
Troup, Tyler--24.
Mr. B. said he would take up the sugar duties first, and show what
had been the operation of the act of 1833, in relation to the
revenue from that article, and the drawbacks founded upon it. In
document No. 275, laid upon our tables on Friday last, we find four
tables in relation to this point, and a letter from the Register of
the Treasury, Mr. T. L. Smith, describing their contents.
These tables are all valuable. The whole of the information
which they contain is useful, and is applicable to the business
of legislation, and goes to enlighten us on the subject under
consideration; but it is not in my power, continued Mr. B., to quote
them in detail. Results and prominent facts only can be selected;
and, proceeding on this plan, I here show to the Senate, from table
No. 1, that as early as the year 1837--being only four years after
the compromise act--the drawback paid on the exportation of refined
sugar actually exceeded the amount of revenue derived from imported
sugar, by the sum of $861 71. As the duties continued to diminish,
and the drawback remained the same, this excess was increased in
1838 to $12,690; and in 1839 it was increased to $20,154 37. Thus
far the results are mathematical; they are copied from the Treasury
books; they show the actual operation of the compromise act on this
article, down to the end of the last year. These are facts to pause
at, and think upon. They imply that the sugar refiners manufactured
more sugar than was imported into the United States for each of
these three years--that they not only manufactured, but exported,
in a refined state, more than was imported into the United States,
about 400,000 lbs. more the last of these years--that they paid
duty on these quantities, not leaving a pound of imported sugar
to have been used or duty paid on it by any other person--and not
leaving a pound of their own refined sugar to be used in the United
States. In other words, the whole amount of the revenue from brown
and clayed sugars was paid over to 29 sugar refiners from 1837: and
not only the whole amount, but the respective sums of $861 71, and
$12,690, and $20,154 37, in that and the two succeeding years, over
and above that amount. This is what the table shows as far as the
act has gone; and as we know that the refiners only consumed a small
part of the sugar imported, and only exported a part of what they
refined, and consequently only paid duty on a small part, it stands
to reason that a most enormous abuse has been committed--the fault
of the law allowing them to "draw back" out of the Treasury what
they had never put into it.
The table then goes on to show the prospective operation of the
act for the remainder of the time which it has to run, and which
will include the great reductions of duty which are to take place
in 1841 and 1842; and here the results become still more striking.
Assuming the importation of each succeeding year to be the same that
it was in 1839, and the excess of the drawback over the duties will
be, for 1840, $37,343 38; for 1841, the same; for 1842, $114,693
94; and for 1843, the sum of $140,477 45. That is to say, these
refiners will receive the whole of the revenue from the sugar tax,
and these amounts in addition, for these four years; when they would
not be entitled, under an honest law, to more than the one fortieth
part of the revenue--which, in fact, is more than they received
while the law was honest. These will be the bounties payable out
of the Treasury in the present, and in the three succeeding years,
provided the importation of sugars shall be the same that it was
in 1839; but will it be the same? To this question, both reason
and experience answer in the negative. They both reply that the
importation will increase in proportion to the increased profit
which the increasing difference between the duty and the drawback
will afford; and this reply is proved by the two first columns in
the table under consideration. These columns show that, under the
encouragement to importation already afforded by the compromise
act, the import of sugar increased in six years from 1,558,971
pounds, costing $72,336, to 11,308,561 pounds, costing $554,119.
Here was an enormous increase under a small inducement compared to
that which is to follow; so that we have reason to conclude that
the importations of the present and ensuing years, unless checked
by the passage of the bill which I propose to bring in, will not
only increase in the ratio of the past years, but far beyond it;
and will in reality be limited only by the capacity of the world to
supply the demand: so great will be the inducement to import raw
or clayed sugars, and export refined. The effect upon our Treasury
must be great. Several hundred thousand dollars per annum must be
taken from it for nothing; the whole extracted from the Secretary of
the Treasury in hard money; his reports having shown us that, while
paper money, and even depreciated paper, is systematically pressed
upon the government in payment of duties, nothing but gold and
silver will be received back in payment of drawbacks. But it is not
the Treasury only that would suffer: the consumers of sugar would
come in for their share of the burden: the drawback will keep up the
price; and the home consumer must pay the drawback as well as the
government; otherwise the refined sugar will seek a foreign market.
The consumers of brown sugar will suffer in the same manner; for
the manufacturers will monopolize it, and refine it, and have their
five cents drawback, either at home or abroad. Add to all this,
it will be well if enterprising dealers shall not impose domestic
sugars upon the manufacturers, and thus convert the home crop into
an article entitled to drawback.
Such are the mischiefs of the act of 1833 in relation to this
article; they are great already, and still greater are yet to
come. As early as 1837, the whole amount of the sugar revenue, and
$861,71 besides, was delivered over to some twenty odd manufacturers
of refined sugars! At this day, the whole amount of that revenue
goes to these few individuals, and $37,343,38 besides. This is the
case this year. Henceforth they are to receive the whole amount of
this revenue, with some hundreds of thousands of dollars besides,
to be drawn from other branches of revenue, unless this bill is
passed which I propose to bring in. This is the effect of the act,
dignified with the name of compromise, and hallowed by the imputed
character of sacred and inviolable! It turns over a tax levied from
seventeen millions of people on an article of essential comfort,
and almost a necessary; it turns over this whole tax to a few
individuals; and that not being enough to satisfy their demand,
they receive the remainder from the National Treasury! It violates
the constitution to the whole extent of the excess of the drawback
over the duty. It subjects the Treasury to an unforeseen amount of
undue demands. It deprives the people of the whole benefit of the
reduction of the sugar tax, provided for by the act itself; and
subjects them to the mercies of those who may choose to monopolize
the article for refinement and exportation. The whole number of
persons into whose hands all this money and power is thrown, is,
according to a statement derived from Gov. Wolf, the late collector
of the customs at Philadelphia, no more than own the 29 sugar
refineries; the whole of which, omitting some small ones in the
West, and three in New Orleans, are situate on the north side of
Mason and Dixon's line. Members from the South and West complain
of the unequal working of our revenue system--of the large amounts
expended in the northeast--the trifle expended South and West.
But, why complain? Their own improvident and negligent legislation
makes it so. This bill alone, in only one of its items--the sugar
item--will send millions, before 1842, to the north side of that
famous line: and this bill was the concoction, and that out of
doors, of one member from the South and one more from the West.
Mr. Benton would proceed to the next article to the effect upon
which, of the compromise act, he would wish to call their attention;
and that article was imported molasses, and its manufacture, in
the shape of exported rum. On this article, and its manufacture,
the operation of the act was of the same character, though not to
the same degree, that it was on sugars; the duties were reduced,
while the drawback remained the same. This was constantly giving
drawback where no duty had been paid; and in 1842 the whole of the
molasses tax will go to these rum distillers--giving the legal
implication that they had imported all the molasses that came into
the United States, and paid duty on it--and then exported it all
in the shape of rum--leaving not a gallon to have been consumed by
the rest of the community, nor even a gallon of their own rum to
have been drank in the United States. All this is clear from the
regular operation of the compromise act, in reducing duties without
making a corresponding reduction in the drawbacks founded upon
them. But is there not to be cheating in addition to the regular
operation of the act? If not, we shall be more fortunate than we
have been heretofore, and that under the circumstances of greater
temptation. It is well known that whiskey can be converted into New
England rum, and exported as such, and receive the drawback of the
molasses duty; and that this has been done just as often as the
price of whiskey (and the meanest would answer the purpose) was
less than the cost of molasses. The process was this. Purchase base
whiskey at a low rate--filtrate it through charcoal, to deprive
it of smell and taste--then pass it through a rum distillery, in
company with a little real rum--and the whiskey would come out rum,
very fit to be sold as such at home, or exported as such, with the
benefit of drawback. All this has been done, and has been proved to
be done; and, therefore, may be done again, and certainly will be
done, under the increased temptation which the compromise act now
affords, and will continue to afford, if not amended as proposed by
the bill I propose to bring in. It was proved before a committee
of the House of Representatives in the session of 1827-8. Mr.
Jeromus Johnson, then a member of Congress from the city of New
York, now a custom-house officer in that city, testified directly
to the fact. To the question: "_Are there not large quantities of
whiskey used with molasses in the distillation of what is called New
England rum?_" He answered: "_There are:_" and that when mixed at
the rate of only four gallons to one, and the mixture run through
a rum distillery--the whiskey previously deprived of its taste
and smell by filtration through charcoal--the best practised rum
drinker could not tell the difference--even if appealed to by a
custom-house officer. That whiskey is now used for that purpose, is
clearly established by the table marked B. That table shows that
the importation of foreign molasses for the year 1839 was 392,368
gallons; and the exportation of distilled rum for that quantity
was 356,699 gallons; that is to say, nearly as many gallons of rum
went out as of molasses came in; and, admitting that a gallon of
good molasses will make a gallon of rum, yet the average is below
it. Inferior or common molasses falls short of producing gallon
for gallon by from 5 to 7-1/2 per cent. Now make an allowance for
this deficiency; allow also for the quantity of foreign molasses
consumed in the United States in other ways; allow likewise for
the quantity of rum made from molasses, and not exported, but
consumed at home: allow for these three items, and the conviction
becomes irresistible, that whiskey was used in the distillation of
rum in the year 1839, and exported with the benefit of drawback!
and that such will continue to be the case (if this blunder is not
corrected), as the duty gets lower and the temptation to export
whiskey, under the disguise of New England rum, becomes greater.
After 1842, this must be a great business, and the molasses drawback
a good profit on mean whiskey.
Putting these two items together--the sugar and the molasses
drawbacks--and some millions must be plundered from the Treasury
under the preposterous provisions of this compromise act.
CHAPTER LIV.
FISHING BOUNTIES AND ALLOWANCES, AND THEIR ABUSE: MR. BENTON'S
SPEECH: EXTRACTS.
The bill which I am asking leave to introduce, proposes to reduce
the fishing bounties and allowances in proportion to the reduction
which the salt duty has undergone, and is to undergo; and at the
threshold I am met by the question, whether these allowances are
founded upon the salt duty, and should rise and fall with it, or are
independent of that duty, and can be kept up without it? I hold the
affirmative of this question. I hold that the allowances rest upon
the duty, and upon nothing else, and that there is neither statute
law nor constitution to support them on any other foundation. This
is what I hold: but I should not have noticed the question at this
time except for the issue joined upon it between the senator from
Massachusetts who sits farthest on the other side (Mr. Davis), and
myself. He and I have made up an issue on this point; and without
going into the argument at this time, I will cite him to the
original petition from the Massachusetts legislature, asking for
a drawback of the duties, or, as they styled it, "a remission of
duties on all the dutiable articles used in the fisheries; and also
premiums and bounties:" and having shown this petition, I will point
to half a dozen acts of Congress which prove my position--hoping
that they may prove sufficient, but promising to come down upon him
with an avalanche of authorities if they are not.
The dutiable articles used in the fisheries, and of which a
remission duty was asked in the petition, were: salt, rum, tea,
sugar, molasses, coarse woollens, lines and hooks, sail-cloth,
cordage, iron, tonnage. This petition, presented to Congress in the
year 1790, was referred to the Secretary of State (Mr. Jefferson),
for a report upon it; and his report was, that a drawback of duties
ought to be allowed, and that the fisheries are not to draw support
from the Treasury; the words, "drawback of duty," only applying to
articles exported, was confined to the salt upon that part of the
fish which were shipped to foreign countries: and to this effect was
the legislation of Congress. I briefly review the first half dozen
of these acts.
1. The act of 1789--the same which imposed a duty of six cents a
bushel on salt, and which granted a bounty of five cents a barrel on
pickled fish exported, and also on beef and pork exported, and five
cents a quintal on dried fish exported--declared these bounties to
be "in lieu of a drawback of the duties imposed on the importation
of the salt employed and expended thereon." This act is decisive
of the whole question. In the first place it declares the bounty
to be in lieu of a drawback of the salt duty. In the second place,
it conforms to the principle of all drawbacks, and only grants the
bounty on the part of the fish which is exported. In the third
place, it gives the same bounty, and in the same words, to the
exporters of salted beef and pork which is given to the exporters of
fish: and certainly mariners were not expected to be created among
the raisers of swine and cattle--which negatives the idea of this
being an encouragement to the formation of seamen.
2. In 1790 the duty on salt was doubled: it was raised from six
to twelve cents a bushel: by the same act the fishing bounties
and allowances were also doubled: they were raised from five to
ten cents the barrel and the quintal. By this act the bounties
and allowances both to fish and provisions, were described to be
"in lieu of drawback of the duty on salt used in curing fish and
provisions exported."
3. The act of 1792 repeals "the bounty in lieu of drawback on dried
fish;" and, "in lieu of that, and as commutation thereof, and as an
equivalent therefor," shifts the bounty from the "quintal" of dried
fish to the "tonnage" of the fishing vessel; and changes its name
from "bounty" to "allowance." This is the key act to the present
system of tonnage allowance to the fishing vessel; and was passed
upon the petition of the fishermen, and to enable the "crew" of
the vessel to draw the bounty instead of letting it fall into the
hands of the exporting merchant. It was done upon the fishermen's
petition, and for the benefit of the crew, interested in the
adventure, and who had paid the duty on the salt which they used.
And to exclude all idea of considering this change as a change of
policy, and to cut off all inference that the allowance was now
to become a bounty from the Treasury as an encouragement for a
seaman's nursery, the act went on to make this precise and explicit
declaration: "_That the allowance so granted to the fishing vessel
was a commutation of, and an equivalent for, the bounty in lieu of
drawback of the duties imposed on the importation of the salt used
in curing the fish exported._" This is plain language--the plain
language used by legislators of that day--and defies misconception,
misunderstanding, or cavil.
4. In 1797 the duty on salt was raised from twelve cents to twenty
cents a bushel: by the same act a corresponding increase was made in
the bounties both to exported salted provisions and pickled fish,
and in the allowance to the fishing vessels. The salt duty was
raised one-third and a fraction: and these bounties and allowances
were raised one-third. Thirty-three and one-third per cent. was
added all round; and the act, to make all sure, was express in again
declaring the bounties and allowances to be a commutation in lieu of
the drawback of the salt duty.
5. The act of April 12th, 1800, continues the salt duty, and with it
all the bounties to salted provisions and pickled fish exported, and
all the allowances to fishing vessels, for ten years; and then adds
this proviso: "That these allowances shall not be understood to be
continued for a longer time than the correspondent duties on salt,
respectively, for which the said allowances were granted, shall be
payable." Such are the terms of the act of the year 1800. It is
a clincher. It nails up, and crushes every thing. It shows that
Congress was determined that the salt duty, and the bounties and
allowances, should be one and indivisible: that they should come,
and go together--should rise and fall together--should live and die
together.
6. In 1807, Mr. Jefferson being President, the salt tax was
abolished upon his recommendation: and with it all the bounties and
allowances to fishing vessels, to pickled fish, and to salted beef
and pork were all swept away. The same act abolished the whole.
The first section repealed the salt duty: the second repealed the
bounties and allowances: and the repeal of both was to take effect
on the same day--namely, on the first day of January, 1808: a day
which deserves to be nationally commemorated, as the day of the
death of an odious, criminal and impious tax. The beneficent and
meritorious act was in these words: "_That from and after the
first day of January next, so much of any act as allows a bounty
on exported salt provisions and pickled fish, in lieu of drawback
of the duties on the salt employed in curing the same, and so
much of any act as makes allowances to the owners and crews of
fishing vessels, in lieu of drawback of the duties paid on the salt
used in the same, shall be, and the same hereby is repealed._"
This was the end of the first salt tax in the United States, and
of all the bounties and allowances built upon it. It fell, with
all its accessories, under the republican administration of Mr.
Jefferson--and with the unanimous vote of every republican--and also
with the vote of many federalists: so much more favorable were the
old federalists than the whigs of this day, to the interests of the
people. In fact there were only five votes against the repeal, and
not one of these upon the ground that the bounties and allowances
were independent of the salt duty.
7. After this, and for six years, there was no salt tax--no fishing
bounties or allowances in the United States. The tax, and its
progeny lay buried in one common grave, and had no resurrection
until the year 1813. The war with Great Britain revived them--the
tax and its offspring together; but only as a temporary measure--as
a war tax--to cease within one year after the termination of the
war. Before that year was out, the tax, and its appendages were
continued--not for any determinate period, but until repealed by
Congress. They have not been repealed yet! and that was forty years
ago! No act could then have been obtained to continue this duty
for the short space of three years. The continuance could only be
obtained on the argument that Congress could then repeal it at any
time; a fallacious reliance, but always seductive to men of easy and
temporizing temperaments.
The pretension that these fishing bounties and allowances were
granted as encouragement to mariners, is rejected by every word
of the acts which grant them, and by the striking fact, that no
part of them goes to the whale fisheries. Not a cent of them had
ever gone to a whale ship: they had only gone to the cod and
mackerel fisheries. The noble whaler of four or five hundred
tons, with her ample crew, which sailed twenty thousand miles,
doubling a most tempestuous cape before she arrived at the field
of her labors--which remained out three years, waging actual war
with the monsters of the deep--a war in which a brave heart,
a steady eye, and an iron nerve were as much wanted as in any
battle with man;--this noble whaler got nothing. It all went to
the hook-and-line men--to the cod and mackerel fisheries, which
were carried on in diminutive vessels, as small as five tons, and
in the rivers, and along the shores, and on the shallow banks of
Newfoundland. Meritorious as these hook-and-line fishermen might be,
they cannot compare with the whalers: and these whalers receive no
bounties and allowances because they pay no duty on imported salt,
re-exported by them.
I now come to the clause in my bill which has called forth these
preliminary remarks; the third clause, which proposes the reduction
of fishing bounties and allowances in proportion to the reduction
which the salt tax has undergone, and shall undergo. And here, it
is not the compromise act alone that is to be blamed: a previous
act shares that censure with it. In 1830 the salt duty was reduced
one-half, to take effect in 1830 and 1831; the fishing bounties
and allowances should have been reduced one-half at the same time.
I made the motion in the Senate to that effect; but it failed of
success. When the compromise act was passed in 1833, and provided
for a further reduction of the salt duty--a reduction which has
now reduced it two-thirds, and in 1841 and '42 will reduce it
still lower--when this act was passed, a reduction of the fishing
bounties and allowances should have taken place. The two senators
who concocted that act in their chambers, and brought it here to be
registered as the royal edicts were registered in the times of the
old French monarchy; when these two senators concocted this act,
they should have inserted a provision in it for the correspondent
reduction of the fishing bounties and allowances with the salt tax:
they should have placed these allowances, and the refined sugar,
and the rum drawbacks, all on the same footing, and reduced them
all in proportion to the reduction of the duties on the articles
on which they were founded. They did not do this. They omitted the
whole; with what mischief you have already seen in the case of
rum and refined sugar, and shall presently see in the case of the
fishing bounties and allowances. I attempted to supply a part of
their omission in making the motion in relation to drawbacks, which
was read to you at the commencement of these remarks. Failing in
that motion, I made no further attempt, but waited for TIME, the
great arbiter of all questions, to show the mischief, and to enforce
the remedy. That arbiter is now here, with his proofs in his hand,
in the shape of certain reports from the Treasury Department in
relation to the salt duty and the fishing bounties and allowances,
which have been printed by the order of the Senate, and constitute
part of the salt document, No. 196. From that document I now
proceed to collect the evidences of one branch of the mischief--the
pecuniary branch of it--which the omission to make the proper
reductions in these allowances has inflicted upon the country.
The salt duty was reduced one-fourth in the year 1831; the fishing
bounties and allowances that year were $313,894; they should have
been reduced one-fourth also, which would have made them about
$160,000. In 1832 the duty was reduced one-half; the fishing
bounties and allowances were paid in full, and amounted to $234,137;
they should have been reduced one-half; and then $117,018 would have
discharged them. The compromise act was made in 1833, and, under
the operation of that act, the salt duty has undergone biennial
reductions, until it is now reduced to about one-third of its
original amount: if it had provided for the correspondent reduction
of the fishing bounties and allowances, there would have been saved
from that year to the year 1839--the last to which the returns have
been made up--an annual average sum of about $150,000, or a gross
sum of about $900,000. The prospective loss can only be estimated;
but it is to increase rapidly, owing to the large reductions in the
salt duty in the years 1841 and 1842.
The present year, 1840, lacks but a little of exhausting the whole
amount of the salt revenue in paying the fishing bounties and
allowances; the next year will take more than the whole; and the
year after will require about double the amount of the salt revenue
of that year to be taken from other branches of the revenue to
satisfy the demands of the fishing vessels: thus producing the same
result as in the case of the sugar duties--the whole amount of the
salt duty, and as much more out of other duties, being paid to the
cod and mackerel fishermen, as the whole amount of the sugar tax,
and considerably more, is paid to the sugar-refiners. The results
for the present year, and the ensuing ones, are of course computed:
they are computations founded upon the basis of the last ascertained
year's operations. The last year to which all the heads of this
branch of business is made up, is the year 1838; and for that year
they stand thus: Salt imported, in round numbers, seven millions of
bushels; net revenue from it, about $430,000; fishing bounties and
allowances, $320,000. Assuming the importation of the present year
to be the same, and the bounties and allowances to be the same,
the loss to the Treasury will be $206,000; for the salt duty this
year will undergo a further reduction. In 1842, when this duty has
reached its lowest point, the whole amount of revenue derived from
it is computed at about $170,000, while the fishing bounties and
allowances continuing the same, namely, about $320,000, the salt
revenue in the gross will be little more than half enough to pay
it; and, after deducting the weighers' and measurers' fees, which
come out of the Treasury, and amount to $52,500 on an importation
of seven millions; after deducting this item, there will be a
deficiency of about $200,000 in the salt revenue, in meeting the
drawbacks, in the shape of bounties and allowances founded upon it.
Thus two-thirds of the whole amount of the salt revenue is at this
time paid to the fishing vessels. Next year it will all go to them;
and after 1842, we shall have to raise money from other sources to
the amount of $200,000 per annum, or raise the salt duty itself to
produce that amount, in order to satisfy these drawbacks, which were
permitted to take the form of bounties and allowances to fishing
vessels. Such is the operation of the compromise act! that act which
is styled sacred and inviolable!
Of the other mischiefs resulting from this compromise act, which
reduced the duties on salt, and the one which preceded it for the
same purpose, without reducing the correspondent bounties and
allowances to the fishing interest--of these remaining mischiefs,
whereof there are many, I mean to mention but one; and merely
to mention that, and not to argue it. It is the constitutional
objection to the payment of any thing beyond the duty received--the
payment of any thing which exceeds the drawback of the duty. Up to
that point, I admit the constitutionality of drawbacks, whether
passing under that name, or changed to the name of a bounty, or an
allowance in lieu of a drawback. I admit the constitutional right
of Congress to permit a drawback of the amount paid in: I deny the
constitutional right to permit a drawback of any amount beyond what
was paid in. This is my position, which I pledge myself to maintain,
if any one disputes it; and applying this principle to the fishing
bounties and allowances, and also to the drawbacks in the case of
refined sugars and rum: and I boldly affirm that the constitution of
the United States has been in a state of flagrant violation, under
the compromise act, from the day of its passage to the present hour,
and will continue so until the bill is passed which I am about to
ask leave to bring in.
Sir, I quit this part of my subject with presenting, in a single
picture, the condensed view of what I have been detailing. It
is, that the whole annual revenue derived from sugar, salt, and
molasses, is delivered over gratuitously to a few thousand persons
in a particular section of the Union, and is not even sufficient to
satisfy their demands! In other words, that a tax upon a nation
of seventeen millions of people, upon three articles of universal
consumption, articles of necessity, and of comfort, is laid for the
benefit of a few dozen rum distillers and sugar refiners, and a few
thousand fishermen; and not being sufficient for them, the deficit,
amounting to many hundred thousand dollars per annum, is taken from
other branches of the revenue, and presented to them! and all this
the effect of an act which was made out of doors, which was not
permitted to be amended on its passage, and which is now held to
be sacred and inviolable! and which will eventually sink under its
own iniquities, though sustained now by a cry which was invented
by knavery, and is repeated by ignorance, folly, and faction--a
cry that that compromise saved the Union. This is the picture I
present--which I prove to be true--and the like of which is not to
be seen in the legislation, or even in the despotic decrees, of
arbitrary monarchs, in any other country upon the face of the earth.
About five millions of dollars have been taken from the Treasury
under these bounties and allowances--the greater part of it most
unduly and abusefully.[3] The fishermen are only entitled to an
amount equal to the duty paid on the imported salt, which is
used upon that part of the fish which is exported; and the law
requires not only the exportation to be proved, but the landing and
remaining of the cargo in a foreign country. They draw back this
year $355,000. Do they pay that amount of duty on the salt put on
the modicum of fish which they export? Why, it is about the entire
amount of the whole salt tax paid by the whole United States! and to
justify their right to it, they must consume on the exported part
of their fish the whole quantity of foreign salt now imported into
the United States--leaving not a handful to be used by the rest of
the population, or by themselves on that part of their fish which
is consumed at home--and which is so much greater than the exported
part. This shows the enormity of the abuse, and that the whole
amount of the salt tax now goes to a few thousand fishermen; and if
this compromise act is not corrected, that whole amount, after 1842,
will not be sufficient to pay this small class--not equal in number
to the farmers in a common Kentucky county; and other money must be
taken out of the Treasury to make good the deficiency. I have often
attempted to get rid of the whole evil, and render a great service
to the country, by repealing _in toto_ the tax and all the bounties
and allowances erected upon it. At present I only propose, and that
without the least prospect of success, to correct a part of the
abuse, by reducing the payments to the fishermen in proportion to
the reduction of the duty on salt: but the true remedy is the one
applied under Mr. Jefferson's administration--total repeal of both.
[3] About four and a quarter millions taken since; and still taking.
CHAPTER LV.
EXPENDITURES OF THE GOVERNMENT.
At no point does the working of the government more seriously claim
the attention of statesmen than at that of its expenses. It is the
tendency of all governments to increase their expenses, and it
should be the care of all statesmen to restrain them within the
limits of a judicious economy. This obligation was felt as a duty
in the early periods of our history, and the doctrine of _economy_
became a principle in the political faith of the party, which,
whether called Republican as formerly, or Democratic as now, is
still the same, and was incorporated in its creed. Mr. Jefferson
largely rested the character of his administration upon it; and
deservedly: for even in the last year of his administration,
and after the enlargement of our territory by the acquisition
of Louisiana, the expenses of the government were but about
three millions and a half of dollars. At the end of Mr. Monroe's
administration, sixteen years later, they had risen to about
seven millions; and in the last year of Mr. Van Buren's (sixteen
years more), they had risen to about thirteen millions. At the
same time, at each of these epochs, and in fact, in every year of
every administration, there were payments from the Treasury for
extraordinary or temporary objects, often far exceeding in amount
the regular governmental expenses. Thus, in the last year of Mr.
Jefferson, the whole outlay from the Treasury, was about twelve
millions and a half; of which eight millions went to the payment of
principal and interest on the public debt, and about one million to
other extra objects. And in the last year of Mr. Monroe, the whole
payments were about thirty-two millions of dollars, of which sixteen
millions and a half went to the liquidation of the public debt;
and above eight millions more to other extraordinary and temporary
objects. Towards the close of Mr. Van Buren's administration, this
aggregate of outlay for all objects had risen to about thirty-seven
millions, which the opposition called thirty-nine; and presenting
this gross sum as the actual expenses of the government, made a
great outcry against the extravagance of the administration; and
the people, not understanding the subject, were seriously impressed
with the force and truth of that accusation, while the real expenses
were but about the one-third of that sum. To present this result
in a plain and authentic form, the author of this View obtained a
call upon the Secretary for the different payments, ordinary and
extraordinary, from the Treasury for a series of years, in which
the payments would be placed under three heads--the ordinary, the
extraordinary, and the public debt--specifying the items of each;
and extending from Monroe's time (admitted to be economical), to
Mr. Van Buren's charged with extravagance. This return was made by
the Secretary, divided into three columns, with specifications, as
required; and though obtained for a temporary and transient purpose,
it possesses a permanent interest as giving a complete view of the
financial working of the government, and fixing points of comparison
in the progress of expenditure--very proper to be looked back upon
by those who would hold the government to some degree of economy
in the use of the public money. There has been no such examination
since the year 1840: there would seem to be room for it now (1855),
when the aggregate of appropriations exceed seventy millions of
dollars. A deduction for extraordinaries would largely reduce that
aggregate, but still leave enough behind to astound the lovers of
economy. Three branches of expenditure alone, each within itself,
exceeds by upwards of four to one, the whole ordinary expenses of
the government in the time of Mr. Jefferson; and upwards of double
of such expense in the time of Mr. Monroe; and some millions more
than the same aggregate in the last year of Mr. Van Buren. These
three branches are, 1. The civil, diplomatic, and miscellaneous,
$17,265,929 and 50 cents. 2. The naval service (without the pensions
and "reserved" list), $15,012,091 and 53 cents. 3. The army,
fortifications, military academy (without the pensions), $12,571,496
and 64 cents. These three branches of expenditure alone would
amount to about forty-five millions of dollars--to which twenty-six
millions more are to be added. The dormant spirit of economy--hoped
to be only dormant, not dead--should wake up at this exhibition of
the public expenditure: and it is with that view--with the view
of engaging the attention of some economical members of Congress,
that the exhibit is now made--that this chapter is written--and
some regard invoked for the subject of which it treats. The evils
of extravagance in the government are great. Besides the burden
upon the people, it leads to corruption in the government, and
to a janissary horde of office holders to live upon the people
while polluting their elections and legislation, and poisoning the
fountains of public information in moulding public opinion to their
own purposes. More than that. It is the true source of the just
discontent of the Southern States, and must aggravate more and more
the deep-seated complaint against the unnecessary levy of revenue
upon the industry of one half of the Union to be chiefly expended
in the other. That complaint was great enough to endanger the Union
twenty-five years ago, when the levy and expenditure was thirty odd
millions: it is now seventy odd! At the same time it is the opinion
of this writer, that a practical man, acquainted with the objects
for which the federal government was created, and familiar with its
financial working from the time its fathers put it into operation,
could take his pen and cross out nearly the one half of these
seventy odd millions, and leave the government in full vigor for all
its proper objects, and more pure, by reducing the number of those
who live upon the substance of the people. To complete the effect
of this chapter, some extracts are given in the ensuing one, from
the speech made in 1840, upon the expenditures of the government, as
presenting practical views upon a subject of permanent interest, and
more worthy of examination now than then.
CHAPTER LVI.
EXPENSES OF THE GOVERNMENT, COMPARATIVE AND PROGRESSIVE, AND
SEPARATED FROM EXTRAORDINARIES.
Mr. Benton moved to print an extra number of these tabular
statements received from the Secretary of the Treasury, and proposed
to give his reasons for the motion, and for that purpose, asked
that the papers should be sent to him (which was done); and Mr. B.
went on to say that his object was to spread before the country,
in an authentic form, the full view of all the government expenses
for a series of years past, going back as far as Mr. Monroe's
administration; and thereby enabling every citizen, in every
part of the country, to see the actual, the comparative, and the
classified expenditures of the government for the whole period. This
proceeding had become necessary, Mr. B. said, from the systematic
efforts made for some years past, to impress the country with the
belief that the expenditures had increased threefold in the last
twelve years--that they had risen from thirteen to thirty-nine
millions of dollars; and that this enormous increase was the effect
of the extravagance, of the corruption, and of the incompetency
of the administrations which had succeeded those of Mr. Adams and
Mr. Monroe. These two latter administrations were held up as the
models of economy; those of Mr. Van Buren and General Jackson were
stigmatized as monsters of extravagance; and tables of figures
were so arranged as to give color to the characters attributed to
each. These systematic efforts--this reiterated assertion, made on
this floor, of _thirteen_ millions increased to _thirty-nine_--and
the effect which such statements must have upon the minds of those
who cannot see the purposes for which the money was expended,
appeared to him (Mr. B.), to require some more formal and authentic
refutation than any one individual could give--something more
imposing than the speech of a solitary member could afford. Familiar
with the action of the government for twenty years past--coming
into the Senate in the time of Mr. Monroe--remaining in it ever
since--a friend to economy in public and in private life--and
closely scrutinizing the expenditures of the government during the
whole time--he (Mr. B.) felt himself to be very able at any time to
have risen in his place, and to have exposed the delusion of this
_thirteen_ and _thirty-nine_ million bugbear; and, if he did not do
so, it was because, in the first place, he was disinclined to bandy
contradictions on the floor of the Senate; and, in the second place,
because he relied upon the intelligence of the country to set all
right whenever they obtained a view of the facts. This view he had
made himself the instrument of procuring, and the Secretary of the
Treasury had now presented it. It was ready for the contemplation
of the American people; and he could wish every citizen to have
the picture in his own hands, that he might contemplate it at his
own fireside, and at his full leisure. He could wish every citizen
to possess a copy of this report, now received from the Secretary
of the Treasury, under the call of the Senate, and printed by its
order; he could wish every citizen to possess one of these authentic
copies, bearing the _imprimatur_ of the American Senate; but that
was impossible; and, limiting his action to what was possible, he
would propose to print such number of extra copies as would enable
some to reach every quarter of the Union.
Mr. B. then opened the tables, and explained their character and
contents. The first one (marked A) consisted of three columns,
and exhibited the aggregate, and the classified expenditures of
the government from the year 1824 to 1839, inclusive; the second
one (marked B) contained the detailed statement of the payments
annually made on account of all temporary or extraordinary objects,
including the public debt, for the same period. The second table was
explanatory of the third column of the first one; and the two, taken
together, would enable every citizen to see the actual expenditures,
and the comparative expenditures, of the government for the whole
period which he had mentioned.
Mr. B. then examined the actual and the comparative expenses of
two of the years, taken from the two contrasted periods referred
to, and invoked the attention of the Senate to the results which
the comparison would exhibit. He took the first and the last of
the years mentioned in the tables--the years 1824 and 1839--and
began with the first item in the first column. This showed the
aggregate expenditures for every object for the year 1824, to have
been $31,898,538 47--very near thirty-two millions of dollars, said
Mr. B., and if stated alone, and without explanation, very capable
of astonishing the public, of imposing upon the ignorant, and of
raising a cry against the dreadful extravagance, the corruption,
and the wickedness of Mr. Monroe's administration. Taken by itself
(and indisputably true it is in itself), and this aggregate of
near thirty-two millions is very sufficient to effect all this
surprise and indignation in the public mind; but, passing on to the
second column to see what were the expenditures, independent of the
public debt, and this large aggregate will be found to be reduced
more than one half; it sinks to $15,330,144 71. This is a heavy
deduction; but it is not all. Passing on to the third column, and
it is seen that the actual expenses of the government for permanent
and ordinary objects, independent of the temporary and extraordinary
ones, for this same year, were only $7,107,892 05; being less than
the one-fourth part of the aggregate of near thirty-two millions.
This looks quite reasonable, and goes far towards relieving Mr.
Monroe's administration from the imputation to which a view of the
aggregate expenditure for the year would have subjected it. But,
to make it entirely satisfactory, and to enable every citizen to
understand the important point of the government expenditures--a
point on which the citizens of a free and representative government
should be always well informed--to attain this full satisfaction,
let us pass on to the second table (marked B), and fix our eyes
on its first column, under the year 1824. We shall there find
every temporary and extraordinary object, and the amount paid on
account of it, the deduction of which reduced an aggregate of near
thirty-two millions to a fraction over seven millions. We shall
there find the explanation of the difference between the first and
third columns. The first item is the sum of $16,568,393 76, paid on
account of the principal and interest of the public debt. The second
is the sum of $4,891,386 56, paid to merchants for indemnities under
the treaty with Spain of 1819, by which we acquired Florida. And
so on through nine minor items, amounting in the whole, exclusive
of the public debt, to about eight millions and a quarter. This
total added to the sum paid on account of the public debt, makes
close upon twenty-five millions of dollars; and this, deducted from
the aggregate of near thirty-two millions, leaves a fraction over
seven millions for the real expenses of the government--the ordinary
and permanent expenses--during the last year of Mr. Monroe's
administration.
This is certainly a satisfactory result. It exempts the
administration of that period from the imputation of extravagance,
which the unexplained exhibition of the aggregate expenditures might
have drawn upon it in the minds of uninformed persons. It clears
that administration from all blame. It must be satisfactory to every
candid mind. And now let us apply the test of the same examination
to some year of the present administration, now so incontinently
charged with ruinous extravagance. Let us see how the same rule will
work when applied to the present period; and, for that purpose,
let us take the last year in the table, that of 1839. Let others
take any year that they please, or as many as they please: I take
one, because I only propose to give an example; and I take the last
one in the table, because it is the last. Let us proceed with this
examination, and see what the results, actual and comparative, will
be.
Commencing with the aggregate payments from the Treasury for all
objects, Mr. B. said it would be seen at the foot of the first
column in the first table, that they amounted to $37,129,396 80;
passing to the second column, and it would be seen that this sum was
reduced to $25,982,797 75; and passing to the third, and it would be
seen that this latter sum was itself reduced to $13,525,800 18; and,
referring to the second table, under the year 1839, and it would
be seen how this aggregate of thirty-seven millions was reduced
to thirteen and a half. It was a great reduction; a reduction of
nearly two-thirds from the aggregate amount paid out; and left for
the proper expenses of the government--its ordinary and permanent
expenses--an inconceivably small sum for a great nation of seventeen
millions of souls, covering an immense extent of territory, and
acting a part among the great powers of the world. To trace this
reduction--to show the reasons of the difference between the first
and the third columns, Mr. B. would follow the same process which
he had pursued in explaining the expenditures of the year 1824, and
ask for nothing in one case which had not been granted in the other.
1. The first item to be deducted from the thirty-seven million
aggregate, was the sum of $11,146,599 05, paid on account of the
public debt. He repeated, on account of the public debt; for it was
paid in redemption of Treasury notes; and these Treasury notes were
so much debt incurred to supply the place of the revenue deposited
with the States, in 1836, or shut up in banks during the suspension
of 1837, or due from merchants, to whom indulgence had been granted.
To supply the place of these unattainable funds, the government went
in debt by issuing Treasury notes; but faithful to the sentiment
which abhorred a national debt, it paid off the debt almost as fast
as it contracted it. Above eleven millions of this debt was paid
in 1839, amounting to almost the one-third part of the aggregate
expenditure of that year; and thus, nearly the one-third part of the
sum which is charged upon the administration as extravagance and
corruption, was a mere payment of debt!--a mere payment of Treasury
notes which we had issued to supply the place of our misplaced
and captured revenue--our three instalments of ten millions cash
presented to the States under the false and fraudulent name of a
deposit, and our revenue of 1837 captured by the banks when they
shut their doors upon their creditors. The glorious administration
of President Jackson left the country free from public debt: its
worthy successor will do the same.
Removal of Indians from the Southern and Western States, and
extinction of their titles, and numerous smaller items, all
specified in the third column of the table, amount to about twelve
millions and a half more; and these added to the payments on the
public debt, the remainder is the expense of the government, and is
but about the one-third of the aggregate expenditure--to be precise,
about thirteen millions and a half.
With this view of the tabular statements Mr. B. closed the
examination of the items of expenditure, and stated the results to
be a reduction of the thirty-seven million aggregate in 1839, like
that of the thirty-two million aggregate in 1824, to about one-third
of its amount. The very first item, that of the payment of public
debt in the redemption of Treasury notes, reduced it eleven millions
of dollars: it sunk it from thirty-seven millions to twenty-six.
The other eighteen items amounted to $12,656,977, and reduced the
twenty-six millions to thirteen and a half. Here then is a result
which is attained by the same process which applies to the year
1824, and to every other year, and which is right in itself; and
which must put to flight and to shame all the attempts to excite the
country with this bugbear story of extravagance. In the first place
the aggregate expenditures have not increased threefold in fifteen
years; they have not risen from thirteen to thirty-nine millions,
as incontinently asserted by the opposition; but from thirty-two
millions to thirty-seven or thirty-nine. And how have they risen? By
paying last year eleven millions for Treasury notes, and more than
twelve millions for Indian lands, and wars, removals of Indians, and
increase of the army and navy, and other items as enumerated. The
result is a residuum of thirteen and a half millions for the real
expenses of the government; a sum one and a half millions short of
what gentlemen proclaim would be an economical expenditure. They all
say that fifteen millions would be an economical expenditure; very
well! here is thirteen and a half! which is a million and a half
short of that mark.
CHAPTER LVII.
DEATH OF MR. JUSTICE BARBOUR OF THE SUPREME COURT, AND
APPOINTMENT OF PETER V. DANIEL, ESQ., IN HIS PLACE.
Mr. Phillip P. Barbour was a representative in Congress from
the State of Virginia when I was first elected to the Senate in
1820. I had the advantage--(for advantage I truly deemed it for
a young member)--to be in habitual society with such a man--one
of the same mess with him the first session of my service. Nor
was it accidental, but sought for on my part. It was a talented
mess--among others the brilliant orator, William Pinkney of
Maryland; and the eloquent James Barbour, of the Senate, brother
to the representative: their cousin the representative John S.
Barbour, equal to either in the endowments of the mind: Floyd of
Virginia: Trimble and Clay of Kentucky. I knew the advantage of
such association--and cherished it. From that time I was intimate
with Mr. Phillip P. Barbour during the twenty-one winters which
his duties, either as representative in Congress, or justice of
the Supreme Court, required him to be at Washington. He was a man
worthy of the best days of the republic--modest, virtuous, pure:
artless as a child: full of domestic affections: patriotic: filially
devoted to Virginia as his mother State, and a friend to the Union
from conviction and sentiment. He had a clear mind--a close, logical
and effective method of speaking--copious without diffusion; and,
always speaking to the subject, both with knowledge and sincerity,
he was always listened to with favor. He was some time Speaker of
the House, and was appointed to the bench of the Supreme Court
by President Van Buren in 1837, in place of Mr. Justice Duval,
resigned. He had the death which knows no pain, and which, to the
body, is sleep without waking. He was in attendance upon the Supreme
Court, in good health and spirits, and had done his part the night
before in one of the conferences which the labors of the Supreme
Bench impose almost nightly on the learned judges. In the morning he
was supposed by his servant to be sleeping late, and, finally going
to his bedside, found him dead--the face all serene and composed,
not a feature or muscle disturbed, the body and limbs in their easy
natural posture. It was evident that the machinery of life had
stopped of itself, and without a shock. Ossification of the heart
was supposed to be the cause. He was succeeded on the Supreme Bench
by Peter V. Daniel, Esq., of the same State, also appointed by Mr.
Van Buren--one in the first, the other in the last days of his
administration.
A beautiful instance in Mr. Barbour of self-denial, and of fidelity
to party and to personal friendship, and regard for honor and
decorum, occurred while he was a member of the House. Mr. Randolph
was in the Senate: the time for his re-election came round: he
had some personal enemies in his own party, who, joined to the
whig party, could defeat him: and it was a high object with the
administration at Washington (that of Mr. Adams), to have him
defeated. The disaffected and the opposition combined together,
counted their numbers, ascertained their strength, and saw that they
could dispose of the election; but only in favor of some one of the
same party with Mr. Randolph. They offered the place to Mr. Barbour.
It was the natural ascent in the gradation of his appointments; and
he desired it; and, it may be said, the place desired him: for he
was a man to adorn the chamber of the American Senate. But honor
forbid; for with him Burns's line was a law of his nature: _Where
you feel your honor grip, let that still be your border._ He was
the personal and political friend of Mr. Randolph, and would not be
used against him; and sent an answer to the combined parties which
put an end to their solicitations. Mr. John Tyler, then governor of
the State, and standing in the same relation with Mr. Barbour to Mr.
Randolph, was then offered the place: and took it. It was his first
step in the road to the whig camp; where he arrived eventually--and
lodged, until elected out of it into the vice-presidential chair.
Judge Barbour was a Virginia country gentleman, after the most
perfect model of that most respectable class--living on his ample
estate, baronially, with his family, his slaves, his flocks and
herds--all well cared for by himself, and happy in his care.
A farmer by position, a lawyer by profession, a politician of
course--dividing his time between his estate, his library, his
professional, and his public duties--scrupulously attentive to
his duties in all: and strict in that school of politics of which
Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, John Taylor of Caroline, Mr. Monroe,
Mr. Macon, and others, were the great exemplars. A friend to
order and economy in his private life, he carried the same noble
qualities into his public stations, and did his part to administer
the government with the simplicity and purity which its founders
intended for it.
CHAPTER LVIII.
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
Mr. Van Buren was the democratic candidate. His administration
had been so acceptable to his party, that his nomination in a
convention was a matter of form, gone through according to custom,
but the result commanded by the party in the different States in
appointing their delegates. Mr. Richard M. Johnson, the actual
Vice-President, was also nominated for re-election; and both
nominations were made in conformity to the will of the people who
sent the delegates. On the part of the whigs the same nominations
were made as in the election of 1836--General William Henry Harrison
of Ohio, for President; and Mr. John Tyler of Virginia, for
Vice-President. The leading statesmen of the whig party were again
passed by to make room for a candidate more sure of being elected.
The success of General Jackson had turned the attention of those who
managed the presidential nominations to military men, and an "odor
of gunpowder" was considered a sufficient attraction to rally the
masses, without the civil qualifications, or the actual military
fame which General Jackson possessed. Availability, to use their
own jargon, was the only ability which these managers asked--that
is, available for the purposes of the election, and for their own
advancement, relying on themselves to administer the government. Mr.
Clay, the prominent man, and the undisputed head of the party, was
not deemed available; and it was determined to set him aside. How to
do it was the question. He was a man of too much power and spirit to
be rudely thrust aside. Gentle, and respectful means were necessary
to get him out of the way; and for that purpose he was concertedly
importuned to withdraw from the canvass. He would not do so, but
wrote a letter submitting himself to the will of the convention.
When he did so he certainly expected an open decision--a vote in
open convention--every delegate acting responsibly, and according to
the will of his constituents. Not so the fact. He submitted himself
to the convention: the convention delivered him to a committee: the
committee disposed of him in a back chamber. It devised a process
for getting at a result, which is a curiosity in the chapter of
ingenious inventions--which is a study for the complication of its
machinery--a model contrivance of the few to govern many--a secure
way to produce an intended result without showing the design, and
without leaving a trace behind to show what was done: and of which
none but itself can be its own delineator: and, therefore, here it
is:
"_Ordered_, That the delegates from each State be requested to
assemble as a delegation, and appoint a committee, not exceeding
three in number, to receive the views and opinions of such
delegation, and communicate the same to the assembled committees
of all the delegations, to be by them respectively reported to
their principals; and that thereupon the delegates from each
State be requested to assemble as a delegation, and ballot for
candidates for the offices of President and Vice-President,
and having done so, to commit the ballot designating the votes
of each candidate, and by whom given, to its committee; and
thereupon all the committees shall assemble and compare the
several ballots, and report the result of the same to their
several delegations, together with such facts as may bear upon
the nomination; and said delegation shall forthwith re-assemble
and ballot again for candidates for the above offices, and
again commit the result to the above committees, and if it
shall appear that a majority of the ballots are for any one man
for candidate for President, said committee shall report the
result to the convention for its consideration; but if there
shall be no such majority, then the delegations shall repeat
the balloting until such a majority shall be obtained, and then
report the same to the convention for its consideration. That
the vote of a majority of each delegation shall be reported
as the vote of that State; and each State represented here
shall vote its full electoral vote by such delegation in the
committee."
As this View of the Thirty Years is intended to show the working
of our political system, and how things _were_ done still more
than _what_ was done; and as the election of chief magistrate is
the highest part of that working; and as the party nomination of
a presidential candidate is the election of that candidate so far
as the party is concerned: in all these points of view, the device
of this resolution becomes historical, and commends itself to the
commentators upon our constitution. The people are to elect the
President. Here is a process through multiplied filtrations by which
the popular sentiment is to be deduced from the masses, collected
in little streams, then united in one swelling current, and poured
into the hall of the convention--no one seeing the source, or
course of any one of the streams. Algebra and alchemy must have
been laid under contribution to work out a quotient from such a
combination of signs and symbols. But it was done. Those who set
the sum could work it: and the quotient was political death to Mr.
Clay. The result produced was--for General Scott, 16 votes: for Mr.
Clay, 90 votes: for General Harrison, 148 votes. And as the law
of these conventions swallows up all minorities in an ascertained
majority, so the majority for General Harrison swallowed up the 106
votes given to Mr. Clay and General Scott, made them count for the
victor, presenting him as the unanimity candidate of the convention,
and the defeated candidate and all their friends bound to join in
his support. And in this way the election of 1840 was effected! a
process certainly not within the purview of those framers of the
constitution, who supposed they were giving to a nation the choice
of its own chief magistrate.
From the beginning it had been foreseen that there was to be an
embittered contest--the severest ever known in our country. Two
powers were in the field against Mr. Van Buren, each strong within
itself, and truly formidable when united--the whole whig party,
and the large league of suspended banks, headed by the Bank of the
United States--now criminal as well as bankrupt, and making its
last struggle for a new national charter in the effort to elect
a President friendly to it. In elections as in war money is the
sinew of the contest, and the broken and suspended banks were in
a condition, and a temper, to furnish that sinew without stint.
By mutual support they were able to make their notes pass as
money; and, not being subject to redemption, it could be furnished
without restraint, and with all the good will of a self-interest
in putting down the democratic party, whose hard-money policy,
and independent treasury scheme, presented it as an enemy to
paper money and delinquent banks. The influence of this moneyed
power over its debtors, over presses, over travelling agents, was
enormous, and exerted to the uttermost, and in amounts of money
almost fabulous; and in ways not dreamed of. The mode of operating
divided itself into two general classes, one coercive--addressed to
the business pursuits and personal interests of the community: the
other seductive, and addressed to its passions. The phrases given
out in Congress against the financial policy of the administration
became texts to speak upon, and hints to act upon. Carrying out the
idea that the re-election of Mr. Van Buren would be the signal
for the downfall of all prices, the ruin of all industry, and
the destruction of all labor, the newspapers in all the trading
districts began to abound with such advertisements as these: "_The
subscriber will pay six dollars a barrel for flour if Harrison is
elected, and three dollars if Van Buren is._" "_The subscriber
will pay five dollars a hundred for pork if Harrison is elected,
and two and a half if Van Buren is._" And so on through the whole
catalogue of marketable articles, and through the different kinds
of labor: and these advertisements were signed by respectable men,
large dealers in the articles mentioned, and well able to fix the
market price for them. In this way the result of the election was
brought to bear coercively upon the business, the property, and
the pecuniary interest of the people. The class of inducements
addressed to the passions and imaginations of the people were such
as history blushes to record. Log-cabins, coonskins, and hard cider
were taken as symbols of the party, and to show its identification
with the poorest and humblest of the people: and these cabins were
actually raised in the most public parts of the richest cities,
ornamented with coonskins after the fashion of frontier huts, and
cider drank in them out of gourds in the public meetings which
gathered about them: and the virtues of these cabins, these skins,
and this cider were celebrated by travelling and stationary orators.
The whole country was put into commotion by travelling parties
and public gatherings. Steamboats and all public conveyances were
crowded with parties singing doggerel ballads made for the occasion,
accompanied with the music of drums, fifes, and fiddles; and incited
by incessant speaking. A system of public gatherings was got up
which pervaded every State, county and town--which took place by
day and by night, accompanied by every preparation to excite; and
many of which gatherings were truly enormous in their numbers--only
to be estimated by the acre; attempts at counting or computing such
masses being out of the question. The largest of these gatherings
took place at Dayton, in the State of Ohio, the month before the
election; and the description of it, as given by its enthusiastic
friends, will give a vivid idea of that monster assemblage, and of
the myriads of others of which it was only the greatest--differing
in degree only, not in kind:
"Dayton, the whole body there assembled in convention covered
_ten acres_ by actual measurement! And at no time were there
more than two-thirds of the people on the ground. Every house
with a flag was a hotel without price--the strings of every
door being out, and every latch unfastened! _One hundred
thousand!_ It were useless to attempt any thing like a detailed
description of this _grand gathering of the people_. We _saw_
it all--_felt_ it all--and shall bear to our graves, live we
yet half a century, the impression it made upon our hearts. But
we cannot describe it. No eye that witnessed it, can convey to
the mind of another, even a faint semblance of the things it
there beheld. The bright and glorious day--the beautiful and
hospitable city--the green-clad and heaven-blessed valley--the
thousand flags, fluttering in every breeze and waving from
every window--the ten thousand banners and badges, with their
appropriate devices and patriotic inscriptions--and, more than
all, the hundred thousand human hearts beating in that dense
and seething mass of people--are things which those alone can
properly feel and appreciate, who beheld this grandest spectacle
of time. _The number of persons present_ was, during the whole
of the morning, variously estimated at from seventy-five to
ninety thousand. Conjecture, however, was put to rest in the
afternoon, at the speakers' stand. Here, while the crowd was
compact, as we have elsewhere described it, and during the
speech of General Harrison, the ground upon which it stood
was measured by three different civil engineers, and allowing
to the square yard four persons, the following results were
arrived at: the first made it 77,600, the second 75,000, and
the third 80,000. During the time of making three measurements,
the number of square yards of surface covered was continually
changing, by pressure without and resistance from within. Mr.
Van Buren and his wiseacre assistants, have so managed currency
matters, that we have very little to do business with. We can,
therefore, be away from home, a portion of the time, as well as
at home. And with respect to our families, _when we leave upon
a rally, we take them with us_! Our wives and daughters, we are
proud to say, have the blood of their revolutionary mothers and
grandmothers coursing through their veins. There is no man among
us whose heart is more filled and animated than theirs, by the
spirit of seventy-six. Look at the three hundred and fifty at
Nashville, who invited Henry Clay, the nation's pride, to be
with them and their husbands and brothers on the 15th of August!
Look at the four hundred at St. Louis, the nine hundred at the
Tippecanoe battle-ground, the five thousand at Dayton! What
now, but the spirit of seventy-six, does all this manifest?
Ay, and _what tale does it all tell_? Does it not say, that the
wicked charlatanry, and mad ambition, and selfish schemings,
of the leading members of this administration of the general
government, have made themselves felt in the very sanctum
sanctorum of domestic life? Does it not speak of the cheerless
hearth, where willing hands sit without employment? Does it
not speak of the half-recompensed toil of the worn laborer,
who finds, now and then, a week's hard work, upon the scant
proceeds of which he must subsist himself and his family for a
month! Does it not speak of empty larders in the town, while the
garners of the country are overflowing? Does it not speak of
want here and abundance there, without any medium of exchange
to equalize the disparity? Does it not speak of a general
disorganization of conventional operations--of embarrassment,
stagnation, idleness, and despondency--whose 'malign influences'
have penetrated the inner temples of man's home, and aroused, to
indignant speech and unusual action, her who is its peace, its
gentleness, its love, its all but divinity? The truth is--and it
should be told--the women are the very life and soul of these
movements of the people. Look at their liberal preparations at
Nashville. Look at their boundless hospitality at Dayton. Look
at their ardor and activity every where. And last, though far
from the least important, look at their presence, in hundreds
and by thousands, wherever there is any good to be done, to
animate and encourage, and urge on their fathers, husbands and
brothers. Whence those six hundred and forty-four flags, whose
stars and stripes wave in the morning breeze, from nearly every
house-top, as we enter the beautiful little city of Dayton? From
the hand of woman. Whence the decorations of these porticoes
and balconies, that gleam in the rising sun, as we ride through
the broad and crowded streets? From the hand of woman. Whence
this handsome and proudly cherished banner, under which the
Ohio delegation returned from Nashville, and which now marks
the head-quarters of the Cincinnati delegation of one thousand
to Dayton? From the hand of woman. Whence yon richly wrought
and surpassingly beautiful standard, about which cluster the
Tippecanoe hosts, and whose production has cost many weeks
of incessant labor? From the hand of woman. And to come down
to less poetical but more substantial things, whence all the
wholesome viands prepared in the six hundred and forty-four
flag-houses around us, for our refreshment, and all the pallets
spread for our repose? From the hand of woman."
By arts like these the community was worked up into a delirium, and
the election was carried by storm. Out of 294 electoral votes Mr.
Van Buren received but 60: out of twenty-six States he received
the votes of only seven. He seemed to have been abandoned by the
people! On the contrary he had been unprecedentedly supported by
them--had received a larger popular vote than ever had been given
to any President before! and three hundred and sixty-four thousand
votes more than he himself had received at the previous presidential
election when he beat the same General Harrison fourteen thousand
votes. Here was a startling fact, and one to excite inquiry in the
public mind. How could there be such overwhelming defeat with such
an enormous increase of strength on the defeated side? This question
pressed itself upon every thinking mind; and it was impossible to
give it a solution consistent with the honor and purity of the
elective franchise. For, after making all allowance for the greater
number of voters brought out on this occasion than at the previous
election by the extraordinary exertions now made to bring them out,
yet there would still be required a great number to make up the five
hundred and sixty thousand votes which General Harrison received
over and above his vote of four years before. The belief of false
and fraudulent votes was deep-seated, and in fact susceptible of
proof in many instances. Many thought it right, for the sake of
vindicating the purity of elections, to institute a scrutiny into
the votes; but nothing of the kind was attempted, and on the second
Wednesday in February, 1841, all the electoral votes were counted
without objection--General Harrison found to have a majority of
the whole number of votes given--and Messrs. Wise and Cushing on
the part of the House and Mr. Preston on the part of the Senate,
were appointed to give him the formal notification of his election.
Mr. Tyler received an equal number of votes with him, and became
Vice-president: Mr. Richard M. Johnson fell twelve votes behind
Mr. Van Buren, receiving but 48 electoral votes. It was a complete
rout of the democratic party, but without a single moral effect of
victory. The spirit of the party ran as high as ever, and Mr. Van
Buren was immediately, and generally, proclaimed the democratic
candidate for the election of 1844.
CHAPTER LIX.
CONCLUSION OF MR. VAN BUREN'S ADMINISTRATION.
The last session of the Twenty-sixth Congress was barren of
measures, and necessarily so, as being the last of an administration
superseded by the popular voice, and soon to expire; and therefore
restricted by a sense of propriety, during the brief remainder
of its existence, to the details of business and the routine of
service. But his administration had not been barren of measures, nor
inauspicious to the harmony of the Union. It had seen great measures
adopted, and sectional harmony conciliated. The divorce of Bank and
State, and the restoration of the constitutional currency, were
illustrious measures, beneficial to the government and the people;
and the benefits of which will continue to be felt as long as they
shall be kept. One of them dissolved a meretricious connection,
disadvantageous to both parties, and most so to the one that should
have suffered least, and was made to suffer most. The other carried
back the government to what it was intended to be--re-established it
as it was in the first year of Washington's administration--made it
in fact a hard-money government, giving solidity to the Treasury,
and freeing the government and the people from the revulsions and
vicissitudes of the paper system. No more complaints about the
currency and the exchanges since that time. Unexampled prosperity
has attended the people; and the government, besides excess of
solid money in time of peace, has carried on a foreign war, three
thousand miles from home, with its securities above par during the
whole time: a felicitous distinction, never enjoyed by our country
before, and seldom by any country of the world. These two measures
constitute an era in the working of our government, entitled to a
proud place in its history, on which the eye of posterity may look
back with gratitude and admiration.
His administration was auspicious to the general harmony, and
presents a period of remarkable exemption from the sectional
bitterness which had so much afflicted the Union for some years
before--and so much more sorely since. Faithful to the sentiments
expressed in his inaugural address, he held a firm and even course
between sections and parties, and passed through his term without
offence to the North or the South on the subject of slavery. He
reconciled South Carolina to the Union--received the support of
her delegation in Congress--saw his administration receive the
approving vote of her general assembly--and counted her vote
among those which he received for the presidency--the first
presidential vote which she had given in twelve years. No President
ever had a more difficult time. Two general suspensions of the
banks--one at the beginning, and the other towards the close of
his administration--the delinquent institutions in both instances
allying themselves with a great political party--were powerful
enough to derange and distress the business of the country, and
unscrupulous enough to charge upon his administration the mischiefs
which themselves created. Meritorious at home, and in his internal
policy, his administration was equally so in its foreign relations.
The insurrection in Canada, contemporaneous with his accession to
the presidency, made a crisis between the United States and Great
Britain, in which he discharged his high duties with equal firmness,
skill, and success. The border line of the United States, for a
thousand miles, was in commotion to join the insurgent Canadians.
The laws of neutrality, the duties of good neighborhood, our own
peace (liable to be endangered by lawless expeditions from our
shores), all required him to repress this commotion. And faithfully
he did so, using all the means--judicial and military--which the
laws put in his hands; and successfully for the maintenance of
neutrality, but with some personal detriment, losing much popular
favor in the border States from his strenuous repression of aid
to a neighboring people, insurging for liberty, and militarily
crushed in the attempt. He did his duty towards Great Britain by
preventing succor from going to her revolted subjects; and when
the scene was changed, and her authorities did an injury to us by
the murder of our citizens, and the destruction of a vessel on
our own shore--the case of the Caroline at Schlosser--he did his
duty to the United States by demanding redress; and when one of
the alleged perpetrators was caught in the State where the outrage
had been committed, he did his duty to that State by asserting her
right to punish the infraction of her own laws. And although he did
not obtain the redress for the outrage at Schlosser, yet it was
never _refused_ to him, nor the right to redress _denied_, nor the
outrage itself _assumed_ by the British government as long as his
administration lasted. Respected at home, his administration was
equally so abroad. Cordially supported by his friends in Congress,
he was equally so by his cabinet, and his leading newspaper, the
Washington Globe. Messrs. Forsyth, Secretary of State--Woodbury of
the Treasury--Poinsett of War--Paulding of the Navy--Kendall and
John M. Niles, Postmasters-general--and Butler, Grundy and Gilpin,
successive Attorneys-general--were all harmonious and efficient
co-operators. With every title to respect, and to public confidence,
he was disappointed of a second election, but in a canvass which had
had no precedent, and has had no imitation; and in which an increase
of 364,000 votes on his previous election, attests an increase of
strength which fair means could not have overcome.
ADMINISTRATION OF WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON.
CHAPTER LX.
INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT HARRISON: HIS CABINET--CALL OF
CONGRESS--AND DEATH.
March the 4th, at twelve o'clock, the Senate met in its chamber,
as summoned to do by the retiring President, to be ready for the
inauguration of the President elect, and the transaction of such
executive business as he should bring before it. The body was quite
full, and was called to order by the secretary, Mr. Asbury Dickens;
and Mr. King, of Alabama, being elected temporary President of the
Senate, administered the oath of office to the Vice-president elect,
John Tyler, Esq., who immediately took the chair as President of
the Senate. The scene in the chamber was simple and impressive. The
senators were in their seats: members of the House in chairs. The
justices of the Supreme Court, and the foreign diplomatic corps
were in the front semicircle of chairs, on the floor of the Senate.
Officers of the army and navy were present--many citizens--and
some ladies. Every part of the chamber and galleries were crowded,
and it required a vigilant police to prevent the entrance of more
than the allotted number. After the Vice-president elect had
taken his seat, and delivered to the Senate over which he was
to preside a well-conceived, well-expressed, and well-delivered
address, appropriately brief, a short pause and silence ensued. The
President elect entered, and was conducted to the seat prepared for
him in front of the secretary's table. The procession was formed
and proceeded to the spacious eastern portico, where seats were
placed, and the ceremony of the inauguration was to take place. An
immense crowd, extending far and wide, stood closely wedged on the
pavement and enclosed grounds in front of the portico. The President
elect read his inaugural address, with animation and strong voice,
and was well heard at a distance. As an inaugural address, it was
confined to a declaration of general principles and sentiments;
and it breathed a spirit of patriotism which adversaries, as well
as friends, admitted to be sincere, and to come from the heart.
After the conclusion of the address, the chief justice of the
Supreme Court of the United States, Mr. Taney, administered the oath
prescribed by the constitution: and the ceremony of inauguration was
at an end.
The Senate returned to its chamber, and having received a message
from the President with the nominations for his cabinet, immediately
proceeded to their consideration; and unanimously confirmed the
whole. They were: Daniel Webster, Secretary of State; Thomas Ewing,
Secretary of the Treasury; John Bell, Secretary at War; George E.
Badger, Secretary of the Navy; Francis Granger, Postmaster-general;
John J. Crittenden, Attorney-general.
On the 17th of March, the President issued a proclamation, convoking
the Congress in extraordinary session for the 31st day of May
ensuing. The proclamation followed the usual form in not specifying
the immediate, or direct, cause of the convocation. It merely
stated, "That sundry and weighty matters, principally growing out
of the condition of the revenue and finances of the country, appear
to call for the convocation of Congress at an earlier day than its
next annual session, and thus form an extraordinary occasion which,
in the judgment of the President, rendered it necessary for the two
Houses to convene as soon as practicable."
President Harrison did not live to meet the Congress which he
had thus convoked. Short as the time was that he had fixed for
its meeting, his own time upon earth was still shorter. In the
last days of March he was taken ill: on the fourth day of April
he was dead--at the age of 69; being one year under the limit
which the psalmist fixed for the term of manly life. There was no
failure of health or strength to indicate such an event, or to
excite apprehension that he would not go through his term with
the vigor with which he commenced it. His attack was sudden, and
evidently fatal from the beginning. A public funeral was given
him, most numerously attended, and the body deposited in the
Congress vault--to wait its removal to his late home at North
Bend, Ohio;--whither it was removed in the summer. He was a man of
infinite kindness of heart, affectionate to the human race,--of
undoubted patriotism, irreproachable integrity both in public and
private life; and of a hospitality of disposition which received
with equal welcome in his house the humblest and the most exalted of
the land.
The public manifestations of respect to the memory of the deceased
President, were appropriate and impressive, and co-extensive with
the bounds of the Union. But there was another kind of respect which
his memory received, more felt than expressed, and more pervading
than public ceremonies: it was the regret of the nation, without
distinction of party: for it was a case in which the heart could
have fair play, and in which political opponents could join with
their adversaries in manifestations of respect and sorrow. Both
the deceased President, and the Vice-president, were of the same
party, elected by the same vote, and their administrations expected
to be of the same character. It was a case in which no political
calculation could interfere with private feeling; and the national
regret was sincere, profound, and pervading. Gratifying was the
spectacle to see a national union of feeling in behalf of one who
had been so lately the object of so much political division. It was
a proof that there can be political opposition without personal
animosity.
General Harrison was a native of Virginia, son of a signer of the
Declaration of Independence, and a descendant of the "regicide"
Harrison who sat on the trial of Charles I.
In the course of the first session of Congress after the death of
General Harrison--that session which convened under his call--the
opportunity presented itself to the author of this View to express
his personal sentiments with respect to him. President Tyler, in
his message, recommended a grant of money to the family of the
deceased President "in consideration of his expenses in removing
to the seat of government, and the limited means which he had left
behind;" and a bill had been brought into the Senate accordingly,
taking one year's presidential salary ($25,000) as the amount of
the grant. Deeming this proceeding entirely out of the limits of
the constitution--against the policy of the government--and the
commencement of the monarchical system of providing for families,
Mr. Benton thus expressed himself at the conclusion of an argument
against the grant:
"Personally I was friendly to General Harrison, and that at a time
when his friends were not so numerous as in his last days; and if
I had needed any fresh evidences of the kindness of his heart, I
had them in his twice mentioning to me, during the short period of
his presidency, that, which surely I should never have mentioned
to him--the circumstance of my friendship to him when his friends
were fewer. I would gladly now do what would be kind and respectful
to his memory--what would be liberal and beneficial to his most
respectable widow; but, to vote for this bill! that I cannot do.
High considerations of constitutional law and public policy forbid
me to do so, and command me to make this resistance to it, that
a mark may be made--a stone set up--at the place where this new
violence was done to the constitution--this new page opened in the
book of our public expenditures; and this new departure taken,
which leads into the bottomless gulf of civil pensions and family
gratuities."
The deceased President had been closely preceded, and was rapidly
followed, by the deaths of almost all his numerous family of sons
and daughters. A worthy son survives (John Scott Harrison, Esq.), a
most respectable member of Congress from the State of Ohio.
ADMINISTRATION OF JOHN TYLER.
CHAPTER LXI.
ACCESSION OF THE VICE-PRESIDENT TO THE PRESIDENCY.
The Vice-president was not in Washington when the President died: he
was at his residence in lower Virginia: some days would necessarily
elapse before he could arrive. President Harrison had not been
impressed with the probable fatal termination of his disease, and
the consequent propriety of directing the Vice-president to be sent
for. His cabinet could not feel themselves justified in taking such
a step while the President lived. Mr. Tyler would feel it indelicate
to repair to the seat of government, of his own will, on hearing the
report of the President's illness. The attending physicians, from
the most proper considerations, held out hopes of recovery to near
the last; but, for four days before the event, there was a pervading
feeling in the city that the President would not survive his attack.
His death left the executive government for some days in a state
of interregnum. There was no authority, or person present, legally
empowered to take any step; and so vital an event as a change in
the chief magistrate, required the fact to be formally and publicly
verified. In the absence of Congress, and the Vice-president, the
members of the late cabinet very properly united in announcing the
event to the country, and in despatching a messenger of state to Mr.
Tyler, to give him the authentic information which would show the
necessity of his presence at the seat of government. He repaired
to it immediately, took the oath of office, before the Chief Judge
of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, William Cranch,
Esquire; and appointed the late cabinet for his own. Each was
retained in the place held under his predecessor, and with the
strongest expressions of regard and confidence.
Four days after his accession to the presidency, Mr. Tyler issued an
address, in the nature of an inaugural, to the people of the United
States, the first paragraph of which was very appropriately devoted
to his predecessor, and to the circumstances of his own elevation to
the presidential chair. That paragraph was in these words:
"Before my arrival at the seat of government, the painful
communication was made to you, by the officers presiding over
the several departments, of the deeply regretted death of
WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, late President of the United States.
Upon him you had conferred your suffrages for the first office
in your gift, and had selected him as your chosen instrument to
correct and reform all such errors and abuses as had manifested
themselves from time to time, in the practical operations of
the government. While standing at the threshold of this great
work, he has, by the dispensation of an all-wise Providence,
been removed from amongst us, and by the provisions of the
constitution, the efforts to be directed to the accomplishing
of this vitally important task have devolved upon myself.
This same occurrence has subjected the wisdom and sufficiency
of our institutions to a new test. For the first time in our
history, the person elected to the Vice-presidency of the United
States, by the happening of a contingency provided for in the
constitution, has had devolved upon him the presidential
office. The spirit of faction, which is directly opposed to
the spirit of a lofty patriotism, may find in this occasion
for assaults upon my administration. And in succeeding, under
circumstances so sudden and unexpected, and to responsibilities
so greatly augmented, to the administration of public affairs,
I shall place in the intelligence and patriotism of the people,
my only sure reliance.--My earnest prayer shall be constantly
addressed to the all-wise and all-powerful Being who made me,
and by whose dispensation I am called to the high office of
President of this confederacy, understandingly to carry out the
principles of that constitution which I have sworn 'to protect,
preserve, and defend.'"
Two blemishes were seen in this paragraph, the first being in that
sentence which spoke of the "errors and abuses" of the government
which his predecessor had been elected to "correct and reform;"
and the correction and reformation of which now devolved upon
himself. These imputed errors and abuses could only apply to the
administrations of General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren, of both which
Mr. Tyler had been a zealous opponent; and therefore might not be
admitted to be an impartial judge. Leaving that out of view, the bad
taste of such a reference was palpable and repulsive. The second
blemish was in that sentence in which he contrasted the spirit of
"faction" with the spirit of "lofty patriotism," and seemed to
refer in advance all the "assaults" which should be made upon his
administration, to this factious spirit, warring upon elevated
patriotism. Little did he think when he wrote that sentence, that
within three short months--within less time than a commercial bill
of exchange usually has to run, the great party which had elected
him, and the cabinet officers which he had just appointed with such
warm expressions of respect and confidence, should be united in
that assault! should all be in the lead and van of a public outcry
against him! The third paragraph was also felt to be a fling at
General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren, and therefore unfit for a place
in a President's message, and especially in an inaugural address. It
was the very periphrasis of the current party slang against General
Jackson, plainly visible through the transparent hypothetical guise
which it put on; and was in these words:
"In view of the fact, well avouched by history, that the
tendency of all human institutions is to concentrate power in
the hands of a single man, and that their ultimate downfall
has proceeded from this cause, I deem it of the most essential
importance that a complete separation should take place between
the sword and the purse. No matter where or how the public
moneys shall be deposited, so long as the President can exert
the power of appointing and removing, at his pleasure, the
agents selected for their custody, the commander-in-chief of
the army and navy is in fact the treasurer. A permanent and
radical change should therefore be decreed. The patronage
incident to the presidential office, already great, is
constantly increasing. Such increase is destined to keep pace
with the growth of our population, until, without a figure of
speech, an army of officeholders may be spread over the land.
The unrestrained power exerted by a selfishly ambitious man,
in order either to perpetuate his authority or to hand it over
to some favorite as his successor, may lead to the employment
of all the means within his control to accomplish his object.
The right to remove from office, while subjected to no just
restraint, is inevitably destined to produce a spirit of
crouching servility with the official corps, which in order
to uphold the hand which feeds them, would lead to direct and
active interference in the elections, both State and federal,
thereby subjecting the course of State legislation to the
dictation of the chief executive officer, and making the will of
that officer absolute and supreme."
This phrase of "purse and sword," once so appropriately used by
Patrick Henry, in describing the powers of the federal government,
and since so often applied to General Jackson, for the removal of
the deposits, could have no other aim than a fling at him; and the
abuse of patronage in removals and appointments to perpetuate power,
or hand it over to a favorite, was the mere repetition of the slang
of the presidential canvass, in relation to General Jackson and Mr.
Van Buren.
Departing from the usual reserve and generalization of an inaugural,
this address went into a detail which indicated the establishment of
a national bank, or the re-charter of the defunct one, masked and
vitalized under a Pennsylvania State charter. That paragraph ran
thus:
"The public interest also demands that, if any war has existed
between the government and the currency, it shall cease.
Measures of a financial character, now having the sanction of
legal enactment, shall be faithfully enforced until repealed by
the legislative authority. But I owe it to myself to declare
that I regard existing enactments as unwise and impolitic, and
in a high degree oppressive. I shall promptly give my sanction
to any constitutional measure which, originating in Congress,
shall have for its object the restoration of a sound circulating
medium, so essentially necessary to give confidence in all
the transactions of life, to secure to industry its just and
adequate rewards, and to re-establish the public prosperity.
In deciding upon the adaptation of any such measure to the end
proposed, as well as its conformity to the constitution, I shall
resort to the fathers of the great republican school for advice
and instruction, to be drawn from their sage views of our system
of government, and the light of their ever glorious example."
The concluding part of this paragraph, in which the new President
declares that, in looking to the constitutionality and expediency
of a national bank, he should look for advice and instruction to
the example of the fathers of the Republic, he was understood as
declaring that he would not be governed by his own former opinions
against a national bank, but by the example of Washington, a signer
of the constitution (who signed the charter of the first national
bank); and by the example of Mr. Madison, another signer of the
constitution, who, yielding to precedent and the authority of
judicial decisions, had signed the charter for the second bank,
notwithstanding his early constitutional objections to it. In other
parts of the paragraph he was considered as declaring in favor
of the late United States Bank, as in the previous part of the
paragraph where he used the phrases which had become catch-words in
the long contest with that bank--"war upon the currency"--"sound
circulating medium"--"restoration of national prosperity;" &c., &c.
He was understood to express a preference for the re-charter of
that institution. And this impression was well confirmed by other
circumstances--his zealous report in favor of that bank when acting
as volunteer chairman to the Senate's committee which was sent
to examine it--his standing a canvass in a presidential election
in which the re-charter of that bank, though concertedly blinked
in some parts of the Union, was the understood vital issue every
where--his publicly avowed preference for its notes over gold, at
Wheeling, Virginia--the retention of a cabinet, pledged to that
bank, with expressions of confidence in them, and in terms that
promised a four years' service together--and his utter condemnation
in other parts of his inaugural and in all his public speeches, of
every other plan (sub-treasury, state banks, revival of the gold
currency), which had been presented as remedies for the financial
and currency disorders. All these circumstances and declarations
left no doubt that he was not only in favor of a national bank, but
of re-chartering the late one; and that he looked to it, and to it
alone, for the "sound circulating medium" which he preferred to the
constitutional currency--for the keeping of those deposits which he
had condemned Jackson for removing from it--and for the restoration
of that national prosperity, which the imputed war upon the bank had
destroyed.
CHAPTER LXII.
TWENTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS: FIRST SESSION: LIST OF MEMBERS, AND
ORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSE.
_Members of the Senate._
MAINE.--Reuel Williams, George Evans.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.--Franklin Pierce, Levi Woodbury.
VERMONT.--Samuel Prentis, Samuel Phelps.
MASSACHUSETTS.--Rufus Choate, Isaac C. Bates.
RHODE ISLAND.--Nathan F. Dixon, James F. Simmons.
CONNECTICUT.--Perry Smith, Jaz. W. Huntington.
NEW YORK.--Silas Wright, N. P. Tallmadge.
NEW JERSEY.--Sam. L. Southard, Jacob W. Miller.
PENNSYLVANIA.--James Buchanan, D. W. Sturgeon.
DELAWARE.--Richard H. Bayard, Thomas Clayton.
MARYLAND.--John Leeds Kerr, Wm. D. Merrick.
VIRGINIA.--Wm. C. Rives, Wm. S. Archer.
NORTH CAROLINA.--Wm. A. Graham, Willie P. Mangum.
SOUTH CAROLINA.--Wm. C. Preston, John C. Calhoun.
GEORGIA.--Alfred Cuthbert, John M. Berrien.
ALABAMA.--Clement C. Clay, William R. King.
MISSISSIPPI.--John Henderson, Robert J. Walker.
LOUISIANA.--Alexander Mouton, Alexander Barrow.
TENNESSEE.--A. O. P. Nicholson, Spencer Jarnagin, executive
appointment. Ephraim H. Foster.
KENTUCKY.--Henry Clay, J. J. Morehead.
OHIO.--William Allen, Benjamin Tappan.
INDIANA.--Oliver H. Smith, Albert S. White.
ILLINOIS.--Richard M. Young, Sam'l McRoberts.
MISSOURI.--Lewis F. Linn, Thomas H. Benton.
ARKANSAS.--Ambrose H. Sevier, William S. Fulton.
MICHIGAN.--Augustus S. Porter, William Woodbridge.
_Members of the House._
MAINE.--Nathaniel Clifford, Wm. P. Fessenden, Benj. Randall, David
Bronson, Nathaniel Littlefield, Alfred Marshall, Joshua A. Lowell,
Elisha H. Allen.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.--Tristram Shaw, Ira A. Eastman, Charles G. Atherton,
Edmund Burke, John R. Reding.
VERMONT.--Hiland Hall, William Slade, Horace Everett, Augustus
Young, John Mattocks.
MASSACHUSETTS.--Robert C. Winthrop, Leverett Saltonstall, Caleb
Cushing, Wm. Parmenter, Charles Hudson, Osmyn Baker, Geo. N. Briggs,
William B. Calhoun, Wm. S. Hastings, Nathaniel B. Borden, Barker
Burnell, John Quincy Adams.
RHODE ISLAND.--Joseph L. Tillinghast, William B. Cranston.
CONNECTICUT.--Joseph Trumbull, Wm. W. Boardman, Thomas W. Williams,
Thos. B. Osborne, Truman Smith, John H. Brockway.
NEW YORK.--Chas. A. Floyd, Joseph Egbert, John McKeon, James J.
Roosevelt, Fernando Wood, Chas. G. Ferris, Aaron Ward, Richard D.
Davis, James G. Clinton, John Van Buren, R. McClellan, Jacob Hauck,
jr., Hiram P. Hunt, Daniel D. Barnard, Archibald L. Lin, Bernard
Blair, Thos. A. Tomlinson, H. Van Rensselaer, John Sanford, Andrew
W. Doig, John G. Floyd, David P. Brewster, T. C. Chittenden, Sam. S.
Bowne, Samuel Gordon, John C. Clark, Lewis Riggs, Sam. Partridge,
Victory Birdseye, A. L. Foster, Christopher Morgan, John Maynard,
John Greig, Wm. M. Oliver, Timothy Childs, Seth M. Gates, John
Young, Stanley N. Clark, Millard Fillmore, ---- Babcock.
NEW JERSEY.--John B. Aycrigg, John P. B. Maxwell, William Halsted,
Joseph F. Randolph, Joseph F. Stratton, Thos. Jones Yorke.
PENNSYLVANIA.--Charles Brown, John Sergeant, George W. Tolland,
Charles Ingersoll, John Edwards, Jeremiah Brown, Francis James,
Joseph Fornance, Robert Ramsay, John Westbrook, Peter Newhard,
George M. Keim, Wm. Simonton, James Gerry, James Cooper, Amos
Gustine, James Irvine, Benj. Bidlack, John Snyder, Davis Dimock,
Albert G. Marchand, Joseph Lawrence, Wm. W. Irwin, William Jack,
Thomas Henry, Arnold Plumer.
DELAWARE.--George B. Rodney.
MARYLAND.--Isaac D. Jones, Jas. A. Pearce, James W. Williams, J.
P. Kennedy, Alexander Randall, Wm. Cost Johnson, John T. Mason,
Augustus R. Sollers.
VIRGINIA.--Henry A. Wise, Francis Mallory, George B. Cary, John
M. Botts, R. M. T. Hunter, John Taliaferro, Cuthbert Powell, Linn
Banks, Wm. O. Goode, John W. Jones, E. W. Hubbard, Walter Coles,
Thomas W. Gilmer, Wm. L. Goggin, R. B. Barton, Wm. A. Harris, A.
H. H. Stuart, Geo. W. Hopkins, Geo. W. Summers, S. L. Hays, Lewis
Steinrod.
NORTH CAROLINA.--Kenneth Rayner, John R. J. Daniel, Edward Stanly,
Wm. H. Washington, James J. McKay, Archibald Arrington, Edmund
Deberry, R. M. Saunders, Aug'e H. Shepherd, Abraham Rencher, Green
C. Caldwell, James Graham, Lewis Williams.
SOUTH CAROLINA.--Isaac E. Holmes, William Butler, F. W. Pickens,
John Campbell, James Rogers, S. H. Butler, Thomas D. Sumter, R.
Barnwell Rhett, C. P. Caldwell.
GEORGIA.--Rich'd W. Habersham, Wm. C. Dawson, Julius C. Alvord,
Eugenius A. Nisbet, Lott Warren, Thomas Butler King, Roger L.
Gamble, Jas. A. Merriwether, Thos. F. Foster.
ALABAMA.--Reuben Chapman, Geo. S. Houston, Dixon H. Lewis, Benj. G.
Shields.
MISSISSIPPI.--A. L. Bingaman, W. R. Harley.
LOUISIANA.--Edward D. White, J. B. Dawson, John Moore.
ARKANSAS.--Edward Cross.
TENNESSEE.--Thomas D. Arnold, Abraham McClellan, Joseph L. Williams,
Thomas J. Campbell, Hopkins L. Turney, Wm. B. Campbell, Robert L.
Caruthers, Meredith P. Gentry, Harvey M. Watterson, Aaron V. Brown,
Cave Johnson, Milton Brown, Christopher H. Williams.
KENTUCKY.--Linn Boyd, Philip Triplet, Joseph R. Underwood, Bryan W.
Owsley, John B. Thompson, Willis Green, John Pope, James C. Sprigg,
John White, Thomas F. Marshall, Landoff W. Andrews, Garret Davis,
William O. Butler.
OHIO.--N. G. Pendleton, John B. Weller, Patrick G. Goode, Jeremiah
Morrow, William Doane, Calvary Morris, Wm. Russell, Joseph Ridgeway,
Wm. Medill, Samson Mason, B. S. Cowan, Joshua Matheot, James
Matthews, Geo. Sweeney, S. J. Andrews, Joshua R. Giddings; John
Hastings, Ezra Dean, Sam. Stockley.
INDIANA.--George W. Proffit, Richard W. Thompson, Joseph L. White,
James H. Cravens, Andrew Kennedy, David Wallace, Henry S. Lane.
MISSOURI.--John Miller, John C. Edwards.
MICHIGAN.--Jacob M. Howard.
Mr. John White of Kentucky (whig), was elected Speaker of the House
over Mr. John W. Jones of Virginia, democratic. Mr. Matthew St.
Clair Clarke of Pennsylvania (whig), was elected clerk over Mr.
Hugh A. Garland of Virginia, democratic. The whigs had a majority of
near fifty in the House, and of seven in the Senate; so that all the
legislative, and the executive department of the government--the two
Houses of Congress and the President and cabinet--were of the same
political party, presenting a harmony of aspect frequently wanting
during the three previous administrations. Notwithstanding their
large majority, the whig party proceeded slowly in the organization
of the House in the adoption of rules for its proceeding. A
fortnight had been consumed in vain when Mr. Cushing, urgently, and
successfully exhorted his whig friends to action:
"I say (continued Mr. Cushing) that it is our fault if this
House be disorganized. We are in the majority--we have a
majority of forty--and we are responsible to our country, to
the constitution, and to our God, for the discharge of our duty
here. It is our duty to proceed to the organization of the
House, to the transaction of the business for which the country
sent us here. And I appeal to the whig party on this floor that
they do their duty--that they act manfully and expeditiously,
and _that_, howsoever the House may organize, under whatever
rules, or under no rules at all; for I am prepared, if this
resolution be not adopted, to call upon the Speaker for the
second reading of a bill from the Senate, now upon the table,
and to move that we proceed with it under the parliamentary
law. We can go on under that. We are _a House_, with a speaker,
clerk, and officers; and whether we have rules or not is
immaterial. We can proceed as the Commons in England do. We can
act upon bills by referring them to a Committee of the Whole
on the state of the Union, or to select committees, if there
are no standing committees. And I am prepared, if the House
cannot be organized under the proposition now before us, for the
purpose of testing the question and enabling the country to see
whose fault it is that we do not go on with its business, to
call at once for the action of the House upon that bill under
the parliamentary law. Once more I appeal to the whig party,
for party lines, I see, are now about to be drawn; I appeal
to the whig party, to the friends of the administration--and
I recognize but one, and that is the administration of John
Tyler--that is the administration, and I recognize no other in
the United States at this time; I appeal to the administration
party, to the friends of the administration of John Tyler, that
at this hour they come to the rescue of their country, and
organize the House, under whatever rules: because, if we do not,
we shall become, as we are now becoming, the laughing-stock, the
scorn, the contempt of the people of these United States."
The bill from the Senate, for action on which Mr. Cushing was so
impatient, and so ready to act without rules, was the one for
the repeal of the sub-treasury; whilom characterized by him as a
serpent hatched of a fowl's egg, (cockatrice); which the people
would trample into the dust. Under his urgent exhortation the House
soon organized, and made the repeal. Passed so promptly, this
repealing bill, with equal celerity, was approved and signed by the
President--leaving him in the first quarter of his administration
in full possession of that formidable sword and long purse, the
imputed union of which in the hands of General Jackson had been his
incontinent deprecation, even in his inaugural address. For this
repeal of the sub-treasury provided no substitute for keeping the
public moneys, and left them without law in the President's hands.
CHAPTER LXIII.
FIRST MESSAGE OF MR. TYLER TO CONGRESS, AND MR. CLAY'S PROGRAMME
OF BUSINESS.
The first paragraph in the message related to the death of President
Harrison, and after a proper expression of respect and regret, it
went on to recommend a grant of money to his family, grounded on the
consideration of his expenses in removing to the seat of government,
and the limited means of his private fortune:
"With this public bereavement are connected other considerations
which will not escape the attention of Congress. The
preparations necessary for his removal to the seat of
government, in view of a residence of four years, must have
devolved upon the late President heavy expenditures, which,
if permitted to burden the limited resources of his private
fortune, may tend to the serious embarrassment of his surviving
family; and it is therefore respectfully submitted to Congress,
whether the ordinary principles of justice would not dictate the
propriety of its legislative interposition."
This recommendation was considered by many as being without the
pale of the constitution, and of dangerous precedent. With respect
to the limited means of which he spoke, the fact was alike true
and honorable to the late President. In public employment from
early life and during the greatest part of his life, no pecuniary
benefit had resulted to him. In situations to afford opportunities
for emolument, he availed himself of none. With immense amounts
of public money passing through his hands, it all went, not only
faithfully to its objects, but without leaving any profit behind
from its use. He lived upon his salaries, liberally dispensing
hospitality and charities, and with simplicity and economy in all
his habits. He used all that he received, and came out of office as
he entered it, and died poor. This, among the ancient Romans was a
commendable issue of a public career, to be mentioned with honor
at the funeral of an illustrious man: and should be so held by all
republican people.
The message showed that President Tyler would not have convoked the
Congress in extra session had it not been done by his predecessor;
but being convoked he would not disturb the arrangement; and was
most happy to find himself so soon surrounded by the national
representation:
"In entering upon the duties of this office, I did not feel that
it would be becoming in me to disturb what had been ordered by
my lamented predecessor. Whatever, therefore, may have been my
opinion originally as to the propriety of convening Congress at
so early a day from that of its late adjournment, I found a new
and controlling inducement not to interfere with the patriotic
desires of the late President, in the novelty of the situation
in which I was so unexpectedly placed. My first wish, under such
circumstances, would necessarily have been to have called to my
aid in the administration of public affairs, the combined wisdom
of the two Houses of Congress, in order to take their counsel
and advice as to the best mode of extricating the government and
the country from the embarrassments weighing heavily on both. I
am then most happy in finding myself so soon, after my accession
to the presidency, surrounded by the immediate representatives
of the States and people."
The state of our foreign relations claimed but a brief paragraph.
The message stated that no important change had taken place in them
since the last session of Congress, and that the President saw
nothing to make him doubt the continuance of the peace with which
the country was blessed. He passed to home affairs:
"In order to supply the wants of the government, an intelligent
constituency, in view of their best interests, will without
hesitation, submit to all necessary burdens. But it is,
nevertheless, important so to impose them as to avoid defeating
the just expectations of the country growing out of pre-existing
laws. The act of the 2d March, 1833, commonly called the
compromise act, should not be altered, except under urgent
necessities, which are not believed at this time to exist.
One year only remains to complete the series of reductions
provided for by that law, at which time provisions made by the
same, and which law then will be brought actively in aid of the
manufacturing interest of the Union, will not fail to produce
the most beneficial results."
This compromise act of 1833, was drawing towards the close of its
career, and was proving itself to have been a complete illusion in
all the good it had promised, and a sad reality in all the ill that
had been predicted of it. It had been framed on the principle of
helping manufactures for nine years, and then to be a free trade
measure for ever after. The first part succeeded, and so well,
in keeping up high duties as to raise far more revenue than the
government needed: the second part left the government without
revenue for its current uses, and under the necessity of giving
up that uniform twenty per centum duty on the value of imports,
which was to have been the permanent law of our tariff; and which
never became law at all. In the meanwhile, the compromise having
provided for periodical reductions in the duties on imported sugars
and molasses, made no provision for proportionate reductions of
the drawback upon these articles when exported in the changed
shape of rum and refined sugars: and enormous sums were drawn from
the treasury by this omission in the compromise act--the great
refiners and rum distillers driving an immense capital into their
business for the mere purpose of getting the gratuitous drawbacks.
The author of this View endeavored to supply the omission at the
time, and repeatedly afterwards; but these efforts were resisted
by the advocates of the compromise until these gratuities becoming
enormous, rising from $2,000 per annum, to hundreds of thousands
per annum, and finally reaching five hundred thousand, they roused
the alarm of the government, and sunk under the enormity of their
abuse. Yet it was this compromise which was held too sacred to have
its palpable defects corrected, and the inviolability of which was
recommended to be preserved, that in addition to its other faults,
was making an annual present of some hundreds of thousands of
dollars to two classes of manufacturers.
A bank of some kind was recommended, under the name of fiscal agent,
as necessary to facilitate the operations of the Treasury, to
promote the collection and disbursement of the public revenue, and
to supply a currency of uniform value. The message said:
"In intimate connection with the question of revenue, is that
which makes provision for a suitable fiscal agent, capable of
adding increased facilities in the collection and disbursement
of the public revenues, rendering more secure their custody,
and consulting a true economy in the great multiplied and
delicate operations of the Treasury department. Upon such an
agent depends in an eminent degree, the establishment of a
currency of uniform value, which is of so great importance to
all the essential interests of society; and on the wisdom to be
manifested in its creation, much depends."
These are the reasons which General Hamilton gave for asking the
establishment of the first national bank, in 1791, and which have
been given ever since, no matter with what variation of phraseology,
for the creation of a similar institution. This preference for
a bank, under a new name, was confirmed by the rejection of the
sub-treasury and hard-money currency, assumed by the message to
have been condemned by the people in the result of the presidential
election. Speaking of this system, it said: "_If carried through
all the stages of its transmutation, from paper and specie to
nothing but the precious metals, to say nothing of the insecurity
of the public moneys its injurious effects have been anticipated
by the country, in its unqualified condemnation._" The justice and
wisdom of this condemnation, thus inferred from the issue of the
presidential election, and carried as that election was (and as has
been described), has been tested by the experience of many years,
without finding that insecurity of the public moneys, and those
injurious effects which the message assumed. On the contrary those
moneys have been safely kept, and the public prosperity never as
great as under the Independent Treasury and the gold and silver
currency of the federal government: and long has it been since any
politician has allowed himself to be supposed to be against them.
Up to the date of that message then--up to the first day of the
extra session, 1841--Mr. Tyler may be considered as in favor of a
national bank, with its paper currency, and opposed to the gold
and silver currency, and the sub-treasury. A distribution of the
proceeds of the sales of the public lands was recommended as a
means of assisting the States in the payment of their debts, and
raising the price of their stocks in foreign markets. Repudiating
as unconstitutional, the federal assumption of the State debts, he
still recommended a grant of money from the public funds to enable
them to meet these debts. In this sense the message said:
"And while I must repudiate, as a measure founded in error, and
wanting constitutional sanction, the slightest approach to an
assumption by this government of the debts of the States, yet I
can see in the distribution adverted to much to recommend it.
The compacts between the proprietor States and this government
expressly guarantee to the States all the benefits which may
arise from the sales. The mode by which this is to be effected
addresses itself to the discretion of Congress as the trustee
for the States, and its exercise, after the most beneficial
manner, is restrained by nothing in the grants or in the
constitution so long as Congress shall consult that equality
in the distribution which the compacts require. In the present
condition of some of the States, the question of distribution
may be regarded as substantially a question between direct and
indirect taxation. If the distribution be not made in some
form or other, the necessity will daily become more urgent
with the debtor States for a resort to an oppressive system
of direct taxation, or their credit, and necessarily their
power and influence, will be greatly diminished. The payment
of taxes, often the most inconvenient and oppressive mode,
will be exacted in place of contributions for the most part
voluntarily made, and therefore comparatively unoppressive. The
States are emphatically the constituents of this government, and
we should be entirely regardless of the objects held in view
by them, in the creation of this government, if we could be
indifferent to their good. The happy effects of such a measure
upon all the States, would immediately be manifested. With the
debtor States it would effect the relief to a great extent of
the citizens from a heavy burden of direct taxation, which
presses with severity on the laboring classes, and eminently
assist in restoring the general prosperity. An immediate advance
would take place in the price of the State securities, and the
attitudes of the States would become once more, as it should
ever be, lofty and erect. Whether such distribution should be
made directly to the States in the proceeds of the sales, or
in the form of profits by virtue of the operations of any
fiscal agency having those proceeds as its basis, should such
measure be contemplated by Congress, would well deserve its
consideration."
Mr. Tyler, while a member of the democratic party, had been one of
the most strict in the construction of the constitution, and one of
the most vigilant and inflexible in bringing proposed measures to
the test of that instrument--repulsing the most insignificant if
they could not stand it. He had been one of the foremost against
the constitutionality of a national bank, and voting for a _scire
facias_ to vacate the charter of the last one soon after it was
established. Now, in recommending the grant of money to the family
of General Harrison--in recommending a bank under the name of fiscal
agent--in preferring a national paper currency--in condemning the
currency of the constitution--in proposing a distribution of the
land revenue--in providing for the payment of the State debts:
in all these recommendations he seemed to have gone far beyond
any other President, however latitudinarian. Add to this, he had
instituted an inquisition to sit upon the conduct of officers, to
hear and adjudge in secret; to the encouragement of informers and
debaters, and to the infringement of the liberty of speech, and the
freedom of opinion in the subordinates of the government. In view of
all this, the author of this work immediately exclaimed:
"What times we have fallen upon! what wonders we witness! how
strange are the scenes of the day! We have a President, who has been
the foremost in the defence of the constitution, and in support of
the rights of the States--whose walk has been on the outward wall of
the constitution--his post in the front line of its defenders--his
seat on the topmost branches of the democratic tree. I will not
disparage the President by saying that he fought side by side with
me in defence of the constitution and the States, and against the
latitudinarians. It would be to wrong him to place him by my side.
His position, as guard of the constitution, was far ahead, and far
above mine. He was always in the advance--on the look-out--listening
and watching--snuffing danger in the first tainted breeze, and
making anticipated battle against the still invisible invader.
Hardly any thing was constitutional enough for him. This was but
a few brief years ago. Now we see the measures brought forward
in the very bud and first blossom of this administration, which
leave all former unconstitutional measures far in the rear--which
add subterfuge and evasion to open violence, and aim more deadly
wounds at the constitution than the fifty previous years of its
existence had brought upon it. I know not the sentiment of the
President upon these measures, except as disclosed by himself, and
say nothing to reach him; but I know the measures themselves--their
desperate character, and fatal issues: and I am free to say, if
such things can come to pass--if they can survive the double ordeal
of the House and the Senate--then there is an end of all that our
fathers contended for in the formation of the federal government.
To be sure, the machinery of government would still stand. We
should still have President, Congress, and a Judiciary--an army, a
navy--a taxing power, the tax-payers, the tax-gatherers, and the
tax-consumers. But, if such measures as these are to pass--a bill
to lavish the public lands on the (indebted) States in order to pay
their debts, supply their taxes, and raise the market price of their
stock--a contrivance to defraud the constitution, and to smuggle and
bribe a bank, though a national bank, through Congress, under the
_alius dictus_ of fiscal agent--the bill to commence the career of
civil pensions and family gratuities--the inquisitorial committee,
modelled on the plan of Sir Robert Walpole's committees of secrecy,
now sitting in the custom-house of New York, the terror of the
honest and the hope of the corrupt--the _ex post facto_ edict for
the creation of political offences, to be punished on suspicion in
_exparte_ trials--the schemes for the infringement of the liberty of
speech, and for the suppression of freedom of opinion, and for the
encouragement and reward of debaters and informers: if such schemes
and measures as these are to come to pass, then do I say that all
the guards and limitations upon our government are broken down!
that our limited government is gone! and a new, wild, and boundless
authority, substituted in its place. The new triumvirate--Bank,
Congress, and President--will then be supreme. Fraud and corruption,
more odious than arms and force, will rule the land. The
constitution will be covered with a black veil: and that derided and
violated instrument will never be referred to, except for the mock
sanction of a fraudulent interpretation, or the insulting ceremony
of a derisory adjuration."
Mr. Tyler had delivered a message: Mr. Clay virtually delivered
another. In the first week of the session, he submitted a programme
of measures, in the form of a resolve, to be adopted by the Senate,
enumerating and declaring the particular subjects, to which he
thought the attention of Congress should be limited at this extra
session. The following was his programme:
"_Resolved, as the opinion of the Senate_, That at the present
session of Congress, no business ought to be transacted, but
such as being of an important or urgent nature, may be supposed
to have influenced the extraordinary convention of Congress,
or such as that the postponement of it might be materially
detrimental to the public interest.
"_Resolved, therefore, as the opinion of the Senate_, That the
following subjects ought first, if not exclusively, to engage
the deliberation of Congress, at the present session--
"1st. The repeal of the sub-treasury.
"2d. The incorporation of a bank adapted to the wants of the
people and of the government.
"3d. The provision of an adequate revenue for the government by
the imposition of duties, and including an authority to contract
a temporary loan to cover the public debt created by the last
administration.
"4th. The prospective distribution of the proceeds of the public
lands.
"5th. The passage of necessary appropriation bills; and
"6th. Some modification of the banking system of the District of
Columbia, for the benefit of the people of the District.
"_Resolved_, That it is expedient to distribute the business
proper to be done this session, between the Senate and House of
Representatives, so as to avoid both Houses acting on the same
subject, and at the same time."
It was, probably, to this assumption over the business of
Congress--this recommendation of measures which Mr. Clay thought
ought to be adopted--that Mr. Cushing alluded in the House, when, in
urging the instant repeal of the sub-treasury act, he made occasion
to say that he recognized no administration but that of John Tyler.
As for the "public debt," here mentioned as being "created by the
last administration," it consisted of the treasury notes and loans
resorted to to supply the place of the revenue lost under the
descending scale of the compromise, and the amount taken from the
Treasury to bestow upon the States, under the fraudulent name of a
deposit.
CHAPTER LXIV.
REPEAL OF THE INDEPENDENT TREASURY ACT
This was the first measure of the new dominant party, and pursued
with a zeal that bespoke a resentment which required gratification,
and indicated a criminal which required punishment. It seemed to
be considered as a malefactor which had just fallen into the hands
of justice, and whose instant death was necessary to expiate his
offences. Mr. Clay took the measure into his own charge. It was No.
1, in his list of bills to be passed; and the bill brought in by
himself, was No. 1, on the Senate's calendar; and it was rapidly
pushed on to immediate decision. The provisions of the bill were
as summary as the proceedings upon it were rapid. It provided for
instant repeal--to take effect as soon as passed, although it was
in full operation all over the United States, and the officers at a
distance, charged with its execution, could not know of the repeal
until ten or twelve days after the event, and during all which time
they would be acting without authority; and, consequently, without
official liability for accident or misconduct. No substitute was
provided; and when passed, the public moneys were to remain without
legal guardianship until a substitute should be provided--intended
to be a national bank; but a substitute which would require time to
pass it, whether a bank or some other measure. These considerations
were presented, but presented in vain to an impatient majority.
A respite of a few days, for the act to be known before it took
effect, was in vain urged. In vain was it urged that promulgation
was part of a law: that no statute was to take effect until it
was promulgated; and that time must be allowed for that essential
formality. The delay of passing a substitute was urged as certain:
the possibility of not passing one at all, was suggested: and then
the reality of that alarm of danger to the Treasury--the union of
the purse and the sword--which had so haunted the minds of senators
at the time of the removal of the deposits; and which alarm,
groundless then, was now to have a real foundation. All in vain. The
days of the devoted act were numbered: the sun was not to set upon
it alive: and late in the evening of a long and hot day in June,
the question was called, with a refusal upon yeas and nays by the
majority, to allow a postponement until the next day for the purpose
of debate. Thus, refused one night's postponement, Mr. Benton,
irritated at such unparliamentary haste, and at the unmeasured terms
of abuse which were lavished upon the doomed act, rose and delivered
the speech, of which some extracts are given in the next chapter.
In the progress of this bill a clause was proposed by Mr. Benton to
exclude the Bank of the United States from becoming a depository of
public moneys, under the new order of things which the repeal of
the Sub-treasury system would bring about; and he gave as a reason,
her criminal and corrupt conduct, and her insolvent condition. The
clause was rejected by a strict party vote, with the exception of
Mr. Archer--who voted for the exclusion. The repeal bill was carried
in the Senate by a strict party vote:
YEAS--Messrs. Archer, Barrow, Bates, Bayard, Berrien, Choate,
Clay of Kentucky, Clayton, Dixon, Evans, Graham, Henderson,
Huntington, Ker, Mangum, Merrick, Miller, Morehead, Phelps,
Porter, Prentiss, Preston, Rives, Simmons, Smith of Indiana,
Southard, Tallmadge, White, and Woodbridge--29.
NAYS--Messrs. Allen, Benton, Calhoun, Clay of Alabama,
Fulton, King, McRoberts, Nicholson, Pierce, Sevier, Smith of
Connecticut, Sturgeon, Tappan, Walker, Williams, Woodbury,
Wright, and Young--18.
In the House the repeal was carried by a decided vote--134 to 87.
The negative voters were:
Messrs. Archibald H. Arrington, Charles G. Atherton, Linn
Banks, Henry W. Beeson, Benjamin A. Bidlack, Samuel S. Bowne,
Linn Boyd, Aaron V. Brown, Charles Brown, Edmund Burke, Sampson
H. Butler, William O. Butler, Green W. Caldwell, Patrick C.
Caldwell, George B. Cary, Reuben Chapman, Nathan Clifford,
James G. Clinton, Walter Coles, Edward Cross, John R. J.
Daniel, Richard D. Davis, John B. Dawson, Ezra Dean, William
Doan, Andrew W. Doig, John C. Edwards, Joseph Egbert, Charles
G. Ferris, John G. Floyd, Charles A. Floyd, Joseph Fornance,
William O. Goode, Samuel Gordon, Amos Gustine, William A.
Harris, John Hastings, Samuel L. Hays, Isaac E. Holmes, George
W. Hopkins, Jacob Houck, jr., George S. Houston, Edmund W.
Hubard, Robert M. T. Hunter, Charles J. Ingersoll, Wiliam
Jack, Cave Johnson, John W. Jones, George M. Keim, Andrew
Kennedy, Dixon H. Lewis, Nathaniel S. Littlefied, Joshua A.
Lowell, Abraham McClellan, Robert McClellan, James J. McKay,
Albert G. Marchand, Alfred Marshall, John Thompson Mason,
James Mathews, William Medill, John Miller, William M. Oliver,
William Parmenter, Samuel Patridge, William W. Payne, Francis
W. Pickens, Arnold Plumer, John R. Reding, Lewis Riggs, James
Rogers, James I. Roosevelt, John Sanford, Romulus M. Saunders,
Tristram Shaw, Benjamin G. Shields, John Snyder, C. Sprigg,
Lewis Steenrod, Hopkins L. Turney, John Van Buren, Aaron Ward,
Harvey M. Watterson, John B. Weller, John Westbrook, James W.
Williams, Fernando Wood.
CHAPTER LXV.
REPEAL OF THE INDEPENDENT TREASURY ACT: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH.
The lateness of the hour, the heat of the day, the impatience of
the majority, and the determination evinced to suffer no delay
in gratifying the feeling which demanded the sacrifice of the
Independent Treasury system, shall not prevent me from discharging
the duty which I owe to the friends and authors of that system, and
to the country itself, by defending it from the unjust and odious
character which clamor and faction have fastened upon it. A great
and systematic effort has been made to cry down the sub-treasury by
dint of clamor, and to render it odious by unfounded representations
and distorted descriptions. It seems to have been selected as a
subject for an experiment at political bamboozling; and nothing is
too absurd, too preposterous, too foreign to the truth, to be urged
against it, and to find a lodgment, as it is believed, in the minds
of the uninformed and credulous part of the community. It is painted
with every odious color, endowed with every mischievous attribute,
and made the source and origin of every conceivable calamity. Not a
vestige of the original appears; and, instead of the old and true
system which it revives and enforces, nothing is seen but a new and
hideous monster, come to devour the people, and to destroy at once
their liberty, happiness and property. In all this the opponents of
the system copy the conduct of the French jacobins of the year '89,
in attacking the veto power reserved to the king. The enlightened
historian, Thiers, has given us an account of these jacobinical
experiments upon French credulity; and we are almost tempted to
believe he was describing, with the spirit of prophecy, what we have
seen taking place among ourselves. He says that, in some parts of
the country, the people were taught to believe that the veto was a
tax, which ought to be abolished; in others, that it was a criminal,
which ought to be hung; in others again, that it was a monster,
which ought to be killed; and in others, that it was a power in the
king to prevent the people from eating or drinking. As a specimen
of this latter species of imposition which was attempted upon the
ignorant, the historian gives a dialogue which actually took place
between a jacobin politician and a country peasant in one of the
remote departments of France, and which ran in about these terms:
"_My friend, do you know what the veto is?_" "_I do not._" "_Then
I will tell you what it is. It is this: You have some soup in your
porringer; you are going to eat it; the king commands you to empty
it on the ground, and you must instantly empty it on the ground:
that is the veto!_" This, said Mr. B. is the account which an
eminent historian gives us of the means used to bamboozle ignorant
peasants and to excite them against a constitutional provision in
France, made for their benefit, and which only arrested legislation
till the people could speak; and I may say that means little short
of such absurdity and nonsense have been used in our country to
mislead and deceive the people, and to excite them against the
sub-treasury here.
It is my intention, said Mr. B., to expose and to explode these
artifices; to show the folly and absurdity of the inventions which
were used to delude the people in the country, and which no senator
of the opposite party will so far forget himself as to repeat here;
and to exhibit the independent treasury as it is--not as a new and
hurtful measure just conceived; but as an old and salutary law,
fallen into disuse in evil times, and now revived and improved for
the safety and advantage of the country.
What is it, Mr. President, which constitutes the system called and
known by the name of the sub-treasury, or the independent treasury?
It is two features, and two features alone, which constitute the
system--all the rest is detail--and these two features are borrowed
and taken from the two acts of Congress of September first, and
September the second, 1789; the one establishing a revenue system,
and the other establishing a treasury department for the United
States. By the first of these acts, and by its 30th section, gold
and silver coin alone was made receivable in payments to the United
States; and by the second of them, section four, the treasurer of
the United States is made the receiver, the keeper, and the payer,
of the moneys of the United States, to the exclusion of banks, of
which only three then existed. By these two laws, the first and the
original financial system of the United States was established;
and they both now stand upon the statute book, unrepealed, and in
full legal force, except in some details. By these laws, made in
the first days of the first session of the first Congress, which
sat under the constitution, gold and silver coin only was made the
currency of the federal treasury, and the treasurer of the United
States was made the fiscal agent to receive, to keep, and to pay
out that gold and silver coin. This was the system of Washington's
administration; and as such it went into effect. All payments to
the federal government were made in gold and silver; all such money
paid remained in the hands of the treasurer himself, until he paid
it out; or in the hands of the collectors of the customs, or the
receivers of the land offices, until he drew warrants upon them in
favor of those to whom money was due from the government. Thus it
was in the beginning--in the first and happy years of Washington's
administration. The money of the government was hard money; and
nobody touched that money but the treasurer of the United States,
and the officers who collected it; and the whole of these were
under bonds and penalties for their good behavior, subject to the
lawful orders and general superintendence of the Secretary of the
Treasury and the President of the United States, who was bound to
see the laws faithfully executed. The government was then what it
was made to be--a hard-money government. It was made by hard-money
men, who had seen enough of the evils of paper money and wished to
save their posterity from such evils in future. The money was hard,
and it was in the hands of the officers of the government--those
who were subject to the orders of the government--and not in the
hands of those who were only subject to requisitions--who could
refuse to pay, protest a warrant, tell the government to sue, and
thus go to law with the government for its own money. The framers
of the constitution, and the authors of the two acts of 1789, had
seen enough of the evils of the system of requisitions under the
confederation to warn them against it under the constitution.
They determined that the new government should keep its own hard
money, as well as collect it; and thus the constitution, the law,
the practice under the law, and the intentions of the hard-money
and independent treasury men, were all in harmony, and in full,
perfect, and beautiful operation, under the first years of General
Washington's administration. All was right, and all was happy and
prosperous, at the commencement.
But the spoiler came! General Hamilton was Secretary of the
Treasury. He was the advocate of the paper system, the banking
system, and the funding system, which were fastened upon England by
Sir Robert Walpole, in his long and baneful administration under
the first and second George. General Hamilton was the advocate of
these systems, and wished to transplant them to our America. He
exerted his great abilities, rendered still more potent by his high
personal character, and his glorious revolutionary services, to
substitute paper money for the federal currency, and banks for the
keepers of the public money; and he succeeded to the extent of his
wishes. The hard-money currency prescribed by the act of September
1st, 1789, was abolished by construction, and by a Treasury order
to receive bank notes; the fiscal agent for the reception, the
keeping, and the disbursement of the public moneys, consisting of
the treasurer, and his collectors and receivers, was superseded by
the creation of a national bank, invested with the privilege of
keeping the public moneys, paying them out, and furnishing supplies
of paper money for the payment of dues to the government. Thus, the
two acts of 1789 were avoided, or superseded; not repealed, but
only avoided and superseded by a Treasury order to receive paper,
and a bank to keep it and pay it out. From this time paper money
became the federal currency, and a bank the keeper of the federal
money. It is needless to pursue this departure farther. The bank
had its privileges for twenty years--was succeeded in them by local
banks--they superseded by a second national bank--it again by local
banks--and these finally by the independent treasury system--which
was nothing but a return to the fundamental acts of 1789.
This is the brief history--the genealogy rather--of our fiscal
agents; and from this it results, that after more than forty years
of departure from the system of our forefathers--after more than
forty years of wandering in the wilderness of banks, local and
national--after more than forty years of wallowing in the slough of
paper money, sometimes sound, sometimes rotten--we have returned
to the point from which we sat out--hard money for our Federal
Treasury; and our own officers to keep it. We returned to the acts
of '89, not suddenly and crudely, but by degrees, and with details,
to make the return safe and easy. The specie clause was restored,
not by a sudden and single step, but gradually and progressively, to
be accomplished in four years. The custody of the public moneys was
restored to the treasurer and his officers; and as it was impossible
for him to take manual possession of the moneys every where, a
few receivers-general were given to him to act as his deputies,
and the two mints in Philadelphia and New Orleans (proper places
to keep money, and their keys in the hands of our officers), were
added to his means of receiving and keeping them. This return to
the old acts of '89 was accomplished in the summer of 1840. The old
system, with a new name, and a little additional organization, has
been in force near one year. It has worked well. It has worked both
well and easy, and now the question is to repeal it, and to begin
again where General Hamilton started us above forty years ago, and
which involved us so long in the fate of banks and in the miseries
and calamities of paper money. The gentlemen on the other side of
the House go for the repeal; we against it; and this defines the
position of the two great parties of the day--one standing on ground
occupied by General Hamilton and the federalists in the year '91;
the other standing on the ground occupied at the same time by Mr.
Jefferson and the democracy.
The democracy oppose the repeal, because this system is proved by
experience to be the safest, the cheapest, and the best mode of
collecting the revenues, and keeping and disbursing the public
moneys, which the wisdom of man has yet invented. It is the safest
mode of collecting, because it receives nothing but gold and silver,
and thereby saves the government from loss by paper money, preserves
the standard of value, and causes a supply of specie to be kept in
the country for the use of the people and for the support of the
sound part of the banks. It is the cheapest mode of keeping the
moneys; for the salaries of a few receivers are nothing compared
to the cost of employing banks; for banks must be paid either by a
per centum, or by a gross sum, or by allowing them the gratuitous
use of the public money. This latter method has been tried, and has
been found to be the dearest of all possible modes. The sub-treasury
is the safest mode of keeping, for the receivers-general are our
officers--subject to our orders--removable at our will--punishable
criminally--suable civilly--and bound in heavy securities. It is
the best mode; for it has no interest in increasing taxes in order
to increase the deposits. Banks have this interest. A national
bank has an interest in augmenting the revenue, because thereby it
augmented the public deposits. The late bank had an average deposit
for near twenty years of eleven millions and a half of public money
in the name of the treasurer of the United States, and two millions
and a half in the names of public officers. It had an annual average
deposit of fourteen millions, and was notoriously in favor of all
taxes, and of the highest tariffs, and was leagued with the party
which promoted these taxes and tariffs. A sub-treasury has no
interest of this kind, and in that particular alone presents an
immense advantage over any bank depositories, whether a national
institution or a selection of local banks. Every public interest
requires the independent treasury to be continued. It is the old
system of '89. The law for it has been on our statute-book for
fifty-two years. Every citizen who is under fifty-two years old has
lived all his life under the sub-treasury law, although the law
itself has been superseded or avoided during the greater part of the
time. Like the country gentleman in Molière's comedy, who had talked
prose all his life without knowing it, every citizen who is under
fifty-two has lived his life under the sub-treasury law--under
the two acts of '89 which constitute it, and which have not been
repealed.
We are against the repeal; and although unable to resist it here,
we hope to show to the American people that it ought not to be
repealed, and that the time will come when its re-establishment will
be demanded by the public voice.
Independent of our objections to the merits of this repeal, stands
one of a preliminary character, which has been too often mentioned
to need elucidation or enforcement, but which cannot be properly
omitted in any general examination of the subject. We are about to
repeal one system without having provided another, and without even
knowing what may be substituted, or whether any substitute whatever
shall be agreed upon. Shall we have any, and if any, what? Shall it
be a national bank, after the experience we have just had of such
institutions? Is it to be a nondescript invention--a fiscality--or
fiscal agent--to be planted in this District because we have
exclusive jurisdiction here, and which, upon the same argument,
may be placed in all the forts and arsenals, in all the dock-yards
and navy-yards, in all the lighthouses and powder magazines, and
in all the territories which the United States now possess, or may
hereafter acquire? We have exclusive jurisdiction over all these;
and if, with this argument, we can avoid the constitution in these
ten miles square, we can also avoid it in every State, and in every
territory of the Union. Is it to be the pet bank system of 1836,
which, besides being rejected by all parties, is an impossibility in
itself? Is it to be the lawless condition of the public moneys, as
gentlemen denounced it, which prevailed from October, 1833, when the
deposits were removed from the Bank of the United States, till June,
1836, when the State bank deposit system was adopted; and during all
which time we could hear of nothing but the union of the purse and
the sword, and the danger to our liberties from the concentration
of all power in the hands of one man? Is it to be any one of these,
and which? And if neither, then are the two acts of '89, which have
never been repealed--which have only been superseded by temporary
enactments, which have ceased, or by treasury constructions which no
one can now defend--are these two acts to recover their vitality
and vigor, and again become the law of the land, as they were in
the first years of General Washington's administration, and before
General Hamilton overpowered them? If so, we are still to have the
identical system which we now repeal, with no earthly difference but
the absence of its name, and the want of a few of its details. Be
all this as it may--let the substitute be any thing or nothing--we
have still accomplished a great point by the objection we have
taken to the repeal before the substitute was produced, and by the
vote which we took upon that point yesterday. We have gained the
advantage of cutting gentlemen off from all plea for adopting their
baneful schemes, founded upon the necessity of adopting something,
because we have nothing. By their own vote they refuse to produce
the new system before they abolish the old one. By their own vote
they create the necessity which they deprecate; and having been
warned in time, and acting with their eyes open, they cannot make
their own conduct a plea for adopting a bad measure rather than
none. If Congress adjourns without any system, and the public moneys
remain as they did from 1833 to 1836, the country will know whose
fault it is; and gentlemen will know what epithets to apply to
themselves, by recollecting what they applied to General Jackson
from the day the deposits were removed until the deposit act of '36
was passed.
Who demands the repeal of this system? Not the people of the United
States; for there is not a solitary petition from the farmers, the
mechanics, the productive classes, and the business men, against
it. Politicians who want a national bank, to rule the country, and
millionary speculators who want a bank to plunder it--these, to be
sure, are clamorous for the repeal; and for the obvious reasons
that the present system stands in the way of their great plans.
But who else demands it? Who else objects to either feature of the
sub-treasury--the hard-money feature, or the deposit of our own
moneys with our own officers? Make the inquiry--pursue it through
its details--examine the community by classes, and see who objects.
The hard-money feature is in full force. It took full effect at
once in the South and West, because there were no bank-notes in
those quarters of the Union of the receivable description: it took
full effect in New York and New England, because, having preserved
specie payments, specie was just as plenty in that quarter as
paper money; and all payments were either actually or virtually
in hard money. It was specie, or its equivalent. The hard-money
clause then went into operation at once, and who complained of
it? The payers of the revenue? No, not one of them. The merchants
who pay the duties have not complained; the farmers who buy the
public lands have not complained. On the contrary, they rejoice;
for hard-money payments keep off the speculator, with his bales of
notes borrowed from banks, and enable the farmer to get his land
at a fair price. The payers of the revenue then do not complain.
How stands it with the next most interested class--the receivers of
money from the United States? Are they dissatisfied at being paid
in gold and silver? And do they wish to go back to the depreciated
paper--the shinplasters--the compound of lampblack and rags--which
they received a few years ago? Put this inquiry to the meritorious
laborer who is working in stone, in wood, earth, and in iron for you
at this moment. Ask him if he is tired of hard-money payments, and
wishes the independent treasury system repealed, that he may get a
chance to receive his hard-earned wages in broken bank-notes again.
Ask the soldier and the mariner the same question. Ask the salaried
officer and the contractor the same question. Ask ourselves here if
we wish it--we who have seen ourselves paid in gold for years past,
after having been for thirty years without a sight of that metal.
No, sir, no. Neither the payers of money to the government, nor the
receivers of money from the government, object to the hard-money
clause in the sub-treasury act. How is it then with the body of
the people--the great mass of the productive and business classes?
Do they object to the clause? Not at all. They rejoice at it: for
they receive, at second-hand, all that comes from the government.
No officer, contractor, or laborer, eats the hard money which he
receives from the government, but pays it out for the supplies which
support his family: it all goes to the business and productive
classes: and thus the payments from the government circulate from
hand to hand, and go through the whole body of the people. Thus the
whole body of the productive classes receive the benefit of the
whole amount of the government hard-money payments. Who is it then
that objects to it? Broken banks, and their political confederates,
are the clamorers against it. Banks which wish to make their paper a
public currency: politicians who wish a national bank as a machine
to rule the country. These banks, and these politicians, are the
sole clamorers against the hard-money clause in the sub-treasury
system: they alone clamor for paper money. And how is it with the
other clause--the one which gives the custody of the public money
to the hands of our own officers, bound to fidelity by character,
by official position, by responsibility, by ample securityship--and
makes it felony in them to touch it for their own use? Here is a
clear case of contention between the banks and the government,
or between the clamorers for a national bank and the government.
These banks want the custody of the public money. They struggle and
strive for it as if it was their own. They fight for it: and if they
get it, they will use it as their own--as we all well know; and
refuse to render back when they choose to suspend. Thus, the whole
struggle for the repeal resolves itself into a contest between the
government, and all the productive and business classes on one side,
and the federal politicians, the rotten part of the local banks, and
the advocates of a national bank on the other.
Sir, the independent treasury has been organized: I say, organized!
for the law creating it is fifty-two years old--has been organized
in obedience to the will of the people, regularly expressed through
their representatives after the question had been carried to them,
and a general election had intervened. The sub-treasury system was
proposed by President Van Buren in 1837, at the called session: it
was adopted in 1840, after the question had been carried to the
people, and the elections made to turn upon it. It was established,
and clearly established, by the will of the people. Have the people
condemned it? Have they expressed dissatisfaction? By no means.
The presidential election was no test of this question; nor of any
question. The election of General Harrison was effected by the
combination of all parties to pull down one party, without any unity
among the assailants on the question of measures. A candidate was
agreed upon by the opposition for whom all could vote. Suppose a
different selection had been made, and an eminent whig candidate
taken, and he had been beaten two to one (as would probably have
been the case): what then would have been the argument? Why, that
the sub-treasury, and every other measure of the democracy, had
been approved, two to one. The result of the election admits of
no inference against this system; and could not, without imputing
a heedless versatility to the people, which they do not possess.
Their representatives, in obedience to their will, and on full three
years' deliberation, established the system--established it in July,
1840: is it possible that, within four months afterwards--in the
month of November following--the same people should condemn their
own work?
But the system is to be abolished; and we are to take our chance
for something, or nothing, in place of it. The abolition is to take
place incontinently--incessantly--upon the instant of the passage of
the bill! such is the spirit which pursues it! such the revengeful
feeling which burns against it! And the system is still to be
going on for a while after its death--for some days in the nearest
parts, and some weeks in the remotest parts of the Union. The
receiver-general in St. Louis will not know of his official death
until ten days after he shall have been killed here. In the mean
time, supposing himself to be alive, he is acting under the law; and
all he does is without law, and void. So of the rest. Not only must
the system be abolished before a substitute is presented, but before
the knowledge of the abolition can reach the officers who carry it
on; and who must continue to receive, and pay out public moneys for
days and weeks after their functions have ceased, and when all their
acts have become illegal and void.
Such is the spirit which pursues the measure--such the vengeance
against a measure which has taken the money of the people from
the moneyed corporations. It is the vengeance of the banking
spirit against its enemy--against a system which deprives soulless
corporations of their rich prey. Something must rise up in the place
of the abolished system until Congress provides a substitute; and
that something will be the nest of local banks which the Secretary
of the Treasury may choose to select. Among these local banks
stands that of the Bank of the United States. The repeal of the
sub-treasury has restored that institution to its capacity to
become a depository of the public moneys: and well, and largely has
she prepared herself to receive them. The Merchants' Bank in New
Orleans, her agent there; her branch in New York under the State
law; and her branches and agencies in the South and in the West: all
these subordinates, already prepared, enable her to take possession
of the public moneys in all parts of the Union. That she expected
to do so we learn from Mr. Biddle, who considered the attempted
resumption in January last as unwise, because, in showing the broken
condition of his bank, her claim to the deposits would become
endangered. Mr. Biddle shows that the deposits were to have been
restored; that, while in a state of suspension, his bank was as good
as any. _De noche todas los gatos son pardos._ So says the Spanish
proverb. In the dark, all the cats are grey--all of one color: the
same of banks in a state of suspension. And in this darkness and
assimilation of colors, the Bank of the United States has found
her safety and security--her equality with the rest, and her fair
claim to recover the keeping of the long-lost deposits. The attempt
at resumption exposed her emptiness, and her rottenness--showed
her to be the whited sepulchre, filled with dead men's bones.
Liquidation was her course--the only honest--the only justifiable
course. Instead of that she accepts new terms (just completed) from
the Pennsylvania legislatures--affects to continue to exist as a
bank: and by treating Mr. Biddle as the Jonas of the ship, when the
whole crew were Jonases, expects to save herself by throwing him
overboard. That bank is now, on the repeal of the sub-treasury,
on a level with the rest for the reception of the public moneys.
She is legally in the category of a public depository, under the
act of 1836, the moment she resumes: and when her notes are shaved
in--a process now in rapid movement--she may assert and enforce her
right. She may resume for a week, or a month, to get hold of the
public moneys. By the repeal, the public deposits, so far as law is
concerned, are restored to the Bank of the United States. When the
Senate have this night voted the repeal, they have also voted the
restoration of the deposits; and they will have done it wittingly
and knowingly, with their eyes open, and with a full perception
of what they were doing. When they voted down my proposition of
yesterday--a vote in which the whole opposition concurred, except
the senator from Virginia who sits nearest me (Mr. Archer)--when
they voted down that proposition to exclude the Bank of the United
States from the list of future deposit banks, they of course
declared that she ought to remain upon the list, with the full
right to avail herself of her privilege under the revived act of
1836. In voting down that proposition, they voted up the prostrate
bank of Mr. Biddle, and accomplished the great object of the panic
of 1833-'34--that of censuring General Jackson, and of restoring
the deposits. The act of that great man--one of the most patriotic
and noble of his life--the act by which he saved forty millions
of dollars to the American people--is reversed. The stockholders
and creditors of the institution lose above forty millions, which
the people otherwise would have lost. They lose the whole stock,
thirty-five millions--for it will not be worth a straw to those
who keep it: and the vote of the bank refusing to show their list
of debtors--suppressing, hiding and concealing--the rotten list
of debts--(in which it is mortifying to see a Southern gentleman
concurring)--is to enable the initiated jobbers and gamblers to
shove off their stock at some price on ignorant and innocent
purchasers. The stockholders lose the thirty-five millions capital:
they lose the twenty per centum advance upon that capital, at which
many of the later holders purchased it; and which is near seven
millions more: they lose the six millions surplus profits which were
reported on hand: but which, perhaps, was only a _bank_ report: and
the holders of the notes lose the twenty to thirty per centum, which
is now the depreciation of the notes of the bank--soon to be much
more. These losses make some fifty millions of dollars. They now
fall on the stockholders, and note-holders: where would they have
fallen if the deposits had not been removed? They would have fallen
upon the public treasury--upon the people of the United States:
for the public is always the goose that is to be first plucked.
The public money would have been taken to sustain the bank: taxes
would have been laid to uphold her: the high tariff would have been
revived for her benefit. Whatever her condition required would have
been done by Congress. The bank, with all its crimes and debts--with
all its corruptions and plunderings--would have been saddled upon
the country--its charter renewed--and the people pillaged of the
more than forty millions of dollars which have been lost. Congress
would have been enslaved: and a new career of crime, corruption,
and plunder commenced. The heroic patriotism of President Jackson
saved us from this shame and loss: but we have no Jackson to save us
now; and millionary plunderers--devouring harpies--foul birds, and
voracious as foul--are again to seize the prey which his brave and
undaunted arm snatched from their insatiate throats.
The deposits are restored, so far as the vote of the Senate goes;
and if not restored in fact, it will be because policy, and new
schemes forbid it. And what new scheme can we have? A nondescript,
hermaphrodite, Janus-faced fiscality? or a third edition of General
Hamilton's bank of 1791? or a bastard compound, the unclean progeny
of both? Which will it be? Hardly the first named. It comes forth
with the feeble and rickety symptoms which announce an unripe
conception, and an untimely death. Will it be the second? It will
be that, or worse. And where will the late flatterers--the present
revilers of Mr. Biddle--the authors equally of the bank that is
ruined, and of the one that is to be created: where will they find
better men to manage the next than they had to manage the last? I
remember the time when the vocabulary of praise was exhausted on Mr.
Biddle--when in this chamber, and out of it, the censer, heaped with
incense, was constantly kept burning under his nose: when to hint
reproach of him was to make, if not a thousand chivalrous swords
leap from their scabbards, at least to make a thousand tongues,
and ten thousand pens, start up to defend him. I remember the time
when a senator on this floor, and now on it (Mr. Preston of South
Carolina), declared in his place that the bare annunciation of Mr.
Biddle's name as Secretary of the Treasury, would raise the value
of the people's property one hundred millions of dollars. My friend
here on my right (pointing to Senator Woodbury) was the Secretary
of the Treasury; and the mere transposition of names and places--the
mere substitution of Biddle for Woodbury--was to be worth one
hundred millions of dollars to the property of the country! What
flattery could rise higher than that? Yet this man, once so
lauded--once so followed, flattered, and courted--now lies condemned
by all his former friends. They cannot now denounce sufficiently
the man who, for ten years past, they could not praise enough: and,
after this, what confidence are we to have in their judgments?
What confidence are we to place in their new bank, and their new
managers, after seeing such mistakes about the former?
Let it not be said that this bank went to ruin since it became a
State institution. The State charter made no difference in its
character, or in its management: and Mr. Biddle declared it to be
stronger and safer without the United States for a partner than
with it. The mortal wounds were all given while it was a national
institution; and the late report of the stockholders shows not one
species of offence, the cotton speculations alone excepted, which
was not shown by Mr. Clayton's report of 1832; and being shown,
was then defended by the whole power of those who are now cutting
loose from the old bank, and clamoring for a new one. Not an act
now brought to light, save and except the cotton operation, not
even that for which Reuben M. Whitney was crushed to death, and
his name constituted the synonyme of perjury and infamy for having
told it; not an act now brought to light which was not shown to
exist ten years ago, and which was not then defended by the whole
federal party; so that the pretension that this institution did
well as a national bank, and ill as a State one, is as unfounded
in fact, as it is preposterous and absurd in idea. The bank was in
the high road to ruin--in the gulf of insolvency--in the slough of
crime and corruption--when the patriot Jackson signed the veto,
and ordered the removal of the deposits; and nothing but these two
great acts saved the people from the loss of the forty millions of
dollars which have now fallen upon the stockholders and the note
holders, and from the shame of seeing their government the slave and
instrument of the bank. Jackson saved the people from this loss,
and their government from this degradation; and for this he is now
pursued with the undying vengeance of those whose schemes of plunder
and ambition were balked by him.
Wise and prudent was the conduct of those who refused to recharter
the second Bank of the United States. They profited by the error
of their friends who refused to recharter the first one. These
latter made no preparations for the event--did nothing to increase
the constitutional currency--and did not even act until the last
moment. The renewed charter was only refused a few days before the
expiration of the existing charter, and the federal government fell
back upon the State banks, which immediately sunk under its weight.
The men of 1832 acted very differently. They decided the question
of the renewal long before the expiration of the existing charter.
They revived the gold currency, which had been extinct for thirty
years. They increased the silver currency by repealing the act
of 1819 against the circulation of foreign silver. They branched
the mints. In a word, they raised the specie currency from twenty
millions to near one hundred millions of dollars; and thus supplied
the country with a constitutional currency to take the place of the
United States Bank notes. The supply was adequate, being nearly ten
times the average circulation of the national bank. That average
circulation was but eleven millions of dollars; the gold and silver
was near one hundred millions. The success of our measures was
complete. The country was happy and prosperous under it; but the
architects of mischief--the political, gambling, and rotten part
of the banks, headed by the Bank of the United States, and aided
by a political party--set to work to make panic and distress, to
make suspensions and revulsions, to destroy trade and business,
to degrade and poison the currency; to harass the country until
it would give them another national bank: and to charge all the
mischief they created upon the democratic administration. This has
been their conduct; and having succeeded in the last presidential
election, they now come forward to seize the spoils of victory in
creating another national bank, to devour the substance of the
people, and to rule the government of their country. Sir, the
suspension of 1837, on the part of the Bank of the United States
and its confederate banks and politicians, was a conspiracy and
a revolt against the government. The present suspension is a
continuation of the same revolt by the same parties. Many good banks
are overpowered by them, and forced into suspension; but with the
Bank of the United States, its affiliated banks, and its confederate
politicians, it is a revolt and a conspiracy against the government.
Sir, it is now nightfall. We are at the end of a long day when
the sun is more than fourteen hours above the horizon, and when a
suffocating heat oppresses and overpowers the Senate. My friends
have moved adjournments: they have been refused. I have been
compelled to speak now, or never, and from this commencement we
may see the conclusion. Discussion is to be stifled; measures are
to be driven through; and a mutilated Congress, hastily assembled,
imperfectly formed, and representing the census of 1830, not of
1840, is to manacle posterity with institutions which are as
abhorent to the constitution as they are dangerous to the liberties,
the morals, and the property of the people. A national bank is to be
established, not even a simple and strong bank like that of General
Hamilton, but some monstrous compound, born of hell and chaos, more
odious, dangerous, and terrible than any simple bank could be.
Posterity is to be manacled, and delivered up in chains to this
deformed monster; and by whom? By a rump Congress, representing an
expired census of the people, in the absence of members from States
which, if they had their members here, would still have but the
one-third part of their proper weight in the councils of the Union.
The census of 1840 gives many States, and Missouri among the rest,
three times their present relative weight; and no permanent measure
ought to be discussed until this new relative weight should appear
in Congress. Why take the census every ten years, if an expiring
representation at the end of the term may reach over, and bind the
increased numbers by laws which claim immunity from repeal, and
which are rushed through without debate? Am I to submit to such
work? No, never! I will war against the bank you may establish,
whether a simple or a compound monster; I will war against it by
every means known to the constitution and the laws. I will vote for
the repeal of its charter as General Harrison and others voted for
the repeal of the late bank charter in 1819. I will promote _quo
warranto's and sci. fa.'s_ against it. I will oppose its friends
and support its enemies, and work at its destruction in every legal
and constitutional way. I will war upon it while I have breath; and
if I incur political extinction in the contest, I shall consider my
political life well sold--sold for a high price--when lost in such a
cause.
But enough for the present. The question now before us is the
death of the sub-treasury. The discussion of the substitute is a
fair inquiry in this question. We have a right to see what is to
follow, and to compare it with what we have. But gentlemen withhold
their schemes, and we strike in the dark. My present purpose is to
vindicate the independent treasury system--to free it from a false
character--to show it to be what it is, nothing but the revival of
the two great acts of September the 1st and September the 2d, 1789,
for the collection, safe keeping, and disbursement of the public
moneys, under which this government went into operation; and under
which it operated safely and successfully until General Hamilton
overthrew it to substitute the bank and state system of Sir Robert
Walpole, which has been the curse of England, and towards which we
are now hurrying again with headlong steps and blindfold eyes.
CHAPTER LXVI.
THE BANKRUPT ACT: WHAT IT WAS: AND HOW IT WAS PASSED.
It has been seen in Mr. Tyler's message that, as a measure of
his own administration, he would not have convened Congress in
extraordinary session; but this having been done by his predecessor,
he would not revoke his act. It was known that the call had been
made at the urgent instance of Mr. Clay. That ardent statesman
had so long seen his favorite measures baffled by a majority
opposition to them in one House or the other, and by the twelve
years presidency of General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren, that he
was naturally now impatient to avail himself of the advantage of
having all the branches of the government in their favor. He did
so without delay. Mr. Tyler had delivered his message recommending
the measures which he deemed proper for the consideration of
Congress: Mr. Clay did the same--that is to say, recommend his list
of measures to Congress also, not in the shape of a message, but
in the form of a resolve, submitted to the Senate; and which has
been given. A bankrupt act was not in his programme, nor in the
President's message; and it was well known, and that by evidence
less equivocal than its designed exclusion from his list of
measures, that Mr. Clay was opposed to such a bill. But parties were
so nearly balanced in the Senate, a deduction of two or three from
the one side and added to the other would operate the life or death
of most important measures, in the event that a few members should
make the passage of a favorite measure the indispensable condition
of their vote for some others which could not be carried without it.
This was the case with the bank bill, and the distribution bill. A
bank was the leading measure of Mr. Clay's policy--the corner stone
of his legislative edifice. It was number two in his list: it was
number one in his affections and in his parliamentary movement. He
obtained a select committee on the second day of the session, to
take into consideration the part of the President's message which
related to the currency and the fiscal agent for the management of
the finances; but before that select committee could report a bill,
Mr. Henderson, of Mississippi, taking the shortest road to get at
his object, asked and obtained leave to bring in a bill to establish
a system of bankruptcy. This measure, then, which had no place in
the President's message, or in Mr. Clay's schedule, and to which he
was averse, took precedence on the calendar of the vital measure
for which the extra session was chiefly called; and Mr. Henderson
being determinedly supported by his colleague, Mr. Walker, and a few
other resolute senators with whom the bankrupt act was an overruling
consideration, he was enabled to keep it ahead, and coerce support
from as many averse to it as would turn the scale in its favor. It
passed the Senate, July 24th, by a close vote, 26 to 23. The yeas
were:
"Messrs. Barrow, Bates, Berrien, Choate, Clay of Kentucky,
Clayton, Dixon, Evans, Henderson, Huntington, Kerr, Merrick,
Miller, Morehead, Mouton, Phelps, Porter, Simmons, Smith
of Indiana, Southard, Tallmadge, Walker, White, Williams,
Woodbridge, Young.
"NAYS--Messrs. Allen, Archer, Bayard, Benton, Buchanan,
Calhoun, Clay of Alabama, Cuthbert, Fulton, Graham, King, Linn,
McRoberts, Nicholson, Pierce, Prentiss, Rives, Sevier, Smith of
Connecticut, Sturgeon, Tappan, Woodbury, Wright."
The distribution bill was a leading measure in Mr. Clay's policy:
it ranked next after the national bank. He had also taken it into
his own care, and had introduced a bill on leave for the purpose at
an early day. A similar bill was also introduced in the House of
Representatives. There was no willing majority for the bankrupt bill
in either House; but the bank bill and the land bill were made to
pass it. The ardent friends of the bankrupt bill embargoed both the
others until their favorite measure was secure. They were able to
defeat the other two, and determined to do so if they did not get
their own measure; and they did get it--presenting the spectacle
of a bill, which had no majority in either House, forcing its
own passage, and controlling the fate of two others--all of them
measures of great national concern.
The bankrupt bill had passed the Senate ahead of the bank bill,
and also of the distribution bill, and went to the House of
Representatives, where the majority was against it. It seemed doomed
in that House. The same bill had originated in that body; but lay
upon the table without consideration. The President, beset by a mass
of debtors who had repaired to Washington to promote the passage
of the bill, sent in a special message in its favor; but without
effect. The House bill slept on the table: the Senate bill arrived
there, and was soon put to rest upon the same table. Mr. Underwood,
of Kentucky, a friend of Mr. Clay, had moved to lay it on the table;
and the motion prevailed by a good majority--110 to 97. Information
of this vote instantly flew to the Senate. One of the senators,
intent upon the passage of the bill, left his seat and went down to
the House; and when he returned he informed the writer of this View
that the bill would pass--that it would be taken off the table, and
put through immediately: and such was the fact. The next day the
bill was taken up and passed--the meagre majority of only six for
it. The way in which this was done was made known to the writer of
this View by the senator who went down to attend to the case when
the bill was laid on the table: it was simply to let the friends of
the bank and distribution bills know that these measures would be
defeated if the bankrupt bill was not passed--that there were enough
determined on that point to make sure: and, for the security of the
bankrupt bill, it was required to be passed first.
The bill had passed the House with an amendment, postponing the
commencement of its operation from November to February; and
this amendment required to be communicated to the Senate for its
concurrence--which was immediately done. This amendment was a
salvo to the consciences of members for their forced votes: it was
intended to give Congress an opportunity of repealing the act before
it took effect; but the friends of the bill were willing to take
it that way--confident that they could baffle the repeal for some
months, and until those most interested, had obtained the relief
they wanted.
At the time that this amendment was coming up to the Senate that
body was engaged on the distribution bill, the debate on the bank
veto message having been postponed by the friends of the bank to
make way for it. August the 18th had been fixed for that day--12
o'clock the hour. The day and the hour, had come; and with them an
immense crowd, and an excited expectation. For it was known that Mr.
Clay was to speak--and to speak according to his feelings--which
were known to be highly excited against Mr. Tyler. In the midst
of this expectation and crowd, and to the disappointment of every
body, Mr. Berrien rose and said that--"Under a sense of duty, he
was induced to move that the consideration of the executive veto
message on the fiscal bank bill be postponed until to-morrow, 12
o'clock."--Mr. Calhoun objected to this postponement. "The day,
he said, had been fixed by the friends of the bank bill. The
President's message containing his objections to it had now been
in possession of the Senate, and on the tables of members for two
days. Surely there had been sufficient time to reflect upon it:
yet now it was proposed still longer to defer action upon it. He
asked the senator from Georgia, who had made the motion, to assign
some reason for the proposed delay." The request of Mr. Calhoun
for a reason, was entirely parliamentary and proper; and in
fact should have been anticipated by giving the reason with the
motion--as it was not deferential to the Senate to ask it to do a
thing without a reason, especially when the thing to be done was
contrary to an expressed resolve of the Senate, and took members
by surprise who came prepared to attend to the appointed business,
and not prepared to attend to another subject. Mr. Berrien declined
to give a reason, and said that--"When the senator from South
Carolina expressed his personal conviction that time enough had
been allowed for reflection on the message, he expressed what would
no doubt regulate his personal conduct; but when he himself stated
that, under a sense of duty, he had asked for further time, he had
stated his own conviction in regard to the course which ought to be
pursued. Senators would decide for themselves which opinion was to
prevail."--Mr. Calhoun rejoined in a way to show his belief that
there was a secret and sinister cause for this reserve, so novel
and extraordinary in legislative proceedings. He said--"Were the
motives such as could not be publicly looked at? were they founded
on movements external to that chamber? It was certainly due to the
Senate that a reason should be given. It was quite novel to refuse
it. Some reason was always given for a postponement. He had never
known it to be otherwise."--Mr. Berrien remained unmoved by this
cogent appeal, and rejoined--"The senator from South Carolina was
at liberty to suggest whatever he might think proper; but that he
should not conclude him (Mr. Berrien), as having made a motion here
for reasons which he could not disclose."--Mr. Calhoun then said
that, "this was a very extraordinary motion, the votes of senators
upon it ought to be recorded: he would therefore move for the yeas
and nays,"--which were ordered, and stood thus: Yeas: Messrs.
Archer, Barrow, Bates, Bayard, Berrien, Choate, Clay of Kentucky,
Clayton (Thomas of Delaware), Dixon, Evans, Graham, Henderson,
Huntingdon, Kerr, Mangum, Merrick, Miller, Morehead, Phelps, Porter,
Prentiss, Preston, Rives, Simmons, Smith of Indiana, Southard,
Tallmadge, White, and Woodbridge, 29--the supporters of the bank all
voting for the postponement, their numbers swelled a little beyond
their actual strength by the votes of Mr. Rives, and a few other
whigs. The nays were: Messrs. Allen, Benton, Buchanan, Calhoun,
Clay of Alabama, Cuthbert, Fulton, King, Linn, McRoberts, Mouton,
A. O. P. Nicholson, Pierce, Sevier, Sturgeon, Tappan, Walker,
Williams, Woodbury, Wright, and Young--21. It was now apparent that
the postponement of the bank question was a concerted measure of the
whig party--that Mr. Berrien was its organ in making the motion--and
that the reason for it was a party secret which he was not at
liberty to disclose. Events, however, were in progress to make the
disclosure.
The distribution bill was next in order, and during its
consideration Mr. White, of Indiana, made a remark which attracted
the attention of Mr. Benton. Deprecating further debate, as a
useless waste of time, Mr. White wished discussion to cease, and
the vote be taken--"as he hoped, as well as believed, that the bill
would pass, and not alone, but be accompanied by other measures."
This remark from Mr. White gave Mr. Benton something to go upon; and
he immediately let out what was on his mind.
He thanked the senator from Indiana for his avowal; it was a
confirmation of what he well knew before--that measures, at this
extraordinary session, were not passed or rejected upon their
merits, but made to depend one upon another, and the whole upon a
third! It was all bargain and sale. All was conglomerated into one
mass, and must go together or fall together. This was the decree out
of doors. When the sun dips below the horizon, a private Congress
is held, the fate of the measure is decided; a bundle are tied
together; and while one goes ahead as a bait, another is held back
as a rod.
Mr. Linn, of Missouri, still more frank than his colleague,
stigmatized the motive for postponement, and the means that were put
in practice to pass momentous bills which could not pass on their
own merits; and spoke out without disguise:
"These artifices grow out of the system adopted for carrying
through measures that never could be carried through other than
by trick and art. The majority which by force, not by argument,
have to carry their measures, must meet in secret--concoct their
measures in conclave--and then hold every member of the party
bound to support what is thus agreed upon--a master spirit
leading all the while. There had been enough of falsehood,
misrepresentation and delusion. The presidential election
had contained enough of it, without adding to the mass at
this session. The country was awake to these impositions,
and required only to be informed of the movements of the
wire-workers to know how to appreciate their measures. And the
people should be informed. As far as it was possible for him
and his friends to lay that information before the country, it
should be done. Every man in the community must be told how this
bank bill, which was intended to rule the country with a moneyed
despotism for years to come, had been passed--how a national
debt was entailed upon the country--how this bankrupt bill was
forced through, as he (Mr. LINN) now understood it was, by a
majority of five votes, in the other end of the Capitol, many of
its whig opponents dodging behind the columns; and how this land
distribution bill was now in the course of being passed, and the
tricks resorted to to effect its passage. It was all part and
parcel of the same system which was concocted in Harrisburg,
wrought with such blind zeal at the presidential election, and
perfected by being compressed into a congressional caucus, at an
extraordinary called, but uncalled-for, session."
The distribution bill had been under debate for an hour, and Mr.
King, of Alabama, was on the floor speaking to it, when the clerk
of the House of Representatives appeared at the door of the Senate
Chamber with the bankrupt bill, and the amendments made by the
House--and asking the concurrence of the Senate. Still standing on
his feet, but dropping the line of his argument, Mr. King exclaimed:
"That, sir, is the bill. There it is sir. That is the bill which
is to hurry this land distribution bill to its final passage,
without either amendments or debate. Did not the senator know
that yesterday, when the bankrupt bill was laid on the table by
a decided vote in the other House, the distribution bill could
not, by any possibility then existing, be passed in this House?
But now the case was altered. A reconsideration of the vote of
yesterday had taken place in the other House, and the bankrupt
bill was now returned to the Senate for concurrence; after which
it would want but the signature of the Executive to become a
law. But how had this change been so suddenly brought about?
How, but by putting on the screws? Gentlemen whose States cried
aloud for the relief of a bankrupt law, were told they could
not have it unless they would pay the price--they must pass the
distribution bill, or they should have no bankrupt bill. One
part of the bargain was already fulfilled: the bankrupt bill was
passed. The other part of the bargain is now to be consummated:
the distribution bill can pass now without further delay. He
(Mr. KING) had had the honor of a seat in this chamber for many
years, but never during that time had he seen legislation so
openly and shamefully disgraced by a system of bargain and sale.
This extra session of Congress would be long remembered for
the open and undisguised extent to which this system had been
carried."
Incontinently the distribution bill was laid upon the table, and the
bankrupt bill was taken up. This was done upon the motion of Mr.
Walker, who gave his reasons, thus:
"He rose not to prolong the debate on the distribution bill,
but to ask that it might be laid on the table, that the bill to
establish a general bankrupt law, which had just been received
from the House, might be taken up, and the amendment, which was
unimportant, might be concurred in by the Senate. He expressed
his ardent joy at the passage of this bill by this House, which
was so imperiously demanded as a measure of great relief to a
suffering community, which he desired should not be held in
suspense another night; but that they should immediately take up
the amendments, and act on them. For this purpose he moved to
lay the distribution bill on the table."
Mr. Linn asked for the yeas and nays, that it might be seen how
senators voted in this rigadoon legislation, in which movements
were so rapid, so complicated, and so perfectly performed. They
were ordered, and stood: Yeas--Messrs. Archer, Barrow, Bates,
Bayard, Berrien, Choate, Clay of Kentucky, Dixon, Evans, Henderson,
Huntington, Kerr, Mangum, Merrick, Miller, Morehead, Phelps, Porter,
Preston, Simmons, Smith of Indiana, Southard, Tallmadge, Walker,
White, and Woodbridge--26. Nays--Messrs. Allen, Benton, Buchanan,
Calhoun, Clay of Alabama, Clayton, Cuthbert, Fulton, Graham, King,
Linn, McRoberts, Mouton, Pierce, Sevier, Sturgeon, Tappan, Williams,
Woodbury, Wright, and Young--21. So that the whole body of the
friends to the distribution bill, voted to lay it down to take up
the bankrupt bill, as they had just voted to lay down the bank bill
to take up the distribution. The three measures thus travelled in
company, but bankrupt in the lead--for the reason, as one of its
supporters told Mr. Benton, that they were afraid it would not get
through at all if the other measures got through before it. The
bankrupt bill having thus superseded the distribution bill, as
itself had superseded the bank bill, Mr. Walker moved a concurrence
in the amendment. Mr. Buchanan intimated to Mr. Walker that he was
taken in--that the postponement was to enable Congress to repeal
the bill before it took effect; and, speaking in this sense, said:
"From the tone of the letters he had received from politicians
differing with him, he should advise his friend from Mississippi
[Mr. WALKER], not to be quite so soft as, in his eagerness to
pass this bill, to agree to this amendment, postponing the time
for it to take effect to February, as it would be repealed
before its operation commenced; although it was now made a price
of the passage of the distribution bill. He felt not a particle
of doubt but there would be a violent attempt to repeal it next
session."
Mr. Walker did not defend the amendment, but took it rather than,
by a non-concurrence, to send the bill back to the House, where its
friends could not trust it again. He said--"When his friend from
Pennsylvania spoke of his being 'soft,' he did not know whether he
referred to his head or his heart; but he could assure him he was
not soft enough to run the chance of defeating the bill by sending
it back to the House."--Mr. Calhoun did not concur with his friend
from Pennsylvania, that there would be any effort to repeal this
bill. It would be exceedingly popular at its first "go off," and if
this bill passed, he hoped that none of his friends would attempt to
repeal it. It would, if permitted to work, produce its legitimate
effects; and was enough to destroy any administration. He saw that
this was a doomed administration. It would not only destroy them,
but blow them "sky high."
This was the only instance in which Mr. Calhoun was known to express
a willingness that a bad measure should stand because it would be
the destruction of its authors; and on this occasion it was merely
the ebullition of an excited feeling, as proved when the question of
repeal came on at the next session--in which he cordially gave his
assistance. The amendment was concurred in without a division, the
adversaries of the bill being for the postponement in good faith,
and its friends agreeing to it for fear of something worse. There
had been an agreement that the three measures were to pass, and upon
that agreement the bank bill was allowed to go down to the House
before the bankrupt bill was out of it; but the laying that bill on
the table raised an alarm, and the friends of the bankrupt required
the others to be stopped until their cherished measure was finished:
and that was _one_ of the reasons for postponing the debate on the
bank veto message which could not be disclosed to the Senate. The
amendment of the House being agreed to, there was no further vote
to be taken on the bill; but a motion was made to suppress it by
laying it on the table. That motion brought out a clean vote for and
against the bill--23 to 26. The next day it received the approval of
the President, and became a law.
The act was not a bankrupt law, but practically an insolvent law for
the abolition of debts at the will of the debtor. It applied to all
persons in debt--allowed them to commence their proceedings in the
district of their own residence, no matter how lately removed to
it--allowed constructive notice to creditors in newspapers--declared
the abolition of the debt where effects were surrendered and fraud
not proved. It broke down the line between the jurisdiction of the
federal courts and the State courts in the whole department of
debtors and creditors; and bringing all local debts and dealings
into the federal courts, at the will of the debtor, to be settled
by a federal jurisdiction, with every advantage on the side of
the debtor. It took away from the State courts the trials between
debtor and creditor in the same State--a thing which under the
constitution can only be done between citizens of different States.
Jurisdiction over bankruptcies did not include the mass of debtors,
but only that class known to legislative and judicial proceedings
as bankrupts. To go beyond, and take in all debtors who could
not pay their debts, and bring them into the federal courts, was
to break down the line between federal and State jurisdictions,
and subject all persons--all neighbors--to have their dealings
settled in the federal courts. It violated the principle of all
bankrupt systems--that of a proceeding on the part of the creditors
for their own benefit--and made it entirely a proceeding for the
benefit of the debtor, at his own will. It was framed upon the
model of the English insolvent debtor's act of George the Fourth;
and after closely paraphrasing eighteen provisions out of that act,
most flagrantly departed from its remedy in the conclusion, in
substituting a release from the _debt_ instead of a release from
_imprisonment_. In that feature, and in applying to all debts, and
in giving the initiative to the debtor, and subjecting the whole
proceeding to be carried on at his will, it ceased to be a bankrupt
act, and became an insolvent act; but with a remedy which no
insolvent act, or bankrupt system, had ever contained before--that
of a total abolition of the debt by the act of the debtor alone,
unless the creditor could prove fraud; which the sort of trial
allowed would render impossible, even where it actually existed. It
was the same bill which had been introduced at the previous session,
and supported by Mr. Webster in an argument which confounded
insolvency with bankruptcy, and assumed every failure to pay a debt
to be a bankruptcy. The pressure for the passing of the act was
immense. The long disorders of the currency, with the expansions,
contractions, suspensions, and breaking of banks had filled the
country with men of ruined fortunes, who looked to the extinction
of their debts by law as the only means of getting rid of their
incumbrances, and commencing business anew. This unfortunate class
was estimated by the most moderate observers at an hundred thousand
men. They had become a power in the State. Their numbers and zeal
gave them weight: their common interest gave them unity: the stake
at issue gave them energy. They worked in a body in the presidential
election, and on the side of the whigs: and now attended Congress,
and looked to that party for the legislative relief for which
they had assisted in the election. Nor did they look in vain.
They got all they asked--but most unwillingly, and under a moral
duresse--and as the price of passing two other momentous bills. Such
is legislation in high party times! selfish and sinistrous, when
the people believe it to be honest and patriotic! people at home,
whose eyes should be opened to the truth, if they wish to preserve
the purity of their government. Here was a measure which, of itself,
could not have got through either House of Congress: combined with
others, it carried itself, and licensed the passing of two more!
And all this was done--so nicely were parties balanced--by the zeal
and activity (more than the numbers) of a single State, and that a
small one, and among the most indebted. In brief, the bankrupt act
was passed, and the passage of the bank and distribution bills were
licensed by the State of Mississippi, dominated by the condition of
its population.
Mr. Buchanan, Mr. Wright, Mr. Woodbury, were the principal speakers
against the bill in the Senate. Mr. Benton addressed himself mainly
to Mr. Webster's position, confounding insolvency and bankruptcy,
as taken at the previous session; and delivered a speech of some
research in opposition to that assumption--of which some extracts
are given in the next chapter.
CHAPTER LXVII.
BANKRUPT BILL: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH: EXTRACTS.
The great ground which we occupy in relation to the character of
this bill (said Mr. B.) is this: that it is not a bankrupt system,
but an insolvent law, perverted to a discharge from debts, instead
of a discharge from imprisonment. As such, it was denounced from the
moment it made its appearance in this chamber, at the last session,
and I am now ready to prove it to be such. I have discovered its
origin, and hold the evidence in my hand. It is framed upon the
English insolvent debtor's act of the 1st of George IV., improved
and extended by the act of the 7th of George IV., and by the 1st
of Victoria. From these three insolvent acts our famous bankrupt
system of 1841 is compiled; and it follows its originals with great
fidelity, except in a few particulars, until it arrives at the
conclusion, where a vast and terrible alteration is introduced!
Instead of discharging the debtor from imprisonment, as the English
acts do, our American copy discharges him from his debts! But this
is a thing rather to be proved than told; and here is the proof.
I have a copy of the British statutes on my table, containing the
three acts which I have mentioned, and shall quote from the first
one, in the first year of the reign of George IV., and is entitled
"_An act for the relief of insolvent debtors in England_." The
preamble recites that it is expedient to make permanent provision
for the relief of insolvent debtors in England confined in jail, and
who shall be willing to surrender their property to their creditors,
and thereby obtain a discharge from imprisonment. For this purpose
the act creates a new court, to be called the _insolvent debtor's
court_, which was to sit in London, and send commissioners into the
counties. The first sections are taken up with the organization of
the court. Then come its powers and duties, its modes of proceeding,
and the rights of insolvents in it: and in these enactments, as
in a mirror, and with a few exceptions (the effect of design, of
accident, or of necessity, from the difference of the two forms of
government), we perceive the original of our bankrupt act. I quote
partly from the body of the statute, but chiefly from the marginal
notes, as being a sufficient index to the contents of the sections.
(Here the speaker quoted eighteen separate clauses in which the bill
followed the English act, constituting the whole essence of the
bill, and its mode of proceeding.)
This is the bill which we call bankrupt--a mere parody and
perversion of the English insolvent debtor's act. And now, how came
such a bill to be introduced? Sir, it grew out of the contentions
of party; was brought forward, as a party measure; and was one of
the bitter fruits of the election of 1840. The bill was brought
forward in the spring of that year, passed in the Senate, and lost
in the House. It was contested in both Houses as a party measure,
and was taken up as a party topic in the presidential canvass. The
debtor class--those irretrievably in debt, and estimated by the
most moderate at a hundred thousand men--entered most zealously
into the canvass, and on the side of the party which favored the
act. The elections were carried by that party--the Congress as
well as the presidential. All power is in the hands of that party;
and an extra session of the legislature was impatiently called to
realize the benefits of the victory. But the opening of the session
did not appear to be auspicious to the wishes of the bankrupts.
The President's message recommended no bankrupt bill; and the list
of subjects enumerated for the action of Congress, and designated
in a paper drawn by Mr. Clay, and placed on our journal for our
guidance, was equally silent upon that subject. To all appearance,
the bankrupt bill was not to come before us at the extra session.
It was evidently a deferred subject. The friends and expectants of
the measure took the alarm--flocked to Congress--beset the President
and the members--obtained from him a special message recommending
a bankrupt law; and prevailed on members to bring in the bill. It
was brought into the Senate--the same which had been defeated
in 1840--and it was soon seen that its passage was not to depend
upon its own merits; that its fate was indissolubly connected with
another bill; and that one must carry the other.
This is an insolvent bill: it is so proved, and so admitted: and to
defend it the argument is, that insolvency and bankruptcy are the
same--a mere inability or failure to pay debts. This is the corner
stone of the argument for the bill, and has been firmly planted as
such, by its ablest supporter (Mr. Webster). He says:
"Bankruptcies, in the general use and acceptation of the term,
mean no more than failures. A bankruptcy is a fact. It is an
occurrence in the life and fortunes of an individual. When a man
cannot pay his debts, we say that he has become bankrupt, or has
failed. Bankruptcy is not merely the condition of a man who is
insolvent, and on whom a bankrupt law is already acting. This
would be quite too technical an interpretation. According to
this, there never could be bankrupt laws; because every law, if
this were the meaning, would suppose the existence of a previous
law. Whenever a man's means are insufficient to meet his
engagements and pay his debts, the fact of bankruptcy has taken
place--a case of bankruptcy has arisen, whether there be a law
providing for it or not. A learned judge has said, that a law on
the subject of bankruptcies is a law making provision for cases
of persons failing to pay their debts. Over the whole subject of
these failures, or these bankruptcies, the power of Congress, as
it stands on the face of the constitution, is full and complete."
This is an entire mistake. There is no foundation for confounding
bankruptcy and insolvency. A debtor may be rich, and yet be a
bankrupt. Inability to pay does not even enter as an ingredient into
bankruptcy. The whole system is founded on ability and fraud. The
bankrupt is defined in Blackstone's commentaries--a work just issued
and known to all our statesmen at the time of our Revolution--"_to
be a trader, who secretes himself, or does certain other acts to
defraud his creditors_." So far from making insolvency a test of
bankruptcy the whole system supposes ability and fraud--ability to
pay part or all, and a fraudulent intent to evade payment. And every
British act upon the subject directs the surplus to be restored to
the debtor if his effects sell for more than pays the debts--a proof
that insolvency was no ingredient in the acts.
The eminent advocate of the bill, in confounding insolvency and
bankruptcy, has gone to the continent of Europe, and to Scotland,
to quote the _cessio bonorum_ of the civil law, and to confound
it with bankruptcy. He says: "_That bankrupt laws, properly so
called, or laws providing for the cessio bonorum, on the continent
of Europe and Scotland, were never confined to traders._" That is
true. This _cessio_ was never confined to traders: it applied to
debtors who could not pay. It was the cession, or surrender of his
property by the debtor for the purpose of obtaining freedom for his
person--leaving the debt in full force--and all future acquisitions
bound for it. I deal in authority, and read from Professor Bell's
Commentaries upon the Laws of Scotland--an elegant an instructive
work, which has made the reading of Scottish law almost as agreeable
to the law reader as the writings of Scott have made Scottish
history and manners to the general reader. Mr. Bell treats of the
_cessio_ and of bankruptcy, and treats of them under distinct heads;
and here is what he says of them:
"The law of _cessio bonorum_ had its origin in Rome. It was
introduced by Julius Cæsar, as a remedy against the severity of
the old Roman laws of imprisonment; and his law--which included
only Rome and Italy--was, before the time of Diocletian,
extended to the provinces. The first law of the code respecting
the _cessio bonorum_ expresses, in a single sentence, the whole
doctrine upon the subject: '_Qui bonis cesserint_,' says the
Emperor Alexander Severus, _'nisi solidum creditor receperit,
non sunt liberati. In eo enim tantummodo hoc beneficium
eis prodest, ne judicati detrahantur in carcerem._' This
institution, having been greatly improved in the civil law,
was adopted by those of the European nations who followed that
system of jurisprudence. In France, the institution was adopted
very nearly as it was received with us. Perhaps, indeed, it
was from France that our system received its distinguishing
features. The law in that country was, during the seventeenth
century, extremely severe--not only against bankrupts (which
name they applied to fraudulent debtors alone), but against
debtors innocently insolvent. * * * The short digest of the law
of _cessio_ in Scotland, then, is:
"1. That a debtor who has been a month in prison, for a
civil debt, may apply to the court of session--calling all
his creditors before that court, by a summons in the king's
name; and concluding that he should be freed from prison on
surrendering to his creditors all his funds and effects.
"2. That he is entitled to this benefit without any mark of
disgrace, if (proving his insolvency) he can satisfy the court,
in the face of his creditors, that his insolvency has arisen
from innocent misfortune, and is willing to surrender all his
property and effects to his creditors.
"3. That, though he may clear himself from any imputation of
fraud, still, if he has been extravagant, and guilty of sporting
with the money of his creditors, he is, in strict law, not
entitled to the _cessio_, but on the condition of wearing the
habit (mark of disgrace); but which is now exchanged for a
prolongation of his imprisonment.
"4. That, if his creditors can establish a charge of fraud
against him, he is not entitled to the _cessio_ at all; but must
lie in prison, at the mercy of his creditors, till the length
of his imprisonment may seem to have sufficiently punished his
crime; when, on a petition, the court may admit him to the
benefit.
"5. That, if he has not given a fair account of his funds,
and shall still be liable to the suspicion of concealment,
the court will, in the meanwhile, refuse the benefit of the
_cessio_--leaving it to him to apply again, when he is able
to present a clearer justification, or willing to make a full
discovery."
This is the _cessio_, and its nature and origin are both given.
Its nature is that of an insolvent law, precisely as it exists at
this day in the United States and in England. Its origin is Roman,
dating from the dictatorship of Julius Cæsar. That great man had
seen the evils of the severity of the Roman law against debtors. He
had seen the iniquity of the law itself, in the cruel condemnation
of the helpless debtor to slavery and death at the will of the
creditor; and he had seen its impolicy, in the disturbances to
which it subjected the republic--the seditions, commotions, and
conspiracies, which, from the time of the secession of the people to
the _Mons Sacer_ to the terrible conspiracy of Catiline, were all
built upon the calamities of the debtor class, and had for their
object an abolition of debts. Cæsar saw this, and determined to free
the commonwealth from a deep-seated cause of commotion, while doing
a work of individual justice. He freed the person of the debtor
upon the surrender of his property; and this equitable principle,
becoming ingrafted in the civil law, spread over all the provinces
of the Roman world--has descended to our times, and penetrated the
new world--and now forms the principle of the insolvent laws of
Europe and America. The English made it permanent by their insolvent
law of the first of George the Fourth--that act from which our
bankrupt system is compiled; and in two thousand years, and among
all nations, there has been no departure from the wise and just
principles of Cæsar's edict, until our base act of Congress has
undertaken to pervert it into an abolition debt law, by substituting
a release from the debt for a release from jail!
This is the _cessio omnium bonorum_ of Scotland, to which we are
referred as being the same thing with bankruptcy (properly so
called), and which is quoted as an example for our act of 1841.
And, now, what says Professor Bell of bankruptcy? Does he mention
that subject? Does he treat of it under a separate head--as a
different thing from the _cessio_--and as requiring a separate
consideration? In fact, he does. He happens to do so; and gives it
about 300 pages of his second volume, under the title of "System of
the Bankrupt Laws;" which system runs on all-fours with that of the
English system, and in the main point--that of discharge from his
debts--it is identical with the English; requiring the concurrence
of four-fifths of the creditors to the discharge; and that bottomed
on the judicial attestation of the bankrupt's integrity. Here it is,
at page 441 of the second volume:
"The concurrence of the creditors, without which the bankrupt
cannot apply to the court for a discharge, must be not that
of a mere majority, but a majority of four-fifths in number
and value. * * * * The creditors are subject to no control in
respect to their concurrence. Against their decision there is
no appeal, nor are they bound to account for or explain the
grounds of it. They are left to proceed upon the whole train of
the bankrupt's conduct, as they may have seen occasion to judge
of him; and the refusal of their concurrence is an absolute bar
until the opposition be overcome. * * * * The statute requires
the concurrence of the trustee, as well as of the creditors.
There appears, however, to be this difference between them: that
the creditors are entirely uncontrolled in giving or withholding
their concurrence; while, on the part of the trustee, it is
_debitum justiliæ_ either to the bankrupt or to the creditors
to give or withhold his concurrence. He acts not as a creditor,
but as a judge. To his jurisdiction the bankrupt is subjected
by the choice of his creditors; and, on deciding on the
bankrupt's conduct, he is not entitled to proceed on the same
undisclosed motives or evidence on which a creditor may act, but
on the ground of legal objection alone--as fraud, concealment,
nonconformity with the statute. In England, the commissioners
are public officers--not the mere creatures of the creditors.
They are by statute invested with a judicial discretion, which
they exercise under the sanction of an oath. Their refusal is
taken as if they swore they could not grant the certificate; and
no mandamus lies to force them to sign."
So much for bankruptcy and _cessio_--two things very different
in their nature, though attempted to be confounded; and each of
them still more different from our act, for which they are quoted
as precedents. But the author of our act says that bankrupt laws
in Scotland are not confined to traders, but take in all persons
whatsoever; and he might have added--though, perhaps, it did not
suit his purpose at the moment--that those laws, in Scotland, were
not confined to natural persons, but also included corporations and
corporate bodies. Bell expressly says:
"Corporate bodies are, in law, considered as persons, when
associated by royal authority or act of Parliament. When a
community is thus established by public authority, it has a
legal existence as a person, with power to hold funds, to sue
and to defend. It is, of consequence, subject to diligence;
and although personal execution cannot proceed against this
ideal-legal person, and so the requisites of imprisonment,
&c., cannot be complied with, there seems to be no reason to
doubt that a corporation may now be made bankrupt by the means
recently provided for those cases in which imprisonment is
incompetent."--vol. 2, p. 167.
The gentleman might have quoted this passage from the Scottish law;
and then what would have become of his argument against including
corporations in the bankrupt act? But he acts the advocate, and
quotes what suits him; and which, even if it were applicable,
would answer but a small part of his purpose. The Scottish system
differs from the English in its application to persons not traders;
but agrees with it in the great essentials of perfect security
for creditors, by giving them the initiative in the proceedings,
discriminating between innocent and culpable bankruptcy, and making
the discharge from debt depend upon their consent, bottomed upon an
attestation of integrity from the officer that tries the case. It
answers no purpose to the gentleman, then, to carry us to Scotland
for the meaning of a term in our constitution. It is to no purpose
that he suggests that the framers of the constitution might have
been looking to Scotland for an example of a bankrupt system. They
were no more looking to it in that case, than they were in speaking
of juries, and in guarantying the right of jury trials--a jury of
twelve, with unanimity, as in England; and not of fifteen, with
a majority of eight to give the verdict, as in Scotland. In all
its employment of technical, legal, and political phrases, the
constitution used them as used in England--the country from which
we received our birth, our language, our manners, and customs, and
all our systems of law and politics. We got all from England; and,
this being the case, there is no use in following the gentleman to
the continent of Europe, after dislodging him from Scotland; but
as he has quoted the continent for the effect of the _cessio_ in
abolishing debts, and for its identity with bankruptcy, I must be
indulged with giving him a few citations from the Code Napoleon,
which embodies the principles of the civil law, and exemplifies the
systems of Europe on the subject of bankruptcies and insolvencies.
Here they are:
Mr. B. here read copiously from the Code Napoleon, on the subjects
of bankruptcies and cession of property; the former contained in
the commercial division of the code, the latter in the civil.
Bankruptcy was divided into two classes--innocent and fraudulent;
both confined to traders (_commercants_); the former were treated
with lenity, the latter with criminal severity. The innocent
bankrupt was the _trader_ who became unable to pay his debts by the
casualties of trade, and who had not lived beyond his means, nor
gambled, nor engaged in speculations of pure hazard; who kept fair
books, and satisfied his creditors and the judge of his integrity.
The fraudulent bankrupt was the _trader_ who had lived prodigally,
or gambled, or engaged in speculations of pure hazard, or who had
not kept books, or not kept them fairly, or misapplied deposits,
or violated trusts, or been guilty of any fraudulent practice. He
was punished by imprisonment and hard labor for a term of years,
and could not be discharged from his debts by any majority of his
creditors whatever. Cession of property--in French, _la cession de
biens_--was precisely the _cessio omnium bonorum_ of the Romans, as
established by Julius Cæsar. It applied to all persons, and obtained
for them freedom from imprisonment, and from suits, on the surrender
of all their present property to their creditors; leaving their
future acquisitions liable for the remainder of the debt. It was the
insolvent law of the civil law; and thus bankruptcy and insolvency
were as distinct on the continent of Europe as in England and
Scotland, and governed by the same principles.
Having read these extracts from the civil law, Mr. B. resumed his
speech, and went on to say that the gentleman was as unfortunate
in his visit to the continent as in his visit to Scotland. In the
first place he had no right to go there for exemplification of the
terms used in our constitution. The framers of the constitution
did not look to other countries for examples. They looked to
England alone. In the second place, if we sought them elsewhere, we
found precisely the same thing that we found in England: we found
bankruptcy and insolvency everywhere distinct and inconvertible.
They were, and are, distinct everywhere; here and elsewhere--at
home and abroad--in England, Scotland, France, and all over Europe.
They have never been confounded anywhere, and cannot be confounded
here, without committing a double offence: _first_, violating our
own constitution; _secondly_, invading the States. And with this, I
dismiss the gentleman's first fundamental position, affirming that
he has utterly failed in his attempt to confound bankruptcy with
insolvency; and, therefore, has utterly failed to gain jurisdiction
for Congress over the general debts of the community, by the pretext
of the bankrupt power.
I have said that this so-called bankrupt bill of ours is copied
from the insolvent law of the first year of George IV., and its
amendments, and so it is, all except section 13 of that act, which
is omitted, and for the purpose of keeping out the distinction
between bankrupts and insolvents. That section makes the
distinction. The act permits all debtors to petition for the benefit
of the insolvent law, that is to say, discharge from imprisonment on
surrendering their property; yet, in every case in which traders,
merchants, &c. petition, the proceedings stop until taken up, and
proceeded upon by the creditors. The filing the petition by a
person subject to the bankrupt law, is simply held to be an act
of bankruptcy, on which the creditors may proceed, or not, as on
any other act of bankruptcy, precisely as they please. And thus
insolvency and bankruptcy are kept distinct; double provisions on
the same subject are prevented; and consistency is preserved in the
administration of the laws. Not so under our bill. The omission to
copy this 13th section has nullified all that relates to involuntary
bankruptcy; puts it into the power of those who are subject to that
proceeding to avoid it, at their pleasure, by the simple and obvious
process of availing themselves of their absolute right to proceed
voluntarily. And now a word upon volunteer bankruptcy. It is an
invention and a crudity in our bill, growing out of the confounding
of bankruptcy and insolvency. There is no such thing in England,
or in any bankrupt system in the world; and cannot be, without
reversing all the rules of right, and subjecting the creditor
to the mercy of his debtor. The English bankrupt act of the 6th
George IV., and the insolvent debtors' act of the 1st of the same
reign, admit the bankrupt, as an insolvent, to file his declaration
of insolvency, and petition for relief; but there it stops. His
voluntary action goes no further than the declaration and petition.
Upon that, his creditors, if they please, may proceed against him as
a bankrupt, taking the declaration as an act of bankruptcy. If they
do not choose to proceed, the case stops. The bankrupt cannot bring
his creditors into court, and prosecute his claim to bankruptcy,
whether they will or not. This is clear from the 6th section of the
bankrupt act of George IV., and the 13th section of the insolvent
debtors' act of the 1st year of the same reign; and thus our act
of 1841 has the honor of inventing volunteer bankruptcy, and thus
putting the abolition of debts in the hands of every person! for
these volunteers have a right to be discharged from their debts,
without the consent of their creditors!
Mr. Benton then read the two sections of the two acts of George IV.
to which he had referred, and commented upon them to sustain his
positions. And first the 6th section of the act of George IV. (1826)
for the amendment of the bankrupt laws:
"SEC. 6. That if any such trader shall file in the office of
the Lord Chancellor's secretary of bankrupts, a declaration in
writing, signed by such trader, and attested by an attorney
or solicitor, that he is insolvent or unable to meet his
engagements, the said secretary of bankrupts, or his deputy,
shall sign a memorandum that such declaration hath been filed;
which memorandum shall be authority for the London Gazette to
insert an advertisement of such declaration therein; and every
such declaration shall, after such advertisement inserted
as aforesaid, _be an act of bankruptcy committed by such_
TRADER _at the time when such declaration was filed_: but _no_
commission shall issue thereupon, _unless_ it be sued out
within two calendar months next after the insertion of such
advertisement, and _unless_ such advertisement shall have been
inserted in the London Gazette within eight days after such
declaration filed. And no docket shall be struck upon such act
of bankruptcy before the expiration of four days next after
such insertion of such advertisement, in case such commission
is to be executed in London; or before the expiration of eight
days next after such insertion, in case such commission is
to be executed in the country; and the Gazette containing
such advertisement shall be evidence to be received of such
declaration having been filed."
Having read this section, Mr. B. said it was explicit, and precluded
argument. The voluntary action of the debtor, which it authorized,
was limited to the mere filing of the declaration of insolvency.
It went no further; and it was confined to traders--to the trading
classes--who, alone, were subject to the laws of bankruptcy.
Mr. B. said that the English had, as we all know, an insolvent
system, as well as a bankrupt system. They had an insolvent debtors'
court, as well as a bankrupt court; and both these were kept
separate, although there were no States in England to be trodden
under foot by treading down the insolvent laws. Not so with us. Our
insolvent laws, though belonging to States called sovereign, are
all trampled under foot! There would be a time to go into this. At
present, Mr. B. would only say that, in England, bankruptcy and
insolvency were still kept distinct; and no insolvent trader was
allowed to proceed as a bankrupt. On the contrary, an insolvent,
applying in the insolvent debtors' court for the release of his
person, could not proceed one step beyond filing his declaration. At
that point the creditors took up the declaration, if they pleased,
transferred the case to the bankrupt court, and prosecuted the case
in that court. This is done by virtue of the 13th section of the
insolvent debtors' act of 7th George IV. (1827). Mr. B. read the
section, as follows:
"_Insolvent debtors' act of 7th year of George IV._ (1827).
"SEC. 13. _And be it further enacted_, That the filing of the
petition of every _person_ in actual custody, who shall be
subject to the laws concerning bankrupts, and who shall apply
by petition to the said court for his or her discharge from
custody, according to this act, shall be accounted and adjudged
_an act of bankruptcy from the time of filing such petition_;
and that any _commission_ issuing against such person, and
under which he or she shall be declared bankrupt before the
time appointed by the said court, and advertised in the _London
Gazette_, for hearing the matters of such petition, or at
any time within two calendar months from the time of filing
such petition, shall have effect to avoid any conveyance and
assignment of the estate and effects of such person, which
shall have been made in pursuance of the provisions of this
act: _Provided, always_, That the filing of such petition shall
not be deemed an act of bankruptcy, _unless_ such person be so
declared bankrupt before the time so advertised as aforesaid,
or within such two calendar months as aforesaid; but that
every such conveyance and assignment shall be good and valid,
notwithstanding any commission of bankruptcy under which such
person shall be declared bankrupt after the time so advertised
as aforesaid, and after the expiration of such two calendar
months as aforesaid."
This (said Mr. B.) accords with the section of the year before in
the bankrupt act. The two sections are accordant, and identical
in their provisions. They keep up the great distinction between
insolvency and bankruptcy, which some of our judges have undertaken
to abrogate; they keep up, also, the great distinction between the
proper subjects of bankruptcy--to wit: traders, and those who are
not traders; and they keep up the distinction between the release
of the person (which is the object of insolvent laws) and the
extinction of the debt with the consent of creditors, which is the
object of bankrupt systems. By this section, if the "_person_" in
custody who files a declaration of insolvency shall be a trader,
subject to the laws of bankruptcy, it only operates as an act of
bankruptcy--upon which the creditors may proceed, or not, as they
please. If they proceed, it is done by suing out a commission of
bankruptcy; which carries the case to the bankrupt court. If the
creditors do not proceed, the petition of the insolvent trader only
releases his person. Being subject to bankruptcy, his creditors may
call him into the bankrupt court, if they please; if they do not,
he cannot take it there, nor claim the benefit of bankruptcy in the
insolvent court: he can only get his person released. This is clear
from the section; and our bill of 1841 committed something worse
than a folly in not copying this section. That bill creates two
sorts of bankruptcy--voluntary and involuntary--and, by a singular
folly, makes them convertible! so that all may be volunteers, if
they please. It makes merchants, traders, bankers, and some others
of the _trading_ classes, subject to involuntary bankruptcy: then
it gives all _persons_ whatever the right to proceed voluntarily.
Thus the involuntary subjects of bankruptcy may become volunteers;
and the distinction becomes ridiculous and null. Our bill, which
is compiled from the English Insolvent Debtors' Act, and is itself
nothing but an insolvent law perverted to the abolition of debts
at the will of the debtor, should have copied the 13th section of
the English insolvent law: for want of copying this, it annihilated
involuntary bankruptcy--made all persons, traders or not, volunteers
who chose to be so--released all debts, at the will of the debtor,
without the consent of a single creditor; and committed the most
daring legislative outrage upon the rights of property, which the
world ever beheld!
CHAPTER LXVIII.
DISTRIBUTION OF THE PUBLIC LAND REVENUE AND ASSUMPTION OF THE
STATE DEBTS.
About two hundred millions of dollars were due from States and
corporations to creditors in Europe. These debts were in stocks,
much depreciated by the failure in many instances to pay the
accruing interest--in some instances, failure to provide for the
principal. These creditors became uneasy, and wished the federal
government to assume their debts. As early as the year 1838 this
wish began to be manifested: in the year 1839 it was openly
expressed: in the year 1840, it became a regular question, mixing
itself up in our presidential election; and openly engaging the
active exertions of foreigners. Direct assumption was not urged:
indirect, by giving the public land revenue to the States, was the
mode pursued, and the one recommended by Mr. Tyler. In his first
regular message, he recommended this disposition of the public
lands, and with the expressed view of enabling the States to pay
their debts, and also to raise the value of the stock. It was a
vicious recommendation, and a flagrant and pernicious violation of
the constitution. It was the duty of Congress to provide for the
payment of the federal debts: that was declared in the constitution.
There was no prohibition upon the payment of the State debts: that
was a departure from the objects of the Union too gross to require
prohibition: and the absence of any authority to do so was a
prohibition as absolute as if expressed in the eyes of all those who
held to the limitations of the constitution, and considered a power,
not granted, as a power denied. Mr. Calhoun spoke with force and
clearness, and with more than usual animation, against this proposed
breach in the constitution. He said:
"If the bill should become a law, it would make a wider breach
in the constitution, and be followed by changes more disastrous,
than any other measure which has ever been adopted. It would,
in its violation of the constitution, go far beyond the general
welfare doctrine of former days, which stretched the power of
the government as far as it was then supposed was possible by
construction, however bold. But as wide as were the limits which
it assigned to the powers of the government, it admitted by
implication that there were limits; while this bill, as I shall
show, rests on principles which, if admitted, would supersede
all limits. According to the general welfare doctrine, Congress
had power to raise money and appropriate it to all objects which
might seem calculated to promote the general welfare--that
is, the prosperity of the States, regarded in their aggregate
character as members of the Union: or, to express it more
briefly, and in language once so common, to national objects:
thus excluding, by necessary implication, all that were not
national, as falling within the sphere of the separate States.
It takes in what is excluded under the general welfare doctrine,
and assumes for Congress the right to raise money, to give by
distribution to the States: that is, to be applied by them
to those very local State objects to which that doctrine, by
necessary implication, denied that Congress had a right to
appropriate money; and thus superseding all the limits of the
constitution--as far, at least, as the money power is concerned.
Such, and so overwhelming, are the constitutional difficulties
which beset this measure. No one who can overcome them--who
can bring himself to vote for this bill--need trouble himself
about constitutional scruples hereafter. He may swallow without
hesitation bank, tariff, and every other unconstitutional
measure which has ever been adopted or proposed. Yes; it would
be easier to make a plausible argument for the constitutionality
of the measures proposed by the abolitionists--for abolition
itself--than for this detestable bill. And yet we find senators
from slaveholding States, the very safety of whose constituents
depends upon a strict construction of the constitution,
recording their names in favor of a measure from which they have
nothing to hope, and every thing to fear. To what is a course so
blind to be attributed, but to that fanaticism of party zeal,
openly avowed on this floor, which regards the preservation of
the power of the whig party as the paramount consideration?
It has staked its existence on the passage of this, and the
other measures for which this extraordinary session was called;
and when it is brought to the alternative of their defeat or
success, in their anxiety to avoid the one and secure the other,
constituents, constitution, duty, country,--all are forgotten."
Clearly unconstitutional, the measure itself was brought forward
at the most inauspicious time--when the Treasury was empty, a loan
bill, and a tax bill actually depending; and measures going on to
raise money from the customs, not only to support the government,
but to supply the place of this very land money proposed to be given
to the States. Mr. Benton exposed this aggravation in some pointed
remarks:
What a time to choose for squandering this patrimony! We are just in
the midst of loans, and taxes, and new and extravagant expenditures,
and scraping high and low to find money to support the government.
Congress was called together to provide revenue; and we begin with
throwing away what we have. We have just passed a bill to borrow
twelve millions, which will cost the people sixteen millions to pay.
We have a bill on the calendar--the next one in order--to tax every
thing now free, and to raise every tax now low, to raise eight or
ten millions for the government, at the cost of eighteen or twenty
to the people. Sixteen millions of deficit salute the commencement
of the ensuing year. A new loan of twelve millions is announced
for the next session. All the articles of consumption which escape
taxation now, are to be caught and taxed then. Such are the
revelations of the chairman of the Finance Committee; and they
correspond with our own calculations of their conduct. In addition
to all this, we have just commenced the national defences--neglected
when we had forty millions of surplus, now obliged to be attended
to when we have nothing: these defences are to cost above a hundred
millions to create them, and above ten millions annually to sustain
them. A new and frightful extravagance has broken out in the Indian
Department. Treaties which cannot be named, are to cost millions
upon millions. Wild savages, who cannot count a hundred except by
counting their fingers ten times over, are to have millions; and
the customs to pay all; for the lands are no longer to pay for
themselves, or to discharge the heavy annuities which have grown
out of their acquisition. The chances of a war ahead: the ordinary
expenses of the government, under the new administration, not
thirteen millions as was promised, but above thirty, as this session
proves. To crown all, the federal party in power! that party whose
instinct is debt and tax--whose passion is waste and squander--whose
cry is that of the horse-leech, give! give! give!--whose call is
that of the grave, more! more! more! In such circumstances, and
with such prospects ahead, we are called upon to throw away the
land revenue, and turn our whole attention to taxing and borrowing.
The custom-house duties--that is to say, foreign commerce, founded
upon the labor of the South and West, is to pay all. The farmers
and planters of the South and West are to take the chief load, and
to carry it. Well may the senator from Kentucky [Mr. CLAY] announce
the forthcoming of new loans and taxes--the recapture of the tea and
coffee tax, if they escape us now--and the increase and perpetuity
of the salt tax. All this must come, and more too, if federalism
rules a few years longer. A few years more under federal sway, at
the rate things have gone on at this session--this sweet little
session called to relieve the people--and our poor America would be
ripe for the picture for which England now sits, and which has been
so powerfully drawn in the Edinburgh Review. Listen to it, and hear
what federalism would soon bring us to, if not stopped in its mad
career:
"Taxes upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers
the back, or is placed under the foot. Taxes upon every thing
which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste. Taxes
upon warmth, light, and locomotion. Taxes on every thing on
earth, and the waters under the earth; on every thing that comes
from abroad, or is grown at home. Taxes on the raw material;
taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry
of man. Taxes on the sauce which pampers a man's appetite,
and the drug that restores him to health; on the ermine which
decorates the judge, and the rope which hangs the criminal; on
the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribbons of the bride. At
bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay. The schoolboy
whips his taxed top; the beardless youth manages his taxed horse
with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road. The dying Englishman pours
his medicine, which has paid seven per cent., into a spoon that
has paid fifteen per cent.; flings himself back upon his chintz
bed, which has paid twenty-two per cent.; makes his will on an
eight-pound stamp, and expires in the arms of an apothecary,
who has paid a license of a hundred pounds for the privilege of
putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately
taxed from two to ten per cent. Besides the probate, large fees
are demanded for burying him in the chancel; his virtues handed
down to posterity on taxed marble, and he is then gathered to
his fathers, to be taxed no more."
This is the way the English are now taxed, and so it would be with
us if the federalists should remain a few years in power.
Execrable as this bill is in itself, and for its objects, and
for the consequences which it draws after it, it is still more
abominable for the time and manner in which it is driven through
Congress, and the contingencies on which its passage is to depend.
What is the time?--when the new States are just ready to double
their representation, and to present a front which would command
respect for their rights, and secure the grant of all their just
demands. They are pounced upon in this nick of time, before the
arrival of their full representation under the new census, to be
manacled and fettered by a law which assumes to be a perpetual
settlement of the land question, and to bind their interests for
ever. This is the time! what is the manner?--gagged through the
House of Representatives by the previous question, and by new
rules fabricated from day to day, to stifle discussion, prevent
amendments, suppress yeas and nays, and hide the deeds which
shunned the light. This was the manner! What was the contingency on
which its passage was to depend?--the passage of the bankrupt bill!
So that this execrable bill, baited as it was with _douceurs_ to old
States, and bribes to the new ones, and pressed under the gag, and
in the absence of the new representation, was still unable to get
through without a bargain for passing the bankrupt bill at the same
time. Can such legislation stand? Can God, or man, respect such work?
But a circumstance which distinguished the passage of this bill from
all others--which up to that day was without a precedent--was the
open exertion of a foreign interest to influence our legislation.
This interest had already exerted itself in our presidential
election: it now appeared in our legislation. Victorious in the
election, they attended Congress to see that their expectations
were not disappointed. The lobbies of the House contained them:
the boarding-houses of the whig members were their resort: the
democracy kept aloof, though under other circumstances they would
have been glad to have paid honor to respectable strangers, only
avoided now on account of interest and exertions in our elections
and legislation. Mr. Fernando Wood of New York brought this scandal
to the full notice of the House. "In connection with this point
I will add that, at the time this cheat was in preparation--the
merchants' petition being drawn up by the brokers and speculators
for the congressional market--there were conspicuous bankers in Wall
street, anxious observers, if not co-laborers in the movement. Among
them might be named Mr. Bates, partner of the celebrated house of
Baring, Brothers & Company; Mr. Cryder, of the equally celebrated
house of Morrison, Cryder & Company; Mr. Palmer, junior, son of Mr.
Horsley Palmer, now, or lately, the governor of the Bank of England.
Nor were these 'allies' seen only in Wall street. Their visits were
extended to the capitol; and since the commencement of the debate
upon this bill in the other House, they have been in the lobbies,
attentive, and apparently interested listeners. I make no comment.
Comment is unnecessary. I state facts--undeniable facts: and it is
with feelings akin to humiliation and shame that I stand up here
and state them." These respectable visitors had a twofold object
in their attention to our legislation--the getting a national bank
established, as well as the State debts provided for. Mr. Benton
also pointed out this outrage upon our legislation:
He then took a rapid view of the bill--its origin, character, and
effects; and showed it to be federal in its origin, associated
with all the federal measures of the present and past sessions;
with bank, tariff, assumption of State debts, dependent upon the
bankrupt bill for its passage; violative of the constitution and the
compacts with the new States; and crowning all its titles to infamy
by drawing capitalists from London to attend this extra session of
Congress, to promote the passage of this bill for their own benefit.
He read a paragraph from the money article in a New York paper,
reciting the names and attendance, on account of this bill, of the
foreign capitalists at Washington. The passage was in these words:
"At the commencement of the session, almost every foreign house
had a representative here. Wilson, Palmer, Cryder, Bates,
Willinck, Hope, Jaudon, and a host of others, came over on
various pretences; all were in attendance at Washington, and
all seeking to forward the proposed measures. The land bill was
to give them three millions per annum from the public Treasury,
or thirty millions in ten years, and to raise the value of the
stock at least thirty millions more. The revenue bill was to
have supplied the deficiency in the Treasury. The loan bill
was to have been the basis of an increase of importations and
of exchange operations; and the new bank was the instrument of
putting the whole in operation."
This Mr. Benton accompanied by an article from a London paper,
showing that the capitalists in that city were counting upon the
success of their emissaries at Washington, and that the passage
of this land bill was the first and most anxious wish of their
hearts--that they considered it equivalent to the assumption of
the State debts--and that the benefit of the bill would go to
themselves. This established the character of the bill, and showed
that it had been the means of bringing upon the national legislation
the degrading and corrupting influences of a foreign interference.
For the first time in the history of our government, foreigners have
attended our Congress, to promote the passage of laws for their own
benefit. For the first time we have had London capitalists for
lobby members; and, mortifying to be told, instead of being repulsed
by defeat, they have been encouraged by success; and their future
attendance may now be looked for as a matter of course, at our
future sessions of Congress, when they have debts to secure, stocks
to enhance, or a national bank to establish.
Mr. Benton also denounced the bill for its unconstitutionality,
its demagogue character, its demoralizing tendencies, its bid for
popularity, and its undaunted attempt to debauch the people with
their own money.
The gentleman from Virginia [Mr. ARCHER], to whose speech I am
now replying, in allusion to the frequent cry of breach of the
constitution, when there is no breach, says he is sick and weary
of the cry, wolf! wolf! when there is no wolf. I say so too. The
constitution should not be trifled with--should not be invoked on
every petty occasion--should not be proclaimed in danger when there
is no danger. Granting that this has been done sometimes--that too
often, and with too little consideration, the grave question of
constitutionality has been pressed into trivial discussions, and
violation proclaimed where there was none: granting this, I must yet
be permitted to say that such is not the case now. It is not now
a cry of wolf! when there is no wolf. It is no false or sham cry
now. The boy cries in earnest this time. The wolf has come! Long,
lank, gaunt, hungry, voracious, and ferocious, the beast is here!
howling, for its prey, and determined to have it at the expense of
the life of the shepherd. The political stockjobbers and gamblers
raven for the public lands, and tear the constitution to pieces to
get at them. They seize, pillage, and plunder the lands. It is not
a case of misconstruction, but of violation. It is not a case of
misunderstanding the constitution, but of assault and battery--of
maim and murder--of homicide and assassination--committed upon
it. Never has such a daring outrage been perpetrated--never such
a contravention of the object of a confederation--never such a
total perversion, and barefaced departure, from all the purposes
for which a community of States bound themselves together for the
defence, and not for the plunder of each other. No, sir! no! The
constitution was not made to divide money. This confederacy was
not framed for a distribution among its members of lands, money,
property, or effects of any kind. It contains rules and directions
for raising money--for levying duties equally, which the new tariff
will violate; and for raising direct taxes in proportion to federal
population; but it contains no rule for dividing money; and the
distributors have to make one as they go, and the rule they make
is precisely the one that is necessary to carry the bill; and that
varies with the varying strength of the distributing party. In
1836, in the deposit act, it was the federal representation in the
two Houses of Congress: in this bill, as it came from the House
of Representatives, it was the federal numbers. We have put in
representation: it will come back to us with numbers; and numbers
will prevail; for it is a mere case of plunder--the plunder of the
young States by the old ones--of the weak by the strong. Sir, it
is sixteen years since these schemes of distribution were brought
into this chamber, and I have viewed them all in the same light,
and given them all the same indignant opposition. I have opposed
all these schemes as unconstitutional, immoral, fatal to the Union,
degrading to the people, debauching to the States; and inevitably
tending to centralism on one hand or to disruption on the other. I
have opposed the whole, beginning with the first proposition of a
senator from New Jersey [Mr. DICKERSON], to divide five millions
of the sinking fund, and following the baneful scheme through all
its modifications for the distribution of surplus revenue, and
finally of land revenue. I have opposed the whole, adhering to the
constitution, and to the objects of the confederacy, and scorning
the ephemeral popularity which a venal system of plunder could
purchase from the victims, or the dupes of a false and sordid policy.
I scorn the bill: I scout its vaunted popularity: I detest it. Nor
can I conceive of an object more pitiable and contemptible than that
of the demagogue haranguing for votes, and exhibiting his tables of
dollars and acres, in order to show each voter, or each State, how
much money they will be able to obtain from the Treasury if the land
bill passes. Such haranguing, and such exhibition, is the address of
impudence and knavery to supposed ignorance, meanness, and folly.
It is treating the people as if they were penny wise and pound
foolish; and still more mean than foolish. Why, the land revenue,
after deducting the expenses, if fairly divided among the people,
would not exceed ninepence a head per annum; if fairly divided among
the States, and applied to their debts, it would not supersede above
ninepence per annum of taxation upon the units of the population.
The day for land sales have gone by. The sales of this year do not
exceed a million and a half of dollars, which would not leave more
than a million for distribution; which, among sixteen millions of
people would be exactly fourpence half penny, Virginia money, per
head! a _fip_ in New York, and a _picaillon_ in Louisiana. At two
millions, it would be ninepence a head in Virginia, equivalent to a
_levy_ in New York, and a _bit_ in Louisiana! precisely the amount
which, in specie times, a gentleman gives to a negro boy for holding
his horse a minute at the door. And for this miserable doit--this
insignificant subdivision of a shilling--a York shilling--can the
demagogue suppose that the people are base enough to violate their
constitution, mean enough to surrender the defence of their country,
and stupid enough to be taxed in their coffee, tea, salt, sugar,
coats, hats, blankets, shoes, shirts; and every article of comfort,
decency, or necessity, which they eat, drink, or wear; or on which
they stand, sit, sleep, or lie?
* * * * *
The bill was bound to pass. Besides being in the same boat with the
other cardinal whig measures--bank, bankrupt, repeal of independent
treasury--and all arranged to pass together; and besides being
pushed along and supported by the London bankers--it contained
within itself the means of success. It was richly freighted with
inducements to conciliate every interest. To every new State it
made a preliminary distribution of ten per centum (in addition to
the five per centum allowed by compact), on the amount of the sales
within the State: then it came in for a full share of all the rest
in proportion to its population. To the same new States it gave also
five hundred thousand acres of land; or a quantity sufficient to
make up that amount where less had been granted. To the settlers in
the new States, including foreigners who had made the declaration
of their intentions to become naturalized citizens, it gave a
pre-emption right in the public lands, to the amount of one quarter
section: 160 acres. Then it distributed the whole amount of the
land revenue, after deduction of the ten and the five per centum
to the new States, to all the old States and new States together,
in proportion to their population: and included all the States yet
to be created in this scheme of distribution. And that no part of
the people should go without their share in these largesses, the
Territories, though not States, and the District of Columbia, though
not a Territory, were also embraced in the plan--each to receive in
proportion to its numbers. So many inducements to all sections of
the country to desire the bill, and such a chance for popularity to
its authors, made sure, not only of its passage, but of its claim
to the national gratitude. To the eye of patriotism, it was all a
venal proceeding--an attempt to buy up the people with their own
money--having the money to borrow first. For it so happened that
while the distribution bill was passing in one House, to divide
out money among the States and the people, there was a loan bill
depending in the other House, to borrow twelve millions of dollars
for three years; and also, a tax bill to produce eighteen millions
a year to reimburse that loan, and to defray the current expenses
of the government. To make a gratuitous distribution of the land
revenue (equal to several millions per annum), looked like fatuity;
and was so in a financial or governmental point of view. But it
was supposed that the distribution scheme would be irresistibly
popular--that it would chain the people and the States to the party
which passed it--and insure them success in the ensuing presidential
elections. Baseless calculation, as it applied to the people! Vain
hope, as it applied to themselves! The very men that passed the bill
had to repeal it, under the sneaking term of suspension, before
their terms of service were out--within less than one year from the
time it was passed! to be precise, within eleven calendar months
and twelve days, from the day of its passage--counting from the
days, inclusive of both, on which John Tyler, President, approved
and disapproved it--whereof, hereafter. But it passed! and was
obliged to pass. It was a case of mutual assurance with the other
whig measures, and passed the Senate by a party vote--Mr. Preston
excepted--who "broke ranks," and voted with the democracy, making
the negative vote 23. The yeas and nays were:
YEAS--Messrs. Archer, Barrow, Bates, Bayard, Berrien, Choate,
Clay of Kentucky, Clayton, Dixon, Evans, Graham, Henderson,
Huntington, Kerr, Mangum, Merrick, Miller, Morehead, Phelps,
Porter, Prentiss, Rives, Simmons, Smith of Indiana, Southard,
Tallmadge, White, Woodbridge.
NAYS--Messrs. Allen, Benton, Buchanan, Calhoun, Clay of Alabama,
Cuthbert, Fulton, King, Linn, McRoberts, Mouton, Nicholson,
Pierce, Preston, Sevier, Smith of Connecticut, Sturgeon, Tappan,
Walker, Williams, Woodbury, Wright, Young.
In the House the vote was close--almost even--116 to 108. The yeas
and nays were:
YEAS--Messrs. John Quincy Adams, Elisha H. Allen, Landaff
W. Andrews, Sherlock J. Andrews, Thomas D. Arnold, John B.
Aycrigg, Alfred Babcock, Osmyn Baker, Daniel D. Barnard, Victory
Birdseye, Henry Black, Bernard Blair, William W. Boardman,
Nathaniel B. Borden, John M. Botts, George N. Briggs, John H.
Brockway, David Bronson, Jeremiah Brown, Barker Burnell, William
B. Calhoun, Thomas J. Campbell, Robert L. Caruthers, Thomas
C. Chittenden, John C. Clark, Staley N. Clarke, James Cooper,
Benjamin S. Cowen, Robert B. Cranston, James H. Cravens, Caleb
Cushing, Edmund Deberry, John Edwards, Horace Everett, William
P. Fessenden, Millard Fillmore, A. Lawrence Foster, Seth M.
Gates, Meredith P. Gentry, Joshua R. Giddings, William L.
Goggin, Patrick G. Goode, Willis Green, John Greig, Hiland Hall,
William Halstead, William S. Hastings, Thomas Henry, Charles
Hudson, Hiram P. Hunt, James Irvin, William W. Irvin, Francis
James, William Cost Johnson, Isaac D. Jones, John P. Kennedy,
Henry S. Lane, Joseph Lawrence, Archibald L. Linn, Thomas F.
Marshall, Samson Mason, Joshua Mathiot, John Mattocks, John
P. B. Maxwell, John Maynard, John Moore, Christopher Morgan,
Calvary Morris, Jeremiah Morrow, Thomas B. Osborne, Bryan Y.
Owsley, James A. Pearce, Nathaniel G. Pendleton, John Pope,
Cuthbert Powell, George H. Proffit, Robert Ramsey, Benjamin
Randall, Alexander Randall, Joseph F. Randolph, Kenneth Rayner,
Joseph Ridgway, George B. Rodney, William Russel, Leverett
Saltonstall, John Sergeant, William Simonton, William Slade,
Truman Smith, Augustus R. Sollers, James C. Sprigg, Edward
Stanly, Samuel Stokely, Charles C. Stratton, Alexander H. H.
Stuart, George W. Summers, John Taliaferro, John B. Thompson,
Richard W. Thompson, Joseph L. Tillinghast, George W. Toland,
Thomas A. Tomlinson, Philip Triplett, Joseph Trumbull, Joseph
R. Underwood, Henry Van Rensselaer, David Wallace, William
H. Washington, Edward D. White, Joseph L. White, Thomas W.
Williams, Lewis Williams, Joseph L. Williams, Robert C.
Winthrop, Thomas Jones Yorke, Augustus Young, John Young.
Those who voted in the negative, are:
NAYS--Messrs. Julius C. Alford, Archibald H. Arrington, Charles
G. Atherton, Linn Banks, Henry W. Beeson, Benjamin A. Bidlack,
Samuel S. Bowne, Linn Boyd, David P. Brewster, Aaron V. Brown,
Milton Brown, Joseph Egbert, Charles G. Ferris, John G. Floyd,
Joseph Fornance, Thomas F. Foster, Roger L. Gamble, Thomas W.
Gilmer, William O. Goode, Samuel Gordon, James Graham, Amos
Gustine, Richard W. Habersham, William A. Harris, John Hastings,
Samuel L. Hays, Isaac E. Holmes, George W. Hopkins, Jacob Houck,
jr., George S. Houston, Edmund W. Hubard, Robert M. T. Hunter,
William Jack, Cave Johnson, John W. Jones, George M. Keim,
Edmund Burke, Sampson H. Butler, William Butler, William O.
Butler, Green W. Caldwell, Patrick C. Caldwell, John Campbell,
William B. Campbell, George B. Cary, Reuben Chapman, Nathan
Clifford, Andrew Kennedy, Thomas Butler King, Dixon H. Lewis,
Nathaniel S. Littlefield, Joshua A. Lowell, Abraham McClellan,
Robert McClellan, James J. McKay, John McKeon, Francis Mallory,
Albert G. Marchand, Alfred Marshall, John Thompson Mason, James
Mathews, William Medill, James A. Meriwether, John Miller,
Peter Newhard, Eugenius A. Nisbet, William M. Oliver, William
Parmenter, Samuel Patridge, William W. Payne, Francis W.
Pickens, Arnold Plumer, James G. Clinton, Walter Coles, John R.
J. Daniel, Richard D. Davis, John B. Dawson, Ezra Dean, Davis
Dimock, jr., William Doan, Andrew W. Doig, Ira A. Eastman, John
C. Edwards, John R. Reding, Abraham Rencher, R. Barnwell Rhett,
Lewis Riggs, James Rogers, James I. Roosevelt, John Sanford,
Romulus M. Saunders, Tristram Shaw, Augustine H. Shepperd,
Benjamin G. Shields, John Snyder, Lewis Steenrod, Thomas D.
Sumter, George Sweney, Hopkins L. Turney, John Van Buren, Aaron
Ward, Lott Warren, Harvey M. Watterson, John B. Weller, John
Westbrook, James W. Williams, Henry A. Wise, Fernando Wood.
The progress of the abuse inherent in a measure so vicious, was
fully illustrated in the course of these distribution-bills. First,
they were merely to relieve the distresses of the people: now they
were to make payment of State debts, and to enhance the price of
State stocks in the hands of London capitalists. In the beginning
they were to divide a surplus on hand, for which the government
had no use, and which ought to be returned to the people who had
paid it, and who now needed it: afterwards it was to divide the
land-money years ahead without knowing whether there would be any
surplus or not: now they are for dividing money when there is none
to divide--when there is a treasury deficit--and loans and taxes
required to supply it. Originally, they were for short and limited
terms--first, for one year--afterwards for five years: now for
perpetuity. This bill provides for eternity. It is a curiosity in
human legislation, and contained a clause which would be ridiculous
if it had not been impious--an attempt to manacle future Congresses,
and to bind posterity through unborn generations. The clause ran
in these words: That if, at any time during the existence of this
act, duties on imported goods should be raised above the rate of
the twenty per centum on the value as provided in the compromise
act of 1833, then the distribution of the land revenue should be
suspended, and continue so until reduced to that rate; and then
be resumed. Fallacious attempt to bind posterity! It did not even
bind those who made it: for the same Congress disregarded it. But
it shows to what length the distribution spirit had gone; and that
even protective tariff--that former sovereign remedy for all the
wants of the people--was sacrificed to it. Mr. Clay undertaking to
bind all the Congresses for ever to uniform twenty per centum ad
valorem duties. And while the distribution-bill thus undertook to
protect and save the compromise of 1833, the new tariff-bill of
this session, undertook to return the favor by assuming to protect
and save the distribution-bill. Its second section contained this
proviso: That if any duty exceeding twenty per centum on the value
shall be levied before the 30th day of June, 1842, it should not
stop the distribution of the land revenue, as provided for in the
distribution act of the present session. Thus, the two acts were
made mutual assurers, each stipulating for the life of the other,
and connecting things which had no mutual relation except in the
coalitions of politicians; but, like other assurers, not able to
save the lives they assured. Both acts were gone in a year! And the
marvel is how such flimsy absurdities could be put into a statute?
And the answer, from the necessity of conciliating some one's
vote, without which the bills could not pass. Thus, some Southern
anti-tariff men would not vote for the distribution bill unless the
compromise of 1833 was protected; and some distribution men of the
West would not vote for the anti-tariff act unless the distribution
bill was protected. And hence the ridiculous, presumptuous, and idle
expedient of mutually insuring each other.
CHAPTER LXIX.
INSTITUTION OF THE HOUR RULE IN DEBATE IN THE HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES: ITS ATTEMPT, AND REPULSE IN THE SENATE.
This session is remarkable for the institution of the hour rule
in the House of Representatives--the largest limitation upon the
freedom of debate which any deliberative assembly ever imposed upon
itself, and presents an eminent instance of permanent injury done
to free institutions in order to get rid of a temporary annoyance.
It was done at a time when the party, called whig, was in full
predominance in both Houses of Congress, and in the impatience
of delay in the enactment of their measures. It was essentially
a whig measure--though with exceptions each way--the body of the
whigs going for it; the body of the democracy against it--several
eminent whigs voting with them: Mr. John Quincy Adams, William C.
Dawson, James A. Pearce, Kenneth Rayner, Edward Stanly, Alexander
H. H. Stuart, Edward D. White and others. Mr. Lott Warren moved the
rule as an amendment to the body of the rules; and, in the same
moment, moved the previous question: which was carried. The vote was
immediately taken, and the rule established by a good majority--only
seventy-five members voting against it. They were:
Messrs. John Quincy Adams, Archibald H. Arrington, Charles
G. Atherton, Linn Banks, Daniel D. Barnard, John M. Botts,
Samuel S. Bowne, Linn Boyd, David P. Brewster, Aaron V. Brown,
Edmund Burke, Barker Burnell, Green W. Caldwell, John Campbell,
Robert L. Caruthers, George B. Cary, Reuben Chapman, James G.
Clinton, Walter Coles, John R. J. Daniel, Wm. C. Dawson, Ezra
Dean, Andrew W. Doig, Ira A. Eastman, Horace Everett, Charles
G. Ferris, John G. Floyd, Charles A. Floyd, William O. Goode,
Samuel Gordon, Samuel L. Hays, George W. Hopkins, Jacob Houck,
jr., Edmund W. Hubard, Charles Hudson, Hiram P. Hunt, William
W. Irwin, William Jack, Cave Johnson, John W. Jones, George
M. Keim, Andrew Kennedy, Thomas Butler King, Dixon H. Lewis,
Nathaniel S. Littlefield, Joshua A. Lowell, Abraham McClellan,
Robert McClellan, James J. McKay, Francis Mallory, Alfred
Marshall, Samson Mason, John Thompson Mason, John Miller, Peter
Newhard, William Parmenter, William W. Payne, James A. Pearce,
Francis W. Pickens, Kenneth Rayner, John R. Reding, Lewis Riggs,
Romulus M. Saunders, William Slade, John Snyder, Augustus
R. Sollers, James C. Sprigg, Edward Stanly, Lewis Steenrod,
Alexander H. H. Stuart, Hopkins L. Turney, Aaron Ward, John
Westbrook, Edward D. White, Joseph L. Williams.
The Roman republic had existed four hundred and fifty years, and
was verging towards its fall under the first triumvirate--(Cæsar,
Pompey, and Crassus)--before pleadings were limited to two hours
before the JUDICES SELECTI. In the Senate the speeches of senators
were never limited at all; but even the partial limitation then
placed upon judicial pleadings, but which were, in fact, popular
orations, drew from Cicero an affecting deprecation of its effect
upon the cause of freedom, as well as upon the field of eloquence.
The reader of the admired treatise on oratory, and notices of
celebrated orators, will remember his lamentation--as wise in its
foresight of evil consequences to free institutions, as mournful
and affecting in its lamentation over the decline of oratory.
Little could he have supposed that a popular assembly should ever
exist, and in a country where his writings were read, which would
voluntarily impose upon itself a far more rigorous limitation
than the one over which he grieved. Certain it is, that with our
incessant use of the previous question, which cuts off all debate,
and the hour rule which limits a speech to sixty minutes (constantly
reduced by interruptions); and the habit of fixing an hour at which
the question shall be taken, usually brief, and the intermediate
little time not secure for that question: with all these limitations
upon the freedom of debate in the House, certain it is that such an
anomaly was never seen in a deliberative assembly, and the business
of a people never transacted in the midst of such ignorance of what
they are about by those who are doing it.
No doubt the license of debate has been greatly abused in our
halls of Congress--as in those of the British parliament: but this
suppression of debate is not the correction of the abuse, but the
destruction of the liberty of speech: and that, not as a personal
privilege, but as a representative right, essential to the welfare
of the people. For fifty years of our government there was no such
suppression: in no other country is there the parallel to it.
Yet in all popular assemblies there is an abuse in the liberty of
speech, inherent in the right of speech, which gives to faction and
folly the same latitude as to wisdom and patriotism. The English
have found the best corrective: it is in the House itself--its
irregular power: its refusal to hear a member further when they are
tired of him. A significant scraping and coughing warns the annoying
speaker when he should cease: if the warning is not taken, a tempest
drowns his voice: when he appeals to the chair, the chair recommends
him to yield to the temper of the House. A few examples reduce the
practice to a rule--insures its observance; and works the correction
of the abuse without the destruction of debate. No man speaking to
the subject, and giving information to the House, was ever scraped
and coughed down, in the British House of Commons. No matter how
plain his language, how awkward his manner, how confused his
delivery, so long as he gives information he is heard attentively;
while the practice falls with just, and relentless effect upon
the loquacious members, who mistake volubility for eloquence, who
delight themselves while annoying the House--who are insensible to
the proprieties of time and place, take the subject for a point to
stand on: and then speak off from it in all directions, and equally
without continuity of ideas or disconnection of words. The practice
of the British House of Commons puts an end to all such annoyance,
while saving every thing profitable that any member can utter.
The first instance of enforcing this new rule stands thus recorded
in the Register of Debates:
"Mr. PICKENS proceeded, in the next place to point out the
items of expenditure which might, without the least injury
to the interests of the government or to the public service,
suffer retrenchment. He quoted the report of the Secretary of
the Treasury of December 9, 1840; from it he took the several
items, and then stated how much, in his opinion, each might be
reduced. The result of the first branch of this reduction of
particulars was a sum to be retrenched amounting to $852,000.
He next went into the items of pensions, the Florida war, and
the expenditures of Congress; on these, with a few minor ones
in addition, he estimated that there might, without injury, be
a saving of four millions. Mr. P. had gotten thus far in his
subject, and was just about to enter into a comparison of the
relative advantages of a loan and of Treasury notes, when
"The Chair here reminded Mr. Pickens that his hour had expired.
"Mr. PICKENS. The hour out?
"The CHAIR. Yes, sir.
"Mr. PICKENS. [Looking at his watch.] Bless my soul! Have I run
my race?
"Mr. HOLMES asked whether his colleague had not taken ten
minutes for explanations?
"Mr. Warren desired that the rule be enforced.
"Mr. PICKENS denied that the House had any constitutional right
to pass such a rule.
"The CHAIR again reminded Mr. Pickens that he had spoken an hour.
"Mr. PICKENS would, then, conclude by saying it was the most
infamous rule ever passed by any legislative body.
"Mr. J. G. FLOYD of New York, said the gentleman had been
frequently interrupted, and had, therefore, a right to continue
his remarks.
"The CHAIR delivered a contrary opinion.
"Mr. FLOYD appealed from his decision.
"The CHAIR then rose to put the question, whether the decision
of the Chair should stand as the judgment of the House? when
"Mr. FLOYD withdrew his appeal.
"Mr. DAWSON suggested whether the Chair had not possibly made a
mistake with respect to the time.
"The CHAIR said there was no mistake.
"Mr. PICKENS then gave notice that he would offer an amendment.
"The CHAIR remarked that the gentleman was not in order.
"Mr. PICKENS said that if the motion to strike out the enacting
clause should prevail, he would move to amend the bill by
introducing a substitute, giving ample means to the Treasury,
but avoiding the evils of which he complained in the bill now
under consideration."
The measure having succeeded in the House which made the majority
master of the body, and enabled them to pass their bills without
resistance or exposure, Mr. Clay undertook to do the same thing
in the Senate. He was impatient to pass his bills, annoyed at
the resistance they met, and dreadfully harassed by the species
of warfare to which they were subjected; and for which he had
no turn. The democratic senators acted upon a system, and with
a thorough organization, and a perfect understanding. Being a
minority, and able to do nothing, they became assailants, and
attacked incessantly; not by formal orations against the whole body
of a measure, but by sudden, short, and pungent speeches, directed
against the vulnerable parts; and pointed by proffered amendments.
Amendments were continually offered--a great number being prepared
every night, and placed in suitable hands for use the next
day--always commendably calculated to expose an evil, and to present
a remedy. Near forty propositions of amendment were offered to the
first fiscal agent bill alone--the yeas and nays taken upon them
seven and thirty times. All the other prominent bills--distribution,
bankrupt, fiscal corporation--new tariff act, called revenue--were
served the same way. Every proposed amendment made an issue, which
fixed public attention, and would work out in our favor--end as
it might. If we carried it, which was seldom, there was a good
point gained: if we lost it, there was a bad point exposed. In
either event we had the advantage of discussion, which placed our
adversaries in the wrong; and the speaking fact of the yeas and
nays--which told how every man was upon every point. We had in our
ranks every variety of speaking talent, from plain and calm up to
fiery and brilliant--and all matter-of-fact men--their heads well
stored with knowledge. There were but twenty-two of us; but every
one a speaker, and effective. We kept their measures upon the anvil,
and hammered them continually: we impaled them against the wall,
and stabbed them incessantly. The Globe newspaper was a powerful
ally (Messrs. Blair and Rives); setting off all we did to the best
advantage in strong editorials--and carrying out our speeches,
fresh and hot, to the people: and we felt victorious in the midst
of unbroken defeats. Mr. Clay's temperament could not stand it, and
he was determined to silence the troublesome minority, and got the
acquiescence of his party, and the promise of their support: and
boldly commenced his operations--avowing his design, at the same
time, in open Senate.
It was on the 12th day of July--just four days after the new rule
had been enforced in the House, and thereby established (for up
to that day, it was doubtful whether it could be enforced)--that
Mr. Clay made his first movement towards its introduction in the
Senate; and in reply to Mr. Wright of New York--one of the last
men in the world to waste time in the Senate, or to speak without
edification to those who would listen. It was on the famous fiscal
bank bill, and on a motion of Mr. Wright to strike out the large
subscription reserved for the government, so as to keep the
government unconnected with the business of the bank. The mover made
some remarks in favor of his motion--to which Mr. Clay replied: and
then went on to say:
"He could not help regarding the opposition to this measure as
one eminently calculated to delay the public business, with
no other object that he could see than that of protracting to
the last moment the measures for which this session had been
expressly called to give to the people. This too was at a time
when the whole country was crying out in an agony of distress
for relief."
These remarks, conveying a general imputation upon the minority
senators of factious conduct in delaying the public business, and
thwarting the will of the people, justified an answer from any one
of them to whom it was applicable: and first received it from Mr.
Calhoun.
Mr. Calhoun was not surprised at the impatience of the senator
from Kentucky, though he was at his attributing to this side of
the chamber the delays and obstacles thrown in the way of his
favorite measure. How many days did the senator himself spend
in amending his own bill? The bill had been twelve days before
the Senate, and eight of those had been occupied by the friends
of the bill. That delay did not originate on this side of the
House; but now that the time which was cheerfully accorded to
him and his friends is to be reciprocated, before half of it
is over, the charge of factious delay is raised. Surely the
urgency and impatience of the senator and his friends cannot be
so very great that the minority must not be allowed to employ
as many days in amending their bill as they took themselves to
alter it. The senator from Kentucky says he is afraid, if we go
on in this way, we will not get through the measures of this
session till the last of autumn. Is not the fault in himself,
and in the nature of the measures he urges so impatiently? These
measures are such as the senators in the minority are wholly
opposed to on principle--such as they conscientiously believe
are unconstitutional--and is it not then right to resist them,
and prevent, if they can, all invasions of the constitution?
Why does he build upon such unreasonable expectations as to
calculate on carrying measures of this magnitude and importance
with a few days of hasty legislation on each? What are the
measures proposed by the senator? They comprise the whole
federal system, which it took forty years, from 1789 to 1829,
to establish--but which are now, happily for the country,
prostrate in the dust. And it is these measures, fraught with
such important results that are now sought to be hurried
through in one extra session; measures which, without consuming
one particle of useless time to discuss fully, would require,
instead of an extra session of Congress, four or five regular
sessions. The senator said the country was in agony, crying for
"action," "action." He understood whence that cry came--it came
from the holders of State stocks, the men who expected another
expansion, to relieve themselves at the expense of government.
"Action"--"action," meant nothing but "plunder," "plunder,"
"plunder;" and he assured the gentleman, that he could not be
more anxious in urging on a system of plunder than he (Mr.
Calhoun) would be in opposing it. He so understood the senator,
and he inquired of him, whether he called this an insidious
amendment?
This was a sharp reply, just in its retort, spirited in its tone,
judicious in expanding the basis of the new debate that was to come
on; and greatly irritated Mr. Clay. He immediately felt that he had
no right to impeach the motives of senators, and catching up Mr.
Calhoun on that point, and strongly contesting it, brought on a
rapid succession of contradictory asseverations: Thus:
"Mr. CLAY. I said no such thing, sir; I did not say any thing
about the _motives_ of senators.
"Mr. CALHOUN said he understood the senator's meaning to be that
the motives of the opposition were factious and frivolous.
"Mr. CLAY. I said no such thing, sir.
"Mr. CALHOUN. It was so understood.
"Mr. CLAY. No, sir; no, sir.
"Mr. CALHOUN. Yes, sir, yes; it could be understood in no other
way.
"Mr. CLAY. What I did say, was, that the _effect_ of such
amendments, and of consuming time in debating them, would be
a waste of that time from the business of the session; and,
consequently, would produce unnecessary delay and embarrassment.
I said nothing of _motives_--I only spoke of the practical
_effect_ and result.
"Mr. CALHOUN said he understood it had been repeated for the
second time that there could be no other motive or object
entertained by the senators in the opposition, in making
amendments and speeches on this bill, than to embarrass the
majority by frivolous and vexatious delay.
"Mr. CLAY insisted that he made use of no assertions as to
_motives_.
"Mr. CALHOUN. If the senator means to say that he does not
accuse this side of the House of bringing forward propositions
for the sake of delay, he wished to understand him.
"Mr. CLAY. I intended that.
"Mr. CALHOUN repeated that he understood the senator to mean
that the senators in the opposition were spinning out the time
for no other purpose but that of delaying and embarrassing the
majority.
"Mr. CLAY admitted that was his meaning, though not thus
expressed."
So ended this keen colloquy in which the pertinacity, and clear
perceptions of Mr. Calhoun brought out the admission that the
impeachment of motives was intended, but not expressed. Having got
this admission Mr. Calhoun went on to defy the accusation of faction
and frivolity, and to declare a determination in the minority to
continue in their course; and put a peremptory question to Mr. Clay.
"Mr. Calhoun observed that to attempt, by such charges of
factious and frivolous motives, to silence the opposition, was
wholly useless. He and his friends had principles to contend for
that were neither new nor frivolous, and they would here now,
and at all times, and in all places, maintain them against those
measures, in whatever way they thought most efficient. Did the
senator from Kentucky mean to apply to the Senate the gag law
passed in the other branch of Congress? If he did, it was time
he should know that he (Mr. Calhoun), and his friends were ready
to meet him on that point."
This question, and the avowed readiness to meet the gagging attempt,
were not spoken without warrant. The democratic senators having got
wind of what was to come, had consulted together and taken their
resolve to defy and to dare it--to resist its introduction, and
trample upon the rule, if voted: and in the mean time to gain an
advantage with the public by rendering odious their attempt. Mr.
Clay answered argumentatively for the rule, and that the people were
for it:
"Let those senators go into the country, and they will find
the whole body of the people complaining of the delay and
interruption of the national business, by their long speeches
in Congress; and if they will be but admonished by the people,
they will come back with a lesson to cut short their debating,
and give their attention more to action than to words. Who ever
heard that the people would be dissatisfied with the abridgment
of speeches in Congress? He had never heard the shortness of
speeches complained of. Indeed, he should not be surprised if
the people would got up remonstrances against lengthy speeches
in Congress."
With respect to the defiance, Mr. Clay returned it, and declared his
determination to bring forward the measure.
"With regard to the intimation of the gentleman from South
Carolina [Mr. CALHOUN], he understood him and his course
perfectly well, and told him and his friends that, for himself,
he knew not how his friends would act; he was ready at any
moment to bring forward and support a measure which should give
to the majority the control of the business of the Senate of
the United States. Let them denounce it as much as they pleased
in advance: unmoved by any of their denunciations and threats,
standing firm in the support of the interests which he believed
the country demands, for one, he was ready for the adoption of
a rule which would place the business of the Senate under the
control of a majority of the Senate."
Mr. Clay was now committed to bring forward the measure; and was
instantly and defyingly invited to do so.
"Mr. CALHOUN said there was no doubt of the senator's
predilection for a gag law. Let him bring on that measure as
soon as ever he pleases.
"Mr. BENTON. Come on with it."
Without waiting for any thing further from Mr. Clay, Mr. Calhoun
proceeded to show him, still further, how little his threat was
heeded and taunted him with wishing to revive the spirit of the
alien and sedition laws:
"Mr. CALHOUN said it must be admitted that if the senator
was not acting on the federal side, he would find it hard to
persuade the American people of the fact, by showing them his
love of gag laws, and strong disposition to silence both the
national councils and the press. Did he not remember something
about an alien and sedition law, and can he fail to perceive
the relationship with the measure he contemplates to put down
debate here? What is the difference, in principle, between his
gag law and the alien and sedition law? We are gravely told that
the speaking of the representatives of the people, which is to
convey to them full information on the subjects of legislation
in their councils, is worse than useless, and must be abated.
Who consumed the time of last Congress in long speeches,
vexatious and frivolous attempts to embarrass and thwart the
business of the country, and useless opposition, tending to
no end but that out of doors, the presidential election? Who
but the senator and his party, then in the minority? But now,
when they are in the majority, and the most important measures
ever pressed forward together in one session, he is the first
to threaten a gag law, to choke off debate, and deprive the
minority even of the poor privilege of entering their protest."
Of all the members of the Senate, one of the mildest and most
amicable--one of the gentlest language, and firmest purpose--was
Dr. Linn, of Missouri. The temper of the minority senators may be
judged by the tone and tenor of his remarks.
"He (Mr. LINN) would for his part, make a few remarks here, and
in doing so he intended to be as pointed as possible, for he had
now, he found, to contend for liberty of speech; and while any
of that liberty was left, he would give his remarks the utmost
bounds consistent with his own sense of what was due to himself,
his constituents, and the country. The whigs, during the late
administration, had brought to bear a system of assault against
the majority in power, which might justly be characterized as
frivolous and vexatious, and nothing else; yet they had always
been treated by the majority with courtesy and forbearance; and
the utmost latitude of debate had been allowed them without
interruption. In a session of six months, they consumed the
greater part of the time in speeches for electioneering
effect, so that only twenty-eight bills were passed. These
electioneering speeches, on all occasions that could be started,
whether the presentation of a petition, motion, or a resolution,
or discussion of a bill, were uniformly and studiously of the
most insulting character to the majority, whose mildest form
of designation was "collar men;" and other epithets equally
degrading. How often had it been said of the other branch of
Congress, "What could be expected from a House so constituted?"
Trace back the course of that party, step by step, to 1834,
and it may be tracked in blood. The outrages in New York in
that year are not forgotten. The fierce and fiendish spirit of
strife and usurpation which prompted the seizure of public arms,
to turn them against those who were their fellow-citizens, is
yet fresh as ever, and ready to win its way to what it aims
at. What was done then, under the influence and shadow of the
great money power, may be done again. He (Mr. LINN) had marked
them, and nothing should restrain him from doing his duty and
standing up in the front rank of opposition to keep them from
the innovations they meditated. Neither the frown nor menace of
any leader of that party--no lofty bearing, or shaking of the
mane--would deter him from the fearless and honest discharge of
those obligations which were due to his constituents and to the
country. He next adverted to the conduct of the whig party when
the sub-treasury was under discussion, and reminded the present
party in power of the forbearance with which they had been
treated, contrasting that treatment with the manifestations now
made to the minority. We are now, said Mr. Linn in conclusion,
to be checked; but I tell the senator from Kentucky, and any
other senator who chooses to tread in his steps, that he is
about to deal a double handed game at which two can play. He is
welcome to try his skill. But I would expect that some on that
side are not prepared to go quite so far; and that there is yet
among them sufficient liberality to counterbalance political
feeling, and induce them not to object to our right of spending
as much time in trying to improve their bill as they have taken
themselves to clip and pare and shape it to their own fancies."
Here this irritating point rested for the day--and for three days,
when it was revived by the reproaches and threats of Mr. Clay
against the minority.
"The House (he said) had been treading on the heels of the
Senate, and at last had got the start of it a long way in
advance of the business of this session. The reason was obvious.
The majority there is for action, and has secured it. Some
change was called for in this chamber. The truth is that the
minority here control the action of the Senate, and cause all
the delay of the public business. They obstruct the majority in
the dispatch of all business of importance to the country, and
particularly those measures which the majority is bound to give
to the country without further delay. Did not this reduce the
majority to the necessity of adopting some measure which would
place the control of the business of the session in their hands?
It was impossible to do without it: it must be resorted to."
To this Mr. Calhoun replied:
"The senator from Kentucky tells the Senate the other House has
got before it. How has the other House got before the Senate? By
a despotic exercise of the power of a majority. By destroying
the liberties of the people in gagging their representatives.
By preventing the minority from its free exercise of its right
of remonstrance. This is the way the House has got before the
Senate. And now there was too much evidence to doubt that the
Senate was to be made to keep up with the House by the same
means."
Mr. Clay, finding such undaunted opposition to the hour rule,
replied in a way to let it be seen that the threat of that rule
was given up, and that a measure of a different kind, but equally
effective, was to be proposed; and would be certainly adopted. He
said:
"If he did not adopt the same means which had proved so
beneficial in the other House, he would have something equally
efficient to offer. He had no doubt of the cheerful adoption of
such a measure when it should come before the Senate. So far
from the rule being condemned, he would venture to say that it
would be generally approved. It was the means of controlling the
business, abridging long and unnecessary speeches, and would be
every way hailed as one of the greatest improvements of the age."
This glimpse of another measure, confirmed the minority in the
belief of what they had heard--that several whig senators had
refused to go with Mr. Clay for the hour rule, and forced him to
give it up; but they had agreed to go for the previous question,
which he held to be equally effective; and was, in fact, more so--as
it cut off debate at any moment. It was just as offensive as the
other. Mr. King, of Alabama, was the first to meet the threat, under
this new form, and the Register of Debates shows this scene:
"Mr. King said the senator from Kentucky complained of three
weeks and a half having been lost in amendments to his bill. Was
not the senator aware that it was himself and his friends had
consumed most of that time? But now that the minority had to
take it up, the Senate is told there must be a gag law. Did he
understand that it was the intention of the senator to introduce
that measure?
"Mr. CLAY. I will, sir; I will!
"Mr. KING. I tell the senator, then, that he may make his
arrangements at his boarding-house for the winter.
"Mr. CLAY. Very well, sir.
"Mr. KING was truly sorry to see the honorable senator so far
forgetting what is due to the Senate, as to talk of coercing
it by any possible abridgment of its free action. The freedom
of debate had never yet been abridged in that body, since the
foundation of this government. Was it fit or becoming, after
fifty years of unrestrained liberty, to threaten it with a gag
law? He could tell the senator that, peaceable a man as he (Mr.
KING) was, whenever it was attempted to violate that sanctuary,
he, for one, would resist that attempt even unto the death."
The issue was now made up, and the determination on both sides
declared--on the part of Mr. Clay, speaking in the name of his
party, to introduce the previous question in the Senate, for the
purpose of cutting off debate and amendments; on the part of
the minority, to resist the rule--not only its establishment,
but its execution. This was a delicate step, and required
justification before the public, before a scene of resistance to the
execution--involving disorder, and possibly violence--should come
on. The scheme had been denounced, and defied; but the ample reasons
against it had not been fully stated; and it was deemed best that a
solid foundation of justification for whatever might happen, should
be laid beforehand in a reasoned and considered speech. The author
of this View, was required to make that speech; and for that purpose
followed Mr. King.
"Mr. Benton would take this opportunity to say a word on this
menace, so often thrown out, of a design to stifle debate, and
stop amendments to bills in this chamber. He should consider
such an attempt as much a violation of the constitution, and of
the privileges of the chamber, as it would be for a military
usurper to enter upon us, at the head of his soldiery, and expel
us from our seats.
"It is not in order, continued Mr. B.--it is not in order,
and would be a breach of the privilege of the House of
Representatives, to refer to any thing which may have taken
place in that House. My business is with our own chamber, and
with the threat which has so often been uttered on this floor,
during this extra session, of stifling debate, and cutting off
amendments, by the introduction of the previous question.
"With respect to debates, senators have a constitutional right
to speak; and while they speak to the subject before the House,
there is no power any where to stop them. It is a constitutional
right. When a member departs from the question, he is to be
stopped: it is the duty of the Chair--your duty, Mr. President,
to stop him--and it is the duty of the Senate to sustain you in
the discharge of this duty. We have rules for conducting the
debates, and these rules only require to be enforced in order to
make debates decent and instructive in their import, and brief
and reasonable in their duration. The government has been in
operation above fifty years, and the freedom of debate has been
sometimes abused, especially during the last twelve years, when
those out of power made the two houses of Congress the arena
of political and electioneering combat against the democratic
administration in power. The liberty of debate was abused during
this time; but the democratic majority would not impose gags
and muzzles on the mouths of the minority; they would not stop
their speeches; considering, and justly considering, that the
privilege of speech was inestimable and inattackable--that some
abuse of it was inseparable from its enjoyment--and that it
was better to endure a temporary abuse than to incur a total
extinction of this great privilege.
"But, sir, debate is one thing, and amendments another. A long
speech, wandering off from the bill, is a very different thing
from a short amendment, directed to the texture of the bill
itself, and intended to increase its beneficial, or to diminish
its prejudicial action. These amendments are the point to which
I now speak, and to the nature of which I particularly invoke
the attention of the Senate.
"By the constitution of the United States, each bill is to
receive three readings, and each reading represents a different
stage of proceeding, and a different mode of action under
it. The first reading is for information only; it is to let
the House know what the bill is for, what its contents are;
and then neither debate nor amendment is expected, and never
occurs, except in extraordinary cases. The second reading is
for amendments and debate, and this reading usually takes place
in Committee of the Whole in the House of Representatives,
and in _quasi_ committee in the Senate. The third reading,
after the bill is engrossed, is for passage; and then it
cannot be amended, and is usually voted upon with little or
no debate. Now, it is apparent that the second reading of the
bill is the important one--that it is the legislative--the
law-making--reading; the one at which the collective wisdom of
the House is concentrated upon it, to free it from defects,
and to improve it to the utmost--to illustrate its nature, and
trace its consequences. The bill is drawn up in a committee;
or it is received from a department in the form of a _projet
de loi_, and reported by a committee; or it is the work of
a single member, and introduced on leave. The bill, before
perfected by amendments, is the work of a committee, or of a
head of a department, or of a single member; and if amendments
are prevented, then the legislative power of the House is
annihilated; the edict of a secretary, of a committee, or of
a member, becomes the law; and the collected and concentrated
wisdom and experience of the House has never been brought to
bear upon it.
"The previous question cuts off amendments; and, therefore,
neither in England nor in the United States, until now, in the
House of Representatives, has that question ever been applied
to bills in Committee of the Whole, on the second reading.
This question annihilates legislation, sets at nought the
wisdom of the House, and expunges the minority. It is always
an invidious question, but seldom enforced in England, and but
little used in the earlier periods of our own government. It
has never been used in the Senate at all, never at any stage
of the bill; in the House of Representatives it has never been
used on the second reading of a bill, in Committee of the
Whole, until the present session--this session, so ominous in
its call and commencement, and which gives daily proof of its
alarming tendencies, and of its unconstitutional, dangerous, and
corrupting measures. The previous question has never yet been
applied in this chamber; and to apply it now, at this ominous
session, when all the old federal measures of fifty years ago
are to be conglomerated into one huge and frightful mass, and
rushed through by one convulsive effort; to apply it now, under
such circumstances, is to muzzle the mouths, to gag the jaws,
and tie up the tongues of those whose speeches would expose the
enormities which cannot endure the light, and present to the
people these ruinous measures in the colors in which they ought
to be seen.
"The opinion of the people is invoked--they are said to be
opposed to long speeches, and in favor of action. But, do
they want action without deliberation, without consideration,
without knowing what we are doing? Do they want bills without
amendments--without examination of details--without a knowledge
of their effect and operation when they are passed? Certainly
the people wish no such thing. They want nothing which will not
bear discussion. The people are in favor of discussion, and
never read our debates with more avidity than at this ominous
and critical extraordinary session. But I can well conceive of
those who are against those debates, and want them stifled. Old
sedition law federalism is against them: the cormorants who
are whetting their bills for the prey which the acts of this
session are to give them, are against them: and the advocates of
these acts, who cannot answer these arguments, and who shelter
weakness under _dignified_ silence, they are all weary, sick
and tired of a contest which rages on one side only, and which
exposes at once the badness of their cause and the defeat of its
defenders. Sir, this call for action! action! action! (as it was
well said yesterday), comes from those whose cry is, plunder!
plunder! plunder!
"The previous question, and the old sedition law, are measures
of the same character, and children of the same parents, and
intended for the same purposes. They are to hide light--to
enable those in power to work in darkness--to enable them to
proceed unmolested--and to permit them to establish ruinous
measures without stint, and without detection. The introduction
of this previous question into this body, I shall resist as
I would resist its conversion into a bed of justice--_Lit de
Justice_--of the old French monarchy, for the registration of
royal edicts. In these beds of justice--the Parliament formed
into a bed of justice--the kings before the revolution, caused
their edicts to be registered without debate, and without
amendment. The king ordered it, and it was done--his word became
law. On one occasion, when the Parliament was refractory, Louis
XIV. entered the chamber, booted and spurred--a whip in his
hand--a horsewhip in his hand--and stood on his feet until the
edict was registered. This is what has been done in the way
of passing bills without debate or amendment, in France. But,
in extenuation of this conduct of Louis the XIV., it must be
remembered that he was a very young man when he committed this
indiscretion, more derogatory to himself than to the Parliament
which was the subject of the indignity. He never repeated it in
his riper age, for he was a gentleman as well as a king, and in
a fifty years' reign never repeated that indiscretion of his
youth. True, no whips may be brought into our legislative halls
to enforce the gag and the muzzle, but I go against the things
themselves--against the infringement of the right of speech--and
against the annihilation of our legislative faculties by
annihilating the right of making amendments. I go against these;
and say that we shall be nothing but a bed of justice for the
registration of presidential, or partisan, or civil chieftain
edicts, when debates and amendments are suppressed in this body.
"Sir, when the previous question shall be brought into this
chamber--when it shall be applied to our bills in our _quasi_
committee--I am ready to see my legislative life terminated. I
want no seat here when that shall be the case. As the Romans
held their natural lives, so do I hold my political existence.
The Roman carried his life on the point of his sword; and when
that life ceased to be honorable to himself, or useful to his
country, he fell upon his sword, and died. This made of that
people the most warlike and heroic nation of the earth. What
they did with their natural lives, I am willing to do with my
legislative and political existence: I am willing to terminate
it, either when it shall cease to be honorable to myself, or
useful to my country; and that I feel would be the case when
this chamber, stripped of its constitutional freedom, shall
receive the gag and muzzle of the previous question."
Mr. Clay again took the floor. He spoke mildly, and
coaxingly--reminded the minority of their own course when in
power--gave a hint about going into executive business--but still
felt it his duty to give the majority the control of the public
business, notwithstanding the threatened resistance of the minority.
"He (Mr. CLAY) would, however, say that after all, he thought
the gentlemen on the other side would find it was better to go
on with the public business harmoniously and good humoredly
together, and all would get along better. He would remind the
gentlemen of their own course when in power, and the frequent
occasions on which the minority then acted with courtesy in
allowing their treasury note bills to pass, and on various other
occasions. He thought it was understood that they were to go
into executive session, and afterwards take up the loan bill. He
should feel it his duty to take measures to give the majority
the control of the business, maugre all the menaces that had
been made."
Here was a great change of tone, and the hint about going into
executive business was a sign of hesitation, faintly counterbalanced
by the reiteration of his purpose under a sense of duty. It was
still the morning hour--the hour for motions, before the calendar
was called: the hour for the motion he had been expected to make.
That motion was evidently deferred. The intimation of going into
executive business, was a surprise. Such business was regularly
gone into towards the close of the day's session--after the day's
legislative work was done; and this course was never departed from
except in emergent cases--cases which would consume a whole day, or
could not wait till evening: and no such cases were known to exist
at present. This was a pause, and losing a day in the carrying along
of those very measures, for hastening which the new rule was wanted.
Mr. Calhoun, to take advantage of the hesitation which he perceived,
and to increase it, by daring the threatened measure, instantly
rose. He was saluted with cries that "the morning hour was out:"
"not yet!" said he: "it lacks one minute of it; and I avail myself
of that minute:" and then went on for several minutes.
"He thought this business closely analogous to the alien and
sedition laws. Here was a palpable attempt to infringe the right
of speech. He would tell the senator that the minority had
rights under the constitution which they meant to exercise, and
let the senator try when he pleased to abridge those rights,
he would find it no easy job. When had that (our) side of the
Senate ever sought to protract discussion unnecessarily? [Cries
of 'never! never!'] Where was there a body that had less abused
its privileges? If the gag-law was attempted to be put in force,
he would resist it to the last. As judgment had been pronounced,
he supposed submission was expected. The unrestrained liberty
of speech, and freedom of debate, had been preserved in the
Senate for fifty years. But now the warning was given that the
yoke was to be put on it which had already been placed on the
other branch of Congress. There never had been a body in this
or any other country, in which, for such a length of time, so
much dignity and decorum of debate had been maintained. It
was remarkable for the fact, the range of discussion was less
discursive than in any other similar body known. Speeches were
uniformly confined to the subject under debate. There could be
no pretext for interference. There was none but that of all
despotisms. He would give the senator from Kentucky notice to
bring on his gag measure as soon as he pleased. He would find it
no such easy matter as he seemed to think."
Mr. Linn, of Missouri, rose the instant Mr. Calhoun stopped, and
inquired of the Chair if the morning hour was out. The president
_pro tempore_ answered that it was. Mr. Linn said, he desired to
say a few words. The chair referred him to the Senate, in whose
discretion it was, to depart from the rule. Mr. Linn appealed to the
Senate: it gave him leave: and he stood up and said:
"It was an old Scottish proverb, that threatened people live
longest. He hoped the liberties of the Senate would yet outlive
the threats of the senator from Kentucky. But, if the lash was
to be applied, he would rather it was applied at once, than
to be always threatened with it. There is great complaint of
delay; but who was causing the delay now growing out of this
threat? Had it not been made, there would be no necessity for
repelling it. He knew of no disposition on the part of his
friends to consume the time that ought to be given to the public
business. He had never known his friends, while in the majority,
to complain of discussion. He knew very well, and could make
allowances, that the senator from Kentucky was placed in a very
trying situation. He knew, also, that his political friends felt
themselves to be in a very critical condition. If he brought
forward measures that were questionable, he had to encounter
resistance. But he was in the predicament that he had pledged
himself to carry those measures, and, if he did not, it would
be his political ruin. He had every thing on the issue, hence
his impatience to pronounce judgment against the right of the
minority to discuss his measures."
Mr. Clay interrupted Mr. Linn, to say that he had not offered to
pronounce judgment. Mr. Linn gave his words "that if the Senate was
disposed to do as he thought it ought to do, they would adopt the
same rule as the other House." Mr. Clay admitted the words; and Mr.
Linn claimed their meaning as pronouncing judgment on the duty of
the Senate, and said:
"Very well; if the senator was in such a critical condition as
to be obliged to say he cannot get his measures through without
cutting off debates, why does he not accept the proposition
of taking the vote on his bank bill on Monday? If he brings
forward measures that have been battled against successfully
for a quarter of a century, is it any wonder that they should
be opposed, and time should be demanded to discuss them? The
senator is aware that whiggery is dying off in the country, and
that there is no time to be lost: unless he and his friends pass
these measures they are ruined. All he should say to him was,
pass them if he could. If, in order to do it, he is obliged
to come on with his gag law, he (Mr. LINN) would say to his
friends, let them meet him like men. He was not for threatening,
but if he was obliged to meet the crisis, he would do it as
became him."
Mr. Berrien, apparently acting on the hint of Mr. Clay, moved to go
into the consideration of executive business. A question of order
was raised upon that motion by Mr. Calhoun. The Chair decided in its
favor. Mr. Calhoun demanded what was the necessity for going into
executive business? Mr. Berrien did not think it proper to discuss
that point: so the executive session was gone into: and when it was
over, the Senate adjourned for the day.
Here, then, was a day lost for such pressing business--the bill,
which was so urgent, and the motion, which was intended to expedite
it. Neither of them touched: and the omission entirely the fault
of the majority. There was evidently a balk. This was the 15th of
July. The 16th came, and was occupied with the quiet transaction of
business: not a word said about the new rules. The 17th came, and
as soon as the Senate met, Mr. Calhoun took the floor; and after
presenting some resolutions from a public meeting in Virginia,
condemning the call of the extra session, and all its measures,
he passed on to correct an erroneous idea that had got into the
newspapers, that he himself, in 1812, at the declaration of war
against Great Britain, being acting chairman of the committee of
foreign relations, who had reported the war bill, had stifled
discussion--had hurried the bill through, and virtually gagged the
House. He gave a detail of circumstances, which showed the error
of this report--that all the causes of war had been discussed
before--that there was nothing new to be said, nor desire to speak:
and that, for one hour before the vote was taken, there was a pause
in the House, waiting for a paper from the department; and no one
choosing to occupy any part of it with a speech, for or against the
war, or on any subject. He then gave a history of the introduction
of the previous question into the House of Representatives.
"It had been never used before the 11th Congress (1810-12). It
was then adopted, as he always understood, in consequence of
the abuse of the right of debate by Mr. Gardinier of New York,
remarkable for his capacity for making long speeches. He could
keep the floor for days. The abuse was considered so great,
that the previous question was introduced to prevent it; but so
little was it in favor with those who felt themselves forced to
adopt it, that he would venture to say without having looked at
the journals, that it was not used half a dozen times during
the whole war, with a powerful and unscrupulous opposition, and
that in a body nearly two-thirds the size of the present House.
He believed he might go farther, and assert that it was never
used but twice during that eventful period. And now, a measure
introduced under such pressing circumstances, and so sparingly
used, is to be made the pretext for introducing the gag-law into
the Senate, a body so much smaller, and so distinguished for
the closeness of its debate and the brevity of its discussion.
He would add that from the first introduction of the previous
question into the House of Representatives, his impression was
that it was not used but four times in seventeen years, that
is from 1811 to 1828, the last occasion on the passage of the
tariff bill. He now trusted that he had repelled effectually the
attempt to prepare the country for the effort to gag the Senate,
by a reference to the early history of the previous question in
the other House."
Mr. Calhoun then referred to a decision made by Mr. Clay when
Speaker of the House, and the benefit of which he claimed
argumentatively. Mr. Clay disputed his recollection: Mr. Calhoun
reiterated. The senators became heated, Mr. Clay calling out from
his seat--"No, sir, No!"--and Mr. Calhoun answering back as he
stood--"Yes, sir, yes:" and each giving his own version of the
circumstance without convincing the other. He then returned to the
point of irritation--the threatened gag;--and said:
"The senator from Kentucky had endeavored to draw a distinction
between the gag law and the old sedition law. He (Mr. Calhoun)
admitted there was a distinction--the modern gag law was by far
the most odious. The sedition law was an attempt to gag the
people in their individual character, but the senator's gag was
an attempt to gag the representatives of the people, selected as
their agents to deliberate, discuss, and decide on the important
subjects intrusted by them to this government."
This was a taunt, and senators looked to see what would follow. Mr.
Clay rose, leisurely, and surveying the chamber with a pleasant
expression of countenance, said:
"The morning had been spent so very agreeably, that he hoped the
gentlemen were in a good humor to go on with the loan bill, and
afford the necessary relief to the Treasury."
The loan bill was then taken up, and proceeded with in a most
business style, and quite amicably. And this was the last that was
heard of the hour rule, and the previous question in the Senate:
and the secret history of their silent abandonment was afterwards
fully learnt. Several whig senators had yielded assent to Mr. Clay's
desire for the hour rule under the belief that it would only be
resisted parliamentarily by the minority; but when they saw its
introduction was to produce ill blood, and disagreeable scenes
in the chamber, they withdrew their assent; and left him without
the votes to carry it: and that put an end to the project of the
hour rule. The previous question was then agreed to in its place,
supposing the minority would take it as a "compromise;" but when
they found this measure was to be resisted like the former, and was
deemed still more odious, hurtful and degrading, they withdrew their
assent again: and then Mr. Clay, brought to a stand again for want
of voters, was compelled to forego his design; and to retreat from
it in the manner which has been shown. He affected a pleasantry, but
was deeply chagrined, and the more so for having failed in the House
where he acted in person, after succeeding in the other where he
acted vicariously. Many of his friends were much dissatisfied. One
of them said to me: "He gives your party a great deal of trouble,
and his own a great deal more." Thus, the firmness of the minority
in the Senate--it may be said, their courage, for their intended
resistance contemplated any possible extremity--saved the body
from degradation--constitutional legislation from suppression--the
liberty of speech from extinction, and the honor of republican
government from a disgrace to which the people's representatives
are not subjected in any monarchy in Europe. The previous question
has not been called in the British House of Commons in one hundred
years--and never in the House of Peers.
CHAPTER LXX.
BILL FOR THE RELIEF OF MRS. HARRISON, WIDOW OF THE LATE PRESIDENT OF
THE UNITED STATES.
Such was the title of the bill which was brought into the House of
Representatives for an indemnity, as it was explained to be, to the
family of the late President for his expenses in the presidential
election, and in removing to the seat of government. The bill itself
was in these words: "That the Secretary of the Treasury pay, out
of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to Mrs.
Harrison, widow of William Henry Harrison, late President of the
United States, or in the event of her death before payment, to the
legal representatives of the said William Henry Harrison, the sum
of $25,000." Mr. John Quincy Adams, as reporter of the bill from
the select committee to which had been referred that portion of
the President's message relating to the family of his predecessor,
explained the motives on which the bill had been founded; and said:
"That this sum ($25,000), as far as he understood, was in
correspondence with the prevailing sentiment of the joint
committee raised on this subject, and of which the gentleman now
in the chair had been a member. There had been some difference
of opinion among the members of the committee as to the sum
which it would be proper to appropriate, and, also, on the part
of one or two gentlemen as to the constitutionality of the
act itself in any shape. There had been more objection to the
constitutionality than there had been as to the sum proposed.
So far as there had been any discussion in the committee, it
seemed to be the general sense of those composing it, that
some provision ought to be made for the family of the late
President, not in the nature of a grant, but as an indemnity
for actual expenses incurred by himself first, when a candidate
for the presidency. It had been observed in the committee,
and it must be known to all members of the House, that, in
the situation in which General Harrison had been placed--far
from the seat of government, and for eighteen months or two
years, while a candidate for the presidency, exposed to a heavy
burden of expense which he could not possibly avoid--it was no
more than equitable that he should, to a reasonable degree, be
indemnified. He had been thus burdened while in circumstances
not opulent; but, on the contrary, it had been one ground on
which he had received so decided proof of the people's favor,
that through a long course of public service he remained poor,
which was in itself a demonstrative proof that he had remained
pure also. Such had been his condition before leaving home to
travel to the seat of government. After his arrival here, he
had been exposed to another considerable burden of expense,
far beyond any amount he had received from the public purse
during the short month he had continued to be President. His
decease had left his family in circumstances which would be
much improved by this act of justice done to him by the people,
through their representatives. The feeling was believed to be
very general throughout the country, and without distinction of
party, in favor of such a measure."
This bill, on account of its principle, gave rise to a vehement
opposition on the part of some members who believed they saw in
it a departure from the constitution, and the establishment of a
dangerous precedent. Mr. Payne, of Alabama, said:
"As he intended to vote against this proposition it was due to
himself to state the reasons which would actuate him. In doing
so he was not called to examine either the merits or demerits
of General Harrison. They had nothing to do with the question.
The question before the House was, not whether General Harrison
was or was not a meritorious individual, but whether that House
would make an appropriation to his widow and descendants. That
being the question, the first inquiry was, had the House a
right to vote this money, and, if they had, was it proper to
do so? Mr. P. was one of those who believed that Congress had
no constitutional right to appropriate the public money for
such an object. He quoted the language of the constitution,
and then inquired whether this was an appropriation to pay the
debts of the Union, to secure the common defence, or to promote
the general welfare? He denied that precedents ever ought to
be considered as settling a constitutional question. If they
could, then the people had no remedy. It was not pretended that
this money was to be given as a reward for General Harrison's
public services, but to reimburse him for the expense of an
electioneering campaign. This was infinitely worse."
Mr. Gilmer, of Virginia, said:
"When he had yesterday moved for the rising of the committee,
he had not proposed to himself to occupy much of the time of
the House in debate, nor was such his purpose at present. With
every disposition to vote for this bill, he had then felt,
and he still felt, himself unable to give it his sanction,
and that for reasons which had been advanced by many of the
advocates in its favor. This was not a place to indulge feeling
and sympathy: if it were, he presumed there would be but one
sentiment throughout that House and throughout the country,
and that would be in favor of the bill. If this were an act of
generosity, if the object were to vote a bounty, a gratuity,
to the widow or relatives of the late President, it seemed to
Mr. G. that they ought not to vote it in the representative
capacity, out of the public funds, but privately from their
own personal resources. They had no right to be generous with
the money of the people. Gentlemen might bestow as much out of
their own purses as they pleased; but they were here as trustees
for the property of others, and no public agent was at liberty
to disregard the trust confided to him under the theory of our
government. It was quite needless here to attempt an eulogy on
the character of the illustrious dead: history has done and
would hereafter do ample justice to the civil and military
character of William Henry Harrison. The result of the recent
election, a result unparalleled in the annals of this country,
spoke the sentiment of the nation in regard to his merits, while
the drapery of death which shrouded the legislative halls, the
general gloom which overspread the nation, spoke that sentiment
in accents mournfully impressive. But those rhapsodies in which
gentlemen had indulged, might, he thought, better be deferred
for some Fourth of July oration, or at least reserved for other
theatres than this. They had come up here not to be generous,
but to be just. His object now was to inquire whether they could
not place this bill on the basis of indisputable justice, so
that it might not be carried by a mere partial vote, but might
conciliate the support of gentlemen of all parties, and from
every quarter of the Union. He wished, if possible, to see the
whole House united, so as to give to their act the undivided
weight of public sentiment. Mr. G. said he could not bow to the
authority of precedent; he should ever act under the light of
the circumstances which surrounded him. His wish was, not to
furnish an evil precedent to others by his example. He thought
the House in some danger of setting one of that character; a
precedent which might hereafter be strained and tortured to
apply to cases of a very different kind, and objects of a widely
different character. He called upon the advocates of the bill
to enable all the members of the House, or as nearly all as
was practicable (for, after what had transpired yesterday, he
confessed his despair of seeing the House entirely united), to
agree in voting for the bill."
There was an impatient majority in the House in favor of the
passage of the bill, and to that impatience Mr. Gilmer referred as
making despair of any unanimity in the House, or of any considerate
deliberation. The circumstances were entirely averse to any such
deliberation--a victorious party, come into power after a most
heated election, seeing their elected candidate dying on the
threshold of his administration, poor, and beloved: it was a case
for feeling more than of judgment, especially with the political
friends of the deceased--but few of whom could follow the counsels
of the head against the impulsions of the heart. Amongst these few
Mr. Gilmer was one, and Mr. Underwood of Kentucky, another; who said:
"His heart was on one side and his judgment upon the other. If
this was a new case, he might be led away by his heart; but as
he had heretofore, in his judgment, opposed all such claims he
should do so now. He gave his reasons thus at large, because
a gentleman from Indiana, on the other side of the House,
denounced those who should vote against the bill. He objected,
because it was retroactive in its provisions, and because it
called into existence legislative discretion, and applied it to
past cases--because it provided for the widow of a President
for services rendered by her husband while in office, thus
increasing the President's compensation after his death. If it
applied to the widow of the President, it applied to the widows
of military officers. He considered if this bill passed, that
Mr. Jefferson's heirs might with equal propriety claim the same
compensation."
If the House had been in any condition for considerate legislation
there was an amendment proposed by Mr. Gordon of New York, which
might have brought it forth. He proposed an indemnity equal to the
amount of one quarter's salary, $6,250. He proposed it, but got but
little support for his proposition, the majority calling for the
question, and some declaring themselves for $50,000, and some for
$100,000. The vote was taken, and showed 66 negatives, comprehending
the members who were best known to the country as favorable to
a strict construction of the constitution, and an economical
administration of the government. The negatives were:
Archibald H. Arrington, Charles G. Atherton, Linn Banks, Henry
W. Beeson, Linn Boyd, David P. Brewster, Aaron V. Brown, Charles
Brown, Edmund Burke, William O. Butler, Green W. Caldwell,
Patrick C. Caldwell, John Campbell, George B. Cary, Reuben
Chapman, Nathan Clifford, James G. Clinton, Walter Coles,
John R. J. Daniel, Richard D. Davis, William Doan, Andrew W.
Doig, Ira A. Eastman, John C. Edwards, Joseph Egbert, John G.
Floyd, Charles A. Floyd, James Gerry, William O. Goode, Samuel
Gordon, Amos Gustine, William A. Harris, Samuel L. Hays, George
W. Hopkins, Jacob Houck, jr., Edmund W. Hubard, Robert M. T.
Hunter, Cave Johnson, John W. Jones, George M. Keim, Andrew
Kennedy, Joshua A. Lowell, Abraham McClellan, Robert McClellan,
James J. McKay, Albert G. Marchand, Alfred Marshall, John
Thompson Mason, James Mathews, William Medill, John Miller,
Peter Newhard, William W. Payne, Francis W. Pickens, Arnold
Plumer, John R. Reding, James Rogers, Romulus M. Saunders,
Tristram Shaw, John Snyder, Lewis Steenrod, Hopkins L. Turney,
Joseph R. Underwood, Harvey M. Watterson, John B. Weller, James
W. Williams.
Carried to the Senate for its concurrence, the bill continued to
receive there a determined opposition from a considerable minority.
Mr. Calhoun said:
"He believed no government on earth leaned more than ours
towards all the corruptions of an enormous pension list. Not
even the aristocratic government of Great Britain has a stronger
tendency to it than this government. This is no new thing.
It was foreseen from the beginning, and the great struggle
then was, to keep out the entering wedge. He recollected very
well, when he was at the head of the War Department, and the
military pension bill passed, that while it was under debate,
it was urged as a very small matter--only an appropriation of
something like $150,000 to poor and meritorious soldiers of the
Revolution, who would not long remain a burden on the Treasury.
Small as the sum was, and indisputable as were the merits of
the claimants, it was with great difficulty the bill passed.
Why was this difficulty--this hesitation on such an apparently
irresistible claim? Because it was wisely argued, and with a
spirit of prophecy since fulfilled, that it would prove an
entering wedge, which, once admitted, would soon rend the pillar
of democracy. And what has been the result of that trifling
grant? It is to be found in the enormous pension list of this
government at the present day.
"He asked to have any part of the Constitution pointed out in
which there was authority for making such an appropriation as
this. If the authority exists in the Constitution at all, it
exists to a much greater extent than has yet been acted upon,
and it is time to have the fact known. If the Constitution
authorizes Congress to make such an appropriation as this for
a President of the United States, it surely authorizes it to
make an appropriation of like nature for a doorkeeper of the
Senate of the United States, or for any other officer of the
government. There can be no distinction drawn. Pass this act,
and the precedent is established for the family of every civil
officer in the government to be placed on the pension list. Is
not this the consummation of the tendency so long combated?
But the struggle is in vain--there is not, he would repeat, a
government on the face of the earth, in which there is such a
tendency to all the corruptions of an aristocratic pension list
as there is in this."
Mr. Woodbury said:
"This was the first instance within his (Mr. W.'s) knowledge,
of an application to pension a civil officer being likely to
succeed; and a dangerous innovation, he felt convinced, it would
prove. Any civil officer, by the mere act of taking possession
of his office for a month, ought to get his salary for a year,
on the reasoning adopted by the senator from Delaware, though
only performing a month's service. If that can be shown to be
right, he (Mr. W.) would go for this, and all bills of the kind.
But it must first be shown satisfactorily. If this lady was
really poor, there would be some plea for sympathy, at least.
But he could point to hundreds who have that claim, and not on
account of civil, but military service, who yet have obtained
no such grant, and never will. He could point to others in
the civil service, who had gone to great expense in taking
possession of office and then died, but no claim of this kind
was encouraged, though their widows were left in most abject
poverty. All analogy in civil cases was against going beyond the
death of the incumbent in allowing either salary or gratuity."
Mr. Pierce said:
"Without any feelings adverse to this claim, political or
otherwise, he protested against any legislation based upon our
_sympathies_--he protested against the power and dominion of
that '_inward arbiter_,' which in private life was almost sure
to lead us right; but, as public men, and as the dispensers of
other men's means--other men's contributions--was quite as sure
to lead us wrong. It made a vast difference whether we paid the
money from our own pockets, or drew it from the pockets of our
constituents. He knew his weakness on this point, _personally_,
but it would be his steady purpose, in spite of taunts and
unworthy imputations, to escape from it, as the representative
of others. But he was departing from the object which induced
him, for a moment, to trespass upon the patience of the Senate.
This claim did not come from the family. No gentleman understood
on what ground it was placed. The indigence of the family had
not even been urged: he believed they were not only in easy
circumstances, but affluent. It was not for loss of limb,
property, or life, in the military service. If for any thing
legitimate, in any sense, or by any construction, it was for the
civil services of the husband; and, in this respect, was a broad
and dangerous precedent."
In saying that the claim did not come from the family of General
Harrison, Mr. Pierce spoke the words which all knew to be true.
Where then did it come from? It came, as was well known at the time,
from persons who had advanced moneys to the amount of about $22,000,
for the purposes mentioned in the bill; and who had a claim upon the
estate to that amount.
Mr. Benton moved to recommit the bill with instructions to prefix
a preamble, or insert an amendment showing upon what ground the
grant was motived. The bill itself showed no grounds for the grant.
It was, on its face, a simple legislative donation of money to a
lady, describing her as the widow of the late President; but in
no way connecting either herself, or her deceased husband, with
any act or fact as the alleged ground of the grant. The grant is
without consideration: the donee is merely described, to prevent
the donation from going to a wrong person. It was to go to Mrs.
Harrison. What Mrs. Harrison? Why, the widow of the late President
Harrison. This was descriptive, and sufficiently descriptive; for
it would carry the money to the right person. But why carry it?
That was the question which the bill had not answered; for there is
nothing in the mere fact of being the widow of a President which
could entitle the widow to a sum of public money. This was felt
by the reporter of the bill, and endeavored to be supplied by an
explanation, that it was not a "grant" but an "indemnity;" and an
indemnity for "actual expenses incurred when he was a candidate for
the presidency;" and for expenses incurred after his "arrival at
the seat of government;" and as "some provision for his family;"
and because he was "poor." Now why not put these reasons into the
bill? Was the omission oversight, or design? If oversight, it should
be corrected; if design, it should be thwarted. The law should be
complete in itself. It cannot be helped out by a member's speech.
It was not oversight which caused the omission. The member who
reported the bill is not a man to commit oversights. It was design!
and because such reasons could not be put on the face of the bill!
could not be voted upon by yeas and nays! and therefore must be left
blank, that every member may vote upon what reasons he pleases,
without being committed to any. This is not the way to legislate;
and, therefore, the author of this View moved the re-commitment,
with instructions to put a reason on the face of the bill itself,
either in the shape of a preamble, or of an amendment--leaving the
selection of the reasons to the friends of the bill, who constituted
the committee to which it would be sent. Mr. Calhoun supported the
motion for re-commitment, and said:
"Is it an unreasonable request to ask the committee for a
specific report of the grounds on which they have recommended
this appropriation? No; and the gentlemen know it is not
unreasonable; but they will oppose it not on that account; they
will oppose it because they know such a report would defeat
their bill. It could not be sustained in the face of their own
report. Not that there would be no ground assumed, but because
those who now support the bill do so on grounds as different
as any possibly can be; and, if the committee was fastened down
to one ground, those who support the others would desert the
standard."
The vote was taken on the question, and negatived. The yeas were:
Messrs. Allen, Benton, Calhoun, Clay of Alabama, Fulton, King of
Alabama, Linn, McRoberts, Pierce, Sevier Smith of Connecticut,
Tappan, Williams of Maine, Woodbury, Wright, Young of Illinois. To
the argument founded on the alleged poverty of General Harrison, Mr.
Benton replied:
"Look at the case of Mr. Jefferson, a man than whom no one
that ever existed on God's earth were the human family more
indebted to. His furniture and his estate were sold to satisfy
his creditors. His posterity was driven from house and home,
and his bones now lay in soil owned by a stranger. His family
are scattered; some of his descendants are married in foreign
lands. Look at Monroe--the amiable, the patriotic Monroe, whose
services were revolutionary, whose blood was spilt in the war
of Independence, whose life was worn out in civil service, and
whose estate has been sold for debt, his family scattered, and
his daughter buried in a foreign land. Look at Madison, the
model of every virtue, public or private, and he would only
mention in connection with this subject, his love of order, his
economy, and his systematic regularity in all his habits of
business. He, when his term of eight years had expired, sent a
letter to a gentleman (a son of whom is now upon this floor)
[Mr. PRESTON], enclosing a note for five thousand dollars,
which he requested him to endorse, and raise the money in
Virginia, so as to enable him to leave this city, and return
to his modest retreat--his patrimonial inheritance--in that
State. General Jackson drew upon the consignee of his cotton
crop in New Orleans for six thousand dollars to enable him to
leave the seat of government without leaving creditors behind
him. These were honored leaders of the republican party. They
had all been Presidents. They had made great sacrifices, and
left the presidency deeply embarrassed; and yet the republican
party who had the power and the strongest disposition to
relieve their necessities, felt they had no right to do so by
appropriating money from the public Treasury. Democracy would
not do this. It was left for the era of federal rule and federal
supremacy--who are now rushing the country with steam power into
all the abuses and corruptions of a monarchy, with its pensioned
aristocracy--and to entail upon the country a civil pension list.
"To the argument founded on the expense of removing to the seat
of government, Mr. Benton replied that there was something in
it, and if the bill was limited to indemnity for that expense,
and a rule given to go by in all cases, it might find claims
to a serious consideration. Such a bill would have principle
and reason in it--the same principle and the same reason which
allows mileage to a member going to and returning from Congress.
The member was supposed during that time to be in the public
service (he was certainly out of his own service): he was at
expense: and for these reasons he was allowed a compensation
for his journeys. But, it was by a uniform rule, applicable
to all members, and the same at each session. The same reason
and principle with foreign ministers. They received an out-fit
before they left home, and an in-fit to return upon. A quarter's
salary, was the in-fit: the out-fit was a year's salary, because
it included the expense of setting up a house after the minister
arrived at his post. The President finds a furnished house on
his arrival at the seat of government, so that the principle
and reason of the case would not give to him, as to a minister
to a foreign court, a full year's salary. The in-fit would be
the proper measure; and that rule applied to the coming of the
President elect, and to his going when he retires, would give
him $6,250 on each occasion. For such an allowance he felt
perfectly clear that he could vote as an act of justice; and
nearly as clear that he could do it constitutionally. But it
would have to be for a general and permanent act."
The bill was passed by a bare quorum, 28 affirmatives out of 52. The
negatives were 16: so that 18 senators--being a greater number than
voted against the bill--were either absent, or avoided the vote. The
absentees were considered mostly of that class who were willing to
see the bill pass, but not able to vote for it themselves. The yeas
and nays were:
YEAS--Messrs. Barrow, Bates, Bayard, Berrien, Buchanan, Choate,
Clay of Kentucky, Clayton, Dixon, Evans, Graham, Huntington,
Mangum, Merrick, Miller, Morehead, Phelps, Porter, Prentiss,
Preston, Rives, Simmons, Smith of Indiana, Southard, Tallmadge,
Walker, White, Woodbridge.
NAYS--Messrs. Allen, Benton, Calhoun, Clay of Alabama, Fulton,
King, Linn, McRoberts, Nicholson, Sevier, Smith of Connecticut,
Surgeon, Tappan, Williams, Woodbury, Wright, Young.
It was strenuously opposed by the stanch members of the democratic
party, and elaborately resisted in a speech from the writer of this
View--of which an extract is given in the next chapter.
CHAPTER LXXI.
MRS. HARRISON'S BILL: SPEECH OF MR. BENTON EXTRACTS.
Mr. Benton said he was opposed to this bill--opposed to it on
high constitutional grounds, and upon grounds of high national
policy--and could not suffer it to be carried through the Senate
without making the resistance to it which ought to be made against a
new, dangerous, and unconstitutional measure.
It was a bill to make a grant of money--twenty-five thousand
dollars--out of the common Treasury to the widow of a gentleman who
had died in a civil office, that of President of the United States;
and was the commencement of that system of civil pensions, and
support for families, which, in the language of Mr. Jefferson, has
divided England, and other European countries into two classes--the
tax payers and the tax consumers--and which sends the laboring man
supperless to bed.
It is a new case--the first of the kind upon our statute book--and
should have been accompanied by a report from a committee,
or preceded by a preamble to the bill, or interjected with a
declaration, showing the reason for which this grant is made. It
is a new case, and should have carried its justification along
with it. But nothing of this is done. There is no report from a
committee--from the two committees in fact--which sat upon the case.
There is no preamble to it, setting forth the reason for the grant.
There is no declaration in the body of the bill, showing the reason
why this money is voted to this lady. It is simply a bill granting
to Mrs. Harrison, widow of William H. Harrison, late President of
the United States, the sum of $25,000. Now, all this is wrong, and
contrary to parliamentary practice. Reason tells us there should
be a report from a committee in such a case. In fact, we have
reports every day in every case, no matter how inconsiderable, which
even pays a small sum of money to an individual. It is our daily
practice, and yet two committees have shrunk from that practice in
this new and important case. They would not make a report, though
urged to do it. I speak advisedly, for I was of the committee, and
know what was done. No report could be obtained; and why? because
it was difficult, if not impossible, for any committee to agree
upon a reason which would satisfy the constitution, and satisfy
public policy, for making this grant. Gentlemen could agree to give
the money--they could agree to vote--but they could not agree upon
the reason which was to be left upon the record as a justification
for the gift and the vote. Being no report, the necessity became
apparent for a preamble; but we have none of that. And, worse than
all, in the absence of report and preamble, the bill itself is
silent on the motive of the grant. It does not contain the usual
clause in money bills to individuals, stating, in a few words, for
what reason the grant or payment is made. All this is wrong; and I
point it out now, both as an argument against the bill, and as a
reason for having it recommitted, and returned with a report, or a
preamble, or a declaratory clause.
We were told at the last session that a new set of books were to be
opened--that the new administration would close up the old books,
and open new ones; and truly we find it to be the case. New books of
all kinds are opened, as foreign to the constitution and policy of
the country, as they are to the former practice of the government,
and to the late professions of these new patriots. Many new books
are opened, some by executive and some by legislative authority; and
among them is this portentous volume of civil pensions, and national
recompenses, for the support of families. Military pensions we have
always had, and they are founded upon a principle which the mind can
understand, the tongue can tell, the constitution can recognize, and
public policy can approve. They are founded upon the principle of
personal danger and suffering in the cause of the country--upon the
loss of life or limb in war. This is reasonable. The man who goes
forth, in his country's cause, to be shot at for seven dollars a
month, or for forty dollars a month, or even for one or two hundred,
and gets his head or his limbs knocked off, is in a very different
case from him who serves the same country at a desk or a table,
with a quill or a book in his hand, who may quit his place when he
sees the enemy coming; and has no occasion to die except in his
tranquil and peaceful bed. The case of the two classes is wholly
different, and thus far the laws of our country have recognized
and maintained the difference. Military pensions have been granted
from the foundation of the government--civil pensions, never; and
now, for the first time, the attempt is to be made to grant them.
A grant of money is to be made to the widow of a gentleman who has
not been in the army for near thirty years--who has since that time,
been much employed in civil service, and has lately died in a civil
office. A pension, or a grant of a gross sum of money, under such
circumstances, is a new proceeding under our government, and which
finds no warrant in the constitution, and is utterly condemned by
high considerations of public policy.
The federal constitution differs in its nature--and differs
fundamentally from those of the States. The States, being original
sovereignties, may do what they are not prohibited from doing; the
federal government, being derivative, and carved out of the States,
is like a corporation, the creature of the act which creates it,
and can only do what it can show a grant for doing. Now the moneyed
power of the federal government is contained in a grant from
the States, and that grant authorizes money to be raised either
by loans, duties or taxes, for the purpose of paying the debts,
supporting the government, and providing for the common defence of
the Union. These are the objects to which money may be applied, and
this grant to Mrs. Harrison can come within neither of them.
But, gentlemen say this is no pension--it is not an annual payment,
but a payment in hand. I say so, too, and that it is so much the
more objectionable on that account. A pension must have some rule
to go by--so much a month--and generally a small sum, the highest
on our pension roll being thirty dollars--and it terminates in a
reasonable time, usually five years, and at most for life. A pension
granted to Mrs. Harrison on this principle, could amount to no great
sum--to a mere fraction, at most, of these twenty-five thousand
dollars. It is not a pension, then, but a gift--a gratuity--a large
present--a national recompense; and the more objectionable for being
so. Neither our constitution, nor the genius of our government,
admits of such benefactions. National recompenses are high rewards,
and require express powers to grant them in every limited
government. The French Consular Constitution of the year 1799,
authorized such recompenses; ours does not, and it has not yet been
attempted, even in military cases. We have not yet voted a fortune
to an officer's or a soldier's family, to lift them from poverty to
wealth. These recompenses are worse than pensions: they are equally
unfounded in the constitution, more incapable of being governed by
any rule, and more susceptible of great and dangerous abuse. We have
no rule to go by in fixing the amount. Every one goes by feeling--by
his personal or political feeling--or by a cry got up at home, and
sent here to act upon him. Hence the diversity of the opinions as
to the proper sum to be given. Some gentlemen are for the amount in
the bill; some are for double that amount; and some are for nothing.
This diversity itself is an argument against the measure. It shows
that it has no natural foundation--nothing to rest upon--nothing
to go by; no rule, no measure, no standard, by which to compute
or compare it. It is all guess-work--the work of the passions or
policy--of faction or of party.
By our constitution, the persons who fill offices are to receive
a compensation for their services; and, in many cases, this
compensation is neither to be increased nor diminished during the
period for which the person shall have been elected; and in some
there is a prohibition against receiving presents either from
foreign States, or from the United States, or from the States of the
Union. The office of President comes under all these restrictions,
and shows how jealous the framers of the constitution were, of any
moneyed influence being brought to bear upon the Chief Magistrate of
the Union. All these limitations are for obvious and wise reasons.
The President's salary is not to be diminished during the time for
which he was elected, lest his enemies, if they get the upper hand
of him in Congress, should deprive him of his support, and starve
him out of office. It is not to be increased, lest his friends, if
they get the upper hand, should enrich him at the public expense;
and he is not to receive "_any other emolument_," lest the provision
against an increase of salary should be evaded by the grant of gross
sums. These are the constitutional provisions; but to what effect
are they, if the sums can be granted to the officer's family, which
cannot be granted to himself?--if his widow--his wife--his children
can receive what he cannot? In this case, the term for which General
Harrison was elected, is not out. It has not expired; and Congress
cannot touch his salary or bestow upon him or his, any emolument
without a breach of the constitution.
It is in vain to look to general clauses of the constitution.
Besides the general spirit of the instrument, there is a specific
clause upon the subject of the President's salary and emoluments. It
forbids him any compensation, except at stated times, for services
rendered; it forbids increase or diminution; and it forbids all
emolument. To give salary or emolument to his family, is a mere
evasion of this clause. His family is himself--so far as property
is concerned, a man's family is himself. And many persons would
prefer to have money or property conveyed to his family, or some
member of it, because it would then receive the destination which
his will would give it, and would be free from the claims or
contingencies to which his own property--that in his own name--would
be subject. There is nothing in the constitution to warrant this
proceeding, and there is much in it to condemn it. It is condemned
by all the clauses which relate to the levy, and the application of
money; and it is specially condemned by the precise clause which
regulates the compensation of the President, and which clause
would control any other part of the constitution which might come
in conflict with it. Condemned upon the constitutional test, how
stands this bill on the question of policy and expediency? It is
condemned--utterly condemned, and reprobated, upon that test! The
view which I have already presented of the difference between
military and naval services (and I always include the naval when I
speak of the military) shows that the former are proper subjects
for pensions--the latter not. The very nature of the service makes
the difference. Differing in principle, as the military and civil
pensions do, they differ quite as much when you come to details, and
undertake to administer the two classes of rewards. The military
has something to go by--some limit to it--and provides for classes
of individuals--not for families or for individuals--one by one.
Though subject to great abuse, yet the military pensions have some
limit--some boundary--to their amount placed upon them. They are
limited at least to the amount of armies, and the number of wars.
Our armies are small, and our wars few and far between. We have
had but two with a civilized power in sixty years. Our navy, also,
is limited; and compared to the mass of the population, the army
and navy must be always small. Confined to their proper subjects,
and military and naval pensions have limits and boundaries which
confine them within some bounds; and then the law is the same for
all persons of the same rank. The military and naval pensioners are
not provided for individually, and therefore do not become a subject
of favoritism, of party, or of faction. Not so with civil pensions.
There is no limit upon them. They may apply to the family of every
person civilly employed--that is, to almost every body--and this
without intermission of time; for civil services go on in peace and
war, and the claims for them will be eternal when once begun. Then
again civil pensions and grants of money are given individually,
and not by classes, and every case is governed by the feeling
of the moment, and the predominance of the party to which the
individual belonged. Every case is the sport of party, of faction,
of favoritism; and of feelings excited and got up for the occasion.
Thus it is in England, and thus it will be here. The English civil
pension list is dreadful, both for the amount paid, and the nature
of the services rewarded; but it required centuries for England to
ripen her system. Are we to begin it in the first half century of
our existence? and begin it without rule or principle to go by?
Every thing to be left to impulse and favor--by the politics of the
individual, his party affinities, and the political complexion of
the party in power.
Gentlemen refuse to commit themselves on the record; but they have
reasons; and we have heard enough, here and elsewhere, to have a
glimpse of what they are. First, poverty: as if that was any reason
for voting a fortune to a family, even if it was true! If it was a
reason, one half of the community might be packed upon the backs
of the other. Most of our public men die poor; many of them use up
their patrimonial inheritances in the public service; yet, until
now, the reparation of ruined fortune has not been attempted out
of the public Treasury. Poverty would not do, if it was true, but
here it is not true: the lady in question has a fine estate, and
certainly has not applied for this money. No petition of hers is
here! No letter, even, that we have heard of! So far as we know, she
is ignorant of the proceeding! Certain it is, she has not applied
for this grant, either on the score of poverty, or any thing else.
Next, election expenses are mentioned; but that would seem to be
a burlesque upon the character of our republican institutions.
Certainly no candidate for the presidency ought to electioneer for
it--spend money for it--and if he did, the public Treasury ought
not to indemnify him. Travelling expenses coming on to the seat of
government, are next mentioned; but these could be but a trifle,
even if the President elect came at his own expense. But we know to
the contrary. We know that the contest is for the honor of bringing
him; that conveyances and entertainments are prepared; and that
friends dispute for precedence in the race of lifting and helping
along, and ministering to every want of the man who is so soon to
be the dispenser of honor and fortune in the shape of office and
contracts. Such a man cannot travel at his own expense. Finally, the
fire in the roof of the west wing of the North Bend mansion has been
mentioned; but Jackson had the whole Hermitage burnt to the ground
when he was President, and would have scorned a gift from the public
Treasury to rebuild it. Such are the reasons mentioned in debate, or
elsewhere, for this grant. Their futility is apparent on their face,
and is proved by the unwillingness of gentlemen to state them in a
report, or a preamble, or in the body of the bill itself.
CHAPTER LXXII.
ABUSE OF THE NAVAL PENSION SYSTEM: VAIN ATTEMPT TO CORRECT IT.
The annual bill for these pensions being on its passage, an attempt
was made to correct the abuse introduced by the act of 1837. That
act had done four things:--1. It had carried back the commencement
of invalid naval pensions to the time of receiving the inability,
instead of the time of completing the proof. 2. It extended the
pensions for death to all cases of death, whether incurred in
the line of duty or not. 3. It extended the widows' pensions for
life, when five years had been the law both in the army and the
navy. 4. It pensioned children until twenty-one years of age,
thereby adopting the English pension system. The effects of these
changes were to absorb and bankrupt the navy pension fund--a
meritorious fund created out of the government share of prize
money, relinquished for that purpose;--and to throw the pensions,
the previous as well as the future, upon the public treasury--where
it was never intended they were to be. This act, so novel in its
character--so plundering in its effects--and introducing such
fatal principles into the naval pension system, and which it has
been found so difficult to get rid of--was one of the deplorable
instances of midnight legislation, on the last night of the session;
when, in the absence of many, the haste of all, the sleepiness of
some, and a pervading inattention, an enterprising member can get
almost any thing passed through--and especially as an amendment.
It was at a time like this that this pension act was passed, the
night of March 3d, 1837--its false and deceptive title ("_An act
for the more equitable administration of the Navy Pension Fund_")
being probably as much of it as was heard by the few members who
heard any thing about it; and the word "equitable," so untruly
and deceptiously inserted, probably the only part of it which
lodged on their minds. And in that way was passed an act which
instantly pillaged a sacred fund of one million two hundred thousand
dollars--which has thrown the naval pensioners upon the Treasury,
instead of the old navy pension fund, for their support--which
introduced the English pension system--which was so hard to repeal;
and which has still all its burdens on our finances, and some of its
principles in our laws. It is instructive to learn the history of
such legislation, and to see its power (a power inherent in the very
nature of an abuse, and the greater in proportion to the greatness
of the abuse) to resist correction: and with this view the brief
debate on an ineffectual attempt in the Senate to repeal the act of
this session is here given--Mr. Reuel Williams, of Maine, having the
honor to commence the movement.
"The naval pension appropriation bill being under
consideration, Mr. WILLIAMS offered an amendment, providing for
the repeal of the act of 1837; and went at some length into the
reasons in favor of the adoption of the amendment. He said all
admitted the injurious tendency of the act of 1837, by which
the fund which had been provided by the bravery of our gallant
sailors for the relief of the widows and orphans of those who
had been killed in battle, or had died from wounds which had
been received while in the line of their duty, had been utterly
exhausted; and his amendment went to the repeal of that law."
"Mr. MANGUM hoped the amendment would not be adopted--that the
system would be allowed to remain as it was until the next
session. It was a subject of great complexity, and if this
amendment passed it would be equivalent to the repeal of all the
naval pension acts."
"Mr. WILLIAMS understood the senator from North Carolina as
saying, that if they passed this amendment, and thus repealed
the act of 1837, they repeal all acts which grant a pension for
disability."
"Mr. MANGUM had said, if they repealed the law of '37, they
would cut off every widow and orphan now on the pension list,
and leave none except the seamen, officers, and marines,
entitled to pensions under the act of 1800."
"Mr. WILLIAMS said the senator was entirely mistaken; and read
the law of 1813, which was still in full force, and could not
be affected by the repeal of the law of 1837. The law of 1813
gives a pension to the widows and orphans of all who are killed
in battle, or who die from wounds received in battle; and also
gives pensions to those who are disabled while in the line of
their duty. This law was now in force. The additional provisions
of the law of 1837 were to carry back the pensions to the time
when the disability was incurred, and to extend it to the widows
and children of those who died, no matter from what cause, while
they were in the naval service. Thus, if an officer or seaman
died from intoxication, or even committed suicide, his widow
received a pension for life, and his children received pensions
until they were twenty-one years of age.
"Again: if officers or seamen received a wound which did not
disable them they continued in the service, receiving their full
pay for years. When they thought proper they retired from the
service, and applied for a pension for disability, which, by the
law of 1837, they were authorized to have carried back to the
time the disability was incurred, though they had, during the
whole series of years subsequent to receiving the disability,
and prior to the application for a pension, been receiving
their full pay as officers or seamen. It was to prevent the
continuance of such abuses, that the amendment was offered."
"Mr. WALKER must vote against this amendment, repealing the act
of 1837, because an amendment which had been offered by him and
adopted, provided for certain pensions under this very act, and
which ought, in justice, to be given."
"Mr. WILLIAMS thought differently, as the specific provision in
the amendment of the senator from Mississippi, would except the
cases included in it from the operation of the repealing clause."
"Mr. EVANS opposed the amendment, on the ground that it cut off
all the amendments adopted, and brought back again the law of
1800."
The proposed amendment of Mr. Williams was then put to the vote--and
negatived--only nineteen senators voting for it. The yeas and nays
were:
YEAS--Messrs. Allen, Benton, Calhoun, Clay of Alabama, Fulton,
King, Linn, McRoberts, Mouton, Nicholson, Pierce, Sevier, Smith
of Connecticut, Sturgeon, Tappan, Williams, Woodbury, Wright,
Young--19.
NAYS--Messrs. Archer, Barrow, Bates, Bayard, Berrien, Choate,
Clay of Kentucky, Clayton, Dixon, Evans, Graham, Huntington,
Kerr, Mangum, Merrick, Miller, Morehead, Phelps, Porter,
Prentiss, Preston, Simmons, Smith of Indiana, Southard,
Tallmadge, Walker, White, Woodbridge--28.
It is remarkable that in this vote upon a palpable and enormous
abuse in the navy, there was not a whig vote among the democracy
for correcting it, nor a democratic vote, except one, among the
negatives. A difference about a navy--on the point of how much, and
of what kind--had always been a point of difference between the two
great political parties of the Union, which, under whatsoever names,
are always the same--each preserving its identity in principles and
policy: but here the two parties divided upon an abuse which no one
could deny, or defend. The excuse was to put it off to another time,
which is the successful way of perpetuating abuses, as there are
always in every public assembly, as in every mass of individuals,
many worthy men whose easy temperaments delight in temporizations;
and who are always willing to put off, temporarily, the repeal of a
bad law, or even to adopt temporarily, the enactment of a doubtful
one. Mr. Williams' proposed amendment was not one of repeal only,
but of enactment also. It repealed the act of 1837, and revived that
of 1832, and corrected some injurious principles interjected into
the naval pension code--especially the ante-dating of pensions,
and the abuse of drawing pay and pension at the same time. This
amendment being rejected, and some minor ones adopted, the question
came up upon one offered by Mr. Walker--providing that all widows
or children of naval officers, seamen, or marines, now deceased,
and entitled to pensions under the act of 1837, should receive
the same until otherwise directed by law; and excluding all cases
from future deaths. Mr. Calhoun proposed to amend this amendment
by striking out the substantive part of Mr. Walker's amendment,
and after providing for those now on the pension-roll under the
act of 1837, confining all future pensioners to the acts of April
23d, 1800--January 24th, 1813--and the second section of the act of
the 3d of March, 1814. In support of his motion Mr. Calhoun spoke
briefly, and pointedly, and unanswerably; but not quite enough so to
save his proposed amendment. It was lost by one vote, and that the
vote of the president _pro tempore_, Mr. Southard. The substance of
Mr. Calhoun's brief speech is thus preserved in the register of the
Congress debates:
"Mr. CALHOUN said that, among the several objections to this,
there was one to which he did hope the Senate would apply the
correction. The amendment not only kept alive the act of 1837,
as to the pensioners now on the list, under that act, but also
kept it alive for all future applications which might be made
under it, until it should be hereafter repealed, if it ever
should be. To this he strongly objected.
"There was one point on which all were agreed, that the act
in question was not only inexpedient, but something much
worse--that it committed something like a fraud upon the pension
fund. It is well known to the Senate that that fund was the
result of prize money pledged to the use of meritorious officers
and sailors who might be disabled in the service of their
country. The whole of this fund, amounting to nearly a million
and a half of dollars, was swept away by this iniquitous act,
that passed on the third of March--the very last day of the
session--introduced and carried through by nobody knows who,
and for which nobody seems responsible. He ventured nothing in
asserting, that if such an act was now under discussion for
the first time, it would not receive a single vote with the
present knowledge which the Senate has of the subject, but, on
the contrary, would be cast from it with universal scorn and
indignation. He went further: it would now be repealed with like
unanimity, were it not that many persons had been placed upon
the list under the act, which was still in force, which was felt
by many to be a sort of a pledge to pay them until the act was
formally repealed. But why should we go further? Why should we
keep it alive to let in those who are not yet put upon the list?
But one answer could be given, and that one stated by the two
senators from Massachusetts, that the act partook of the nature
of a contract between the government and the officers, sailors
and marines, comprehended within its provisions. There might be
some semblance of reason for the few cases which have occurred
since the passage of the act; but not the slightest as far as it
relates to that more numerous class which occurred before its
passage. And yet the amendment keeps the act open for the latter
as well as the former. As strong as this objection is to the
amendment as it stands, there are others not less so.
"It introduces new and extraordinary principles into our pension
list. It gives pensions for life--yes, beyond--to children
for twenty-one years, as well as the widows of the deceased
officer, sailor or marine, who may die while in service. It
makes no distinction between the death of the gallant and brave
in battle, or him who may die quietly in his hammock or his bed
on shore, or even him who commits suicide. Nor does it even
distinguish between those who have served a long or a short
time. The widows and children of all, however short the service,
even for a single day, whatever might be the cause of death, are
entitled, under this fraudulent act, to receive pensions, the
widow for life, and the children for twenty-one years. To let in
this undeserving class, to this unmeasured liberality of public
bounty, this act is to be kept alive for an indefinite length of
time--till the Congress may hereafter choose to repeal it.
"The object of my amendment, said Mr. C., is to correct this
monstrous abuse; and, for this purpose, he proposed so to
modify the amendment of the senator from Mississippi, as to
exclude all who are not now on the pension roll from receiving
pensions under the act of 1837, and also to prevent any one
from being put on the navy pension roll hereafter under any
act, except those of April 23, 1800, January 20, 1813, and
the second section of the act of 30th March, 1814. These
acts limit the pensions to the case of officers, sailors and
marines, being disabled in the line of their duty, and limit the
pensions to their widows and children to five years, even in
those meritorious cases. Mr. C. then sent his amendment to the
chair. It proposed to strike out all after the word 'now,' and
insert, 'the pension roll, under the act of 1837, shall receive
their pension till otherwise decided by law, but no one shall
hereafter be put on the navy pension roll, under the said act,
or any other act, except that of April 23, 1800, and the act
of January 24, 1813, and the second section of the act of 3d
March, 1814.' The question was then taken on the amendment by a
count, and the Chair announced the amendment was lost--ayes 20,
noes 21. Mr. Calhoun inquired if the Chair had voted. The Chair
said he had voted with the majority. Mr. Buchanan then said
he would offer an amendment which he had attempted to get an
opportunity of offering in committee. It was to strike out the
words 'until otherwise directed by law,' and insert the words
'until the close of the next session of Congress,' so as to
limit the operations of the bill to that period. The amendment
was adopted, and the amendments to the bill were ordered to be
engrossed, and the bill ordered to a third reading."
Mr. Pierce having been long a member of the Pension Committee had
seen the abuses to which our pension laws gave rise, and spoke
decidedly against their abuse--and especially in the naval branch of
the service. He said:
"There were cases of officers receiving pay for full disability,
when in command of line-of-battle ships. The law of 1837
gave pay to officers from the time of their disability. He
had been long enough connected with the Pension Committee to
understand something of it. He had now in his drawer more than
fifty letters from officers of the army, neither begging nor
imploring, but demanding to be placed on the same footing with
the navy in regard to pensions. He thought, on his conscience,
that the pension system of this country was the worst on the
face of the earth, and that they could never have either an army
or a navy until there were reforms of more things than pensions.
He pointed to the military academy, appointments to which rested
on the influence that could be brought to bear by both Houses
of Congress. He had looked on that _scientific institution_,
from which no army would ever have a commander while West Point
was in the ascendency; and he would tell why. The principles
on which Frederick the Great and Napoleon acted were those to
make soldiers--where merit was, reward always followed, but
had they not witnessed cases of men of character, courage, and
capacity, asking, from day to day, in vain for the humble rank
of third lieutenant in your army, who would be glad to have such
appointments? I know (said Mr. P.) a man who, at the battle of
the _Withlacoochie_, had he performed the same service under
Napoleon, would have received a _baton_. But in ours what did he
get? Three times did that gallant fellow, with his arm broken
and hanging at his side, charge the Indians, and drive them from
their hammocks, where they were intrenched. The poor sergeant
staid in the service until his time expired, and that was all
he got for his gallantry and disinterestedness. Such instances
of neglect would upset any service, destroy all emulation, and
check all proper pride and ambition in subordinates. If ever
they were to have a good army or navy, they must promote merit
in both branches of service, as every truly great general had
done, and every wise government ought to do."
In the House of Representatives an instructive debate took place,
chiefly between Mr. Adams, and Mr. Francis Thomas, of Maryland, in
which the origin and course of the act was somewhat traced--enough
to find out that it was passed in the Senate upon the faith of a
committee, without any discussion in the body; and in the House by
the previous question, cutting off all debate; and so quietly and
rapidly as to escape the knowledge of the most vigilant members--the
knowledge of Mr. Adams himself, proverbially diligent. In the course
of his remarks he (Mr. Adams) said:
"Upwards of $1,200,000 in the year 1837, constituting that fund,
had been accumulating for a number of years. What had become
of it, if the fund was exhausted? It was wasted--it was gone.
And what was it gone for? Gentlemen would tell the House that
it had gone to pay those pensioners not provided for by the
8th and 9th sections of the act which had been read--the act
of 1800; but to provide for the payment of others, their wives
and children; and their cousins, uncles and aunts, for aught
he knew--provided for by the act of 1837. It was gone. Now, he
wished gentlemen who were so much attached to the _economies_ of
the present administration, to make a little comparison between
the condition of the fund now and its condition in 1837, when
the sum of $1,200,000 had accumulated--from the interest of
which all the pensions designated in the act of 1800 were to
have been paid. In the space of three little years, this fund
of $1,200,000 (carrying an interest of $70,000) was totally
gone--absorbed--not a dollar of it left. Yes: there were some
State stocks, to be sure; about $18,000 or less; but they
were unsaleable; and it was because they were unsaleable that
this appropriation, in part, was wanted. How came this act of
1837 to have passed Congress? Because he saw, from the ground
taken by the chairman of the committee on naval affairs, that
it was Congress that had been guilty of this waste of the
public money; the President had nothing to do with it--the
administration had nothing to do with it. How, he asked, was
this law of 1837 passed? Would the Chairman of the Committee on
Naval Affairs tell the House how it had been passed; by whom it
had been brought in and supported; and in what manner it had
been carried through both Houses of Congress? If he would, we
should then hear whether it came from whigs; or from economists,
retrenchers, and reformers."
Mr. Francis Thomas, now the Chairman of the Committee on Naval
Affairs, in answer to Mr. Adams's inquiry, as to who were the
authors of this act of 1837, stated that
"It had been reported to the Senate by the honorable Mr.
Robinson, of Illinois, and sent to the Committee on Naval
Affairs, of which Mr. Southard was a member, and he had reported
the bill to the Senate, by whom it had been passed without
a division. The Senate bill coming into the House, had been
referred to the Committee on Naval Affairs, in the House. Mr. T.
read the names of this committee, among which that of Mr. Wise
was one. The bill had been ordered to its third reading without
a division, and passed by the House without amendment.
"Mr. Wise explained, stating that, though his name appeared on
the naval committee, he was not responsible for the bill. He was
at that time but nominally one of the committee--his attention
was directed elsewhere--he had other fish to fry--and could no
longer attend to the business of that committee [of which he had
previously been an active member], being appointed on another,
which occupied his time and thoughts."
Mr. Adams, while condemning the act of 1837, would not now refuse to
pay the pensioners out of the Treasury. He continued:
"When the act of 1837 was before Congress then was the time to
have inquired whether these persons were fairly entitled to such
a pension--whether Congress was bound to provide for widows and
children, and for relatives in the seventh degree (for aught
he knew). But that was not now the inquiry. He thought that,
by looking at the journals, gentlemen would see that the bill
was passed through under the previous question, or something
of that kind. He was in the House, but he could not say how it
passed. He was not conscious of it; and the discussion must
have been put down in the way in which such things were usually
done in this House--by clapping the previous question upon it.
No questions were asked; and that was the way in which the bill
passed. He did not think he could tell the whole story; but he
thought it very probable that there were those in this House
who could tell if they would, and who could tell what private
interests were provided for in it. He had not been able to look
quite far enough behind the curtain to know these things, but
he knew that the bill was passed in a way quite common since
the reign of reform commenced in squandering away the public
treasure. _That_ he affirmed, and the Chairman of the Committee
on Naval Affairs would not, he thought, undertake to contradict
it. So much for that."
Mr. Adams showed that a further loss had been sustained under this
pension act of 1837, under the conduct of the House itself, at
the previous session, in refusing to consider a message from the
President, and in refusing to introduce a resolution to show the
loss which was about to be sustained. At that time there was a part
of this naval pension fund ($153,000) still on hand, but it was in
stocks, greatly depreciated; and the President sent in a report
from the Secretary of the Navy, that $50,000 was wanted for the
half-yearly payments due the first of July; and, if not appropriated
by Congress, the stocks must be sold for what they would bring. On
this head, he said:
"Towards the close of the last session of Congress, a message
was transmitted by the President, covering a communication from
the Secretary of the Navy, suggesting that an appropriation of
$50,000 was necessary to meet the payment of pensions coming
due on the 1st of July last. The message was sent on the 19th
of June, and there was in it a letter from the Secretary of
the Navy, stating that the sum of $50,000 was required to pay
pensions coming due on the then 1st of July, and that it was
found impracticable to effect a sale of the stocks belonging
to the fund, even at considerable loss, in time to meet the
payment. What did the House do with that message? It had no
time to consider it; and then it was that he had offered his
resolutions. But the House would not receive them--would not
allow them to be read. The time of payment came--and sacrifices
of the stocks were made, which were absolutely indispensable
so long as the House would not make the payment. And that
$50,000 was one of the demonstrations and reductions from
the expenditures of 1840, about which the President and the
Secretary of the Treasury were congratulating themselves and the
country. They called for the $50,000. They told the House that
if that sum was not appropriated, it would be necessary to make
great sacrifices. Yet the House refused to consider the subject
at all.
"He had desired a long time to say this much to the House; and
he said it now, although a little _out_ of order, because he had
never been allowed to say it _in_ order. At the last session
the House would not hear him upon any thing; and it was that
consideration which induced him to offer the resolutions he had
read, and which gave something like a sample of these things. He
offered them after the very message calling for $50,000 for this
very object, had come in. But no, it was not in order, and there
was a gentleman here who cried out "_I object!_" He (Mr. A.) was
not heard by the House, but he had now been heard; and he hoped
that when he should again offer these resolutions, as he wished
to do, they might at least be allowed to go on the journal as
a record, to show that such propositions had been offered.
Those resolutions went utterly and entirely against the system
of purchasing State bonds above par, and selling them fifty or
sixty per cent. below par."
These debates are instructive, as showing in what manner legislation
can be carried on, under the silencing process of the previous
question. Here was a bill, slipped through the House, without the
knowledge of its vigilant members, by which a fund of one million
two hundred thousand dollars was squandered at once, and a charge
of about $100,000 per annum put upon the Treasury to supply the
place of the squandered fund, to continue during the lives of the
pensioners, so far as they were widows or invalids, and until
twenty-one years of age, so far as they were children. And it is
remarkable that no one took notice of the pregnant insinuation of
Mr. Adams, equivalent to an affirmation, that, although he could not
tell the whole story of the passage of the act of 1837, there were
others in the House who could, if they would; and also could tell
what private interests were provided for.
No branch of the public service requires the reforming and
retrenching hand of Congress more than the naval, now costing (ocean
steam mail lines included) above eighteen millions of dollars: to
be precise--$18,586,547, and 41 cents; and exclusive of the coast
survey, about $400,000 more; and exclusive of the naval pensions.
The civil, diplomatic, and miscellaneous branch is frightful, now
amounting to $17,255,929 and 59 cents: and the military, also, now
counting $12,571,496 and 64 cents (not including the pensions).
Both these branches cry aloud for retrenchment and reform; but not
equally with the naval--which stands the least chance to receive
it. The navy, being a maritime establishment, has been considered
a branch of service with which members from the interior were
supposed to have but little acquaintance; and, consequently, but
little right of interference. I have seen many eyes open wide,
when a member from the interior would presume to speak upon it. By
consequence, it has fallen chiefly under the management of members
from the sea-coast--the tide-water districts of the Atlantic coast:
where there is an interest in its growth, and also in its abuses.
Seven navy yards (while Great Britain has but two); the constant
building and equally constant repairing and altering vessels;
their renewed equipment; the enlistment and discharge of crews; the
schools and hospitals; the dry docks and wet docks; the congregation
of officers ashore; and the ample pension list: all these make an
expenditure, perennial and enormous, and always increasing, creates
a powerful interest in favor of every proposition to spend money on
the navy--especially in the north-east, where the bulk of the money
goes; and an interest not confined to the members of Congress from
those districts, but including a powerful lobby force, supplied
with the arguments which deceive many, and the means which seduce
more. While this management remains local, reform and retrenchment
are not to be expected; nor could any member accomplish any thing
without the support and countenance of an administration. Besides
a local interest, potential on the subject, against reform, party
spirit, or policy, opposes the same obstacle. The navy has been, and
still is, to some degree, a party question--one party assuming to
be its guardian and protector; and defending abuses to sustain that
character. So far as this question goes to the _degree_, and _kind_
of a navy--whether fleets to fight battles for the dominion of the
seas, or cruisers to protect commerce--it is a fair question, on
which parties may differ: but as to abuse and extravagance, there
should be no difference. And yet what but abuse--what but headlong,
wilful, and irresponsible extravagance, could carry up our naval
expenditure to 18 millions of dollars, in time of peace, without
a ship of the line afloat! and without vessels enough to perform
current service, without hiring and purchasing!
CHAPTER LXXIII.
HOME SQUADRON, AND AID TO PRIVATE STEAM LINES.
Great Britain has a home squadron, and that results from her
geographical structure as a cluster of islands, often invaded, more
frequently threatened, and always liable to sudden descents upon
some part of her coast, resulting from her proximity to continental
Europe, and engaged as principal or ally in almost all the wars of
that continent. A fleet for home purposes, to cruise continually
along her coasts, and to watch the neighboring coasts of her often
enemies, was, then, a necessity of her insular position. Not so
with the United States. We are not an island, but a continent,
geographically remote from Europe, and politically still more
so--unconnected with the wars of Europe--having but few of our own;
having but little cause to expect descents and invasions, and but
little to fear from them, if they came. Piracy had disappeared from
the West Indies twenty years before. We had then no need for a home
squadron. But Great Britain had one; and therefore we must. That was
the true reason, with the desire for a great navy, cherished by the
party opposed to the democracy (no matter under what name), and now
dominant in all the departments of the government, for the creation
of a home squadron at this session. The Secretary of the Navy and
the navy board recommended it: Mr. Thomas Butler King, from the
Naval Committee of the House, reported a bill for it, elaborately
recommended in a most ample report: the two Houses passed it: the
President approved it: and thus, at this extra session, was fastened
upon the country a supernumerary fleet of two frigates, two sloops,
two schooners, and two armed steamers: for the annual subsistence
and repairs of which, about nine hundred thousand dollars were
appropriated. This was fifteen years ago; and the country has yet to
hear of the first want, the first service, rendered by this domestic
squadron. In the mean time, it furnishes comfortable pay and
subsistence, and commodious living about home, to some considerable
number of officers and men.
But the ample report which was drawn up, and of which five thousand
extra copies were printed, and the speeches delivered in its favor
were bound to produce reasons for this new precaution against the
danger of invasion, now to be provided after threescore years of
existence without it, and when we had grown too strong, and too
well covered our maritime cities with fortresses, to dread the
descent of any enemy. Reasons were necessary to be given, and were;
in which the British example, of course, was omitted. But reasons
were given (in addition to the main object of defence), as that
it would be a school for the instruction of the young midshipmen;
and that it would give employment to many junior officers then idle
in the cities. With respect to the first of these reasons it was
believed by some that the merchant service was the best school in
which a naval officer was ever trained; and with respect to the idle
officers, that the true remedy was not to create so many. The sum
appropriated by the bill was in gross--so much for all the different
objects named in the bill, without saying how much for each. This
was objected to by Mr. McKay of North Carolina, as being contrary to
democratic practice, which required specific appropriations; also as
being a mere disguise for an increase of the navy; and further that
it was not competent for Congress to limit the employment of a navy.
He said:
"That the bill before the committee proposed to appropriate
a gross sum to effect the object in view, which he deemed
a departure from the wholesome rule heretofore observed in
making appropriations. It was known to all that since the
political revolution of 1800, which placed the democratic party
in power, the doctrine had generally prevailed, that all our
appropriations should be specific. Now he would suggest to the
chairman whether it would not be better to pursue that course in
the present instance. Here Mr. McKay enumerated the different
items of expenditure to be provided for in the bill, and named
the specific sum for each. This was the form, he said, in which
all our naval appropriation bills had heretofore passed. He saw
no reason for a departure from this wholesome practice in this
instance--a practice which was the best and most effectual means
of securing the accountability of our disbursing officers. There
was another suggestion he would throw out for the consideration
of the chairman, and he thought it possessed some weight. This
bill purported to be for the establishment of a home squadron,
but he looked upon it as nothing more nor less than for the
increase of the navy. Again, could Congress be asked to direct
the manner in which this squadron, after it was fitted out,
should be employed? It was true that by the constitution,
Congress alone was authorized to build and fit out a navy,
but the President was the commander-in-chief, and had alone
the power to direct how and where it should be employed. The
title of this bill, therefore, should be 'a bill to increase
the navy,' for it would not be imperative on the President to
employ this squadron on our coasts. Mr. M. said he did not rise
to enter into a long discussion, but merely to suggest to the
consideration of the chairman of the committee, the propriety
of making the appropriations in the bill specific."
"Mr. WISE said that he agreed entirely with the gentleman from
North Carolina as to the doctrine of specific appropriations;
and if he supposed that this bill violated that salutary
principle he should be willing to amend it. But it did not; it
declared a specific object, for which the money was given. He
did not see the necessity of going into all the items which made
up the sum. That Congress had no power to ordain that a portion
of the navy should be always retained upon the coast as a home
squadron, was to him a new doctrine. The bill did not say that
these vessels should never be sent any where else."
"Mr. MCKAY insisted on the ground he had taken, and went into a
very handsome eulogy on the principle of specific appropriations
of the public money, as giving to the people the only security
they had for the proper and the economical use of their money;
but this, by the present shape of the bill, they would entirely
be deprived of. The bill might be modified with the utmost ease,
but he should move no amendments."
Mr. Thomas Butler King, the reporter of the bill, entered largely
into its support, and made some comparative statements to show
that much money had been expended heretofore on the navy with very
inadequate results in getting guns afloat, going as high as eight
millions of dollars in a year and floating but five hundred and
fifty guns; and claimed an improvement now, as, for seven millions
and a third they would float one thousand and seventy guns. Mr. King
then said:
"He had heard much about the abuse and misapplication of moneys
appropriated for the navy, and he believed it all to be true. To
illustrate the truth of the charge, he would refer to the table
already quoted, showing on one hand the appropriations made, and
on the other the results thereby obtained. In 1800 there had
been an appropriation of $2,704,148, and we had then 876 guns
afloat; while in 1836, with an appropriation of $7,011,055, we
had but 462 guns afloat. In 1841, with an appropriation of a
little over _three_ millions, we had 836 guns afloat; and in
1838, with an appropriation of over _eight_ millions, we had
but 554 guns afloat. These facts were sufficient to show how
enormous must have been the abuses somewhere."
Mr. King also gave a statement of the French and British navies, and
showed their great strength, in order to encourage our own building
of a great navy to be able to cope with them on the ocean. He
"Alluded to the change which had manifested itself in the naval
policy of Great Britain, in regard to a substitution of steam
power for ordinary ships of war. He stated the enumeration of
the British fleet, in 1840, to be as follows: ships of the line,
105; vessels of a lower grade, in all, 403; and war steamers,
87. The number of steamers had since then been stated at 300.
The French navy, in 1840, consisted of 23 ships of the line, 180
lesser vessels, and 36 steamers; besides which, there had been,
at that time, eight more steamers on the stocks. These vessels
could be propelled by steam across the Atlantic in twelve or
fourteen days. What would be the condition of the lives and
property of our people, if encountered by a force of this
description, without a gun to defend themselves?"
Lines of railroad, with their steam-cars, had not, at that time,
taken such extension and multiplication as to be taken into
the account for national defence. Now troops can come from the
geographical centre of Missouri in about sixty hours (summoned by
the electric telegraph in a few minutes), and arrive at almost any
point on the Atlantic coast; and from all the intermediate States
in a proportionately less time. The railroad, and the electric
telegraph, have opened a new era in defensive war, and especially
for the United States, superseding old ideas, and depriving invasion
of all alarm. But the bill was passed--almost unanimously--only
eight votes against it in the House; namely: Linn Boyd of Kentucky;
Walter Coles of Virginia; John G. Floyd of New York; William O.
Goode of Virginia; Cave Johnson, Abraham McClelland, and Hopkins L.
Turney of Tennessee; and John Thompson Mason of Maryland. It passed
the Senate without yeas and nays.
A part of the report in favor of the home squadron was also a
recommendation to extend assistance out of the public treasury to
the establishment of private lines of ocean steamers, adapted to war
purposes; and in conformity to it Mr. King moved this resolution:
"_Resolved_, That the Secretary of the Navy is hereby directed
to inquire into the expediency of aiding individuals or
companies in our establishment of lines of armed steamers
between some of our principal Northern and Southern ports,
and to foreign ports; to advertise for proposals for the
establishment of such lines as he may deem most important and
practicable; and to report to this House at the next session of
Congress."
This resolution was adopted, and laid the foundation for those
annual enormous appropriations for private lines of ocean steamers
which have subjected many members of Congress to such odious
imputations, and which has taken, and is taking, so many millions of
the public money to enable individuals to break down competition,
and enrich themselves at the public expense. It was a measure worthy
to go with the home squadron, and the worst of the two--each a
useless waste of money; and each illustrating the difficulty, and
almost total impossibility, of getting rid of bad measures when once
passed, and an interest created for them.
CHAPTER LXXIV.
RECHARTER OF THE DISTRICT BANKS: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH: EXTRACTS.
Mr. BENTON then proposed the following amendment:
"_And be it further enacted_, That each and every of said banks
be, and they are hereby, expressly prohibited from issuing or
paying out, under any pretence whatever, any bill, note, or
other paper, designed or intended to be used and circulated
as money, of a less denomination than five dollars, or of any
denomination between five and ten dollars, after one year from
the passage of this bill; or between ten and twenty dollars,
after two years from the same time; and for any violation of the
provisions of this section, or for issuing or paying out the
notes of any bank in a state of suspension, its own inclusive,
the offending bank shall incur all the penalties and forfeitures
to be provided and directed by the first section of this act
for the case of suspension or refusal to pay in specie; to be
enforced in like manner as is directed by that section."
Mr. BENTON. The design of the amendment is to suppress two great
evils in our banking system: the evil of small notes, and that of
banks combining to sustain each other in a state of suspension.
Small notes are a curse in themselves to honest, respectable banks,
and lead to their embarrassment, whether issued by themselves or
others. They go into hands of laboring people, and become greatly
diffused, and give rise to panics; and when a panic is raised it
cannot be stopped among the holders of these small notes. Their
multitudinous holders cannot go into the counting-room to examine
assets, and ascertain an ultimate ability. They rush to the counter,
and demand pay. They assemble in crowds, and spread alarm. When
started, the alarm becomes contagious--makes a run upon all banks;
and overturns the good as well as the bad. Small notes are a curse
to all good banks. They are the cause of suspensions. When the Bank
of England commenced operations, she issued no notes of a less
denomination than one hundred pounds sterling; and when the notes
were paid into the Bank, they were cancelled and destroyed. But in
the course of one hundred and three years, she worked down from one
hundred pound notes to one pound notes. And when did they commence
reducing the amount of their notes? During the administration of
Sir Robert Walpole. When the notes got down to one pound, specie
was driven from circulation, and went to France and Holland, and a
suspension of six and twenty years followed.
They are a curse to all good banks in another way: they banish
gold and silver from the country: and when that is banished the
foundation which supports the bank is removed: and the bank itself
must come tumbling down. While there is gold and silver in the
country--in common circulation--banks will be but little called upon
for it: and if pressed can get assistance from their customers. But
when it is banished the country, they alone are called upon, and get
no help if hard run. All good banks should be against small notes on
their own account.
These small notes are a curse to the public. They are the great
source of counterfeiting. Look at any price current, and behold the
catalogue of the counterfeits. They are almost all on the small
denominations--under twenty dollars. And this counterfeiting,
besides being a crime in itself, leads to crimes--to a general
demoralization in passing them. Holders cannot afford to lose
them: they cannot trace out the person from whom they got them.
They gave value for them; and pass them to somebody--generally the
most meritorious and least able to bear the loss--the day-laborer.
Finally, they stop in somebody's hands--generally in the hands of a
working man or woman.
Why are banks so fond of issuing these small notes? Why, in the
first place, banks of high character are against them: it is only
the predatory class that are for them: and, unfortunately, they
are a numerous progeny. It is in vain they say they issue them for
public accommodation. The public would be much better accommodated
with silver dollars, gold dollars--with half, whole, double, and
quarter eagles--whereof they would have enough if these predatory
notes were suppressed. No! they are issued for profit--for dishonest
profit--for the shameful and criminal purpose of getting something
for nothing. It is for the wear and tear of these little pilfering
messengers! for their loss in the hands of somebody! which loss
is the banker's gain! the gain of a day's or a week's work from
a poor man, or woman, for nothing. Shame on such a spirit, and
criminal punishment on it besides. But although the gains are small
individually, and in the petty larceny spirit, yet the aggregate is
great; and enters into the regular calculation of profit in these
paper money machines; and counts in the end. There is always a large
per centum of these notes outstanding--never to come back. When,
at the end of twenty-five years, Parliament repealed the privilege
granted to the Bank of England to issue notes under five pounds,
a large amount were outstanding; and though the repeal took place
more than twenty years ago, yet every quarterly return of the Bank
now shows that millions of these notes are still outstanding, which
are lost or destroyed, and never will be presented. The Bank of
England does not now issue any note under five pounds sterling: nor
any other bank in England. The large banks repulsed the privilege
for themselves, and got it denied to all the small class. To carry
the iniquity of these pillaging little notes to the highest point,
and to make them open swindlers, is to issue them at one place,
redeemable at another. That is to double the cheat--to multiply the
chance of losing the little plunderer by sending him abroad, and to
get a chance of "_shaving_" him in if he does not go.
The statistics of crime in Great Britain show, that of all the
counterfeiting of bank bills and paper securities in that kingdom,
more is counterfeited on notes under five pounds than over and
it is the same in this country. On whom does the loss of these
counterfeit notes fall? On the poor and the ignorant--the laborer
and the mechanic. Hence these banks inflict a double injury on the
poorer classes; and of all the evils of the banking system, the most
revolting is its imposing unequal burdens on that portion of the
people the least able to bear them.
Mr. B. then instanced a case in point of an Insurance Company in
St. Louis, which, in violation of law, assumed banking privileges,
and circulated to a large extent the notes of a suspended bank. Up
to Saturday night these notes were paid out from its counter, and
the working man and mechanics of St. Louis were paid their week's
wages in them. Well, when Monday morning came, the Insurance Company
refused to receive one of them, and they fell at once to fifty cents
on the dollar. Thus the laborer and the mechanic had three days of
their labor annihilated, or had worked three days for the exclusive
benefit of those who had swindled them; and all this by a bank
having power to receive or refuse what paper they please, and when
they please. And the Senate are now called upon to confer the same
privilege upon the banks of this district.
Mr. B. said it was against the immutable principles of justice--in
opposition to God's most holy canon, to make a thing of value
to-day, which will be of none to-morrow. You might as well permit
the dry goods merchant to call his yard measure three yards, or the
grocer to call his quart three quarts, as to permit the banker to
call his dollar three dollars. There is no difference in principle,
though more subtle in the manner of doing it. Money is the standard
of value, as the yard, and the gallon, and the pound weight, were
the standards of measure.
When he proposed the amendment, he considered it a proper
opportunity to bring before the people of the United States the
great question, whether they should have an exclusive paper currency
or not. He wished to call their attention to this war upon the
currency of the constitution--a war unremitting and merciless--to
establish in this country an exclusive paper currency. This war
to subvert the gold and silver currency of the constitution, is
waged by that party who vilify your branch mints, ridicule gold,
ridicule silver, go for banks at all times and at all places; and go
for a paper circulation down to notes of six and a quarter cents.
He rejoiced that this question was presented in that body, on a
platform so high that every American can see it--the question of a
sound or depreciated currency. He was glad to see the advocates of
banks, State and national, show their hand on this question.
To hear these paper-money advocates celebrate their idols--for
they really seem to worship bank notes--and the smaller and meaner
the better--one would be tempted to think that bank notes were the
ancient and universal currency of the world, and that gold and
silver were a modern invention--an innovation--an experiment--the
device of some quack, who deserved no better answer than to be
called humbug. To hear them discoursing of "sound banks," and "sound
circulating medium," one would suppose that they considered gold and
silver unsound, and subject to disease, rottenness, and death. But,
why do they apply this phrase "sound" to banks and their currency?
It is a phrase never applied to any thing which is not subject to
unsoundness--to disease--to rottenness--to death. The very phrase
brings up the idea of something subject to unsoundness; and that is
true of banks of circulation and their currency: but it is not true
of gold and silver: and the phrase is never applied to them. No one
speaks of the gold or silver currency as being sound, and for the
reason that no one ever heard of it as rotten.
Young merchants, and some old ones, think there is no living without
banks--no transacting business without a paper money currency. Have
these persons ever heard of Holland, where there are merchants
dealing in tens of millions, and all of it in gold and silver? Have
they ever heard of Liverpool and Manchester, where there was no
bank of circulation, not even a branch of the Bank of England; and
whose immense operations were carried on exclusively upon gold and
the commercial bill of exchange? Have they ever heard of France,
where the currency amounts to four hundred and fifty millions of
dollars, and it all hard money? For, although the Bank of France
has notes of one hundred and five hundred, and one thousand francs,
they are not used as currency but as convenient bills of exchange,
for remittance, or travelling. Have they ever heard of the armies,
and merchants, and imperial courts of antiquity? Were the Roman
armies paid with paper? did the merchant princes deal in paper? Was
Nineveh and Babylon built on paper? Was Solomon's temple so built?
And yet, according to these paper-money idolaters, we cannot pay a
handful of militia without paper! cannot open a dry goods store in
a shanty without paper! cannot build a house without paper! cannot
build a village of log houses in the woods, or a street of shanties
in a suburb, without a bank in their midst! This is real humbuggery;
and for which the industrial classes--the whole working population,
have to pay an enormous price. Does any one calculate the cost to
the people of banking in our country? how many costly edifices have
to be built? what an army of officers have to be maintained? what
daily expenses have to be incurred? how many stockholders must
get profits? in a word, what a vast sum a bank lays out before it
begins to make its half yearly dividend of four or five per centum,
leaving a surplus--all to come out of the productive classes of
the people? And after that comes the losses by the wear and tear
of small notes--by suspensions and breakings--by expansions and
contractions--by making money scarce when they want to buy, and
plenty when they want to sell. We talk of standing armies in Europe,
living on the people: we have an army of bank officers here doing
the same. We talk of European taxes; the banks tax us here as much
as kings tax their subjects. And this district is crying out for
banks. It has six, and wants them rechartered--Congress all the time
spending more hard money among them than they can use. They had
twelve banks: and what did they have to do? Send to Holland, where
there is not a single bank of circulation, to borrow one million
of dollars in gold, which they got at five per centum per annum;
and then could not pay the interest. At the end of the third year
the interest could not be paid; and Congress had to pay it to save
the whole corporate effects of the city from being sold--sold to
the Dutch, because the Dutch had no banks. And sold it would have
been if Congress had not put up the money: for the distress warrant
was out, and was to be levied in thirty days. Then what does this
city want with banks of circulation? She has no use for them; but I
only propose to make them a little safer by suppressing their small
notes, and preventing them from dealing in the depreciated notes of
suspended, or broken banks.
CHAPTER LXXV.
REVOLT IN CANADA: BORDER SYMPATHY: FIRMNESS OF MR. VAN BUREN: PUBLIC
PEACE ENDANGERED--AND PRESERVED:--CASE OF MCLEOD.
The revolt which took place in Canada in the winter of 1837-'8 led
to consequences which tried the firmness of the administration, and
also tried the action of our duplicate form of government in its
relations with foreign powers. The revolt commenced imposingly,
with a large show of disjointed forces, gaining advantages at
the start; but was soon checked by the regular local troops. The
French population, being the majority of the people, were chiefly
its promoters, with some emigrants from the United States; and
when defeated they took refuge on an island in the Niagara River
on the British side, near the Canadian coast, and were collecting
men and supplies from the United States to renew the contest.
From the beginning an intense feeling in behalf of the insurgents
manifested itself all along the United States border, upon a line of
a thousand miles--from Vermont to Michigan. As soon as blood began
to flow on the Canadian side, this feeling broke out into acts on
the American side, and into organization for the assistance of the
revolting party--the patriots, as they were called. Men assembled
and enrolled, formed themselves into companies and battalions,
appointed officers--even generals--issued proclamations--forced the
public stores and supplied themselves with arms and ammunition: and
were certainly assembling in sufficient numbers to have enabled
the insurgents to make successful head against any British forces
then in the provinces. The whole border line was in a state of
excitement and commotion--many determined to cross over, and
assist--many more willing to see the assistance given: the smaller
part only discountenanced the proceeding and wished to preserve the
relations which the laws of the country, and the duties of good
neighborhood, required. To the Canadian authorities these movements
on the American side were the cause of the deepest solicitude; and
not without reason: for the numbers, the inflamed feeling, and
the determined temper of these auxiliaries, presented a force
impossible for the Canadian authorities to resist, if dashing upon
them, and difficult for their own government to restrain. From the
first demonstration, and without waiting for any request from the
British minister at Washington (Mr. FOX), the President took the
steps which showed his determination to have the laws of neutrality
respected. A proclamation was immediately issued, admonishing and
commanding all citizens to desist from such illegal proceedings,
and threatening the guilty with the utmost penalties of the law.
But the President knew full well that it was not a case in which
a proclamation, and a threat, were to have efficacy; and he took
care to add material means to his words. Instructions were issued
to all the federal law officers along the border, the marshals and
district attorneys, to be vigilant in making arrests: and many were
made, and prosecutions instituted. He called upon the governors of
the border States to aid in suppressing the illegal movement: which
they did. And to these he added all the military and naval resources
which could be collected. Major-general Scott was sent to the line,
with every disposable regular soldier, and with authority to call on
the governors of New York and Michigan for militia and volunteers:
several steamboats were chartered on Lake Erie, placed under the
command of naval officers, well manned with regular soldiers, and
ordered to watch the lake.
The fidelity, and even sternness with which all these lawless
expeditions from the United States, were repressed and rebuked by
President Van Buren, were shown by him in his last communication to
Congress on the subject; in which he said:
"Information has been given to me, derived from official
and other sources, that many citizens of the United States
have associated together to make hostile incursions from our
territory into Canada, and to aid and abet insurrection there,
in violation of the obligations and laws of the United States,
and in open disregard of their own duties as citizens.
"The results of these criminal assaults upon the peace and order
of a neighboring country have been, as was to be expected,
fatally destructive to the misguided or deluded persons engaged
in them, and highly injurious to those in whose behalf they are
professed to have been undertaken. The authorities in Canada,
from intelligence received of such intended movements among our
citizens, have felt themselves obliged to take precautionary
measures against them; have actually embodied the militia,
and assumed an attitude to repel the invasion to which they
believed the colonies were exposed from the United States. A
state of feeling on both sides of the frontier has thus been
produced, which called for prompt and vigorous interference. If
an insurrection existed in Canada, the amicable dispositions of
the United States towards Great Britain, as well as their duty
to themselves, would lead them to maintain a strict neutrality,
and to restrain their citizens from all violations of the laws
which have been passed for its enforcement. But this government
recognizes a still higher obligation to repress all attempts
on the part of its citizens to disturb the peace of a country
where order prevails, or has been re-established. Depredations
by our citizens upon nations at peace with the United States,
or combinations for committing them, have at all times been
regarded by the American government and people with the greatest
abhorrence. Military incursions by our citizens into countries
so situated, and the commission of acts of violence on the
members thereof, in order to effect a change in its government,
or under any pretext whatever, have, from the commencement of
our government, been held equally criminal on the part of those
engaged in them, and as much deserving of punishment as would
be the disturbance of the public peace by the perpetration of
similar acts within our own territory."
By these energetic means, invasions from the American side were
prevented; and in a contest with the British regulars and the
local troops, the disjointed insurgents, though numerous, were
overpowered--dispersed--subjected--or driven out of Canada. Mr.
Van Buren had discharged the duties of neutrality most faithfully,
not merely in obedience to treaties and the law of nations, but
from a high conviction of what was right and proper in itself,
and necessary to the well-being of his own country as well as
that of a neighboring power. Interruption of friendly intercourse
with Great Britain, would be an evil itself, even if limited to
such interruption: but the peace of the United States might be
endangered: and it was not to be tolerated that bands of disorderly
citizens should bring on war. He had done all that the laws, and all
that a sense of right and justice required--and successfully, to
the repression of hostile movements--and to the satisfaction of the
British authorities. Faithfully and ably seconded by his Secretary
of State (Mr. Forsyth), and by his Attorney-general (Mr. Gilpin), he
succeeded in preserving our neutral relations in the most trying
circumstances to which they had ever been exposed, and at large cost
of personal popularity to himself: for the sympathy of the border
States resented his so earnest interference to prevent aid to the
insurgents.
The whole affair was over, and happily, when a most unexpected
occurrence revived the difficulty--gave it a new turn--and made
the soil of the United States itself, the scene of invasion--of
bloodshed--of conflagration--and of abduction. Some remnant of the
dispersed insurgents had taken refuge on Navy Island, near the
Canadian shore; and reinforced by some Americans, were making a
stand there, and threatening a descent upon the British colonies.
Their whole number has been ascertained to have been no more than
some five hundred--but magnified by rumor at the time to as many
thousands. A small steamboat from the American side, owned by a
citizen of the United States, was in the habit of carrying men and
supplies to this assemblage on the island. Her practices became
known to the British military authorities, encamped with some
thousand men at Chippewa, opposite the island; and it was determined
to take her in the fact, and destroy her. It was then the last of
December. A night expedition of boats was fitted out to attack this
vessel, moored to the island; but not finding her there, the vessel
was sought for in her own waters--found moored to the American
shore; and there attacked and destroyed. The news of this outrage
was immediately communicated to the President, and by him made known
to Congress in a special message--accompanied by the evidence on
which the information rested, and by a statement of the steps which
the President had taken in consequence. The principal evidence was
from the master of the boat--her name, the Caroline--and Schlosser,
on the American shore, her home and harbor. After admitting that
the boat had been employed in carrying men and supplies to the
assemblage on Navy Island, his affidavit continues:
"That from this point the Caroline ran to Schlosser, arriving
there at three o'clock in the afternoon; that, between this time
and dark, the Caroline made two trips to Navy Island, landing as
before. That, at about six o'clock in the evening, this deponent
caused the said Caroline to be landed at Schlosser, and made
fast with chains to the dock at that place. That the crew and
officers of the Caroline numbered ten, and that, in the course
of the evening, twenty-three individuals, all of whom were
citizens of the United States, came on board of the Caroline,
and requested this deponent and other officers of the boat to
permit them to remain on board during the night, as they were
unable to get lodgings at the tavern near by; these requests
were acceded to, and the persons thus coming on board retired to
rest, as did also all of the crew and officers of the Caroline,
except such as were stationed to watch during the night. That,
about midnight, this deponent was informed by one of the watch,
that several boats filled with men, were making towards the
Caroline from the river, and this deponent immediately gave the
alarm; and before he was able to reach the deck, the Caroline
was boarded by some 70 or 80 men, all of whom were armed. That
they immediately commenced a warfare with muskets, swords,
and cutlasses, upon the defenceless crew and passengers of
the Caroline, under a fierce cry of G--d damn them, give them
no quarter; kill every man: fire! fire! That the Caroline was
abandoned without resistance, and the only effort made by
either the crew or passengers seemed to be to escape slaughter.
That this deponent narrowly escaped; having received several
wounds, none of which, however, are of a serious character. That
immediately after the Caroline fell into the hands of the armed
force who boarded her, she was set on fire, cut loose from the
dock, was towed into the current of the river, there abandoned,
and soon after descended the Niagara Falls: that this deponent
has made vigilant search after the individuals, thirty-three
in number, who are known to have been on the Caroline at the
time she was boarded, and twenty-one only are to be found, one
of whom, to wit, Amos Durfee, of Buffalo, was found dead upon
the dock, having received a shot from a musket, the ball of
which penetrated the back part of the head, and came out at
the forehead. James II. King, and Captain C. F. Harding, were
seriously, though not mortally wounded. Several others received
slight wounds. The twelve individuals who are missing, this
deponent has no doubt, were either murdered upon the steamboat,
or found a watery grave in the cataract of the falls. And this
deponent further says, that immediately after the Caroline was
got into the current of the stream and abandoned, as before
stated, beacon lights were discovered upon the Canada shore,
near Chippewa; and after sufficient time had elapsed to enable
the boats to reach that shore, this deponent distinctly heard
loud and vociferous cheering at that point. That this deponent
has no doubt that the individuals who boarded the Caroline, were
a part of the British forces now stationed at Chippewa."
Ample corroborative testimony confirmed this affidavit--for which,
in fact, there was no necessity, as the officer in command of the
boats made his official report to his superior (Col. McNab), to the
same effect--who published it in general orders; and celebrated the
event as an exploit. This report varied but little from the American
in any respect, and made it worse in others. After stating that he
did not find the Caroline at Navy Island, "as expected," he went
in search of her, and found her at Grand Island, and moored to the
shore. The report proceeds:
"I then assembled the boats off the point of the Island, and
dropped quietly down upon the steamer; we were not discovered
until within twenty yards of her, when the sentry upon the
gangway hailed us, and asked for the countersign, which I told
him we would give when we got on board; he then fired upon us,
when we immediately boarded and found from twenty to thirty men
upon her decks, who were easily overcome, and in two minutes she
was in our possession. As the current was running strong, and
our position close to the Falls of Niagara, I deemed it most
prudent to burn the vessel; but previously to setting her on
fire, we took the precaution to loose her from her moorings, and
turn her out into the stream, to prevent the possibility of the
destruction of anything like American property. In short, all
those on board the steamer who did not resist, were quietly put
on shore, as I thought it possible there might be some American
citizens on board. Those who assailed us, were of course dealt
with according to the usages of war.
"I beg to add, that we brought one prisoner away, a British
subject, in consequence of his acknowledging that he had
belonged to Duncombe's army, and was on board the steamer to
join Mackenzie upon Navy Island. Lieutenant McCormack, of the
Royal Navy, and two others were wounded, and I regret to add
that five or six of the enemy were killed."
This is the official report of Captain Drew, and it adds the crimes
of impressment and abduction to all the other enormities of that
midnight crime. The man carried away as a British subject, and
because he had belonged to the insurgent forces in Canada, could not
(even if these allegations had been proved upon him), been delivered
up under any demand upon our government: yet he was carried off by
violence in the night.
This outrage on the Caroline, reversed the condition of the parties,
and changed the tenor of their communications. It now became the
part of the United States to complain, and to demand redress; and
it was immediately done in a communication from Mr. Forsyth, the
Secretary of State, to Mr. Fox, the British minister, at Washington.
Under date of January 5th, 1838, the Secretary wrote to him:
"The destruction of the property, and assassination of citizens
of the United States on the soil of New York, at the moment
when, as is well known to you, the President was anxiously
endeavoring to allay the excitement, and earnestly seeking to
prevent any unfortunate occurrence on the frontier of Canada,
has produced upon his mind the most painful emotions of surprise
and regret. It will necessarily form the subject of a demand
for redress upon her majesty's government. This communication
is made to you under the expectation that, through your
instrumentality, an early explanation may be obtained from the
authorities of Upper Canada, of all the circumstances of the
transaction; and that, by your advice to those authorities,
such decisive precautions may be used as will render the
perpetration of similar acts hereafter impossible. Not doubting
the disposition of the government of Upper Canada to do its duty
in punishing the aggressors and preventing future outrage, the
President, notwithstanding, has deemed it necessary to order a
sufficient force on the frontier to repel any attempt of a like
character, and to make known to you that if it should occur, he
cannot be answerable for the effects of the indignation of the
neighboring people of the United States."
In communicating this event to Congress, Mr. Van Buren showed that
he had already taken the steps which the peace and honor of the
country required. The news of the outrage, spreading through the
border States, inflamed the repressed feeling of the people to
the highest degree, and formidable retaliatory expeditions were
immediately contemplated. The President called all the resources of
the frontier into instant requisition to repress these expeditions,
and at the same time took measures to obtain redress from the
British government. His message to the two Houses said:
"I regret, however, to inform you that an outrage of a most
aggravated character has been committed, accompanied by a
hostile, though temporary invasion of our territory, producing
the strongest feelings of resentment on the part of our citizens
in the neighborhood, and on the whole border line; and that the
excitement previously existing, has been alarmingly increased.
To guard against the possible recurrence of any similar act,
I have thought it indispensable to call out a portion of the
militia to be posted on that frontier. The documents herewith
presented to Congress show the character of the outrage
committed, the measures taken in consequence of its occurrence,
and the necessity for resorting to them. It will also be seen
that the subject was immediately brought to the notice of the
British minister accredited to this country, and the proper
steps taken on our part to obtain the fullest information of all
the circumstances leading to and attendant upon the transaction,
preparatory to a demand for reparation."
The feeling in Congress was hardly less strong than in the border
States, on account of this outrage, combining all the crimes of
assassination, arson, burglary, and invasion of national territory.
An act of Congress was immediately passed, placing large military
means, and an appropriation of money in the President's hands,
for the protection of our frontier. His demand for redress was
unanimously seconded by Congress; and what had been so earnestly
deprecated from the beginning, as a consequence of this border
trouble--a difficulty between the two nations--had now come to
pass; but entirely from the opposite side from which it had been
expected. The British government delayed the answer to the demand
for redress--avoided the assumption of the criminal act--excused
and justified it--but did not assume it: and in fact could not,
without contradicting the official reports of her own officers, all
negativing the idea of any intention to violate the territory of
the United States. The orders to the officer commanding the boats,
was to seek the Caroline at Navy Island, where she had been during
the day, and was expected to be at night. In pursuance of this
order, the fleet of boats went to the island, near midnight; and not
finding the offending vessel there, sought her elsewhere. This is
the official report of Capt. Drew, of the Royal Navy, commanding the
boats: "I immediately directed five boats to be armed, and manned
with forty-five volunteers; and, at about eleven o'clock, P. M.,
we pushed off from the shore for Navy Island, when not finding her
there, as expected, we went in search, and found her moored between
the island and the main shore." The island here spoken of as the
one between which and the main shore, the Caroline was found, was
the American island, called Grand Island, any descent upon which,
Colonel McNab had that day officially disclaimed, because it was
American territory. The United States Attorney for the District of
New York, (Mr. Rodgers), then on the border to enforce the laws
against the violators of our neutrality, hearing that there was a
design to make a descent upon Grand Island, addressed a note to Col.
McNab, commanding on the opposite side of the river, to learn its
truth; and received this answer:
"With respect to the report in the city of Buffalo, that certain
forces under my command had landed upon Grand Island--an island
within the territory of the United States--I can assure you
that it is entirely without foundation; and that so far from my
having any intention of the kind, such a proceeding would be in
direct opposition to the wishes and intentions of her Britannic
majesty's government, in this colony, whose servant I have the
honor to be. Entering at once into the feeling which induced
you to address me on this subject, I beg leave to call your
attention to the following facts: That so far from occupying or
intending to occupy, that or any other portion of the American
territory, aggressions of a serious and hostile nature have been
made upon the forces under my command from that island. Two
affidavits are now before me, stating that a volley of musketry
from Grand Island was yesterday fired upon a party of unarmed
persons, some of whom were females, without the slightest
provocation having been offered. That on the same day, one of my
boats, unarmed, manned by British subjects, passing along the
American shore, and without any cause being given, was fired
upon from the American side, near Fort Schlosser, by cannon, the
property, I am told, of the United States."
This was written on the 29th day of December, and it was eleven
o'clock of the night of that day that the Caroline was destroyed
on the American shore. It was Col. McNab, commanding the forces at
Chippewa, that gave the order to destroy the Caroline. The letter
and the order were both written the same day--probably within the
same hour, as both were written in the afternoon: and they were
coincident in import as well as in date. The order was to seek
the offending vessel at Navy Island, being British territory, and
where she was seen at dark: the letter disclaimed both the fact,
and the intent, of invading Grand Island, because it was American
territory: and besides the disclaimer for himself, Col. McNab
superadded another equally positive in behalf of her Majesty's
government in Canada, declaring that such a proceeding would be
in direct opposition to the wishes and intentions of the colonial
government. In the face of these facts the British government found
it difficult, and for a long time impossible, to assume this act of
destroying the Caroline as a government proceeding. It was never
so assumed during the administration of Mr. Van Buren--a period of
upwards of three years--to be precise--(and this is a case which
requires precision)--three years and two months and seven days: that
is to say, from the 29th of December, 1837, to March 3d, 1841.
When this letter of Col. McNab was read in the House of
Representatives (which it was within a few days after it was
written), Mr. Fillmore (afterwards President of the United States,
and then a representative from the State of New York, and, from that
part of the State which included the most disturbed portion of the
border), stood up in his place, and said:
"The letter just read by the clerk, at his colleague's request,
was written in reply to one from the district attorney as to the
reported intention of the British to invade Grand Island; and in
it is the declaration that there was no such intention. Now, Mr.
F. would call the attention of the House to the fact that that
letter was written on the 29th December, and that it was on the
very night succeeding the date of it that this gross outrage was
committed on the Caroline. Moreover, he would call the attention
of the House to the well-authenticated fact, that, after burning
the boat, and sending it over the falls, the assassins were
lighted back to McNab's camp, where he was in person, by beacons
lighted there for that purpose. Mr. F. certainly deprecated a
war with Great Britain as sincerely as any gentleman on that
floor could possibly do: and hoped, as earnestly, that these
difficulties would be amicably adjusted between the two nations.
Yet, he must say, that the letter of McNab, instead of affording
grounds for a palliation, was, in reality, a great aggravation
of the outrage. It held out to us the assurance that there was
nothing of the kind to be apprehended; and yet, a few hours
afterwards, this atrocity was perpetrated by an officer sent
directly from the camp of that McNab."
At the time that this was spoken the order of Col. McNab to Captain
Drew had not been seen, and consequently it was not known that the
letter and the order were coincident in their character, and that
the perfidy, implied in Mr. Fillmore's remarks, was not justly
attributable to Col. McNab: but it is certain he applauded the act
when done: and his letter will stand for a condemnation of it, and
for the disavowal of authority to do it.
The invasion of New York was the invasion of the United States, and
the President had immediately demanded redress, both for the public
outrage, and for the loss of property to the owners of the boat.
Mr. Van Buren's entire administration went off without obtaining an
answer to these demands. As late as January, 1839--a year after the
event--Mr. Stevenson, the United States minister in London, wrote:
"I regret to say that no answer has yet been given to my note in
the case of the Caroline." And towards the end of the same year,
Mr. Forsyth, the American Secretary of State, in writing to him,
expressed the belief that an answer would soon be given. He says:
"I have had frequent conversations with Mr. Fox in regard to this
subject--one of very recent date--and from its tone, the President
expects the British government will answer your application in the
case without much further delay."--Delay, however, continued; and,
as late as December, 1840, no answer having yet been received, the
President directed the subject again to be brought to the notice of
the British government; and Mr. Forsyth accordingly wrote to Mr. Fox:
"The President deems this to be a proper occasion to remind
the government of her Britannic majesty that the case of the
"Caroline" has been long since brought to the attention of her
Majesty's principal Secretary of State for foreign affairs, who,
up to this day, has not communicated its decision thereupon. It
is hoped that the government of her Majesty will perceive the
importance of no longer leaving the government of the United
States uninformed of its views and intentions upon a subject
which has naturally produced much exasperation, and which has
led to such grave consequences. I avail myself of this occasion
to renew to you the assurance of my distinguished consideration."
This was near the close of Mr. Van Buren's administration, and up
to that time it must be noted, _first_, that the British government
had not assumed the act of Captain Drew in destroying the Caroline;
_secondly_, that it had not answered (had not refused redress) for
that act. Another circumstance showed that the government, in its
own conduct in relation to those engaged in that affair, had not
even indirectly assumed it by rewarding those who did it. Three
years after the event, in the House of Commons, Lord John Russell,
the premier, was asked in his place, whether it was the intention
of ministers to recommend to her Majesty to bestow any reward upon
Captain Drew, and others engaged in the affair of the Caroline; to
which he replied negatively, and on account of the delicate nature
of the subject. His answer was: "No reward had been resolved upon,
and as the question involved a subject of a very delicate nature, he
must decline to answer it further." Col. McNab had been knighted;
not for the destruction of the Caroline on United States territory
(which his order did not justify, and his letter condemned), but for
his services in putting down the revolt.
Thus the affair stood till near the close of Mr. Van Buren's
administration, when an event took place which gave it a new turn,
and brought on a most serious question between the United States
and Great Britain, and changed the relative positions of the two
countries--the United States to become the injured party, claiming
redress. The circumstances were these: one Alexander McLeod,
inhabitant of the opposite border shore, and a British subject,
had been in the habit of boasting that he had been one of the
destroyers of the Caroline, and that he had himself killed one of
the "damned Yankees." There were enough to repeat these boastings
on the American side of the line; and as early as the spring of
1838 the Grand Jury for the county in which the outrage had been
committed, found a bill of indictment against him for murder and
arson. He was then in Canada, and would never have been troubled
upon the indictment if he had remained there; but, with a boldness
of conduct which bespoke clear innocence, or insolent defiance, he
returned to the seat of the outrage--to the county in which the
indictment lay--and publicly exhibited himself in the county town.
This was three years after the event; but the memory of the scene
was fresh, and indignation boiled at his appearance. He was quickly
arrested on the indictment, also sued for damages by the owner of
the destroyed boat, and committed to jail--to take his trial in the
State court of the county of Niagara. This arrest and imprisonment
of McLeod immediately drew an application for his release in a note
from Mr. Fox to the American Secretary of State. Under date of the
13th December, 1840, he wrote:
"I feel it my duty to call upon the government of the United
States to take prompt and effectual steps for the liberation
of Mr. McLeod. It is well known that the destruction of
the steamboat 'Caroline' was a public act of persons in
her Majesty's service, obeying the order of their superior
authorities.--That act, therefore, according to the usages of
nations, can only be the subject of discussion between the two
national governments; it cannot justly be made the ground of
legal proceedings in the United States against the individuals
concerned, who were bound to obey the authorities appointed
by their own government. I may add that I believe it is quite
notorious that Mr. McLeod was not one of the party engaged
in the destruction of the steamboat 'Caroline,' and that the
pretended charge upon which he has been imprisoned rests
only upon the perjured testimony of certain Canadian outlaws
and their abettors, who, unfortunately for the peace of that
neighborhood, are still permitted by the authorities of the
State of New York to infest the Canadian frontier. The question,
however, of whether Mr. McLeod was or was not concerned in the
destruction of the 'Caroline,' is beside the purpose of the
present communication. That act was the public act of persons
obeying the constituted authorities of her Majesty's province.
The national government of the United States thought themselves
called upon to remonstrate against it; and a remonstrance
which the President did accordingly address to her Majesty's
government is still, I believe, a pending subject of diplomatic
discussion between her Majesty's government and the United
States legation in London. I feel, therefore, justified in
expecting that the President's government will see the justice
and the necessity of causing the present immediate release of
Mr. McLeod, as well as of taking such steps as may be requisite
for preventing others of her Majesty's subjects from being
persecuted, or molested in the United States in a similar manner
for the future."
This note of Mr. Fox is fair and unexceptionable--free from
menace--and notable in showing that the demand for redress for
the affair of the Caroline was still under diplomatic discussion
in London, and that the British government had not then assumed
the act of Captain Drew. The answer of Mr. Forsyth was prompt and
clear--covering the questions arising out of our duplicate form of
government, and the law of nations--and explicit upon the rights of
the States, the duties of the federal government, and the principles
of national law. It is one of the few answers of the kind which
circumstances have arisen to draw from our government, and deserves
to be well considered for its luminous and correct expositions of
the important questions of which it treats. Under date of the 28th
of December, and writing under the instructions of the President, he
says:
"The jurisdiction of the several States which constitute the
Union is, within its appropriate sphere, perfectly independent
of the federal government. The offence with which Mr. McLeod is
charged was committed within the territory, and against the laws
and citizens of the State of New York, and is one that comes
clearly within the competency of her tribunals. It does not,
therefore, present an occasion where, under the constitution
and laws of the Union, the interposition called for would be
proper, or for which a warrant can be found in the powers
with which the federal executive is invested. Nor would the
circumstances to which you have referred, or the reasons you
have urged, justify the exertion of such a power, if it existed.
The transaction out of which the question arises, presents the
case of a most unjustifiable invasion, in time of peace, of a
portion of the territory of the United States, by a band of
armed men from the adjacent territory of Canada, the forcible
capture by them within our own waters, and the subsequent
destruction of a steamboat, the property of a citizen of the
United States, and the murder of one or more American citizens.
If arrested at the time, the offenders might unquestionably
have been brought to justice by the judicial authorities of the
State within whose acknowledged territory these crimes were
committed; and their subsequent voluntary entrance within that
territory, places them in the same situation. The President is
not aware of any principle of international law, or, indeed, of
reason or justice, which entitles such offenders to impunity
before the legal tribunals, when coming voluntarily within
their independent and undoubted jurisdiction, because they
acted in obedience to their superior authorities, or because
their acts have become the subject of diplomatic discussion
between the two governments. These methods of redress, the legal
prosecution of the offenders, and the application of their
government for satisfaction, are independent of each other, and
may be separately and simultaneously pursued. The avowal or
justification of the outrages by the British authorities might
be a ground of complaint with the government of the United
States, distinct from the violation of the territory and laws
of the State of New York. The application of the government
of the Union to that of Great Britain, for the redress of an
authorized outrage of the peace, dignity, and rights of the
United States, cannot deprive the State of New York of her
undoubted right of vindicating, through the exercise of her
judicial power, the property and lives of her citizens. You have
very properly regarded the alleged absence of Mr. McLeod from
the scene of the offence at the time when it was committed,
as not material to the decision of the present question. That
is a matter to be decided by legal evidence; and the sincere
desire of the President is, that it may be satisfactorily
established. If the destruction of the Caroline was a public act
of persons in her Majesty's service, obeying the order of their
superior authorities, this fact has not been communicated to
the government of the United States by a person authorized to
make the admission; and it will be for the court which has taken
cognizance of the offence with which Mr. McLeod is charged, to
decide upon its validity when legally established before it."
This answer to Mr. Fox, was read in the two Houses of Congress, on
the 5th of January, and was heard with great approbation--apparently
unanimous in the Senate. It went to London, and on the 8th and
9th of February, gave rise to some questions and answers, which
showed that the British government did not take its stand in
approving the burning of the Caroline, until after the presidential
election of 1840--until after that election had ensured a change
of administration in the United States. On the 8th of February, to
inquiries as to what steps had been taken to secure the liberation
of McLeod, the answers were general from Lord Palmerston and Lord
Melbourne, "_That her Majesty's ministers would take those measures
which, in their estimation, would be best calculated to secure the
safety of her Majesty's subjects, and to vindicate the honor of the
British nation_." This answer was a key to the instructions actually
given to Mr. Fox, showing that they were framed upon a calculation
of what would be most effective, and not upon a conviction of
what was right. They would do what they thought would accomplish
the purpose; and the event showed that the calculation led them
to exhibit the war attitude--to assume the offence of McLeod, and
to bully the new administration. And here it is to be well noted
that the British ministry, up to that time, had done nothing to
recognize the act of Captain Drew. Neither to the American minister
in London, nor to the Secretary of State here, had they assumed it.
More than that: they carefully abstained from indirect, or implied
assumption, by withholding pensions to their wounded officers in
that affair--one of whom had five severe wounds. This fact was
brought out at this time by a question from Mr. Hume in the House
of Commons to Lord John Russell, in which--
"He wished to ask the noble lord a question relating to a matter
of fact. He believed that, in the expedition which had been
formed for the destruction of the Caroline, certain officers,
who held commissions in her Majesty's army and navy, were
concerned in that affair, and that some of these officers had,
in the execution of the orders which were issued, received
wounds. The question he wished to ask was, whether or not her
Majesty's government had thought proper to award pensions to
those officers, corresponding in amount with those which were
usually granted for wounds received in the regular service of
her Majesty."
This was a pointed question, and carrying an argument along with it.
Had the wounded officers received the usual pension? If not, there
must be a reason for departing from the usual practice; and the
answer showed that the practice had been departed from. Lord John
Russell replied:
"_That he was not aware of any pensions having been granted to
those officers who were wounded in the expedition against the
Caroline._"
This was sufficiently explicit, and showed that up to the 8th
day of February, 1841, the act of Captain Drew had not been even
indirectly, or impliedly recognized. But the matter did not stop
there. Mr. Hume, a thoroughly business member, not satisfied with an
answer which merely implied that the government had not sanctioned
the measure, followed it up with a recapitulation of circumstances
to show that the government had not answered, one way or the other,
during the three years that the United States had been calling for
redress; and ending with a plain interrogatory for information on
that point.
"He said that the noble lord (Palmerston), had just made a
speech in answer to certain questions which had been put to him
by the noble lord, the member for North Lancashire; but he (Mr.
Hume) wished to ask the House to suspend their opinion upon
the subject until they had the whole of the papers laid before
the House. He had himself papers in his possession, that would
explain many things connected with this question, and which,
by-the-bye, were not exactly consistent with the statement which
had just been made. It appeared by the papers which he had in
his possession, that in January, 1838, a motion was made in the
U. S. House of Representatives, calling upon the President to
place upon the table of the House, all the papers respecting
the Caroline, and all the correspondence which had passed
between the government of the United States and the British
government on the subject of the destruction of the Caroline. In
consequence of that motion, certain papers were laid upon the
table, including one from Mr. Stevenson, the present minister
here from the U. States. These were accompanied by a long
letter, dated the 15th of May, 1838, from that gentleman, and
in that letter, the burning of the Caroline was characterized
in very strong language. He also stated, that agreeably to
the orders of the President, he had laid before the British
government the whole of the evidence relating to the subject,
which had been taken upon the spot, and Mr. Stevenson _denied he
had ever been informed that the expedition against the Caroline
was authorized or sanctioned by the British government_. Now,
from May, 1838, the time when the letter had been written, up
to this hour, no answer had been given to that letter, nor had
any satisfaction been given by the British government upon this
subject. In a letter dated from London, the 2d of July, Mr.
Stevenson stated that he had not received any answer upon the
subject, and that he did not wish to press the subject further;
but if the government of the United States wished him to do so,
he prayed to be informed of it. By the statement which had taken
place in the House of Congress, it appeared that the government
of the United States had been ignorant of any information
that could lead them to suppose that the enterprise against
the Caroline had been undertaken by the orders of the British
government, or by British authority. That he believed was the
ground upon which Mr. Forsyth acted as he had done. He takes his
objections, and denies the allegation of Mr. Fox, that neither
had he nor her Majesty's government made any communication to
him or the authorities of the United States, that the British
government had _authorized the destruction of the Caroline_.
He (Mr. Hume) therefore hoped that no discussion would take
place, until all the papers connected with the matter were
laid before the House. He wished to know what the nature of
those communications was with Mr. Stevenson and her Majesty's
government which had induced him to act as he had done."
Thus the ministry were told to their faces, and in the face of the
whole Parliament, that for the space of three years, and under
repeated calls, they had never assumed the destruction of the
Caroline: and to that assertion the ministry _then_ made no answer.
On the following day the subject was again taken up, "_and in the
course of it Lord Palmerston admitted that the government approved
of the burning of the Caroline_." So says the Parliamentary
Register of Debates, and adds: "_The conversation was getting rather
warm, when Sir Robert Peel interposed by a motion on the affairs of
Persia._" This was the first knowledge that the British parliament
had of the assumption of that act, which undoubtedly had just been
resolved upon. It is clear that Lord Palmerston was the presiding
spirit of this resolve. He is a bold man, and a man of judgment in
his boldness. He probably never would have made such an assumption
in dealing with General Jackson: he certainly made no such
assumption during the three years he had to deal with the Van Buren
administration. The conversation was "getting warm;" and well it
might: for this pregnant assumption, so long delayed, and so given,
was entirely gratuitous, and unwarranted by the facts. Col. McNab
was the commanding officer, and gave all the orders that were given.
Captain Drew's report to him shows that his orders were to destroy
the vessel at Navy Island: McNab's letter of the same day to the
United States District Attorney (Rodgers), shows that he would not
authorize an expedition upon United States territory; and his sworn
testimony on the trial of McLeod shows that he did not do it in his
orders to Captain Drew. That testimony says:
"I do remember the last time the steamboat Caroline came down
previous to her destruction; from the information I received, I
had every reason to believe that she came down for the express
purpose of assisting the rebels and brigands on Navy Island with
arms, men, ammunition, provisions, stores, &c.; to ascertain
this fact, I sent two officers with instructions to watch the
movements of the boat, to note the same, and report to me; they
reported they saw her land a cannon (a six or nine-pounder),
several men armed and equipped as soldiers, and that she had
dropped her anchor on the east side of Navy Island; on the
information I had previously received from highly respectable
persons in Buffalo, together with the report of these gentlemen,
I determined to destroy her that night. I intrusted the command
of the expedition for the purposes aforesaid, to Capt. A. Drew,
royal navy; seven boats were equipped, and left the Canadian
shore; I do not recollect the number of men in each boat;
Captain Drew held the rank of commander in her Majesty's royal
navy; I ordered the expedition, and first communicated it to
Capt. Andrew Drew, on the beach, where the men embarked a short
time previous to their embarkation; Captain Drew was ordered
to take and destroy the Caroline wherever he could find her;
I gave the order as officer in command of the forces assembled
for the purposes aforesaid; they embarked at the mouth of the
Chippewa river; in my orders to Captain Drew nothing was said
about invading the territory of the United States, but such was
their nature that Captain Drew might feel himself justified in
destroying the boat wherever he might find her."
From this testimony it is clear that McNab gave no order to invade
the territory of the United States; and the whole tenor of his
testimony agrees with Captain Drew's report, that it was "expected"
to have found the Caroline at Navy Island, where she was in fact
immediately before, and where McNab saw her while planning the
expedition. No such order was then given by him--nor by any other
authority; for the local government in Quebec knew no more of it
than the British ministry in London. Besides, Col. McNab was only
the military commander to suppress the insurrection. He had no
authority, for he disclaimed it, to invade an American possession;
and if the British government had given such authority, which they
had not, it would have been an outrage to the United States, not to
be overlooked. They then assumed an act which they had not done;
and assumed it! and took a war attitude! and all upon a calculation
that it was the most effectual way to get McLeod released. It was
in the evening of the 4th day of March that all Washington city
was roused by the rumor of this assumption and demand: and on the
12th day of that month they were all formally communicated to our
government. It was to the new administration that this formidable
communication was addressed--and addressed at the earliest moment
that decency would permit. The effect was to the full extent all
that could have been calculated upon; and wholly reversed the stand
taken under Mr. Van Buren's administration. The burning of the
Caroline was admitted to be an act of war, for which the sovereign,
and not the perpetrators, was liable: the invasion of the American
soil was also an act of war: the surrender of McLeod could not be
effected by an _order_ of the federal government, because he was
in the hands of a State court, charged with crimes against the
laws of that State: but the United States became his defender and
protector, with a determination to save him harmless: and all this
was immediately communicated to Mr. Fox in unofficial interviews,
before the formal communication could be drawn up and delivered.
Lord Palmerston's policy was triumphant; and it is necessary to
show it in order to show in what manner the Caroline affair was
brought to a conclusion; and in its train that of the northeastern
boundary, so long disputed; and that of the north-western boundary,
never before disputed; and that of the liberated slaves on their
way from one United States port to another: and all other questions
besides which England wished settled. For, emboldened by the success
of the Palmerstonian policy in the case of the Caroline, it was
incontinently applied in all other cases of dispute between the
countries--and with the same success. But of this hereafter. The
point at present is, to show, as has been shown, that the assumption
of this outrage was not made until three years after the event, and
then upon a calculation of its efficiency, and contrary to the facts
of the case; and when made, accompanied by large naval and military
demonstrations--troops sent to Canada--ships to Halifax--newspapers
to ourselves, the _Times_ especially--all odorous of gunpowder and
clamorous for war.
This is dry detail, but essential to the scope of this work, more
occupied with telling how things were done than what was done:
and in pursuing this view it is amazing to see by what arts and
contrivances--by what trifles and accidents--the great affairs
of nations, as well as the small ones of individuals, are often
decided. The finale in this case was truly ridiculous: for, after
all this disturbance and commotion--two great nations standing to
their arms, exhausting diplomacy, and inflaming the people to the
war point--after the formal assumption of McLeod's offence, and war
threatened for his release, it turned out that he was not there! and
was acquitted by an American jury on ample evidence. He had slept
that night in Chippewa, and only heard of the act the next morning
at the breakfast table--when he wished he had been there. Which
wish afterwards ripened into an assertion that he was there! and,
further, had himself killed one of the damned Yankees--by no means
the first instance of a man boasting of performing exploits in a
fight which he did not see. But what a lesson it teaches to nations!
Two great countries brought to angry feelings, to criminative
diplomacy, to armed preparation, to war threats--their governments
and people in commotion--their authorities all in council, and
taxing their skill and courage to the uttermost: and all to settle
a national quarrel as despicable in its origin as the causes of
tavern brawls; and exceedingly similar to the origin of such brawls.
McLeod's false and idle boast was the cause of all this serious
difficulty between two great Powers.
Mr. Fox had delivered his formal demand and threat on the 12th day
of March: the administration immediately undertook McLeod's release.
The assumption of his imputed act had occasioned some warm words in
the British House of Commons, where it was known to be gratuitous:
its communication created no warmth in our cabinet, but a cold chill
rather, where every spring was immediately put in action to release
McLeod. Being in the hands of a State court, no order could be
given for his liberation; but all the authorities in New York were
immediately applied to--governor, legislature, supreme court, local
court--all in vain: and then the United States assumed his defence,
and sent the Attorney-General, Mr. Crittenden, to manage his
defence, and General Scott, of the United States army, to protect
him from popular violence; and hastened to lay all their steps
before the British minister as fast as they were taken.
The acquittal of McLeod was honorable to the jury that gave it; and
his trial was honorable to the judge, who, while asserting the right
to try the man, yet took care that the trial should be fair. The
judges of the Supreme Court (Bronson, Nelson, and Cowan) refused the
_habeas corpus_ which would take him out of the State: the Circuit
judge gave him a fair trial. It was satisfactory to the British; and
put an end to their complaint against us: unhappily it seemed to put
an end to our complaint against them. All was postponed for a future
general treaty--the invasion of territory, the killing of citizens,
the arson of the boat, the impressment and abduction of a supposed
British subject--all, all were postponed to the day of general
settlement: and when that day came all were given up.
The conduct of the administration in the settlement of the affair
became a subject of discussion in both Houses of Congress, and was
severely censured by the democracy, and zealously defended by the
whigs. Mr. Charles Jared Ingersoll, after a full statement of the
extraordinary and successful efforts of the administration of Mr.
Van Buren to prevent any aid to the insurgents from the American
side, proceeded to say:
"Notwithstanding, however, every exertion that could be and was
made, it was impossible altogether to prevent some outbreaks,
and among the rest a parcel of some seventy or eighty Canadians,
as I have understood, with a very few Americans, took possession
of a place near the Canadian shore, called Navy Island, and
fortified themselves in defiance of British power. If I have not
been misinformed there were not more than eight or ten Americans
among them. An American steamboat supplied them with a cannon
and perhaps other munitions of war: for I have no disposition to
diminish whatever was the full extent of American illegality,
but, in this statement of the premises, desire to present the
argument with the most unreserved concessions. I am discussing
nothing as the member of a party. I consider the Secretary of
State as the representative of his government and country. I
desire to be understood as not intending to say one word against
that gentleman as an individual; as meaning to avoid every thing
like personality, and addressing myself to the position he has
assumed for the country, without reference to whether he is
connected with one administration or another; viewing this as a
controversy between the United States and a foreign government,
in which all Americans should be of one party, acknowledging no
distinction between the acts of Mr. Forsyth and Mr. Webster,
but considering the whole affair, under both the successive
administrations, as one and indivisible; and on many points, I
believe this country is altogether of one and the same sentiment
concerning this controversy. It seems to be universally agreed
that British _pirates_ as they were, as I will show according
to the strictest legal definition of the term, in the dead
of night, _burglariously invaded_ our country, _murdered_ at
least one of our unoffending fellow-citizens, were guilty of
the further crime of _arson_ by burning what was at least the
temporary dwelling of a number of persons asleep in a steamboat
moored to the wharf, and finally cutting her loose, carried her
into the middle of the stream, where, by romantic atrocity,
unexampled in the annals of crime, they sent her over the Falls
of Niagara, with how many persons in her, God only will ever
know.
"Now Mr. Speaker, this, in its national aspect, was precisely
the same as if perpetrated in your house or mine, and should
be resented and punished accordingly. Some time afterwards
one of the perpetrators, named McLeod, in a fit of that
sort of infatuation with which Providence mostly betrays the
guilty, strayed over from Canada to the American shore, like
a fool, as he was, and there was soon arrested and imprisoned
by that popular police, which is always on the alert to
administer justice upon malefactors. First proceeded against,
as it appears, for civil redress for the loss of the vessel,
he was soon after indicted by the appropriate grand jury,
and has remained ever since in custody, awaiting the regular
administration of justice. Guilty or innocent, however, there
he was, under the ægis of the law of the sovereign State of New
York, with the full protection of every branch of the government
of that State, when the present administration superseded
the last, and the first moment after the late President's
inauguration was ungenerously seized by the British minister
to present the new Secretary of State with a letter containing
the insolent, threatening, and insufferable language which I am
about to read from it:
"'The undersigned is instructed to demand from the government
of the United States, formally, in the name of the British
government, the immediate release of Mr. Alexander McLeod.
The transaction in question may have been, as her Majesty's
government are of opinion that it was, a justifiable employment
of force for the purpose of defending the British territory
from the unprovoked attack of a band of British rebels and
American pirates, who, having been permitted to arm and organize
themselves within the territory of the United States, had
actually invaded and occupied a portion of the territory of
her Majesty; or it may have been, as alleged by Mr. Forsyth,
in his note to the undersigned of the 26th of December, a most
unjustifiable invasion in time of peace, of the territory of the
United States.'"
"Finally, after a tissue of well elaborated diplomatic
contumely, the very absurdity of part of which, in the
application of the term pirates to the interfering Americans, is
demonstrated by Mr. Webster--the British minister reiterates,
towards the conclusion of his artfully insulting note--that
'be that as it may, her Majesty's government formally demands,
upon the grounds already stated, the immediate release of Mr.
McLeod; and her Majesty's government entreats the President of
the United States--I pray the House to mark the sarcasm of this
offensive entreaty--to take into his deliberate consideration
the serious nature of the consequences which must ensue from a
rejection of this demand.'
"Taken in connection with all the actual circumstances of the
case--the tone of the British press, both in England and Canada,
the language of members in both Houses of Parliament, and the
palpable terms of Mr. Fox's letter itself, it is impossible,
I think, not to see we cannot wink so hard as not to perceive
that Mr. Fox's is a threatening letter. It surprises me that
this should have been a subject of controversy in another
part of this building, while I cannot doubt that Mr. Webster
was perfectly satisfied of the menacing aspect of the first
letter he received from the British minister. Anxious--perhaps
laudably anxious--to avoid a quarrel so very unpromising at
the very outset of a new administration, he seems to have shut
his eyes to what must flash in every American face. And here
was his first mistake; for his course was perfectly plain. He
had nothing to do but, by an answer in the blandest terms of
diplomatic courtesy, to send back the questionable phrases to
Mr. Fox, with a respectful suggestion that they looked to him
as if conveying a threat; that he hoped not, he believed not;
he trusted for the harmony of their personal relations, and the
peace of their respective nations, that he was laboring under
a mistake; but he could not divest his mind of the impression,
that there were in this note of Mr. Fox, certain phrases which,
in all controversies among gentlemen as well as nations,
inevitably put an end to further negotiation. Mr. Fox must have
answered negatively or affirmatively, and the odious indignity
which now rankles in the breast of at least a large proportion
of the country, interpreting it as the meaning of the British
communication, would have been avoided. Mr. Webster had Mr. Fox
absolutely in the hollow of his hand. He had an opportunity of
enlisting the manly feeling of all his countrymen, the good will
of right-minded Englishmen themselves, to a firm and inoffensive
stand like this, on the threshold of the correspondence. Why he
did not, is not for me to imagine. With no feeling of personal
disparagement to that gentleman, I charge this as an obvious, a
capital, and a deplorable lapse from the position he should have
assumed, in his very first attitude towards the British minister.
"The British argument addressed to him was, that 'the
transaction in question was a justifiable employment of public
force, with the sanction, or by order of the constituted
authorities of a State, engaging individuals in military or
naval enterprises in their country's cause, when it would be
contrary to the universal practice of civilized nations to fix
individual responsibility upon the persons engaged.' This,
as I do not hesitate to pronounce it, false assumption of
law, is, at once, conceded by Mr. Webster, in the remarkable
terms, that the 'government of the United States,' by which
he must mean himself, entertains _no doubt_ of the asserted
British principle. Mr. Webster had just before said, that 'the
President is not certain that he understands precisely the
meaning intended to be conveyed by her Majesty's government,'
'which doubt,' he adds, 'has occasioned with the President some
hesitation.' Thus while the President entertained a doubt,
the government entertained no doubt at all; which I cannot
understand, otherwise, than that while the President hesitated
to concede, the Secretary of State had no hesitation whatever
to concede at once the whole British assumption, and surrender
at discretion the whole American case. For where is the use of
Mr. Webster's posterior, elaborated argument, when told by the
British minister that this transaction was _justifiable_, and
informed by the public prints that at a very early day, one of
the British Secretaries, Lord John Russell, declared in open
Parliament that the British government _justified_ what is
called the _transaction_ of McLeod. The matter was ended before
Mr. Webster set his powerful mind to produce an argument on the
subject. The British crown had taken its position. Mr. Webster
knew it had; and he may write the most elegant and pathetic
letters till doomsday, with no other effect than to display
the purity of his English to admiring fellow-citizens, and the
infirmity of his argument to Great Britain and the world. By
asserting the legal position which they assume, and justifying
the transaction, together with Mr. Webster's concession of their
legal position, the transaction is settled. Nothing remains to
be done. Mr. Webster may write about it if he will, but Mr.
Fox and the British minister hold the written acknowledgment
of the American Secretary of State, that the affair is at an
end. I call this, sir, a terrible mistake, a fatal blunder,
irrecoverable, desperate, leaving us nothing but Mr. Webster's
dreadful alternative of cold-blooded, endless, causeless war.
"Our position is false, extremely and lamentably false. The
aggrieved party, as we are, and bound to insist upon redress,
to require the punishment of McLeod, Drew, and McNab, and the
other pirates who destroyed the Caroline, we have been brought
to such a reverse of the true state of things, as to be menaced
with the wrong-doer's indignation, unless we yield every thing.
I care not whose fault it is, whether of this administration
or that. In such an affair I consider both the present and the
past, as presenting one and the same front to one and the same
assailant. I cannot refrain, however, from saying, that whatever
may have been our position, it has been greatly deteriorated by
Mr. Webster's unfortunate concession.
"Never did man lose a greater occasion than Mr. Webster cast
away, for placing himself and his country together, upon a
pinnacle of just renown. Great Britain had humbled France,
conquered Egypt, subdued vast tracts of India, and invaded
the distant empire of China--there was nothing left but our
degradation, to fill the measure of her glory, if it consists
in such achievements; and she got it by merely demanding,
without expecting it. And why have we yielded? Was there any
occasion for it? Did she intend to realize her threat? Were the
consequences which Mr. Webster was entreated to take into his
consideration, the immediate and exterminating warfare, servile
war and all, which belligerent newspapers, peers, and other such
heralds of hostilities have proclaimed? No such thing. We may
rely, I think, with confidence, upon the common good sense of
the English nation, not to rush at once upon such extremities,
and for such a cause. Mr. Fox took Mr. Webster in the melting
mood, and conquered by a threat; that is to say, conquered
for the moment; because the results, at some distant day,
unless his steps are retraced, will and must be estrangement
between kindred nations, and cold-blooded hostilities. I have
often thought, Mr. Speaker, that this affair of McLeod is what
military men call a demonstration, a feint, a false attack, to
divert us from the British design on the State of Maine; of
which I trust not one inch will ever be given up. And truly,
when we had the best cause in the world, and were the most
clearly in the right, it has been contrived, some how or other,
to put us in false position, upon the defensive, instead of
the offensive, and to perplex the plainest case with vexatious
complication and concession."
The latter part of this speech was prophetic--that which related to
the designs on the State of Maine. Successful in this experiment
of the most efficacious means for the release of McLeod, the
British ministry lost no time in making another trial of the same
experiment, on the territory of that State--and again successfully:
but of this in its proper place. Mr. John Quincy Adams, and Mr.
Caleb Cushing, were the prominent defenders of the administration
policy in the House of Representatives--resting on the point that
the destruction of the Caroline was an act of war. Mr. Adams said:
"I take it that the late affair of the Caroline was in hostile
array against the British government, and that the parties
concerned in it were employed in acts of war against it: and
I do not subscribe to the very learned opinion of the chief
justice of the State of New York (not, I hear, the chief
justice, but a judge of the Supreme Court of that State), that
there was no act of war committed. Nor do I subscribe to it
that every nation goes to war only on issuing a declaration or
proclamation of war. This is not the fact. Nations often wage
war for years, without issuing any declaration of war. The
question is not here upon a declaration of war, but acts of war.
And I say that in the judgment of all impartial men of other
nations, we shall be held as a nation responsible; that the
Caroline, there, was in a state of war against Great Britain;
for purposes of war, and the worst kind of war--to sustain an
insurrection; I will not say rebellion, because rebellion is a
crime, and because I heard them talked of as patriots."
Mr. Cushing said:
"It is strange enough that the friends of Mr. Van Buren should
deny that the attack on the Caroline was an act of war. I reply
to them not only by exhibiting the reason and the principle of
the thing, but by citing the authority of their own President.
I hold in my hand a copy of the despatch addressed by Mr.
Stevenson to Lord Palmerston, under the direction of Mr. Van
Buren, making demand of reparation for the destruction of the
Caroline, and in that despatch, which has been published, Mr.
Stevenson pursues the only course he could pursue; he proceeds
to prove the hostile nature of the act by a full exhibition
of facts, and concludes and winds up the whole with declaring
in these words: 'The case then is one of open, undisguised,
and unwarrantable hostility.' After this, let no one complain
of Mr. Webster for having put the case of the Caroline on the
same precise ground which Mr. Van Buren had assumed for it, and
which, indeed, is the only ground upon which the United States
could undertake to hold the British government responsible.
And when the gentleman from Pennsylvania is considering the
first great negotiation of Mr. Webster, how does he happen to
forget the famous, or rather infamous, first great negotiation
undertaken by Mr. Van Buren? And is it not an act of mere
madness on the part of the friends of Mr. Van Buren, to compel
us to compare the two? Here is a despatch before us, addressed
in a controversy between the United States and Great Britain,
containing one of the ablest vindications of the honor and
integrity of the United States that ever was written. Mr. Van
Buren began, also, with the discussion of the question between
us and Great Britain. And in what spirit?--that of a patriot,
a man of honor, and an American? Is not that despatch, on the
contrary, a monument of ignominy in the history of the United
States? Instead of maintaining the interests of this country,
did not Mr. Van Buren, on that occasion, utterly sacrifice
them? Did he not dictate in that despatch, a disposition of the
great question of the colony trade between the United States
and Great Britain, which, from that time to this, has proved
most disastrous in its effects on the commercial and navigating
interests of the United States? And pernicious as was the object
of the despatch, was not the spirit of it infinitely worse? in
which, for the first time, party quarrels of the people of the
United States were carried into our foreign affairs--in which
a preceding administration was impliedly reproached for the
zeal with which it had defended our interests--in which it was
proclaimed that the new administration started in the world with
a set purpose of concession toward Great Britain--in which the
honor of the United States was laid prostrate at the foot of the
British throne, and the proud name of America, to sustain which
our fathers had carried on a first and a second war, as we may
have to do a third--that glory which the arms of our enemy could
not reach, was, in this truckling despatch, laid low for the
first, and, I trust in God, the last time, before the lion of
England."
The ground taken by Mr. Adams and Mr. Cushing for the defence of Mr.
Webster (for they seemed to consider him, and no doubt truly, as the
whole administration in this case) was only shifting the defence
from one bad ground to another. The war ground they assumed could
only apply between Great Britain and the insurgents: she had no war
with the United States: the attack on the Caroline was an invasion
of the territory of a neutral power--at peace with the invader. That
is a liberty not allowed by the laws of nations--not allowed by the
concern which any nation, even the most inconsiderable, feels for
its own safety, and its own self-respect. A belligerent party cannot
enter the territory of a neutral, even in fresh pursuit of an enemy.
No power allows it. That we have seen in our own day, in the case of
the Poles, in their last insurrection, driven across the Austrian
frontier by the Russians; and the pursuers stopped at the line, and
the fugitive Poles protected the instant they had crossed it: and
in the case of the late Hungarian revolt, in which the fugitive
Hungarians driven across the Turkish frontier, were protected from
pursuit. The Turks protected them, Mahometans as they were; and
would not give up fugitive Christians to a Christian power; and
afterwards assisted the fugitives to escape to Great Britain and
the United States. The British then had no right to invade the
United States even in fresh pursuit of fugitive belligerents: but
the Caroline and crew were not belligerents. She was an American
ferry-boat carrying men and supplies to the insurgents, but she
was not a combatant. And if she had been--had been a war-vessel
belonging to the insurgents, and fighting for them, she could not
be attacked in a neutral port. The men on board of her were not
Canadian insurgents, but American citizens, amenable to their own
country for any infraction of her neutrality laws: and if they
had been Canadian insurgents they could not have been seized on
American soil; nor even demanded under the extradition clause in the
treaty of 1796, even if in force. It did not extend to political
offences, either of treason or war. It only applied to the common
law offences of murder and forgery. How contradictory and absurd
then to claim a right to come and take by violence, what could not
be demanded under any treaty or the law of nations. No power gives
up a political fugitive. Strong powers protect them openly, while
they demean themselves orderly: weak powers get them to go away when
not able to protect them. None give them up--not even the weakest.
All the countries of Europe--the smallest kingdom, the most petty
principality, the feeblest republic, even San Marino--scorn to give
up a political fugitive, and though unable to chastise, never fail
to resent any violation of its territory to seize them. We alone,
and in the case of the Caroline, acknowledge the right of Great
Britain to invade our territory, seize and kill American citizens
sleeping under the flag of their country, to cut out an American
vessel moored in our port, and send her in flames over the Falls of
Niagara. We alone do that! but we have done it but once! and history
places upon it the stigma of opprobrium.
Mr. William O. Butler of Kentucky, replied to Mr. Cushing,
especially to his rehash of the stale imputations, worn out at the
time of Mr. Van Buren's senatorial rejection as minister to Great
Britain, and said:
"He expected from the gentleman a discussion on national law;
but how much was he astonished the next day, on reading his
speech in the _Intelligencer_, and finding him making a most
virulent attack on the conduct and reputation of Mr. Van Buren.
The gentleman referred to the letter of instructions of Mr. Van
Buren to our Minister at the Court of St. James, and compared it
with the instructions of Mr. Webster to the Attorney-general;
speaking of the latter as breathing the statesman and patriot
throughout, while he characterizes the former as infamous. Mr.
B. said he would not repeat the harsh and offensive terms in
which the gentleman had spoken of Mr. Van Buren's letter; he
would read what the gentleman said from his printed speech,
in order that the House might see the length to which his
invectives were carried. [Here Mr. B. read extracts from Mr.
Cushing's speech.] The gentleman spoke of comparing the two
letters together. But did he think of comparing the thing we
complain of with the thing he complains of? No: that would be
next to madness. The gentleman shrinks from that comparison, and
goes on to compare not the thing we complain of with the letter
of Mr. Van Buren, but the beautiful composition of Mr. Webster,
written forty days after complying with the British minister's
insulting demands, and intended to cover over the instructions
to Mr. Crittenden, after which he characterizes Mr. Van Buren's
letter as a monument of ignominy. Now Mr. B. said he would
make the same reply that a dignified farmer of Kentucky did to
a lawyer. The lawyer prosecuted the farmer for a slander, and
in the course of the trial took occasion to heap on him all the
abuse and invective of which the Billingsgate vocabulary is
capable. Yet the jury, without leaving their box, pronounced a
verdict of acquittal. The verdict of an honest and intelligent
jury, said the farmer, is a sufficient answer to all your abuse.
Just so it was with Mr. Van Buren. His letter had made a great
noise in the country; had been extensively circulated and read,
and had been assailed with the utmost virulence by the opposite
party. Yet the highest jury on earth, the American people, had
pronounced the acquittal of Mr. Van Buren by electing him to the
Chief Magistracy. The gentleman complained that the patriotism
of Mr. Webster not only had been assailed, but that the
gentleman from Pennsylvania had had the temerity to attack that
most beautiful of letters which the patriotic Secretary wrote
to Mr. Fox. Now he (Mr. B.) would admit that it was a beautiful
piece of composition, and he knew of but one that would compare
with it, and that was the proclamation of General Hull, just
before surrendering the Northwestern army to the British."
The friends of Mr. Webster had a fashion of extolling his intellect
when his acts were in question; and on no occasion was that fashion
more largely indulged in than on the present one. His letter,
superscribed to Mr. Fox--brought out for home consumption forty days
after the satisfactory answer had been given--was exalted to the
skies for the harmony of its periods, the beauty of its composition,
the cogency of its reasons! without regarding the national honor
and interest which it let down into the mud and mire; and without
considering that the British imperious demand required in the answer
to it, nerve as well as head--and nerve most. It was a case for an
iron will, more than for a shining intellect: and iron will was
not the strong side of Mr. Webster's character. His intellect was
great--his will small. His pursuits were civil and intellectual;
and he was not the man, with a goose quill in his hand, to stand
up against the British empire in arms. Throughout the debate, in
both Houses of Congress, the answer to Mr. Fox was treated by Mr.
Webster's friends, as his own; and, no doubt, justly--his supremacy
as a jurist being so largely deferred to.
The debate in the House was on the adoption of a resolution offered
by Mr. John G. Floyd, of New York, calling on the President for
information in relation to the steps taken to aid the liberation of
McLeod; and the fate of the resolution was significant of the temper
of the House--a desire to get rid of the subject without a direct
vote. It was laid upon the table by a good majority--110 to 70. The
nays, being those who were for prosecuting the inquiry, were:
Messrs. Archibald H. Arrington, Charles G. Atherton, Linn
Banks, Henry W. Beeson, Benjamin A. Bidlack, Samuel S. Bowne,
Linn Boyd, Aaron V. Brown, Charles Brown, Edmund Burke, Reuben
Chapman, James G. Clinton, Walter Coles, Edward Cross, John R.
J. Daniel, Richard D. Davis, Ezra Dean, William Doan, Andrew
W. Doig, Ira A. Eastman, John C. Edwards, Charles G. Ferris,
John G. Floyd, Charles A. Floyd, Joseph Fornance, James Gerry,
William O. Goode, Samuel Gordon, William A. Harris, John
Hastings, Samuel L. Hays, Isaac E. Holmes, Jacob Houck, jr.,
George S. Houston, Edmund W. Hubard, Charles J. Ingersoll,
William Jack, Cave Johnson, John W. Jones, George M. Keim,
Abraham McClellan, Robert McClellan, James J. McKay, John
McKeon, Albert G. Marchand, Alfred Marshall, John Thompson
Mason, James Mathews, William Medill, John Miller, Christopher
Morgan, Peter Newhard, William Parmenter, Samuel Patridge,
William W. Payne, Arnold Plumer, John Reynolds, Lewis Riggs,
Tristram Shaw, John Snyder, Lewis Steenrod, George Sweeny,
Thomas A. Tomlinson, Hopkins L. Turney, John Van Buren, Aaron
Ward, Harvey M. Watterson, John Westbrook, James W. Williams,
Henry A. Wise, Fernando Wood.
The same subject was largely debated in the Senate--among others by
Mr. Benton--some extracts from whose speech will constitute the next
chapter.
CHAPTER LXXVI.
DESTRUCTION OF THE CAROLINE: ARREST AND TRIAL OF McLEOD: MR.
BENTON'S SPEECH: EXTRACTS.
Mr. Benton said the history of our country contained a warning
lesson to gentlemen who take the side of a foreign country against
their own: he alluded to the case of Arbuthnot and Ambrister,
seized among the Seminole Indians in 1818, and hung as outlaws
and pirates by the orders of General Jackson. The news of that
execution was heard with joy by the American people, who considered
these Englishmen as a thousand times more culpable than the
wretched savages whom they stimulated to the murder of women and
children--men who had abandoned their own country, and the white
race to which they belonged, to join savages against a country with
which their own government was at peace. The country heard the
news of the execution with joy: they approved the act of General
Jackson. Not so with the politicians--the politicians of the federal
school especially. They condemned it; partisan presses attacked
it; and when Congress met, committees of each House of Congress
reported against it--loudly condemned it--and were followed by a
crowd of speakers. All the phrases now heard in claiming exemption
for McLeod, and bewailing his fate, were then heard in deploring
the fate of Arbuthnot and Ambrister. Violation of the laws of
nations--inhuman--unworthy of the nineteenth century--shocking
to humanity--barbarous--uncivilized--subjecting us to reprisals,
and even to war from England--drawing upon us the reproaches of
Christendom, and even the wrath of Heaven: such were the holiday
phrases with which the two Houses of Congress then resounded. To
hear what was said, and it would seem that the British lion would
be instantly upon us. We were taught to tremble for the return news
from England. Well! it came! and what was it? Not one word from the
British government against the act of Jackson! Not the scrape of a
pen from a minister on the subject! Not a word in Parliament except
the unsupported complaint of some solitary members--just enough
to show, by the indifference with which it was received, that the
British House of Commons had no condemnation to pronounce upon the
conduct of General Jackson. Their silence justified him in England,
while committees and orators condemned him in his own country: and
this justification from abroad, in a case where two Englishmen were
actually hanged, should be a warning to gentlemen how they should
commit themselves in a case where an Englishman is merely in the
hands of justice, and has nothing to fear from "God and the country"
if he is as innocent, as he now alleges, and which humanity would
wish him to be. General Jackson was right, and the committees and
orators who condemned him were wrong. He was right in the law, and
in the application of the law. He had no musty volumes of national
law to refer to in the swamps of Florida; and he needed none. He had
the law of nature, and of nations, in his heart. He had an American
heart, and that heart never led him wrong when the rights, the
interest, and the honor of his country were at stake. He hung the
Englishmen who were inciting savages to the murder of our women and
children: and the policy of the measure has become no less apparent
than its legality was clear. Before that time Englishmen were
habitually in the camp and wigwam of the Indians, stimulating to
war upon us: since that time no Englishman has been heard of among
them. The example was impressive--its effect salutary--its lesson
permanent. It has given us twenty-five years of exemption from
British interference in our Indian relations; and if the assassins
of the Caroline shall be hung up in like manner it will give us
exemption from future British outrage along the extended line which
divides the Union from the British Canadian provinces.
It is humiliating to see senators of eminent ability consulting
books to find passages to justify an outrage upon their own country.
Better far throw away the books, and go by the heart. Then, at
least, with American hearts, they would always have the consolation
of being on their country's side. Better even to take the rule of
the illustrious commodore whose actions have shed so much lustre
on the American name (Decatur), and go for their country, right
or wrong. Then they would always have their own hearts on their
side. Besides, there is no book which fits our case--none which
was written for the duplicate form of government which we possess.
We have State governments as well as a general government; and
those governments have their rights, and are sovereign within their
limits. The protection of the lives, liberty, and property of their
citizens, is among these rights: the punishment of murder, arson,
and burglary, are among these rights. If there was nothing in the
law of nations, as written in the books, to recognize these rights,
it would be necessary for us to do an act which would cause a new
line to be written in these books. But this is not the case. The law
of nations as it now stands, is sufficient for us. It has been read
from Vattel by several senators; and is conclusive in our favor.
What is it? Why, that if the citizens of one country commit an
outrage upon another, you must apply to their sovereign for redress:
but if the wrong-doer comes into your country, you may seize and
punish him. This is the law of nations, and it fits our case; and
we have followed it. The United States, as charged with our foreign
relations, have made the demand for redress upon Great Britain: the
State of New York, as the wronged local authority, has seized the
wrong-doer, when he came upon her territory; and is giving him what
he did not give her citizens--a trial for his life: and this she has
a right to do: and if the federal government attempts to give up
that man, she shrinks from the defence of right, violates the law of
nations, and invades the jurisdiction of New York.
This brings us to the case before us. What is it? The facts of the
transaction are all spread out in official documents, and sustained
upon clear and undeniable testimony. Some Canadian insurgents are
on an island, near the Canada shore, entrenching themselves, and
receiving aid in men and arms from the American side. An American
ferry-boat, the Steamer Caroline, carries that aid. She is seen in
the fact--seen by the commanding officer of the British forces, as
he stands on the Canadian shore, looking on. He sees her there late
in the evening--saw her cast anchor near the island--and determines
to destroy her there. Five boats are fitted out in the dark to go
and do the work; and if they had done it there, not a word would
have been said; for it was a British island, and she was there upon
an unlawful business--violating the laws of neutrality, disobeying
the laws of her own country, disregarding the proclamation of the
President; and doing an act which might bring her own country into
trouble. If she had been found there and destroyed, not a word would
have been said: but she was not found there, and the captain of the
boats, of his own head, contrary to the order which he had received,
and which directed him to the British island, and contrary to the
letter written by his commanding officer on that very day, abjuring
all right and all intent to make a descent upon our coast, because
it was ours: this captain, his name Drew, and an officer in the
British navy without the knowledge of his commander, determines
to cross the line--to steal across the river in the night--oars
muffled--all noises silenced--creep upon the unsuspecting vessel,
anchored at the shore, sleeping under the flag, and sheltered by
the laws of her country, and the law of nations: and stealthily get
on board. They run to the berths--cut, stab, slash, and shoot, all
that they see--pursue the flying--kill one man on the shore--no
distinction of persons--and no quarter the word. Several are killed
in the boat: none escape but those whom darkness and confusion
favored. Victorious in an attack upon men asleep, the conquerors
draw the vessel into the middle of the river--it was just above
the falls--set her on fire; and, with all her contents--the dead
and the dying, the living and the wounded--send her, luminous in
flames, over the frightful cataract of Niagara. One man alone had
been spared, and he as a British subject, to be taken home for
punishment. These are facts. What do they amount to in law--that of
nations, and that of New York, where the deed was done? First, a
violation of the law of nations, in invading the soil of the United
States--in attacking a vessel (even if it had been a belligerent),
in a neutral port--in attacking persons on neutral territory--in
impressing and carrying off a man from our territory: then each
of these acts was a crime against the municipal laws of New York.
McLeod, one of the actors in that cowardly assassination, and
conflagration, guilty upon his own boasting, and caught upon the
scene of his outrage, now in the hands of justice in the State of
New York, while no indemnity is offered for the outrage itself: this
perpetrator we are required, and that under a threat, to release
from the hands of a State, which has the legal right to try him.
All this was years before--near four years before--December, 1837.
The news flew upon the wings of the wind. It fired the bosoms of
the border inhabitants, upon a line of fifteen hundred miles.
Retaliation was in every heart, threats in every mouth, preparation
open--war imminent. Mr. Van Buren was then President. To repress
the popular risings, proclamations were issued: to prevent acts
of retaliation, troops were stationed along the line, and armed
steamers floated the river and the lakes: to punish any violation
of order, instructions were issued to the district attorneys,
and marshals; and the aid of the State authorities was claimed,
and obtained. To obtain redress for the outrage to our citizens,
and the insults to our national character, immediate application
was made to the British government. That government delayed its
answer to our just demand--avoided the assumption of the criminal
act--excused and justified, without assuming it, either in words,
or indirectly, by rewarding the actors, or even giving pensions
to those wounded in the attack: for there were several of them in
the dark and dastardly attack. Diplomacy was still drawing out its
lengthened thread--procrastination the game, and the chapter of
accidents the hope--when McLeod, the boaster in Canada of his active
share in this triple crime of murder, arson, and robbery, against
the State of New York, and of violated neutrality against the United
States, crosses over to the United States, exhibits himself on the
very spot of his exploits, and in the sight of those who had often
heard of his boasts. Justice then took hold of him. He was arrested
on an indictment found against him, immediately after the act; and
he was also sued by the owner of the vessel. A trial, of course,
in each case, was to take place in the courts of the State whose
laws had been violated. Vattel prescribed that. The United States
had nothing to do with it. Her business was with his sovereign.
To the State it belonged to punish the violation of her own laws,
the perpetrator having been caught within her jurisdiction: to
the owner of the boat it belonged to sue for damages; and neither
the United States, nor the State of New York, had any right to
defeat his action, by releasing the defendant. It was a transitory
action, and would lay any where where the defendant was caught.
McLeod went to jail in both cases--the indictment, and the civil
suit; and would seem to have courted that fate by coming over to
defy it. The news of these proceedings fly to the British minister
in this city (Mr. Henry S. Fox): that minister addresses a note
to the Secretary of State (Mr. Forsyth), demanding the release
of McLeod: the Secretary answered, by the direction of President
Van Buren, that this man, being charged with criminal offences
against the State of New York, and sued in a civil action by one
of her citizens, the general government had no right to release
him: and would not undertake to do so. This answer was read in
this chamber on the night of the 5th of January last, when the
Senate was composed very nearly as it is now--nearly all the same
members--when the present Secretary of State (Mr. Webster), and
the present Attorney-general (Mr. Crittenden), were both present:
and we all know in what manner that answer of Mr. Forsyth was
received. It received the unanimous approbation of this chamber!
Mr. B. repeated the expression--unanimous approbation! and said
he would pause for correction if he was mistaken. (He paused.
Several senators said, yes! yes! No one said the contrary.) Mr. B.
continued: I remember that letter well, and the feeling of unanimous
approbation which pervaded the chamber when it was read. Every
senator that spoke, expressed his approbation. No one signified
dissent: and the feeling was then universal that the proper answer
had been given by the American government--the answer which the
law of nations, our duplicate form of government, the dignity of
the Union, the rights of the State of New York, and the rights of
the owner of the destroyed vessel--all required to be given. If I
am wrong in my recollection, I repeat the request: let me be set
right now. (Several voices exclaimed, "right! right!" No one said
the contrary.) Mr. B. resumed: a great point--one vital to the
case as it concerns our action, and conclusive in this debate, is
now established. It is established, that in the month of January
last, when the answer of the American Secretary was read in this
chamber, we were all of opinion that he had given the correct
and proper answer: and among the senators then present were the
present Secretary of State, who has undertaken to get McLeod out
of the clutches of the law in New York; and also the present
attorney-general, who has gone to New York upon that errand. This is
enough. Those gentlemen heard the case then, and uttered no dissent.
The Senate was then unanimous--including those who dissent now. How
was it in the House of Representatives, where the same papers were
read at the same time? How was it there, in a body of 220, and the
immediate representatives of the people? About the same that it
was in the Senate--only more formally expressed. The papers were
sent to the Committee of Foreign Affairs. That committee, through
Mr. Pickens, its chairman, made an ample report, fully sustaining
the answer of the American government: and of that report, five
thousand extra copies were printed by the unanimous consent of the
House, for distribution among the people.
In the month of January last, it may then be assumed, that the two
Houses of Congress approved the decision of President Van Buren; and
according to that decision, McLeod was neither to be given up, nor
the course of justice in New York interfered with by the federal
government. Mr. Fox received the answer of Mr. Forsyth--transmitted
it to his government--and received from that government precise
instructions to avow and assume the attack on the Caroline as
a national act--to make a peremptory demand for the release of
McLeod--to threaten us with serious consequences in the event of
refusal; and, as the London newspapers said, to demand his passports
and leave the country if his demand was not immediately complied
with. It was on the evening of the 4th day of March--the day of
the inauguration of the new President, so nicely had the British
ministry calculated the time--that the news of these instructions
arrived in this city; and along with that news came the war-threats,
and the war speeches of the press and public men of Great
Britain--the threat of many papers to send admirals and war-steamers
to batter down our cities; and the diabolical speech of a peer of
the realm (Lord Mountcashel) to excite our three millions of slaves
to insurrection--to raise all the Indian tribes against us--and to
destroy our finances by bursting the paper bubbles on which they
floated. Yes! it was on the evening of the 4th day of March that
these instructions--these threats--these war annunciations--all
arrived together in this city. The new President (General Harrison)
had just been inaugurated: his cabinet had just been indicated:
the men who were to compose the presidential council were fully
known: and I undertook at once to tell what would be done. I said to
several--some now in this city if not in this chamber: McLeod will
be given up--not directly, but indirectly. Underhanded springs will
be set in motion to release him, and a letter will afterwards be
cooked up to show to Congress and the people, and to justify what
had been done. This is what I said. Persons are now in this city to
whom I said it. And now let us resume the succession of events, and
see what was done by this new administration which had just been
inducted into office in the midst of triumphal processions--under
the fire of cannon--the beating of drums--the display of flags;
and all the glorious pomp and circumstance of war. Let us see what
they did. On the 12th of March--the new administration having been
allowed a week to organize--Mr. Fox addresses to Mr. Webster a
formal demand, in the name of his government for the release of
McLeod, and goes on to say:
"The grounds upon which the British government made this demand
upon the government of the United States are these: that the
transaction on account of which Mr. McLeod has been arrested,
and is to be put upon his trial, was a transaction of a public
character planned and executed by persons duly empowered by
her Majesty's colonial authorities to take any steps, and to
do any acts which might be necessary for the defence of her
Majesty's territories, and for the protection of her Majesty's
subjects; and that, consequently, those subjects of her Majesty
who engaged in that transaction were performing an act of public
duty, for which they cannot be made personally and individually
answerable to the laws and tribunals of any foreign country."
And after enforcing this demand, by argument, contesting the answer
given by Mr. Forsyth, and suggesting the innocence of McLeod, the
letter proceeds to say:
"But, be that as it may, her Majesty's government formally
demands, upon the grounds already stated, the immediate release
of Mr. McLeod; and her Majesty's government entreat the
President of the United States to take into his most deliberate
consideration the serious nature of the consequences which must
ensue from a rejection of this demand."
This letter to Mr. Webster bears date on the 12th of March, which
was Friday, and will be considered as having been delivered on the
same day. On the 15th of the same month, which was Monday, Mr.
Webster delivers to the Attorney-general of the United States, a
set of instructions, and delivers a copy of the same to Mr. Fox,
in which he yields to the demand of this Minister, and despatches
the Attorney-general to New York, to effect the discharge of the
prisoner. The instructions, among other things, say:
"You are well aware that the President has no power to arrest
the proceeding in the civil and criminal courts of the State of
New York. If this indictment were pending in one of the courts
of the United States, I am directed to say that the President,
upon the receipt of Mr. Fox's last communication, would have
immediately directed a _nolle prosequi_ to be entered. Whether
in this case the Governor of New York have that power, or, if
he have, whether he would not feel it his duty to exercise it,
are points upon which we are not informed. It is understood
that McLeod is holden also on civil process, sued out against
him by the owner of the Caroline. We suppose it very clear that
the Executive of the State cannot interfere with such process;
and, indeed, if such process were pending in the courts of the
United States, the President could not arrest it. In such, and
many analogous cases, the party prosecuted and sued, must avail
himself of his exemption or defence, by judicial proceedings,
either in the court into which he is called, or in some other
court. But whether the process be criminal or civil, the fact
of having acted under public authority, and in obedience to the
orders of lawful superiors, must be regarded as a valid defence;
otherwise, individuals would be holden responsible for injuries
resulting from the acts of government, and even from the
operations of public war. You will be furnished with a copy of
this instruction, for the use of the Executive of New York, and
the Attorney-general of that State. You will carry with you also
authentic evidence of the recognition by the British government
of the destruction of the Caroline, as an act of public force,
done by national authority. The President is impressed with
the propriety of transferring the trial from the scene of the
principal excitement to some other and distant county. You will
take care that this be suggested to the prisoner's counsel.
The President is gratified to learn that the Governor of New
York has already directed that the trial take place before the
Chief Justice of the State. Having consulted with the Governor
you will proceed to Lockport, or wherever else the trial may be
holden, and furnish the prisoner's counsel with the evidence
of which you will be in possession material to his defence.
You will see that he have skilful and eminent counsel, if such
be not already retained, and, although you are not desired to
act as counsel yourself, you will cause it to be signified to
him, and to the gentlemen who may conduct his defence, that it
is the wish of this government that, in case his defence be
overruled by the court in which he shall be tried, proper steps
be taken immediately for removing the cause, by writ of error,
to the Supreme Court of the United States. The President hopes
that you will use such despatch as to make your arrival at the
place of trial sure before the trial comes on; and he trusts
you will keep him informed of whatever occurs by means of a
correspondence through this Department."
A copy of these instructions, as I have said, was delivered to Mr.
Fox at the time they were written. At the same moment they were
delivered to the new Attorney-general [Mr. CRITTENDEN], who, thus
equipped with written directions for his guide, and accompanied by
an officer of high rank in the United States army [Major-general
SCOTT], immediately proceeded on the business of his mission to
the State of New York, and to the place of the impending trial,
at Lockport. About forty days thereafter, namely, on the 24th day
of April, Mr. Webster replies to Mr. Fox's letter of the 12th
of March; elaborately reviews the case of McLeod--justifies the
instructions--absolves the subject--and demands nothing from the
sovereign who had assumed his offence. Thus, what I had said on the
evening of the 4th of March had come to pass. Underhand springs
had been set in motion to release the man; a letter was afterwards
cooked up to justify the act. This, sir, is the narrative of the
case--the history of it down to the point at which it now stands;
and upon this case I propose to make some remarks, and, in the
first place, to examine into the legality and the propriety of the
mission in which our Attorney-general was employed. I mean this as
a preliminary inquiry, unconnected with the general question, and
solely relating to the sending of our Attorney-general into any
State to interfere in any business in its courts. I believe this
mission of Mr. Crittenden to New York was illegal and improper--a
violation of our own statutes, and will test it by referring to the
law under which the office of Attorney-general was created, and the
duties of the officer defined. That law was passed in 1789, and is
in these words:
"And there shall also be appointed a meet person, learned in the
law, to act as Attorney-general of the United States, who shall
be sworn, or affirmed, to a faithful execution of his office;
whose duty it shall be to prosecute and conduct all suits in the
Supreme Court in which the United States shall be concerned,
and to give his advice and opinion upon questions of law,
when required by the President of the United States, or when
requested by any of the heads of the Departments, touching any
matters that may concern their departments; and shall receive
such compensation for his services as shall be by law provided."
Here, said Mr. B., are the duties of the Attorney-general. He
is subject to no orders whatever from the Secretary of State.
That Secretary has nothing to do with him except to request his
legal advice on a matter which concerns his department. Advice
on a question of municipal law was doubtless what was intended;
but no advice of any kind seems to have been asked of the
Attorney-general. He seems to have been treated as the official
subordinate of the Secretary--as his clerk or messenger--and sent
off with "_instructions_" which he was to read and to execute.
This was certainly an illegal assumption of authority over the
Attorney-general, an assumption which the statute does not
recognize. In the next place, this officer is sent into a State
court to assist at the defence of a person on trial in that court
for a violation of the State laws, and is directed to employ eminent
and skilful counsel for him--to furnish him with evidence--to
suggest a change of venue--and to take a writ of error to the
Supreme Court of the United States, if the defence of the prisoner
be overruled by the State court. If brought to the Supreme Court
by this writ of error--a novel application of the writ, it must
be admitted--then the Attorney-general is to appear in this court
for the prisoner, not to prosecute him in the name of the United
States, but to dismiss the writ. Now, it is very clear that all
this is foreign to the duty of the Attorney-general--foreign
to his office--disrespectful and injurious to the State of New
York--incompatible with her judicial independence--and tending
to bring the general government and the State government into
collision. McLeod, a foreigner, is under prosecution in a State
court for the murder of its citizens; the importance of the case has
induced the Governor of the State, as he has officially informed
its legislature, to direct the Attorney-general of the State to
repair to the spot, and to prosecute the prisoner in person; and
here is the Attorney-general of the United States sent to the same
place to defend the same person against the Attorney-general of the
State. The admonition to Mr. Crittenden, that he was not desired
to act as counsel himself, was an admission that he ought not so
to act--that all he was doing was illegal and improper--and that
he should not carry the impropriety so far as to make it public
by making a speech. He was to oppose the State without publicly
appearing to do so; and, as for his duty in the Supreme Court of
the United States, he was to violate that outright, by acting for
the accused, instead of prosecuting for the United States! From all
this, I hold it to be clear, that our Attorney-general has been
illegally and improperly employed in this business; that all that
he has done, and all the expense that he has incurred, and the fee
he may have promised, are not only without law but against law; and
that the rights of the State of New York have not only been invaded
and infringed in this interference in a criminal trial, but that the
rights and interests of the owners of the Caroline, who have brought
a civil action against McLeod for damages for the destruction of
their property, have been also gratuitously assailed in that part of
the Secretary's instructions in which he declares that such civil
suit cannot be maintained. I consider the mission as illegal in
itself, and involving a triple illegality, _first_, as it concerns
the Attorney-general himself, who was sent to a place where he had
no right to go; _next_, as it concerns the State of New York, as
interfering with her administration of justice; and, _thirdly_, as
it concerns the owners of the Caroline, who have sued McLeod for
damages, and whose suit is declared to be unmaintainable.
I now proceed, Mr. President, to the main inquiry in this case, the
correctness and propriety of the answer given by our Secretary of
State to Mr. Fox, and its compatibility with the honor, dignity, and
future welfare of this republic.
I look upon the "_instructions_" which were given to Mr. Crittenden,
and a copy of which was sent to Mr. Fox, as being THE ANSWER to
that Minister; and I deem the letter entitled an answer, and dated
forty days afterwards, as being a mere afterpiece--an article for
home consumption--a speech for Buncombe, as we say of our addresses
to our constituents--a pleading intended for us, and not for the
English, and wholly designed to excuse and defend the real answer so
long before, and so promptly given. I will give some attention to
this, so called, letter, before I quit the case; but for the present
my business is with the "_instructions_," a copy of which being
delivered to Mr. Fox, was the answer to his demand; and as such was
transmitted to the British government, and quoted in the House of
Commons as being entirely satisfactory. This quotation took place
on the 6th day of May, several days before the, so called, letter
of the 24th of April could possibly have reached London. Lord John
Russell, in answer to a question from Mr. Hume, referred to these
instructions as being satisfactory, and silenced all further inquiry
about the affair, by showing that they had all they wanted.
I hold these instructions to have been erroneous, in point of
national law, derogatory to us in point of national character, and
tending to the future degradation and injury of this republic.
That the Secretary has mistaken the law of the case in consenting
to the release of McLeod is persuasively shown by referring to
the opinions of the two Houses of Congress in January last. Their
opinions were then unanimous in favor of Mr. Forsyth's answer; and
that answer was a peremptory refusal either to admit that McLeod
ought to be released, or to interfere in his behalf with the courts
of New York. The reasons urged by Mr. Fox in his letter to Mr.
Forsyth for making the demand, were precisely the same with those
subsequently given in the letter to Mr. Webster. The only difference
in the two demands was in the formality of the latter, being under
instructions from his government, and in the threat which it
contained. In other respects the two demands were the same; so that,
at the outset of this inquiry, we have the opinions of the Secretary
of State, the Attorney-general, and the body of their friends in the
two Houses of Congress to plead against themselves. Then we produce
against our Secretary the law of nations, as laid down by Vattel. He
says:
"However, as it is impossible for the best regulated State, or
for the most vigilant and absolute sovereign to model at his
pleasure all the actions of his subjects, and to confine them on
every occasion to the most exact obedience, it would be unjust
to impute to the nation or the sovereign every fault committed
by the citizens. We ought not, then, to say, in general, that we
have received an injury from a nation, because we have received
it from one of its members. But if a nation or its chief
approves and ratifies the act of the individual, it then becomes
a public concern, and the injured party is then to consider the
nation as the real author of the injury, of which the citizen
was, perhaps, only the instrument. _If the offended State has
in her power the individual who has done the injury, she may,
without scruple, bring him to justice, and punish him._ If he
has escaped, and returned to his own country, she ought to apply
to his sovereign to have justice done in the case."
This is the case before us. The malefactor is taken, and is in the
hands of justice. His imputed crime is murder, arson, and robbery.
His government, by assuming his crime, cannot absolve his guilt,
nor defeat our right to try and punish him according to law. The
assumption of his act only adds to the number of the culpable, and
gives us an additional offender to deal with them, if we choose. We
may proceed against one or both; but to give up the individual when
we have him, without redress from the nation, which justifies him,
is to throw away the advantage which chance or fortune has put into
our hands, and to make a virtual, if not actual surrender, of all
claim to redress whatsoever.
The law of nations is clear, and the law of the patriot heart is
equally clear. The case needs no book, no more than the hanging of
Arbuthnot and Ambrister required the justification of books when
General Jackson was in the hommocks and marshes of Florida. A band
of foreign volunteers, without knowing what they were going to do,
but ready to follow their file leader to the devil, steal across a
boundary river in the night, attack unarmed people asleep upon the
soil, and under the flag of their country; give no quarter--make
no prisoners--distinguish not between young and old--innocent or
guilty--kill all--add fire to the sword--send the vessel and its
contents over the falls in flames--and run back under cover of
the same darkness which has concealed their approach. All this in
time of peace. And then to call this an act of war, for which the
perpetrators are not amenable, and for which redress must be had by
fighting, or negotiating with the nation to which they belong. This
is absurd. It is futile and ridiculous. Common sense condemns it.
The heart condemns it. Jackson's example in Florida condemns it; and
we should render ourselves contemptible if we took any such weak and
puerile course.
Mr. Fox nowhere says this act was done by the sovereign's command.
He shows, in fact, that it was not so done; and we know that it
was not. It was the act of volunteers, unknown to the British
government until it was over, and unassumed by them for three
years after it occurred. The act occurred in December, 1837; our
minister, Mr. Stevenson, demanded redress for it in the spring
of 1838. The British government did not then assume it, nor did
they assume it at all until McLeod was caught. Then, for the
first time, they assume and justify, and evidently for the mere
purpose of extricating McLeod. The assumption is void. Governments
cannot assume the crimes of individuals. It is only as a military
enterprise that this offence can be assumed; and we know this affair
was no such enterprise, and is not even represented as such by
the British minister. He calls it a "_transaction_." Three times
in one paragraph he calls it a "_transaction_;" and whoever heard
of a fight, or a battle, being characterized as a transaction? We
apply the term to an affair of business, but never to a military
operation. How can we have a military operation without war? without
the knowledge of the sovereign? without the forms and preliminaries
which the laws of nations exact? This was no military enterprise
in form, or in substance. It was no attack upon a fort, or a ship
of war, or a body of troops. It was no attack of soldiers upon
soldiers, but of assassins upon the sleeping and the defenceless.
Our American defenders of this act go beyond the British in exalting
it into a military enterprise. They take different ground, and
higher ground, than the British, in setting up that defence; and
are just as wrong now as they were in the case of Arbuthnot and
Ambrister.
Incorrect in point of national law, I hold these instructions to
have been derogatory to as in point of national character, and given
with most precipitate haste when they should not have been given at
all. They were given under a formal, deliberate, official threat
from the minister; and a thousand unofficial threats from high and
respectable sources. The minister says:
"But, be that as it may, her Majesty's government _formally
demands_, upon the grounds already stated, the _immediate_
release of Mr. McLeod; and her Majesty's government entreat the
President of the United States to take into his most _deliberate
consideration_ the serious nature of the consequences which
must ensue from a rejection of this demand."
Nothing could be more precise and formal than this demand--nothing
more significant and palpable than this menace. It is such as should
have prevented any answer--such as should have suspended diplomatic
intercourse--until it was withdrawn. Instead of that, a most sudden
and precipitate answer is given; and one that grants all that the
British demanded, and more too; and that without asking any thing
from them. It is given with a haste which seems to preclude the
possibility of regular deliberation, cabinet council, and official
form. The letter of Mr. Fox bears date the 12th of March, which was
Friday, and may have been delivered in office hours of that day. The
instruction to Mr. Crittenden was delivered on the 15th of March,
which was Monday, and a copy delivered to Mr. Fox. This was the
answer to the demand and the threat; and thus the answer was given
in two days; for Sunday, as the lawyers call it, is _dies non_; that
is to say, no day for business; and it is hardly to be presumed that
an administration which seems to be returning to the church and
state times of Queen Anne, had the office of the Department of State
open, and the clerks at their desks on Sunday, instead of being in
their pews at church. The answer, then, was given in two days; and
this incontinent haste to comply with a threat contrasts wonderfully
with the delay--the forty days' delay--before the letter was written
which was intended for home consumption; and which, doubtless, was
considered as written in good time, if written in time to be shown
to Congress at this extra session.
Sir, I hold it to have been derogatory to our national character
to have given any answer at all, much less the one that was given,
while a threat was hanging over our heads. What must be the
effect of yielding to demands under such circumstances? Certainly
degradation--national degradation--and an encouragement to Great
Britain to continue her aggressive course upon us. That nation
is pressing us in the Northeast and Northwest; she is searching
our ships on the coast of Africa; she gives liberty to our slaves
wrecked on her islands in their transit from one of our ports to
another; she nurtures in London the societies which produced
the San Domingo insurrection, and which are preparing a similar
insurrection for us; and she is the mistress of subjects who hold
immense debts against our States, and for the payment of which the
national guarantee, or the public lands, are wanted. She has many
points of aggressive contact upon us; and what is the effect of
this tame submission--this abject surrender of McLeod, without a
word of redress for the affair of the Caroline, and under a public
threat--what is the effect of this but to encourage her to press
us and threaten us on every other point? It must increase her
arrogance, and encourage her encroachments, and induce her to go
on until submission to further outrage becomes impossible, and war
results from the cowardice which courage would have prevented. On
this head the history of many nations is full of impressive lessons,
and none more so than that of Great Britain. It is a nation of
brave people; but they have sometimes had ministers who were not
brave, and whose timidity has ended in involving their country in
all the calamities of war, after subjecting it to all the disgrace
of pusillanimous submission to foreign insult. The administration
of Sir Robert Walpole; long, cowardly and corrupt--tyrannical at
home and cringing abroad--was a signal instance of this; and, as a
warning to ourselves, I will read a passage from English history to
show his conduct, and the consequences of it. I read from Smollett,
and from his account of the Spanish depredations, and insults upon
English subjects, which were continued the whole term of Walpole's
administration, and ended in bringing on the universal war which
raged throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, and cost the
English people so much blood and treasure. The historian says:
"The merchants of England loudly complained of these outrages;
the nation was fired with resentment, and cried for vengeance;
but the minister appeared cold, phlegmatic, and timorous. He
knew that a war would involve him in such difficulties as must
of necessity endanger his administration. The treasure which
he now employed for domestic purposes must in that case be
expended in military armaments; the wheels of that machine on
which he had raised his influence would no longer move; the
opposition would of consequence gain ground, and the imposition
of fresh taxes, necessary for the maintenance of the war, would
fill up the measure of popular resentment against his person
and ministry. Moved by these considerations, he industriously
endeavored to avoid a rupture, and to obtain some sort of
satisfaction by dint of memorials and negotiations, in which
he betrayed his own fears to such a degree as animated the
Spaniards to persist in their depredations, and encouraged the
court of Madrid to disregard the remonstrances of the British
ambassador."
Such is the picture of Walpole's foreign policy; and how close is
the copy we are now presenting of it! Under the scourge of Spanish
outrage, he was cold, phlegmatic, and timorous; and such is the
conduct of our secretary under British outrage. He wanted the public
treasure for party purposes, and neglected the public defences: our
ministry want the public lands and the public money for _douceurs_
to the States, and leave the Union without forts and ships. Walpole
sought some sort of satisfaction by dint of negotiation; our
minister does the same. The British minister at Madrid was paralyzed
by the timidity of the cabinet at home; so is ours paralyzed at
London by our submission to Mr. Fox here. The result of the whole
was, accumulated outrage, coalitions against England, universal war,
the disgrace of the minister, and the elevation of the man to the
highest place in his country, and to the highest pinnacle of glory,
whom Walpole had dismissed from the lowest place in the British
army--that of cornet of horse--for the political offence of voting
against him. The elder William Pitt--the dismissed cornet--conducted
with glory and success the war which the timidity of Walpole begat;
and, that the smallest circumstances might not be wanting to the
completeness of the parallel, our prime minister here has commenced
his career by issuing an order for treating our military and naval
officers as Pitt was treated by Walpole, and for the same identical
offence.
Sir, I consider the instructions to Mr. Crittenden as most
unfortunate and deplorable. They have sunk the national character
in the eyes of England and of Europe. They have lost us the respect
which we gained by the late war and by the glorious administration
of Jackson. They bring us into contempt, and encourage the haughty
British to push us to extremities. We shall feel the effect of
this deplorable diplomacy in our impending controversies with that
people; and happy and fortunate it will be for us if, by correcting
our error, retracing our steps, recovering our manly attitude,
discarding our distribution schemes, and preparing for war, we shall
be able thereby to prevent war, and to preserve our rights.
I have never believed our English difficulties free from danger.
I have not spoken upon the Northeastern question; but the senator
from that State who sits on my right (looking at senator WILLIAMS)
knows my opinion. He knows that I have long believed that nothing
could save the rights of Maine _but the war countenance of our
government_. Preparation for war might prevent war, and save the
rights of the State. This has been my opinion; and to that point
have all my labors tended. I have avoided speeches; I have opposed
all distributions of land and money; I have gone for ships, forts
and cannon--the _ultima ratio_ of Republics as well as kings. I go
for them now, and declare it as my opinion that the only way to
obtain our rights, and to avoid eventual war with England, is to
abandon all schemes of distribution, and to convert our public lands
and surplus revenue, when we have it, into cannon, ships and forts.
Hard pressed on the instructions to Mr. Crittenden--prostrate and
defenceless there--the gentlemen on the other side take refuge under
the letter to Mr. Fox, and celebrate the harmony of its periods,
and the beauty of its composition. I grant its merit in these
particulars. I admit the beauty of the style, though attenuated
into gossamer thinness and lilliputian weakness. I agree that
the Secretary writes well. I admit his ability even to compose a
prettier letter in less than forty days. But what has all this to
do with the question of right and wrong--of honor and shame--of war
and peace--with a foreign government? In a contest of rhetoricians,
it would indeed be important; but in the contests of nations it
dwindles into insignificance. The statesman wants knowledge,
firmness, patriotism, and invincible adherence to the rights, honor,
and interests of his country. These are the characteristics of the
statesman; and tried by these tests, what becomes of this letter, so
encomiastically dwelt upon here? Its knowledge is shown by a mistake
of the law of nations--its firmness, by yielding to a threat--its
patriotism, by taking the part of foreigners--its adherence to the
honor, rights and interests of our own country, by surrendering
McLeod without receiving, or even demanding, one word of redress or
apology for the outrage upon the Caroline!
The letter, besides its fatal concessions, is deficient in manly
tone--in American feeling--in nerve--in force--in resentment of
injurious imputations--and in enforcement of our just claims to
redress for blood spilt, territory invaded, and flag insulted.
The whole spirit of the letter is feeble and deprecatory. It does
not repel, but begs off. It does not recriminate, but defends. It
does not resent insult--not even the audacious threat--which is
never once complained of, nor even alluded to.
This letter is every way an unfortunate production. It does not
even show the expense and trouble we took to prevent our citizens
from crossing the line and joining the Canadian insurgents. It
does not show the expense we were at in raising a new regiment of
infantry expressly for that service (several voices said yes, yes,
it mentions that). Good, let it be credited accordingly. But it
does not mention the appropriation of $650,000 made at one time
for that object; it does not mention the numerous calls upon the
militia authorities and the civil authorities along the line to
assist in restraining our people; it does not mention the arrests of
persons, and seizures of arms, which we made; it does not mention
the prosecutions which we instituted; it does not show that for
two years we were at great expense and trouble to restrain our
people; and that this expense and trouble was brought upon us by
the excitement produced by the affair of the Caroline. The British
brought us an immense expense by that affair, for which they render
us no thanks, and the Secretary fails to remind them. The letter
does not repel, with the indignant energy which the declaration
required, that we had "_permitted_" our citizens to arm and join the
insurgents. It repels it, to be sure, but too feebly and gently,
and it omits altogether what should never be lost sight of in this
case, that the British have taken great vengeance on our people for
their rashness in joining this revolt. Great numbers of them were
killed in action; many were hanged; and many were transported to the
extremities of the world--to Van Diemen's Land, under the antarctic
circle--where they pine out a miserable existence, far, far, and for
ever removed from kindred, home and friends.
The faults of the letter are fundamental and radical--no beauty of
composition, no tropes and figures, no flowers of rhetoric--can
balance or gloss over. The objections go to its spirit and
substance--to errors of fact and law--to its tameness and
timidity--and to its total omission to demand redress from the
British government for the outrages on the Caroline, which that
government has assumed. She has now assumed that outrage for the
first time--assumed it after three years of refusal to speak; and
in the assumption offers not one word of apology, or of consolation
to our wounded feelings. She claps her arms akimbo, and avows the
offence; and our Secretary, in his long and beautiful letter, finds
no place to insert a demand for the assumed outrage. He gives up the
culprit subject, and demands nothing from the imperious sovereign.
He lets go the servant, and does not lay hold of the master. This
is a grievous omission. It is tantamount to a surrender of all
claim for any redress of any kind. McLeod, the culprit, is given
up: he is given up without conditions. The British government
assume his offence--demand his release--offer us no satisfaction:
and we give him up, and ask no satisfaction. The letter demands
nothing--literally nothing: and in that respect again degrades us as
much as the surrender upon a threat had already degraded us. This is
a most material point, and I mean to make it clear. I mean to show
that the Secretary in giving up the alleged instrument, has demanded
nothing from the assuming superiors: and this I will do him the
justice to show by reading from his own letter. I have examined it
carefully, and can find but two places where the slightest approach
is made, not even to a demand for redress, but to the suggestion of
an intimation of a wish on our side ever to hear the name of the
Caroline mentioned again. These two places are on the concluding
pages of the letter, as printed by our order. If there are others,
let gentlemen point them out, and they shall be read. The two
paragraphs I discover, are these:
"This government, therefore, not only holds itself above
reproach in every thing respecting the preservation of
neutrality, the observance of the principle of non-intervention,
and the strictest conformity, in these respects, to the rules of
international law, but it doubts not that the world will do it
the justice to acknowledge that it has set an example not unfit
to be followed by others, and that, by its steady legislation on
this most important subject, it has done something to promote
peace and good neighborhood among nations, and to advance the
civilization of mankind.
"The President instructs the undersigned to say, in conclusion,
that he confidently trusts that this and all other questions of
difference between the two governments will be treated by both
in the full exercise of such a spirit of candor, justice, and
mutual respect, as shall give assurance of the long continuance
of peace between the two countries."
This is all I can see that looks to the possible contingency of any
future allusion to the case of the Caroline. Certainly there could
not be a more effectual abandonment of our claim to redress. The
first paragraph goes no further than to "trust" that the grounds may
be presented which "justify"--a strange word in such a case--the
local authorities in attacking and destroying this vessel; and the
second buries it all up by deferring it to the general and peaceful
settlement of all other questions and differences between the two
countries. Certainly this is a farewell salutation to the whole
affair. It is the valedictory to the Caroline. It is the parting
word, and is evidently so understood by the British ministry. They
have taken no notice of this beautiful letter: they have returned
no answer to it; they have not even acknowledged its receipt. The
ministry, the parliament, and the press, all acknowledge themselves
satisfied--satisfied with the answer which was given to Mr. Fox,
on the 12th of March. They cease to speak of the affair; and the
miserable Caroline--plunging in flames over the frightful cataract,
the dead and the dying both on board--is treated as a gone-by
procession, which has lost its interest for ever. Mr. Webster has
given it up, by deferring it to general settlement; and in so giving
it up, has not only abandoned the rights and honor of his country,
but violated the laws of diplomatic intercourse. Outrages and
insults are never deferred to a general settlement. They are settled
_per se_--and promptly and preliminarily. All other negotiations
cease until the insult and outrage is settled. That is the course
of Great Britain herself in this case. She assumes the arrest of
McLeod to be an offence to the British crown, and dropping all
other questions of difference, demands instant reparation for that
offence. Mr. Webster should have done the same by the offence to
his country. It was prior in time, and should have been prior in
settlement--at all events the two offences should have been settled
together. Instead of that he hastens to make reparation to the
British--does it in person--and without waiting even to draw up a
letter in reply to Mr. Fox! and then, of his own head, defers our
complaint to a general settlement. This is unheard of, either in
national or individual insults. What would we think of a man, who
being insulted by an outrage to his family in his house, should say
to the perpetrators: "We have some outstanding accounts, and some
day or other we may have a general settlement; and then, I trust
you will settle this outrage." What would be said of an individual
in such a case, must be said of ourselves in this case. In vain do
gentlemen point to the paragraph in the letter, so powerfully drawn,
which paints the destruction of the Caroline, and the slaughter
of the innocent as well as the guilty, asleep on board of her.
That paragraph aggravates the demerit of the letter: for, after
so well showing the enormity of the wrong, and our just title to
redress, it abandons the case without the slightest atonement. But
that letter, with all its ample beauties, found no place to rebuke
the impressment and abduction of the person claimed as a British
subject, because he was a fugitive rebel. Whether so, or not, he
could not be seized upon American soil--could not even be given up
under the extradition clause in Mr. Jay's treaty, even if in force,
which only applied to personal and not to political offences. But
that letter, was for Buncombe: it was for home consumption: it was
to justify to the American people on the 24th of May, what had been
done on the 12th of March. It was superscribed to Mr. Fox, but
written for our own people: and so Mr. Fox understood it, and never
even acknowledged its receipt.
But gentlemen point to a special phrase in the letter, and quote it
with triumph, as showing pluck and fight in our Secretary: it is the
phrase, "bloody and exasperated war"--and consider this phrase as
a cure for all deficiencies. Alas! it would seem to have been the
very thing which did the business for our Secretary. That blood,
with war, and exasperation, seems to have hastened his submission to
the British demand. But how was it with Mr. Fox? Did it hasten his
inclination to pacify us? Did he take it as a thing to quicken him?
or, did the British government feel it as an inducement, or stimulus
to hasten atonement for the injury they had assumed? Not at all! Far
from it! Mr. Fox did not take fright, and answer in two days! nor
has he answered yet! nor will he ever while such gentle epistles are
written to him. Its effect upon the British ministry is shown by
the manner in which they have treated it--the contempt of silence.
No, sir! instead of these gentle phrases, there ought to have been
two brief words spoken to Mr. Fox--first, your letter contains a
threat; and the American government does not negotiate under a
threat; _next_, your government has assumed the Caroline outrage to
the United States, and now atone for it: and as to McLeod, he is in
the hands of justice, and will be tried for his crimes, according
to the law of nations. This is the answer which ought to have been
given. But not so. Instant submission on our part, was the resolve
and the act. Forty days afterwards this fine letter was delivered.
Unfortunate as is this boasted letter in so many respects, it has a
further sin to answer for, and that is for its place, or order--its
collocation and connection--in the printed document which lies
before us; and also in its assumption to "enclose" the Crittenden
instructions to Mr. Fox--which had been personally delivered to
him forty days before. The letter is printed, in the document,
before the "instructions," though written forty days after them;
and purports to "enclose" what had been long before delivered. Sir,
the case of McLeod is not an isolation: it is not a solitary act:
it is not an atom lying by itself. But it is a feature in a large
picture--a link in a long chain. It connects itself with all the
aggressive conduct of Great Britain towards the United States--her
encroachments on the State of Maine--her occupation of our territory
on the Oregon--her insolence in searching our vessels on the coast
of Africa--the liberation of our slaves, wrecked on her islands,
when in transition from one part of the Union to another--her
hatching in London for the Southern States, what was hatched there
above forty years ago for San Domingo: and the ominous unofficial
intimation to our aforesaid Secretary, that the federal government
is bound for the European debts of the individual States. The
McLeod case mixes itself with the whole of these; and the success
which has attended British threats in his case, may bring us threats
in all the other cases; and blows to back them, if not settled to
British liking. Submission invites aggression. The British are
a great people--a wonderful people; and can perform as well as
threaten. Occupying some islands no larger than two of our States,
they have taken possession of the commanding points in the four
quarters of the globe, and dominate over an extent of land and
water, compared to which the greatest of empires--that of Alexander,
of Trajan, of the Caliphs--was a dot upon the map. War is to them
a distant occupation--an ex-territorial excursion--something like
piracy on a vast scale; in which their fleets go forth to capture
and destroy--to circumnavigate the globe; and to return loaded
with the spoil of plundered nations. Since the time of William
the Conqueror, no foreign hostile foot has trod their soil; and,
safe thus far from the ravages of war at home, they are the more
ready to engage in ravages abroad. To bully, to terrify, to strike,
to crush, to plunder--and then exact indemnities as the price of
forbearance--is their policy and their practice: and they look
upon us with our rich towns and extended coasts, as a fit subject
for these compendious tactics. We all deprecate a war with that
people--none deprecate it more than I do--not for its dangers, but
for its effects on the business pursuits of the two countries, and
its injury to liberal governments: but we shall never prevent war
by truckling to threats, and squandering in douceurs to the States
what ought to be consecrated to the defence of the country. The
result of our first war with this people, when only a fifth of our
present numbers, shows what we could do in a seven years' contest:
the result of the second shows that, at the end of two years, having
repulsed their fleets and armies at all points, we were just ready
to light upon Canada with an hundred thousand volunteers, fired by
the glories of New Orleans. And in any future war with that nation,
woe to the statesman that woos peace at the repulse of the foe. Of
all the nations of the earth, we are the people to land upon the
coasts of England and Ireland. We are their kin and kith; and the
visits of kindred have sympathies and affections, which statutes and
proclamations cannot control.
CHAPTER LXXVII.
REFUSAL OF THE HOUSE TO ALLOW RECESS COMMITTEES.
Two propositions submitted at this session to allow committees
to sit in the recess, and collect information on industrial
subjects--commerce, manufactures, and agriculture--with a view
to beneficial legislation, had the effect of bringing out a very
full examination into the whole subject--under all its aspects, of
constitutionality and expediency. The whole debate was brought on
by the principal proposition, submitted by Mr. Winthrop, from the
Committee on Commerce, in these words:
"_Resolved_, That a committee of nine members, not more than one
of whom shall be from any one State, be appointed by the Chair,
to sit during the recess, for the purpose of taking evidence at
the principal ports of entry and elsewhere, as to the operation
of the existing system and rates of duties on imports upon the
manufacturing, agricultural, and commercial interests of the
country, and of procuring, generally, such information as may be
useful to Congress in any revision of the revenue laws which may
be attempted at the next session."
On this resolution there was but little said. The previous question
was soon called, and the resolution carried by a lean majority--106
to 104. A reconsideration was instantly moved by Mr. McKeon of New
York, which, after some discussion, was adopted, 106 to 90. The
resolution was then laid on the table: from which it was never
raised. Afterwards a modification of it was submitted by Mr. Kennedy
of Maryland, from the committee on commerce, in these words:
"_Resolved_, That a select committee of eleven members, not more
than one of which shall be from any one State, be appointed by
the Chair for the purpose of taking evidence at the principal
ports of entry and elsewhere as to the operation of the existing
system and rates of duties on imports upon the manufacturing,
commercial, and agricultural interests of the country; and
of procuring, generally, such information as may be useful
to Congress in any revision of the revenue laws which may be
attempted at the next session.
"_Resolved, further_, That said committee be authorized to sit
during the recess, and to employ a clerk."
A motion was made by Ingersoll which brought up the question of
recess committees on their own merits, stripped of the extraneous
considerations which a proposition for such a committee, for a
particular purpose, would always introduce. He moved to strike
out the words, "_to sit during the recess_." This was the proper
isolation of the contested point. In this form the objections
to such committees were alone considered, and found to be
insuperable. In the first place, no warrant could be found in the
constitution for this elongation of itself by the House by means
of its committees, and it was inconsistent with that adjournment
for which the constitution provides, and with those immunities to
members which are limited to the term of service, and the time
allowed for travelling to and from Congress. No warrant could be
found for them in the constitution, and practical reasons against
them presented themselves more forcibly and numerously as the
question was examined. The danger of degenerating into faction and
favoritism, was seen to be imminent. Committees might be appointed
to perambulate the Union--at the short sessions for nine months
in the year--spending their time idly, or engaged in political
objects--drawing the pay and mileage of members of Congress all
the time, with indefinite allowances for contingencies. If one
committee might be so appointed, then as many others as the House
chose: if by one House, then by both: if to perambulate the United
States, then all Europe--constituting a mode of making the tour of
Europe at the public expense. All Congress might be so employed:
but it was probable that only the dominant party, each in its turn,
would so favor its own partisans, and for its own purposes. The
practical evils of the measure augmented to the view as more and
more examined: and finally, the whole question was put to rest
by the decided sense of the House--only sixty-two members voting
against the motion to lay it on the table, not to be taken up again:
a convenient, and compendious way to get rid of a subject, as it
brings on the direct vote, without discussion, and without the
process of the previous question to cut off debate.
Such was the decision of the House; and, what has happened in
the Senate, goes to confirm the wisdom of their decision. Recess
committees have been appointed from that body; and each case of
such appointment has become a standing argument against their
existence. The first instance was that of a senatorial committee, in
the palmy days of the United States Bank, consisting of the friends
of that bank, appointed on the motion of its own friends to examine
it--spending the whole recess in the work: and concluding with a
report lauding the management of the bank, and assailing those who
opposed it. Several other senatorial recess committees have since
been appointed; but under circumstances which condemn them as an
example; and with consequences which exemplify the varieties of
abuse to which they are subject; and of which, faction, favoritism,
personal objects, ungovernable expense, and little, or no utility,
constitute the heads.
CHAPTER LXXVIII.
REDUCTION OF THE EXPENSE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS BY REDUCING THE NUMBER.
A question of permanent and increasing interest was opened at this
session, which has become more exigent with time, and deserves
to be pursued until its object shall be accomplished. It was the
question of reducing the expenses of foreign missions, by reducing
the number, and the expediency of returning to the Jeffersonian
policy of having no ministers resident, or permanent succession of
ministers abroad. The question was brought on by a motion from Mr.
Charles Jared Ingersoll to strike from the appropriation bill the
salaries of some missions mentioned in it; and this motion brought
on the question of, how far the House had a right to interfere in
these missions and control them by withholding compensation? and
how far it was expedient to diminish their number, and to return to
the Jeffersonian policy? Chargés had been appointed to Sardinia and
Naples: Mr. Ingersoll thought them unnecessary; as also the mission
to Austria, and that the ministers to Spain ought to be reduced
to chargéships. Mr. Caleb Cushing considered the appointment of
these ministers as giving them "vested rights in their salaries,"
and that the House was bound to vote. Mr. Ingersoll scouted this
idea of "vested rights." Mr. Adams said the office of minister was
created by the law of nations, and it belonged to the President and
Senate to fill it, and for the Congress to control it, if it judged
it necessary, as the British parliament has a right to control the
war which the king has a right to declare, namely, by withholding
the supplies: but it would require an extreme case to do so after
the appointment had been made. He did not think the House ought to
lay aside its power to control in a case obviously improper. And he
thought the introduction of an appropriation bill, like the present,
a fit occasion to inquire into the propriety of every mission;
and he thought it expedient to reduce the expenses of our foreign
missions, by reducing the number: and with this view he should offer
a resolution when it should be in order to do so. Mr. Gilmer, as one
of the Committee on Retrenchment, had paid some attention to the
subject of our foreign representation; and he believed, with Mr.
Adams, that both the grade and the destination of our foreign agents
would admit of a beneficial reduction. Mr. Ingersoll rejoined on the
different branches of the question, and in favor of Mr. Jefferson's
policy, and for following up the inquiry proposed by Mr. Adams; and
said:
"If the stand he had now taken should eventually lead to the
retrenchment alluded to in the resolution of the venerable
gentleman from Massachusetts, he should be content. He still
thought the House might properly exercise its withholding
power, not, indeed, so as to stop the wheels of government,
but merely to curtail an unnecessary expenditure; and he hoped
there would be enough of constitutional feeling, of the _esprit
du corps_, to lead them to insist upon their right. He scouted
the idea of the President's appointment creating a vested
interest in the appointee to his salary as minister. Such a
doctrine would be monstrous. The House might be bound by high
considerations of policy and propriety, but never by the force
of a contract, to appropriate for an appointed minister. This
was carrying the principle totally _extra moenia mundi_. Mr.
I. disclaimed opposing these measures on the mere ground of
dollars and cents; he alluded to the multiplication of missions
to and from this country as introducing examples of lavish
expenditure and luxurious living among our own citizens. As
to the distinction between temporary and permanent missions,
the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. CUSHING] perfectly well
knew that originally all public missions were temporary; such
a thing as a permanent foreign mission was unheard of. This was
an invention of modern times; and it had been Mr. Jefferson's
opinion that such missions ought not to exist. It was high time
that public attention was called to the subject; and he hoped
that at the next session Mr. Adams would bring forward and press
his resolution of inquiry as to the expediency of reducing the
whole system of foreign intercourse."
Mr. Adams afterwards introduced his proposed resolution, which
was adopted by the House, and sent to the Committee on Foreign
Relations; but which has not yet produced the required reform. This
was his resolve:
"_Resolved_, That the Committee on Foreign Affairs be instructed
to inquire into the expediency of reducing the expenditures in
the diplomatic department of the government, by diminishing the
number of ministers and other diplomatic agents abroad, and
report thereon to the House."
It would be a public benefaction, and a great honor to the member
who should do it, for some ardent man to take charge of this
subject--revive Mr. Adams' resolution, and pursue the inquiry
through all the branches which belong to it: and they are many.
First: The full mission of minister plenipotentiary and envoy
extraordinary, formerly created only on extraordinary occasions,
and with a few great courts, and intrusted to eminent men, are now
lavished in profusion; and at secondary courts; and filled with
men but little adapted to grace them; and without waiting for an
occasion, but rapidly, to accommodate political partisans; and
as a mere party policy, recalling a political opponent to make
room for an adherent: and so keeping up a perpetual succession,
and converting the envoys extraordinary into virtual ministers
resident. In the second place, there are no plenipotentiaries
now--no ministers with full powers--or in fact with any powers at
all, except to copy what is sent to them, and sign what they are
told. The Secretaries of State now do the business themselves,
either actually making the treaty at home while the minister is idle
abroad, or virtually by writing instructions for home effect, often
published before they are delivered, and containing every word the
minister is to say--with orders to apply for fresh instructions
at every new turn the business takes. And communications have
now become so rapid and facile that the entire negotiation may
be conducted at home--the important minister plenipotentiary and
envoy extraordinary being reduced to the functions of a messenger.
In the third place, all the missions have become resident,
contrary to the policy and interest of our country, which wants no
entangling alliances or connections abroad; and to the damage of our
treasury, which is heavily taxed to keep up a numerous diplomatic
establishment in Europe, not merely useless, but pernicious. In
the fourth place, our foreign intercourse has become inordinately
expensive, costing above three hundred thousand dollars a year;
and for ministers who do not compare with the John Marshalls of
Virginia, the John Quincy Adamses, the Pinckneys of South Carolina,
the Pinkney of Maryland, the Rufus Kings, Albert Gallatins, James
Monroes, the Livingstons, and all that class, the pride of their
country, and the admiration of Europe; and which did not cost us
one hundred thousand dollars a year, and had something to do,
and did it--and represented a nation abroad, and not a party.
Prominently among the great subjects demanding reform, is now the
diplomatic intercourse of the United States. Reduction of number,
no mission without an object to accomplish, no perpetual succession
of ministers, no ministers resident, no exclusion of one party by
the other from this national representation abroad, no rank higher
than a chargé except when a special service is to be performed and
then nationally composed: and the expenses inexorably brought back
within one hundred thousand dollars a year. Such are the reforms
which our diplomatic foreign intercourse has long required--which
so loudly called for the hand of correction fifteen years ago, when
Mr. Adams submitted his resolution; and all the evils of which
have nearly doubled since. It is a case in which the House of
Representatives, the immediate representatives of the people, and
the sole constitutional originator of taxes upon them, should act
as a check upon the President and Senate; and do it as the British
House of Commons checks the king, the lords and the ministry--by
withholding the supplies.
CHAPTER LXXIX.
INFRINGEMENT OF THE TARIFF COMPROMISE ACT OF 1833: CORRECTION OF
ABUSES IN DRAWBACKS
The history, both ostensible and secret, of this act has been
given, and its brief existence foretold, although intended for
perpetuity, and the fate of the Union, in numerous State legislative
resolves, and in inumerable speeches, declared to depend upon
its inviolability. It was assumed to have saved the Union: the
corollary of that assumption was, that its breach would dissolve
the Union. Equally vain and idle were both the assumption and the
inference! and equally erroneous was the general voice, which
attributed the act to Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun. They appeared
to the outside observer as the authors of the act: the inside
witness saw in Mr. John M. Clayton, of Delaware, and Mr. Robert P.
Letcher, of Kentucky, its real architects--the former in commencing
the measure and controlling its provisions; the latter as having
brought Mr. Calhoun to its acceptance by the communication to him of
President Jackson's intentions; and by his exertions in the House
of Representatives. It was composed of two parts--one part to last
nine years, for the benefit of the manufacturers: the other part
to last for ever, for the benefit of the planting and consuming
interest. Neither part lived out its allotted time; or, rather, the
first part died prematurely, and the second never began to live.
It was a _felo de se_ from the beginning, and bound to perish of
the diseases in it. To Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun, it was a political
necessity--one to get rid of a stumbling-block (which protective
tariff had become); the other to escape a personal peril which his
nullifying ordinance had brought upon him: and with both, it was a
piece of policy, to enable them to combine against Mr. Van Buren,
by postponing their own contention: and a device on the part of
Mr. Clayton and Mr. Clay to preserve the protective system, doomed
to a correction of its abuses at the ensuing session of Congress.
The presidential election was over, and General Jackson elected
to his second term, pledged to a revenue tariff and incidental
protection: a majority of both Houses of Congress were under the
same pledge: the public debt was rapidly verging to extinction:
and both the circumstances of the Treasury, and the temper of the
government were in harmony with the wishes of the people for a
"judicious tariff;" limited to the levy of the revenue required
for the economical administration of a plain government, and
so levied as to extend encouragement to the home production of
articles necessary to our independence and comfort. All this was
ready to be done, and the country quieted for ever on the subject
of the tariff, when the question was taken out of the hands of the
government by a coalition between Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun, and
a bill concocted, as vicious in principle, as it was selfish and
unparliamentary in its conception and execution. The plan was to
give the manufacturers their undue protection for nine years, by
making annual reductions, so light and trifling during the time,
that they would not be felt; and after the nine years, to give the
anti-tariff party their millennium, in jumping down, at two leaps,
in the two last years, to a uniform _ad valorem_ duty of twenty
per centum on all dutied articles. All practical men saw at the
time how this concoction would work--that it would produce more
revenue than the government wanted the first seven years, and leave
it deficient afterwards--that the result would be a revulsion of
all interests against a system which left the government without
revenue--and that, in this revulsion there must be a re-modelling,
and an increase in the tariff: all ending in a complete deception
to the anti-tariff party, who would see the protective part of the
compromise fully enjoyed by the manufacturing interest, and the
relief part for themselves wholly lost. All this was seen at the
time: but a cry was got up, by folly and knavery, of danger to
the Union: this bill was proclaimed as the only means of saving
it: ignorance, credulity, timidity and temporizing temperaments
united to believe it. And so the bill was accepted as a God-send:
the coming of which had saved the Union--the loss of which would
destroy it: and the two ostensible architects of the measure (each
having worked in his own interest, and one greatly over-reaching
the other), were saluted as pacificators, who had sacrificed their
ambition upon the altar of patriotism for the good of their country.
The time had come for testing these opinions. We were in the eighth
year of the compromise, the first part had nearly run its course:
within one year the second part was to begin. The Secretary of the
Treasury had declared the necessity of loans and taxes to carry on
the government: a loan bill for twelve millions had been passed: a
tariff bill to raise fourteen millions more was depending; and the
chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, Mr. Millard Fillmore,
thus defended its necessity:
"He took a view of the effects of the compromise act, in the
course of which he said that by that act one tenth of the
customs over twenty-five per cent. ad valorem was to come off
on the 1st January, 1834; and on the 1st January, 1836, another
tenth was to be deducted; on the 1st January, 1838, another
tenth; and on the 1st January, 1840, another tenth; and on the
1st January, 1842, three tenths more; and on the 1st July, 1842,
the remaining three tenths were to be deducted, so that, on
that day, what was usually termed the compromise act, was to go
fully into effect, and reduce the revenue to 20 per cent. ad
valorem on all articles imported into the country. It appeared
from a report submitted to this House (he meant the financial
report of the Secretary of the Treasury, document No. 2, page
20), showing the amount of imports for the seven years from 1834
to 1840 inclusive, that there were imported into this country
one hundred and forty-one million four hundred and seventy-six
thousand seven hundred and sixty-nine dollars' worth of goods,
of which seventy-one million seven hundred and twenty-eight
thousand three hundred and twelve dollars were free of duty,
and sixty-nine million seven hundred and forty-eight thousand
four hundred and fifty-seven dollars paid duty. Then, having
these amounts, and knowing that, by the compromise act, articles
paying duty over 20 per cent., and many of them paid more, were
to be reduced down to that standard, and all were to pay only
20 per cent., what would be the amount of revenue from that
source? Why, its gross amount would only be thirteen million
nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars in round numbers--that
is, taking the average of goods imported in the last seven
years, the whole gross amount of duty that would pass into the
Treasury, did all the imported articles pay the highest rate of
duty, would only be thirteen million nine hundred and fifty-four
thousand dollars--say fourteen millions of dollars in round
numbers."
Thus the compromise act, under its second stage, was only to produce
about fourteen millions of dollars--little more than half what the
exigencies of the government required. Mr. Fillmore passed in review
the different modes by which money could be raised. _First_, by
loans: and rejected that mode as only to be used temporarily, and
until taxes of some kind could be levied. Next, by direct taxation:
and rejected that mode as being contrary to the habits and feelings
of the people. Thirdly, by duties: and preferred that mode as being
the one preferred by the country, and by which the payment of the
tax became, in a large degree, voluntary--according to the taste
of the payer in purchasing foreign goods. He, therefore, with
the Secretary of the Treasury, preferred that mode, although it
involved an abrogation of the compromise. His bill proposed twenty
per centum additional to the existing duty on certain specified
articles--sufficient to make up the amount wanted. This encroachment
on a measure so much vaunted when passed, and which had been kept
inviolate while operating in favor of one of the parties to it,
naturally excited complaint and opposition from the other; and Mr.
Gilmer, of Virginia, said:
"In referring to the compromise act, the true characteristics
of that act which recommended it strongly to him, were that it
contemplated that duties were to be levied for revenue only, and
in the next place to the amount only necessary to the supply
of the economical wants of the government. He begged leave to
call the attention of the committee to the principle recognized
in the language of the compromise--a principle which ought to
be recognized in all time to come by every department of the
government. It is, said he, that duties to be raised for revenue
are to be raised to such an amount only as is necessary for an
economical administration of the government. Some incidental
protection must necessarily be given, and he, for one, coming
from an anti-tariff portion of the country, would not object
to it. But said he, we were told yesterday by the gentleman
from Massachusetts [Mr. ADAMS], that he did not consider the
compromise binding, because it was a compact between the South
and the West, in which New England was not a party, and it was
crammed down her throat by the previous question, he voting
against it. The gentleman from Pennsylvania said to-day almost
the same thing, for he considered it merely a point of honor
which he was willing to concede to the South, and that object
gained, there was no longer reason for adhering to it.
"Did the gentleman contend that no law was binding on New
England, and on him, unless it is sanctioned by him and the
New England delegation? Sir, said Mr. G., I believe that it is
binding, whether sanctioned by New England or not. The gentleman
said that he would give the public lands to the States, and the
compromise act to the dogs. Sir, if the lands are to be given
to the States, if upwards of three millions are to be deducted
from that source of revenue, and we are then to be told that
this furnishes a pretext, first for borrowing, and then for
taxing the people, we may well feel cause for insisting on the
obligations of the compromise. Sir, said Mr. G., gentlemen know
very well that there is some virtue in the compromise act, and
that though it may be repudiated by a few of the representatives
of the people, yet the people themselves will adhere to it as
the means of averting the greatest of evils. But he had seen
enough to show him that the power of giving might be construed
as the power of taking, and he should not be surprised to see a
proposition to assume the debts of the States--for the more that
you give, the more that is wanted.
"After some further remarks, Mr. G. said that he was opposed to
the hurrying of this important measure through at the present
session. Let us wait until sufficient information is obtained
to enable us to act judiciously. Let us wait to inquire whether
there is any necessity for raising an increased revenue of
eight millions of dollars from articles, all of which, under
the compromise act, are either free of duty or liable to a
duty of less than 20 per cent. Let us not be told that on
account of the appropriations for a home squadron, and for
fortifications amounting to about three millions of dollars,
that it is necessary to raise this large sum. We have already
borrowed twelve millions of dollars, and during the remainder
of the year, Mr. Ewing tells us that the customs will yield
five millions, which together, will make seventeen millions
of dollars of available means in the Treasury. Then there was
a large sum in the hands of the disbursing officers of the
government, and he ventured to assert that there would be more
than twenty millions at the disposal of the Treasury before
the expiration of the next session of Congress. Are we to be
told, said Mr. G., that we are to increase the tariff in order
to give to the States this fourth instalment under the deposit
act? No sir; let us arrest this course of extravagance at the
outset; let us arrest that bill which is now hanging in the
other House [the distribution bill], and which I trust will ever
hang there. Let us arrest that bill and the proceeds from that
source will, in the coming four years, pay this twelve million
loan. But these measures are all a part of the same system.
Distribution is used as a pretext for a loan, and a loan is used
as a pretext for high duties. This was an extraordinary session
of Congress, and inasmuch as there would be within a few months
a regular session--inasmuch as the Committee on Commerce had
reported a resolution contemplating the organization of a select
committee, with a view to the collection of information to aid
in the revision of the tariff for revenue--and inasmuch as the
compromise goes fully into operation in July next--he thought
that wisdom, as well as justice, demanded that they should not
hurry through so important a measure, when it was not absolutely
essential to the wants of the government.
"After some further remarks, Mr. G. said that it was time that
he and his whig friends should understand one another. He wanted
now to understand what were the cardinal principles of the whig
party, of which he was an humble member. He had for six or seven
years been a member of that party, and thought he understood
their principles, but he much feared that he had been acting
under some delusion; and now that they were all here together,
he wished to come to a perfect understanding."
The perfect understanding of each other which Mr. Gilmer wished to
have with his whig friends, was a sort of an appeal to Mr. Clay to
stand by the act of 1833. He represented that party on one side of
the compromise, and Mr. Calhoun the other: and now, when it was
about to be abrogated, he naturally called on the guaranty of the
other side to come to the rescue. Mr. Charles Jared Ingersoll,
pleasantly and sarcastically apostrophized the two eminent chiefs,
who represented two opposite parties, and gloriously saved the Union
(without the participation of the government), at the making of that
compromise: and treated it as glory that had passed by:
"I listened with edification to the account of the venerable
member from Massachusetts [Mr. ADAMS], of the method of enacting
the compromise act--what may be called the perpetration of that
memorable measure. Certainly it put an end to fearful strife.
Perhaps it saved this glorious Union. I wish to be understood
as speaking respectfully of both the distinguished persons who
are said to have accomplished it. After all, however, it was
rather their individual achievement than an act of Congress.
The two chiefs, the towering peaks, of overhanging prohibitory
protection and forcible nullification, nodded their summits
together, and the work was done, without the active agency of
either the executive or legislative branches of government.
Its influences on public tranquillity were benignant. But how
to be regarded as economical or constitutional lessons, is a
different question, which, at this session, I am hardly prepared
to unravel. Undiscriminating impost, twenty per cent. flush
throughout, on all articles alike, will not answer the purposes
of the Union, or of my State. It is not supposed by their
advocates that it will. The present bill is to be transient; we
are to have more particular, more thorough and permanent laws
hereafter. Without giving in my adhesion to the compromise act,
or announcing opposition to it, I hope to see such government
as will ensure steady employment, at good wages, by which I mean
high wages, paid in hard money; no others can be good, high,
or adequate, or money at all; for every branch of industry,
agricultural, commercial, manufacturing, and navigation, that
palmy state of a country, to which this of all others is
entitled, _pulcherrimo populi fasligio_."
Mr. Pickens, of South Carolina, the intimate friend of Mr. Calhoun,
also raised his voice against the abrogation of the act which had
been kept in good faith by the free-trade party, and the consuming
classes while so injurious to them, and was now to be impaired the
moment it was to become beneficial:
"All the gentlemen who had spoken denied the binding force of
the compromise act. Was this the doctrine of the party in power?
Mr. P. had wished to hear from Kentucky, that he might discover
whether this had been determined in conclave. The struggle would
be severe to bring back the system of 1824, '28, and '32. The
fact could no longer be disguised; and gentlemen might prepare
themselves for the conflict. He saw plainly that this bill was
to be passed by, and that all the great questions of the tariff
policy would be again thrown open as though the compromise
act had no existence. Was this fair? In 1835-6, when the last
administration had taken possession of power, it was determined
that the revenue must be reduced; but Mr. P. had at that time
insisted that, though there was a surplus, the compromise act
was not lightly to be touched, and that it would therefore be
better to forbear and let that act run its course. Gentlemen on
the other side had then come up and congratulated him on his
speech; for they had already received the benefit of that act
for four years. Then his doctrine was all right and proper; but
now, when the South came to enjoy its share of the benefit, they
took the other side, and the compromise was as nothing. One
gentleman had said that twenty-eight millions would be needed to
carry on the government; another, that twenty-seven; another,
that twenty-five; and in this last opinion, the gentleman from
Pennsylvania [Mr. INGERSOLL] agreed. And, as this sum could not
be raised without duties over 20 per cent. the compromise must
be set aside. Until lately Mr. P. had not been prepared for
this; he had expected that at least the general spirit of that
act would be carried out in the legislation of Congress; but he
now saw that the whole tariff question must be met in all its
length and breadth."
Very justly did Mr. Pickens say that the bill had been kept
inviolate while operating injuriously to the consumers--that no
alteration would be allowed in it. That was the course of the
Congress to such a degree that a palpable error in relation to
drawbacks was not allowed to be rectified, though plundering the
Treasury of some hundreds of thousands of dollars per annum. But the
new bill was to be passed: it was a necessity: for, in the language
of Mr. Adams, the compromise act had beggared the Treasury, and
would continue to beggar it--producing only half enough for the
support of the government: and the misfortune of the free trade
party was, that they did not foresee that consequence at the time,
as others did; or seeing it, were obliged to submit to what the
high tariff party chose to impose upon them, to release eminent
men of South Carolina from the perilous condition in which the
nullification ordinance had placed them. It passed the House by a
vote of 116 to 101--the vote against it being stronger than the
resistance in debate indicated.
The expenses of collecting the duties under the universal _ad
valorem_ system, in which every thing had to be valued, was
enormous, and required an army of revenue officers--many of them
mere hack politicians, little acquainted with their business, less
attentive to it, giving the most variant and discordant valuations
to the same article at different places, and even in the same place
at different times; and often corruptly; and more occupied with
politics than with custom-house duties. This was one of the evils
foreseen when specific duties were abolished to make way for _ad
valorems_ and home valuations, and will continue until specific
duties are restored as formerly, or "_angels_" procured to make the
valuations. Mr. Charles Jared Ingersoll exposed this abuse in the
debate upon this bill, showing that it cost nearly two millions of
dollars to collect thirteen; and that two thousand officers were
employed about it, who also employed themselves in the elections. He
said:
"Even the direct tax and internal duties levied during the late
war cost but little more than five per cent. for collection;
whereas, now, upon an income decreasing under the compromise act
in geometrical ratio, the cost of collecting it increases in
that ratio; amounting, according to the answer I got from the
chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, to at least twelve
per cent.; near two millions of dollars, says the gentleman
from Massachusetts [Mr. SALTONSTALL]--one million seven hundred
thousand dollars. To manage the customs, government is obliged
to employ not less than two thousand officers, heavily paid,
and said to be the most active partisans; those who, in this
metropolis, are extremely annoying by their importunate contests
for office, and elsewhere still more offensive by misconduct,
sometimes of a gross kind, as in the instance of one, whom I
need not name, in my district. The venerable gentleman from
Vermont [Mr. EVERETT] suggested yesterday a tax on auctions as
useful to American manufactures. On that, I give no opinion.
But this I say, that a stamp tax on bank notes, and a duty on
auctions, would not require fifty men to collect them. It is not
for us of the minority to determine whether they should be laid.
Yet I make bold to suggest to the friends of the great leader,
who, next to the President, has the power of legislation at
present, that one of three alternatives is inevitable."
The bill went to the Senate where it found its two authors--such to
the public; but in relative positions very different from what they
were when it was passed--then united, now divided--then concurrent,
now antagonistic: and the antagonism, general upon all measures,
was to be special on this one. Their connection with the subject
made it their function to lead off in its consideration; and their
antagonist positions promised sharp encounters--which did not fail
to come. From the first word temper was manifest; and especially on
the part of Mr. Clay. He proposed to go on with the bill when it
was called: Mr. Calhoun wished it put off till Monday. (It was then
Friday.) Mr. Clay persevered in his call to go on with the bill,
as the way to give general satisfaction. Then ensued a brief and
peremptory scene, thus appearing in the Register of Debates:
"Mr. CALHOUN thought the subject had better lie over. Senators
had not an opportunity of examining the amendments; indeed, few
had even the bill before them, not expecting it to come up. He
agreed with the senator from Kentucky that it was important to
give satisfaction, but the best way was to do what was right
and proper; and he always found that, in the end, it satisfied
more persons than they would by looking about and around to see
what particular interest could be conciliated. Whatever touched
the revenue touched the pockets of the people, and should be
looked to with great caution. Nothing, in his opinion, was so
preposterous as to expect, by a high duty on these articles, to
increase the revenue. If the duty was placed at 20 per cent.
it would be impossible to prevent smuggling. The articles in
question would not bear any such duty; indeed, if they were
reduced to 5 per cent. more revenue would be realized. He
really hoped the senator would let the matter lie over until
to-morrow or Monday."
"Mr. CLAY said he always found, when there was a journey to
be performed, that it was as well to make the start; if they
only got five or six miles on the way, it was so much gained at
least."
"Mr. CALHOUN. We ought to have had some notice."
"Mr. CLAY. I give you notice now. Start! start! The amendment
was very simple, and easily understood. It was neither more
nor less than to exempt the articles named from the list of
exceptions in the bill, by which they would be subjected to a
duty of 20 per cent. Those who agreed to it could say 'aye,' and
those who did not 'no;' and that was all he should say on the
subject."
The bill went on. Mr. Calhoun said:
"He was now to be called on to vote for this bill, proposing, as
it did, a great increase of taxes on the community, because it
was an exigency measure. He should give his votes as if for the
permanent settlement of the tariff. The exigency was produced
by the gentlemen on the opposite side, and they should be held
responsible for it. This necessity had been produced by the
present administration--it was of their making, and he should
vote for this as if he were settling the taxes, and as if the
gentlemen had done their duty, and had not by extravagance and
distribution created a deficiency in the Treasury, for which
they were responsible. They yesterday passed a bill emptying the
Treasury, by giving away the proceeds of the public lands, and
to-day we have a bill to supply the deficiency by a resort to a
tax which in itself was a violation of the compromise act. The
compromise act provides that no duty shall be laid except for
the economical support of the government; and he regarded the
giving away of the public lands a violation of that act, whether
the duty was raised to 20 per cent. or not, because they had
not attempted to bring down the expenses of the government to
an economical standard. He should proceed with this bill as if
he were fixing the tariff; he thought an average of twelve and
a half per cent. on our imports would raise an ample revenue
for the support of the government, and in his votes on the
several classes of articles he should bear this average in mind,
imposing higher duties on some, and lower duties on others, as
he thought the several cases called for."
"Mr. Benton said the bill came in the right place; and at the right
moment: it came to fill up the gap which we had just made in the
revenue by voting away the land-money. He should not help to fill
that gap. Those who made it may fill it. He knew the government
needed money, and must have it, and he did not intend to vote
factiously, to stop its wheels, but considerately to compel it
to do right. Stop the land-money distribution, and he would vote
to supply its place by increased duties on imports; but while
that branch of the revenue was lavished on the States in order
to purchase popularity for those who squandered it, he would not
become accessory to their offence by giving them other money to
enable them to do so. The present occasion, he said, was one of high
illustration of the vicious and debauching distribution schemes.
When those schemes were first broached in this chamber ten years
before, it was solely to get rid of a surplus--solely to get rid of
money lying idle in the Treasury--merely to return to the people
money which they had put into the Treasury and for which there was
no public use. Such was the argument for these distributions for the
first years they were attempted. Then the distributors advanced a
step further, and proposed to divide the land money for a series of
years, without knowing whether there would be any surplus or not.
Now they have taken the final stride, and propose to borrow money,
and divide it: propose to raise money by taxes, and divide it: for
that is what the distribution of the land money comes to. It is not
a separate fund: it is part of the public revenue: it is in the
Treasury: and is as much custom-house revenue, for the customs have
to be resorted to to supply its place. It is as much public money
as that which is obtained upon loan: for the borrowed money goes to
supply its loss. The distribution law is a fraud and a cheat on its
face: its object is to debauch the people, and to do it with their
own money; and I will neither vote for the act; nor for any tax to
supply its place."
It was moved by Mr. Woodbury to include sumach among the dutiable
articles, on the ground that it was an article of home growth, and
the cultivation of it for domestic manufacturing purposes ought to
be encouraged. Mr. Clay opposed this motion, and fell into a perfect
free-trade argument to justify his opposition, and to show that
sumach ought to come in free. This gave Mr. Calhoun an opportunity,
which was not neglected, to compliment him on his conversion to
the right faith; and this compliment led to some interesting
remarks on both sides, in which each greeted the other in a very
different spirit from what they had done when they were framing that
compromise which one of them was now breaking. Thus:
"Mr. CLAY said it was very true that sumach was an article of
home growth; but he understood it was abundant where it was not
wanted; and where those manufactures exist which would require
it, there was none to be found. Under these circumstances, it
had not as yet been cultivated for manufacturing purposes, and
probably would not be, as long as agricultural labor could be
more profitably employed. Imported sumach came from countries
where labor was much cheaper than in this country, and he
thought it was for the interest of our manufacturers to obtain
it upon the cheapest terms they can. Our agricultural labor
would be much employed in other channels of industry."
"Mr. CALHOUN was very glad to hear the senator from Kentucky at
last coming round in support of this sound doctrine. It was just
what he (Mr. Calhoun) had long expected that Mr. Clay would be
forced to conform to, that those articles ought to be imported,
which can be obtained from abroad on cheaper terms than they can
be produced at home."
"Mr. CLAY thought the senator from South Carolina was not
entitled to his interpretation of what he (Mr. Clay) had
said. The senator converts a few words expressed in favor
of continuing the free importation of sumach, under present
circumstances, into a general approbation of free trade--a thing
wholly out of view in his (Mr. Clay's) mind at the time he made
his remarks. It was certainly owing to the peculiar habit of
mind in which the senator from South Carolina was so fond of
indulging, that he was thus always trying to reduce every thing
to his system of abstractions."
These "abstractions," and this "peculiar habit," were a standing
resort with Mr. Clay when a little pressed by Mr. Calhoun. They
were mere flouts, but authorizing retaliation; and, on the present
occasion, when the question was to break up that compromise which
(in his part of it, the universal 20 per cent. ad valorems)
was the refined essence of Mr. Calhoun's financial system, and
which was to be perpetual, and for which he had already paid the
consideration in the nine years' further endurance of the protective
system: when this was the work in hand, and it aggravated by the
imperative manner in which it was brought on--refusal to wait till
Monday, and that most extemporaneous notice, accompanied by the
command, "start! start!"--all this was a good justification to Mr.
Calhoun in the biting spirit which he gave to his replies--getting
sharper as he went on, until Mr. Clay pleasantly took refuge under
sumach--popularly called shoe-make in the South and West.
"Mr. Calhoun observed that the senator from Kentucky had
evidently very strong prejudices against what he calls
abstractions. This would be easily understood when we take into
consideration what the senator and his friends characterized
as abstractions. What he and they called abstractions, was the
principle of scrutiny and opposition so powerfully evinced by
this side of the Senate, against the low estimates, ruinous
projects, and extravagant expenditures which constitute the
leading measures of the present administration. As regards the
principles of free trade, if these were abstractions, he was
happy to know that he was in company with some of the ablest
statesmen of Great Britain. He referred to the report recently
made in Parliament on this subject--a document of eminent
ability."
"Mr. Clay observed that the senator from South Carolina
based his abstractions on the theories of books--on English
authorities, and on the arguments urged in favor of free trade
by a certain party in the British Parliament. Now, he (Mr.
Clay), and his friends would not admit of these authorities
being entitled to as much weight as the universal practice of
nations, which in all parts of the world was found to be in
favor of protecting home manufactures to an extent sufficient
to keep them in a flourishing condition. This was the whole
difference. The senator was in favor of book theory and
abstractions: he (Mr. Clay) and his friends were in favor of the
universal practice of nations, and the wholesome and necessary
protection of domestic manufactures. And what better proof
could be given of national decision on this point than that
furnished by the recent elections in Great Britain. A report on
the subject of free trade, written by the astute and ingenious
Scotchman, Mr. Hume, had obtained pretty general circulation in
this country. On the principles set forth in that report the
British ministry went before the people of England at a general
election, and the result proved that they were repudiated."
"Mr. Calhoun had supposed the senator from Kentucky was
possessed of more tact than to allude at all to the recent
elections in England, and claim them as a triumph of his
principles, much less to express himself in such strong terms
of approbation at the result. The senator was, however,
elated at the favorable result of the late elections to the
tory party in England. That was not much to be wondered at,
for the interests, objects, and aims of the tory party there
and the whig party here, are identical. The identity of the
two parties is remarkable. The tory party are the patrons of
corporate monopolies; _and are not you?_ They are advocates of
a high tariff; _and are not you?_ They are the supporters of a
national bank; _and are not you?_ They are for corn-laws--laws
oppressive to the mass of the people, and favorable to their
own power; _and are not you?_ Witness this bill. The tory party
in England are not supported by the British people. That party
is the representative of the mere aristocracy of the country,
which, by the most odious and oppressive system of coercion
exercised over the tenantry of the country, has obtained the
power of starving the mass of the people, by the continuation
of laws exclusively protecting the landed interests, that is,
the rent rolls of the aristocracy. These laws that party will
uphold, rather than suffer the people to obtain cheap bread. The
administration party in England wished to dissipate this odious
system of exclusive legislation, and to give the mass of the
people cheap bread. This the senator from Kentucky characterizes
as ridiculous abstraction. And who are these tories of England?
Do not the abolitionists constitute a large portion of that
party? Those very abolitionists, who have more sympathy for the
negroes of the West India Islands, than for the starving and
oppressed white laborers of England. And why? Because it is
the interest of the tory party to have high rents at home, and
high tariff duties against the sugar of this country, for the
protection of the owners of estates in the West India Islands.
This is the party, the success of which, at the recent elections
in Great Britain, has so elated the senator from Kentucky! The
success of that party in England, and of the whig party here,
is the success of the great money power, which concentrates the
interests of the two parties, and identifies their principles.
The struggle of both is a struggle for the ascendency of this
great money power. When the whole subject is narrowly looked
into, it is seen that the whole question at issue is that of
the ascendency of this enormous and dangerous power, or that
of popular rights. And this is a struggle which the opposition
in this Capitol, to whom alone the people of this country can
now look for protection against the measures threatened to be
consummated here, will maintain to the last, regardless of the
success of the tories abroad or their allies at home."
Mr. Clay did not meet these biting interrogatories. He did not
undertake to show any injustice in classifying his modern whig
party with the English high tory party, but hauled off, washing his
hands of sympathy for that party--a retreat, for which Mr. Calhoun
taunted him in his reply. Fact was, the old federal party--and I
never refer to them as such in reproach--had become unpopular,
and changed name without changing principles. They took that of
whig, as having a seductive revolutionary odor, without seeming to
perceive that it had not a principle in common with the whigs of the
revolution which their adversaries had not also; and that in reality
they occupied the precise ground in our political parties which the
high tory party did in England. Mr. Calhoun drove this home to Mr.
Clay with a point and power, and a closeness of application, which
stuck, and required an exculpatory answer, if any could be given.
But none such was attempted, either by Mr. Clay, or any of his
friends; and the issue has shown the folly of taking a name without
corresponding works. The name "whig" has been pretty well given up,
without finding a better, and perhaps without saving the commendable
principle of conservatism which was in it; and which, in its liberal
and enlightened sense, is so essential in all governments. One thing
both the disputants seemed to forget, though others did not; and
that was, that Mr. Calhoun had acted with this party for ten years
against President Jackson.
"Mr. Clay denied that he had made any boast of the success
of the tories in the English elections. He had expressed no
sympathy with that party. He cared nothing about their success,
though he did hope that the tories would not come into power in
this country. He had only adverted to their triumph in England
as an evidence of the sense of the English nation on the subject
of free trade. His argument was, that no matter what contending
politicians said about abstract principles, when it came to the
practical action of the whole nation on these principles, that
action was found decisive against theories and in favor of the
practice of nations all over the globe. As to the success of
the tories in England, he had frequently made the remark that
this government had more to expect from the justice of a tory
minister than a whig ministry, either in England or France, as
the latter were afraid of being accused of being swayed by their
liberal sentiments."
This was disavowing a fellow-feeling--not showing a difference; and
Mr. Calhoun, seeing his advantage, followed it up with clinching
vigor, and concluded with a taunt justified by the occasion.
"Mr. Calhoun said when there was a question at issue between
the senator from Kentucky and himself, that senator was not the
judge of its accuracy, nor was he; but he would leave it to the
Senate, and to all present who had heard the argument, if he had
not met it fairly. Did he not quote, in tones of exultation,
the triumph of the tory party in England as the triumph of his
principles over the principles of free trade? And when he (Mr.
Calhoun) had noticed the points of identity in principle between
the tory party of England and the whig party of this country,
had the senator attempted to reply? Nay more, he had alluded to
the striking coincidence between the party affinities in Great
Britain and this country, and showed that this victory was not
a tory victory only, but an abolitionist victory--the advocates
of high taxes on sugar joining the advocates of high taxes on
bread, and now the senator wishes to produce the impression
that he had not fairly met the question, and tries to make a
new issue. There was one trait in the senator's character,
which he had often noticed. He makes his onslaughts with great
impetuosity, not always thinking where they will carry him; and
when he finds himself in difficulty, all his great ingenuity
is taxed to make a skilful retreat. Like the French general,
Moreau, he is more celebrated for the dexterity of his retreats
than the fame of his battles."
Mr. Clay pleasantly terminated this interlude, which was certainly
unprofitable to him, by recalling the Senate to the question before
them, which was simply in relation to the free, or taxed importation
of _sumach_: a word which he pronounced with an air and emphasis,
peculiar to himself, and which had the effect of a satiric speech
when he wished to make any thing appear contemptible, or ridiculous.
"Mr. Clay of Kentucky was not going into a dissertation on the
political institutions of the British nation. He would merely
recapitulate the facts with relation to the question at issue
between the administration party in England and the tory party.
Here Mr. Clay re-stated the position of both parties at the
recent election, and the result; and concluded by declaring,
that, after all, it was not a question now before the Senate,
whether it was a tory victory in England and a whig victory
here, but whether _sumach_ was or was not to be admitted free
of duty. He thought it would be just as well to revert to that
question and let it be decided. For his part, he cared very
little whether it was or was not. He would leave it to the
Senate to decide the question just as it pleased."
The vote was taken: sumach was taxed: the foreign rival was
discouraged--with what benefit to the American farmer, and the
domestic grower of the article, the elaborate statistics of the
decennial census has yet failed to inform us. But certainly so
insignificant a weed has rarely been the occasion of such keen
debate, between such eminent men, on a theatre so elevated. The
next attempt to amend the bill was at a point of more concern to the
American farmer: and appears thus in the Register of Debates:
"Mr. ALLEN had proposed to make salt a free article, which Mr.
WALKER had proposed to amend by adding gunny bags.
"Mr. BENTON appealed to the senator from Mississippi to withdraw
his amendment, and let the vote be taken on salt.
"Mr. KING also appealed to the senator from Mississippi to
withdraw his amendment.
"Mr. WALKER said, at the suggestion of his friends, he should
withdraw his amendment for the present, as it was supposed by
some it might embarrass the original amendment.
"Mr. HUNTINGTON opposed the amendment as tending to a
violation of the compromise act. It would result, also, in the
annihilation of the extensive American works engaged in this
manufacture, and would give the foreign manufacturers a monopoly
in trade, which would tend to greatly increase the price of the
article as it entered into the consumption of the country.
"Mr. KING was in favor of the compromise act, so far as it
could be maintained. The article of salt entered equally into
the consumption of all classes--the poor as well as the rich.
He should vote for this amendment. If the senator wished, he
would vote to amend the proposition so that it should not take
effect till the 30th of June, 1842; and that would prevent its
interference with the compromise. He hoped the experiment would
be made, and be ascertained whether revenue sufficient for the
expenses of government could be raised by taxation on other
articles which could better bear it. He should vote for the
amendment.
"Mr. BATES said the duty on salt affected two great portions
of the community in a very different manner--the interior of
the country, which derived their supplies from the domestic
manufacture, from salines, and those parts on the seaboard which
were supplied with imported salt. The price of salt for the
interior of the country, which was supplied with domestic salt,
of which there was a great abundance, would not be affected by
an imposition of duty, as the price was regulated by the law of
nature, and could not be repealed or modified; but the price of
salt on the seaboard, which was supplied by imports, and some
manufactured from marine water, would, however gentlemen might
be disposed to disbelieve it, be increased if the duty were
taken off; as the manufactories of salt from marine water would
be entirely suspended, since none would continue the investment
of their capital in so uncertain a business--the foreign supply
being quite irregular. Thus perhaps, a third of the supplies
being cut off, a greater demand would arise, and the price be
increased on the seaboard, while the interior would not be
affected.
"Mr. SEVIER wished to know how much revenue was collected from
salt; he had heard it stated that the drawbacks amounted to more
than the duty; if so, it would be better to leave it among the
free articles.
"Mr. CLAY did not recollect positively; he believed the duty was
about $400,000, and the drawbacks near $260,000--the tax greatly
exceeded the drawback.
"Mr. CALHOUN said, individually there was, perhaps, no article
which he would prefer to have exempted from duty than salt, but
he was opposed, by any vote of his, to give a pretext for a
violation of the compromise act hereafter. The duty on salt was
going off gradually, and full as rapidly as was consistent with
safety to commercial interests. No one could regard the bill
before them as permanent. It was evident that the whole system
would have to be revised under the compromise system.
"Mr. WALKER was warmly in favor of the amendment. He regarded a
tax on salt as inhuman and unjust. It was almost as necessary to
human life as the air they breathed, and should be exempted from
all burdens whatever.
"Mr. ALLEN then modified his amendment so as that it should not
take effect until after the 3d of June, 1842.
"Mr. CLAY spoke against the amendment; and said the very
circumstance of the universality of its use, was a reason it
should come in for its share of taxation. He never talked about
the _poor_, but he believed he felt as much, and probably more,
than those who did. Who were the poor? Why we were all poor;
and any attempt to select certain classes for taxation was
absurd, as before the collector came round they might be poor.
He expressed the hope that the tax might not be interfered with.
This was a subject which Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Macon took under
their peculiar care, and other gentlemen had since mounted the
hobby, and literally rode it down. He could tell them, if they
desired to preserve the compromise, they must leave the salt tax
alone.
"The debate was further continued by Messrs. WALKER, BENTON,
CALHOUN, and PRESTON, when the question was taken on the
adoption of the amendment, and decided in the negative, as
follows:
"YEAS--Messrs. Allen, Benton, Buchanan, Clay of Alabama,
Cuthbert, Fulton, King, Linn, McRoberts, Mouton, Nicholson,
Pierce, Prentiss, Preston, Smith of Connecticut, Tappan, Walker,
White, Woodbury, Wright, and Young--21.
"NAYS--Messrs. Archer, Barrow, Bates, Berrien, Calhoun, Choate,
Clay of Kentucky, Clayton, Dixon, Evans, Graham, Henderson,
Huntington, Ker, Mangum, Merrick, Miller, Porter, Smith of
Indiana, Southard, Sturgeon, Tallmadge, and Woodbridge--23.
This odious and impious tax on salt has been kept up by a
combination of private and political interests. The cod and
mackerel fisheries of New England and the domestic manufacturers
of salt on the Kenhawa and in New York, constituting the private
interest; and the tariff-protective party constituting the political
interest. The duty has been reduced, not abolished; and the injury
has become greater to the Treasury in consequence of the reduction;
and still remains considerable to the consumers. The salt duty,
previous to the full taking effect of the compromise act of 1833,
paid the fishing bounties and allowances founded upon it, and left
a surplus for the Treasury: now, and since 1842, these bounties
and allowances take the whole amount of the salt duty, and a large
sum besides, out of the public Treasury. In five years (from 1848
to 1854), the duty produced from about $210,000, to $220,000; and
the bounties and allowances during the same time, were from about
$240,000, to $300,000; leaving the Treasury a loser to the amount
of the difference: and, without going into figures, the same result
may be predicated of every year since 1842. To the consumer the tax
still remaining, although only one-fifth of the value, about doubles
the cost of the article consumed to the consumer. It sends all the
salt to the custom-house, and throws it into the hands of regraters;
and they combine, and nearly double the price.
The next attempt to amend the bill was on Mr. Woodbury's motion to
exempt tea and coffee from duty, which was successful by a large
vote--39 to 10. The nays were: Messrs. Archer, Barrow, Berrien,
Clay of Kentucky, Henderson, Leeds, Kerr, Merrick, Preston, Rives,
Southard. The bill was then passed by a general vote, only eleven
against it, upon the general ground that the government must have
revenue: but those who voted against it thought the proper way to
stop the land bill was to deny this supply until that was given up.
The compromise act of 1833--by a mere blunder, for it cannot be
supposed such an omission could have been intentional--in providing
for the reduction of duties on imported sugars, molasses, and salt,
made no corresponding provision for the reduction of drawbacks when
the sugars underwent refining and exportation; nor upon molasses
when converted into rum and exported; nor on the fishing bounties
and allowances, when the salt was re-exported on the fish which
had been cured by it. This omission was detected at the time
by members not parties to the compromise, but not allowed to be
corrected by any one unfriendly to the compromise. The author of
this View offered an amendment to that effect--which was rejected,
by yeas and nays, as follows: Yeas--Messrs. Benton, Buckner,
Calhoun, Dallas, Dickerson, Dudley, Forsyth, Johnson, Kane, King,
Rives, Robinson, Seymour, Tomlinson, Webster, White, Wilkins, and
Wright. Nays--Messrs. Bell, Bibb, Black, Clay, Clayton, Ewing, Foot,
Grundy, Hendricks, Holmes, Knight, Mangum, Miller, Moore, Naudain,
Poindexter, Prentiss, Robbins, Silsbee, Smith, Sprague, Tipton,
Troup, and Tyler. Of those then voting against this provision, one
(Mr. Ewing, as Secretary of the Treasury), now, in 1841, recommended
its adoption, so far as it related to refined sugars and rum;
another (Mr. Clay), supported his recommendation; a third (Mr.
Tyler), approved the act which adopted it: but all this, after the
injury had been going on for eight years, and had plundered the
Treasury of one and a half millions of dollars. The new tariff act
of this extra session made the corresponding reductions, and by a
unanimous vote in each House; the writer of this View, besides his
motion at the time, having renewed it, and in vain, almost every
year afterwards--always rejected on the cry that the compromise
was sacred and inviolable--had saved the Union at the time it was
made, and would endanger it the day it was broken. Well! it was
pretty well broken at this extra session: and the Union was just as
much destroyed by its breaking as it had been saved by its making.
In one case the reductions of drawback remained untouched--that
of the bounties and allowances to the cod and mackerel fisheries,
founded on the idea of returning to the fisherman, or the exporter,
the amount of duty supposed to have been paid on the imported salt
carried back out of the country on that part of the fish which
was exported. The fisheries have so long possessed this advantage
that they now claim it as a right--no such pretension being set up
until it was attacked as an abuse. A committee of the Senate, in
the year 1846, of which Mr. Benton was chairman, and Mr. John Davis
of Massachusetts, and Mr. Alexander Anderson, were members, made a
report which explored this abuse to its source; but without being
able to get it corrected. The abuse commenced after the late war
with Great Britain, and has taken since that time about six millions
of dollars; and is now going at the rate of about three hundred
thousand dollars per annum. In the earlier ages of the government,
these bounties and allowances were always stated in the annual
treasury report, according to their true nature in connection with
the salt duties, and as dependent upon those duties: and the sums
allowed were always carried out in bushels of salt: which would
show how much salt was supposed to have been carried out of the
country on the exported fish. A treasury statement of that kind
at present, would show about one million three hundred thousand
bushels of foreign salt (for it is only on the foreign that the
bounties and allowances accrue), so exported, while there is only
about one million of bushels imported--nineteen-twentieths of which
is employed in other branches of business--beef and pork packing,
and bacon curing, for example: and there can be no doubt but that
these branches export far more foreign salt on the articles they
send abroad, than is done on cod and mackerel exported. In viewing
the struggles about these bounties and allowances, I have often had
occasion to admire the difference between the legislators of the
North and those of the South and West--the former always intent
upon the benefits of legislation--the latter upon the honors of the
government.
CHAPTER LXXX.
NATIONAL BANK: FIRST BILL.
This was the great measure of the session, and the great object of
the whig party, and the one without which all other measures would
be deemed to be incomplete, and the victorious election itself
little better than a defeat. Though kept out of view as an issue
during the canvass, it was known to every member of the party to be
the alpha and omega of the contest, and the crowning consummation
of ten years labor in favor of a national bank. It was kept in the
background for a reason perfectly understood. Both General Harrison
and Mr. Tyler had been ultra against a national bank while members
of the democratic party: they had both, as members of the House of
Representatives voted in a small minority in favor of issuing a writ
of _scire facias_ against the late Bank of the United States soon
after it was chartered; and this could be quoted in the parts of
the country where a bank was unpopular. At the same time the party
was perfectly satisfied with their present sentiments, and wanted
no discussion which might scare off anti-bank men without doing
any good on their own side. The bank, then, was the great measure
of the session--the great cause of the called session--and as such
taken by Mr. Clay into his own care from the first day. He submitted
a schedule of measures for the consideration of the body, and for
acting on which he said it might be understood the extraordinary
session was convoked; he moved for a select committee to report a
bill, of which committee he was of course to be chairman: and he
moved a call upon the Secretary of the Treasury (Mr. Ewing) for
the plan of a bank. It was furnished accordingly, and studiously
contrived so as to avoid the President's objections, and save his
consistency--a point upon which he was exceedingly sensitive.
The bill of the select committee was modelled upon it. Even the
title was made ridiculous to please the President, though not as
much so as he wished. He objected to the name of bank, either in
the title or the body of the charter, and proposed to style it
"The Fiscal Institute;" and afterwards the "Fiscal Agent;" and
finally the "Fiscal Corporation." Mr. Clay and his friends could
not stand these titles; but finding the President tenacious on the
title of the bill, and having all the properties of all sorts of
banks--discount--deposit--circulation--exchange--all in the plan so
studiously contrived, they yielded to the word Fiscal--rejecting
each of its proposed addenda--and substituted bank. The title of the
instrument then ran thus: "A Bill to incorporate the subscribers
to the Fiscal Bank of the United States." Thus entitled, and thus
arranged out of doors, it was brought into the Senate, not to be
perfected by the collective legislative wisdom of the body, but to
be carried through the forms of legislation, without alteration
except from its friends, and made into law. The deliberative power
of the body had nothing to do with it. Registration of what had been
agreed upon was its only office. The democratic members resisted
strenuously in order to make the measure odious. Successful
resistance was impossible, and a repeal of the act at a subsequent
Congress was the only hope--a veto not being then dreamed of.
Repeal, therefore, was taken as the watchword, and formal notice of
it proclaimed in successive speeches, that all subscribers to the
bank should be warned in time, and deprived of the plea of innocence
when the repeal should be moved. Mr. Allen, of Ohio, besides an
argument in favor of the right of this repeal, produced a resolve
from the House Journal of 1819, in which General Harrison, then
a member of that body, voted with others for a resolve directing
the Judiciary Committee to report a bill to repeal the then
United States Bank charter--not to inquire into the expediency of
repealing, but to repeal absolutely.
The bill was passed through both Houses--in the Senate by a close
vote, 26 to 23--in the House by a better majority, 128 to 98.
This was the sixth of August. All was considered finished by the
democracy, and a future repeal their only alternative. Suddenly
light began to dawn upon them. Rumors came that President Tyler
would disapprove the act; which, in fact he did: but with such
expressions of readiness to approve another bill which should be
free from the objections which he named, as still to keep his party
together, and to prevent the explosion of his cabinet. But it made
an explosion elsewhere. Mr. Clay was not of a temper to be balked
in a measure so dear to his heart without giving expression to his
dissatisfaction; and did so in the debate on the veto message; and
in terms to assert that Mr. Tyler had violated his faith to the whig
party, and had been led off from them by new associations. He said:
"On the 4th of April last, the lamented Harrison, the President
of the United States, paid the debt of nature. President Tyler,
who, as Vice-President, succeeded to the duties of that office,
arrived in the city of Washington on the 6th of that month. He
found the whole metropolis wrapt in gloom, every heart filled
with sorrow and sadness, every eye streaming with tears, and
the surrounding hills yet flinging back the echo of the bells
which were tolled on that melancholy occasion. On entering
the Presidential mansion he contemplated the pale body of his
predecessor stretched before him, and clothed in the black
habiliments of death. At that solemn moment, I have no doubt
that the heart of President Tyler was overflowing with mingled
emotions of grief, of patriotism and gratitude--above all, of
gratitude to that country by a majority of whose suffrages,
bestowed at the preceding November, he then stood the most
distinguished, the most elevated, the most honored of all living
whigs of the United States.
"It was under these circumstances, and in this probable state of
mind, that President Tyler, on the 10th day of the same month
of April, voluntary promulgated an address to the people of the
United States. That address was in the nature of a coronation
oath, which the chief of the State, in other countries, and
under other forms, takes upon ascending the throne. It referred
to the solemn obligations, and the profound sense of duty under
which the new President entered upon the high trust which had
devolved upon him, by the joint acts of the people and of
Providence, and it stated the principles and delineated the
policy by which he would be governed in his exalted station. It
was emphatically a whig address from beginning to end--every
inch of it was whig, and was patriotic.
"In that address the President, in respect to the subject-matter
embraced in the present bill, held the following conclusive and
emphatic language: 'I shall promptly give my sanction to any
constitutional measure which, originating in Congress, shall
have for its object the restoration of a sound circulating
medium, so essentially necessary to give confidence in all
the transactions of life, to secure to industry its just and
adequate rewards, and to re-establish the public prosperity.
In deciding upon the adaptation of any such measure to the end
proposed, as well as its conformity to the Constitution, I shall
resort to the fathers of the great republican school for advice
and instruction, to be drawn from their sage views of our system
of government, and the light of their ever glorious example.'
"To this clause in the address of the President, I believe but
one interpretation was given throughout this whole country,
by friend and foe, by whig and democrat, and by the presses
of both parties. It was by every man with whom I conversed on
the subject at the time of its appearance, or of whom I have
since inquired, construed to mean that the President intended
to occupy the Madison ground, and to regard the question of
the power to establish a national bank as immovably settled.
And I think I may confidently appeal to the Senate, and to the
country, to sustain the fact that this was the contemporaneous
and unanimous judgment of the public. Reverting back to the
period of the promulgation of the address, could any other
construction have been given to its language? What is it? 'I
shall promptly give my sanction to any constitutional measure
which, originating in Congress,' shall have certain defined
objects in view. He concedes the vital importance of a sound
circulating medium to industry and to the public prosperity. He
concedes that its origin must be in Congress. And, to prevent
any inference from the qualification, which he prefixes to
the measure, being interpreted to mean that a United States
Bank was unconstitutional, he declares that, in deciding on
the adaptation of the measure to the end proposed, and its
conformity to the constitution, he will resort to the fathers of
the great Republican school. And who were they? If the Father
of his country is to be excluded, are Madison (the father of
the constitution), Jefferson, Monroe, Gerry, Gallatin, and the
long list of Republicans who acted with them, not to be regarded
as among those fathers? But President Tyler declares not only
that he should appeal to them for advice and instruction, but
to the light of their ever glorious example. What example? What
other meaning could have been possibly applied to the phrase,
than that he intended to refer to what had been done during the
administrations of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe?
"Entertaining this opinion of the address, I came to Washington,
at the commencement of the session, with the most confident
and buoyant hopes that the Whigs would be able to carry all
their prominent measures, and especially a Bank of the United
States, by far that one of the greatest immediate importance.
I anticipated nothing but cordial co-operation between the two
departments of government; and I reflected with pleasure that
I should find at the head of the Executive branch, a personal
and political friend, whom I had long and intimately known,
and highly esteemed. It will not be my fault if our amicable
relations should unhappily cease, in consequence of any
difference of opinion between us on this occasion. The President
has been always perfectly familiar with my opinion on this bank
question.
"Upon the opening of the session, but especially on the receipt
of the plan of a national bank, as proposed by the Secretary
of the Treasury, fears were excited that the President had
been misunderstood in his address, and that he had not waived
but adhered to his constitutional scruples. Under these
circumstances it was hoped that, by the indulgence of a mutual
spirit of compromise and concession, a bank, competent to fulfil
the expectations and satisfy the wants of the people, might be
established.
"Under the influence of that spirit, the Senate and the House
agreed, 1st, as to the name of the proposed bank. I confess,
sir, that there was something exceedingly _outré_ and revolting
to my ears in the term 'Fiscal Bank;' but I thought, 'What
is there in a name? A rose, by any other name, would smell
as sweet.' Looking, therefore, rather to the utility of the
substantial faculties than to the name of the contemplated
institution, we consented to that which was proposed."
In his veto message Mr. Tyler fell back upon his early opinions
against the constitutionality of a national bank, so often and
so publicly expressed; and recurring to these early opinions he
now declared that it would be a crime and an infamy in him to sign
the bill which had been presented to him. In this sense he thus
expressed himself:
"Entertaining the opinions alluded to, and having taken this
oath, the Senate and the country will see that I could not give
my sanction to a measure of the character described without
surrendering all claim to the respect of honorable men--all
confidence on the part of the people--all self-respect--all
regard for moral and religious obligations; without an
observance of which no government can be prosperous, and no
people can be happy. It would be to commit a _crime_ which I
would not wilfully commit to gain any earthly reward, and which
would _justly_ subject me to the ridicule and scorn of all
virtuous men."
Mr. Clay found these expressions of self-condemnation entirely too
strong, showing too much sensibility in a President to personal
considerations--laying too much stress upon early opinions--ignoring
too completely later opinions--and not sufficiently deferring to
those fathers of the government to whom, in his inaugural address,
he had promised to look for advice and instruction, both as to the
constitutionality of a bank, and its adaptation to the public wants.
And he thus animadverted on the passage:
"I must think, and hope I may be allowed to say, with profound
deference to the Chief Magistrate, that it appears to me he has
viewed with too lively sensibility the personal consequences
to himself of his approval of the bill; and that, surrendering
himself to a vivid imagination, he has depicted them in much too
glowing and exaggerated colors, and that it would have been most
happy if he had looked more to the deplorable consequences of
a veto upon the hopes, the interests, and the happiness of his
country. Does it follow that a magistrate who yields his private
judgment to the concurring authority of numerous decisions,
repeatedly and deliberately pronounced, after the lapse of
long intervals, by all the departments of government, and by
all parties, incurs the dreadful penalties described by the
President? Can any man be disgraced and dishonored who yields
his private opinion to the judgment of the nation? In this case,
the country (I mean a majority), Congress, and, according to
common fame, an unanimous cabinet, were all united in favor of
the bill. Should any man feel himself humbled and degraded in
yielding to the conjoint force of such high authority? Does
any man, who at one period of his life shall have expressed
a particular opinion, and at a subsequent period shall act
upon the opposite opinion, expose himself to the terrible
consequences which have been portrayed by the President? How
is it with the judge, in the case by no means rare, who bows
to the authority of repeated precedents, settling a particular
question, whilst in his private judgment the law was otherwise?
How is it with that numerous class of public men in this
country, and with the two great parties that have divided it,
who, at different periods, have maintained and acted on opposite
opinions in respect to this very bank question?
"How is it with James Madison, the father of the
constitution--that great man whose services to his country
placed him only second to Washington--whose virtues and purity
in private life--whose patriotism, intelligence, and wisdom
in public councils, stand unsurpassed? He was a member of the
national convention that formed, and of the Virginia convention
that adopted the constitution. No man understood it better
than he did. He was opposed in 1791 to the establishment of
the Bank of the United States upon constitutional ground; and
in 1816 he approved and signed the charter of the late Bank of
the United States. It is a part of the secret history connected
with the first Bank, that James Madison had, at the instance of
General Washington, prepared a veto for him in the contingency
of his rejection of the bill. Thus stood James Madison when,
in 1815, he applied the veto to a bill to charter a bank upon
considerations of expediency, but with a clear and express
admission of the existence of a constitutional power in Congress
to charter one. In 1816, the bill which was then presented to
him being free from the objections applicable to that of the
previous year, he sanctioned and signed it. Did James Madison
surrender 'all claim to the respect of honorable men--all
confidence on the part of the people--all self-respect--all
regard for moral and religious obligations?' Did the pure,
the virtuous, the gifted James Madison, by his sanction and
signature to the charter of the late Bank of the United States,
commit a crime which justly subjected him 'to the ridicule and
scorn of all virtuous men?'"
But in view of these strong personal consequences to his (Mr.
Tyler's) own character in the event of signing the bill, Mr.
Clay pointed out a course which the President might have taken
which would have saved his consistency--conformed to the
constitution--fulfilled his obligations to the party that elected
him--and permitted the establishment of that sound currency, and
that relief from the public distress, which his inaugural address,
and his message to Congress, and his veto message, all so earnestly
declared to be necessary. It was to have let the bill lie in his
hands without approval or disapproval: in which case it would have
become a law without any act of his. The constitution had made
provision for the case in that clause in which it declares that--"If
any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days
(Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the
same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless
the Congress by their adjournment prevent its return; in which case
it shall not be a law." In this case there was no danger of Congress
adjourning before the lapse of the ten days; and Mr. Clay adverted
to this course as the one, under his embarrassing circumstances the
President ought to have adopted, and saved both his consistency and
faith to his party. He urged it as a proper course--saying:
"And why should not President Tyler have suffered the bill
to become a law without his signature? Without meaning the
slightest possible disrespect to him (nothing is further from
my heart than the exhibition of any such feeling towards that
distinguished citizen, long my personal friend), it cannot be
forgotten that he came into his present office under peculiar
circumstances. The people did not foresee the contingency which
has happened. They voted for him as Vice-President. They did
not, therefore, scrutinize his opinions with the care which
they probably ought to have done, and would have done, if they
could have looked into futurity. If the present state of the
fact could have been anticipated--if at Harrisburg, or at the
polls, it had been foreseen that General Harrison would die in
one short month after the commencement of his administration;
that Vice-President Tyler would be elevated to the presidential
chair; that a bill, passed by decisive majorities of the first
whig Congress, chartering a national bank, would be presented
for his sanction; and that he would veto the bill, do I hazard
any thing when I express the conviction that he would not have
received a solitary vote in the nominating convention, nor one
solitary electoral vote in any State in the Union?"
Not having taken this course with the bill, Mr. Clay pointed out
a third one, suggested by the conduct of the President himself
under analogous circumstances, and which, while preserving his
self-respect, would accomplish all the objects in view by the
party which elected him, by simply removing the obstacle which
stood between them and the object of their hopes; it was to resign
the presidency. For this contingency--that of neither President
nor Vice-President--the constitution had also made provision in
declaring--"In case of the removal of the President from office,
or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the
powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on
the Vice-President; and the Congress may by law provide for the
case of the removal, death, resignation, or inability both of the
President and Vice-President, declaring what officer shall then act
as President; and such officer shall act accordingly, until the
disability be removed, or a President shall be elected." Congress
had acted under this injunction and had devolved the duties of
President, first on the president of the Senate _pro tempore_; and
if no such temporary president, then on the speaker of the House
of Representatives; and requiring a new election to be held on the
first Wednesday of the ensuing December if there was time before it
for a notification of two months; and if not, then the new election
to take place (if the vacant term had not expired on the third day
of March after they happened) on the like Wednesday of the next
ensuing month of December. Here was provision made for the case, and
the new election might have been held in less than four months--the
temporary president of the Senate, Mr. Southard, acting as President
in the mean time. The legal path was then clear for Mr. Tyler's
resignation, and Mr. Clay thus enforced the propriety of that step
upon him:
"But, sir, there was still a third alternative, to which
I allude not because I mean to intimate that it should be
embraced, but because I am reminded of it by a memorable event
in the life of President Tyler. It will be recollected that,
after the Senate had passed the resolution declaring the removal
of the deposits from the Bank of the United States to have been
derogatory from the constitution and laws of the United States,
for which resolution President (then senator) Tyler had voted,
the General Assembly of Virginia instructed the senators from
that State to vote for the expunging of that resolution. Senator
Tyler declined voting in conformity with that instruction, and
resigned his seat in the Senate of the United States. This he
did because he could not conform, and did not think it right
to go counter to the wishes of those who had placed him in the
Senate. If, when the people of Virginia, or the General Assembly
of Virginia, were his only constituency, he would not set up
his own particular opinion in opposition to theirs, what ought
to be the rule of his conduct when the people of twenty-six
States--a whole nation--compose his constituency? Is the will
of the constituency of one State to be respected, and that of
twenty-six to be wholly disregarded? Is obedience due only to
the single State of Virginia? The President admits that the Bank
question deeply agitated, and continues to agitate, the nation.
It is incontestable that it was the great, absorbing, and
controlling question, in all our recent divisions and exertions.
I am firmly convinced, and it is my deliberate judgment, that an
immense majority, not less than two-thirds of the nation, desire
such an institution. All doubts in this respect ought to be
dispelled by the recent decisions of the two Houses of Congress.
I speak of them as evidence of popular opinion. In the House of
Representatives, the majority was 131 to 100. If the House had
been full, and but for the modification of the 16th fundamental
condition, there would have been a probable majority of 47. Is
it to be believed that this large majority of the immediate
representatives of the people, fresh from amongst them, and to
whom the President seemed inclined, in his opening message, to
refer this very question, have mistaken the wishes of their
constituents?"
The acting President did not feel it to be his duty to resign,
although it may be the judgment of history (after seeing the
expositions of his secretaries at the resignation of their places
consequent upon a second veto to a second bank act), that he ought
to have done so. In his veto message he seemed to leave the way
open for his approval of a charter free from the exceptions he had
taken; and rumor was positive in asserting that he was then engaged
in arranging with some friends the details of a bill which he could
approve. In allusion to this rumor, Mr. Clay remarked:
"On a former occasion I stated that, in the event of an
unfortunate difference of opinion between the legislative
and executive departments, the point of difference might be
developed, and it would be then seen whether they could be
brought to coincide in any measure corresponding with the public
hopes and expectations. I regret that the President has not,
in this message, favored us with a more clear and explicit
exhibition of his views. It is sufficiently manifest that he
is decidedly opposed to the establishment of a new Bank of the
United States formed after two old models. I think it is fairly
to be inferred that the plan of the Secretary of the Treasury
could not have received his sanction. He is opposed to the
passage of the bill which he has returned; but whether he would
give his approbation to any bank, and, if any, what sort of a
bank, is not absolutely clear. I think it may be collected from
the message, with the aid of information derived through other
sources, that the President would concur in the establishment of
a bank whose operations should be limited to dealing in bills
of exchange to deposits, and to the supply of a circulation,
excluding the power of discounting promissory notes. And I
understand that some of our friends are now considering the
practicability of arranging and passing a bill in conformity
with the views of President Tyler. Whilst I regret that I can
take no active part in such an experiment, and must reserve to
myself the right of determining whether I can or cannot vote
for such a bill after I see it in its matured form, I assure my
friends that they shall find no obstacle or impediment in me. On
the contrary, I say to them, go on: God speed you in any measure
which will serve the country, and preserve or restore harmony
and concert between the departments of government. An executive
veto of a Bank of the United States, after the sad experience
of late years, is an event which was not anticipated by the
political friends of the President; certainly not by me. But it
has come upon us with tremendous weight, and amidst the greatest
excitement within and without the metropolis. The question now
is, what shall be done? What, under this most embarrassing and
unexpected state of things, will our constituents expect of
us? What is required by the duty and the dignity of Congress?
I repeat that if, after a careful examination of the executive
message, a bank can be devised which will afford any remedy to
existing evils, and secure the President's approbation, let
the project of such a bank be presented. It shall encounter no
opposition, if it should receive no support, from me."
The speech of Mr. Clay brought out Mr. Rives in defence of the
President, who commenced with saying:
"He came to the Senate that morning to give a silent vote on
the bill, and he should have contented himself with doing so
but for the observations which had fallen from the senator from
Kentucky in respect to the conduct of the President of the
United States. Mr. R. had hoped the senator would have confined
himself strictly to the merits of the question before the
Senate. He told us, said Mr. R., that the question was this: the
President having returned the bill for a fiscal bank with his
exceptions thereto, the bill was such an one as ought to pass by
the constitutional majority of two-thirds; and thus become a law
of the land. Now what was the real issue before the Senate? Was
it not the naked question between the bill and the objections
to it, as compared with each other? I really had hoped that the
honorable senator, after announcing to us the issue in this
very proper manner, would have confined his observations to
it alone; and if he had done so I should not have troubled the
Senate with a single word. But what has been the course of the
honorable senator? I do not reproach him with it. He, no doubt,
felt it necessary, in order to vindicate his own position before
the country, to inculpate the course taken by the President: and
accordingly about two-thirds of his speech, howsoever qualified
by expressions of personal kindness and respect, were taken up
in a solemn arraignment of the President of the United States.
Most of the allegations put forth by the senator seem to arrange
themselves under the general charge of perfidy--of faithlessness
to his party, and to the people."
Mr. Rives went on to defend the President at all points, declaring
the question of a bank was not an issue in the election--repelling
the imputation of perfidy--scouting the suggestions of resignation
and of pocketing the bill to let it become law--arguing that
General Harrison himself would have disapproved the same bill
if he had lived and it had been presented to him. In support
of this opinion he referred to the General's early opposition
to the national bank of 1816, and to his written answer given
during the canvass--"that he would not give his sanction to a
Bank of the United States, unless by the failure of all other
expedients, it should be demonstrated to be necessary to carry on
the operations of government; and unless there should be a general
and unequivocal manifestation of the will of the Union in favor
of such an institution; and then only as a fiscal, and not as a
commercial bank." But this authentic declaration seemed to prove
the contrary of that for which it was quoted. It contained two
conditions, on the happening of which General Harrison would sign
a bank charter--first, the failure of all other plans for carrying
on the financial operations of the government; and, secondly, the
manifestation of public opinion in favor of it. That the first
of these conditions had been fulfilled was well shown by Mr.
Rives himself in the concluding passages of his speech where he
said: "All previous systems have been rejected and condemned--the
sub-treasury--the pet banks--an old-fashioned Bank of the United
States--a new-fashioned fiscal agent." The second condition was
fulfilled in the presidential election in the success of the whig
party, whose first object was a bank; and in the election of members
of the House and the Senate, where the majorities were in favor of a
bank. The conditions were fulfilled then on which General Harrison
was to approve a bank charter; and the writer of this View has no
doubt that he would have given his signature to a usual bank charter
if he had lived; and from an obligatory sense of duty, and with no
more dishonor than Mr. Madison had incurred in signing the act for
the second bank charter after having been the great opponent of
the first one; and for which signing, as for no act of his life,
was dishonor imputed to him. The writer of this View believes that
General Harrison would have signed a fair bank charter, and under
its proper name; and he believes it, not from words spoken between
them, but from public manifestations, seen by every body. 1. His
own declaration, stating the conditions on which he would do it;
and which conditions were fulfilled. 2. The fact that he was the
presidential candidate of the party which was emphatically the bank
party. 3. The selection of his cabinet, every member of which was
in favor of a national bank. 4. The declaration of Mr. Clay at the
head of the list of measures proposed by him for the consideration
of Congress at its extra session, in which a national bank was
included; and which measures he stated were probably those for which
the extraordinary session had been convened by President Harrison--a
point on which Mr. Clay must be admitted to be well informed, for he
was the well reputed adviser of President Harrison on the occasion.
Mr. Clay rejoined to Mr. Rives, and became more close and pointed
in his personal remarks upon Mr. Tyler's conduct, commencing with
Mr. Rives' lodgment in the "half-way house," _i.e._ the pet bank
system--which was supposed to have been a camping station in the
transition from the democratic to the whig camp. He began thus:
"I have no desire, said he, to prolong this unpleasant
discussion, but I must say that I heard with great surprise
and regret the closing remark, especially, of the honorable
gentleman from Virginia, as, indeed, I did many of those which
preceded it. That gentleman stands in a peculiar situation. I
found him several years ago in the half-way house, where he
seems afraid to remain, and from which he is yet unwilling to
go. I had thought, after the thorough riddling which the roof
of the house had received in the breaking up of the pet bank
system, he would have fled somewhere else for refuge; but, there
he still stands, solitary and alone, shivering and pelted by
the pitiless storm. The sub-treasury is repealed--the pet bank
system is abandoned--the United States Bank bill is vetoed--and
now, when there is as complete and perfect a reunion of the
purse and the sword in the hands of the executive as ever there
was under General Jackson or Mr. Van Buren, the senator is for
doing nothing."
There was a whisper at this time that Mr. Tyler had an inner circle
of advisers, some democratic and some whig, and most of whom had
sojourned in the "half-way house," and who were more confidential
and influential with the President than the members of his cabinet.
To this Mr. Clay caustically adverted.
"Although the honorable senator professes not to know the
opinions of the President, it certainly does turn out in the
sequel that there is a most remarkable coincidence between those
opinions and his own; and he has, on the present occasion,
defended the motives and the course of the President with all
the solicitude and all the fervent zeal of a member of his
privy council. There is a rumor abroad that a cabal exists--a
new sort of kitchen cabinet--whose object is the dissolution
of the regular cabinet--the dissolution of the whig party--the
dispersion of Congress, without accomplishing any of the great
purposes of the extra session--and a total change, in fact, in
the whole face of our political affairs. I hope, and I persuade
myself, that the honorable senator is not, cannot be, one of the
component members of such a cabal; but I must say that there has
been displayed by the honorable senator to-day a predisposition,
astonishing and inexplicable, to misconceive almost all of what
I have said, and a perseverance, after repeated corrections, in
misunderstanding--for I will not charge him with wilfully and
intentionally misrepresenting--the whole spirit and character of
the address which, as a man of honor and as a senator, I felt
myself bound in duty to make to this body."
There was also a rumor of a design to make a third party, of which
Mr. Tyler was to be the head; and, as part of the scheme, to make a
quarrel between Mr. Tyler and Mr. Clay, in which Mr. Clay was to be
made the aggressor; and he brought this rumor to the notice of Mr.
Rives, repelling the part which inculpated himself, and leaving the
rest for Mr. Rives to answer.
"Why, sir, what possible, what conceivable motive can I have
to quarrel with the President, or to break up the whig party?
What earthly motive can impel me to wish for any other result
than that that party shall remain in perfect harmony, undivided,
and shall move undismayed, boldly, and unitedly forward to the
accomplishment of the all-important public objects which it has
avowed to be its aim? What imaginable interest or feeling can I
have other than the success, the triumph, the glory of the whig
party? But that there may be designs and purposes on the part of
certain other individuals to place me in inimical relations with
the President, and to represent me as personally opposed to him,
I can well imagine--individuals who are beating up for recruits,
and endeavoring to form a third party, with materials so scanty
as to be wholly insufficient to compose a decent corporal's
guard. I fear there are such individuals, though I do not charge
the senator as being himself one of them. What a spectacle has
been presented to this nation during this entire session of
Congress! That of the cherished and confidential friends of John
Tyler, persons who boast and claim to be _par excellence_, his
exclusive and genuine friends, being the bitter, systematic,
determined, uncompromising opponents of every leading measure
of John Tyler's administration! Was there ever before such an
example presented, in this or any other age, in this or any
other country? I have myself known the President too long, and
cherished towards him too sincere a friendship, to allow my
feelings to be affected or alienated by any thing which has
passed here to-day. If the President chooses--which I am sure
he cannot, unless falsehood has been whispered into his ears or
poison poured into his heart--to detach himself from me, I shall
deeply regret it, for the sake of our common friendship and our
common country. I now repeat, what I before said, that, of all
the measures of relief which the American people have called
upon us for, that of a National Bank and a sound and uniform
currency has been the most loudly and importunately demanded."
Mr. Clay reiterated his assertion that bank, or no bank, was the
great issue of the presidential canvass wherever he was, let what
else might have been the issue in Virginia, where Mr. Rives led for
General Harrison.
"The senator says that the question of a Bank was not the issue
made before the people at the late election. I can say, for one,
my own conviction is diametrically the contrary. What may have
been the character of the canvass in Virginia, I will not say;
probably gentlemen on both sides were, every where, governed in
some degree by considerations of local policy. What issues may
therefore have been presented to the people of Virginia, either
above or below tide water, I am not prepared to say. The great
error, however, of the honorable senator, is in thinking that
the sentiments of a particular party in Virginia are always a
fair exponent of the sentiments of the whole Union. I can tell
the senator, that, wherever I was--in the great valley of the
Mississippi, in Kentucky, in Tennessee, in Maryland--in all the
circles in which I moved, every where, 'Bank or no Bank' was the
great, the leading, the vital question."
In conclusion, Mr Clay apostrophized himself in a powerful
peroration as not having moral courage enough (though he claimed as
much as fell to the share of most men) to make himself an obstacle
to the success of a great measure for the public good; in which the
allusion to Mr. Tyler and his veto was too palpable to miss the
apprehension of any person.
"The senator says that, if placed in like circumstances, I
would have been the last man to avoid putting a direct veto
upon the bill, had it met my disapprobation; and he does me
the honor to attribute to me high qualities of stern and
unbending intrepidity. I hope that in all that relates to
personal firmness--all that concerns a just appreciation of
the insignificance of human life--whatever may be attempted
to threaten or alarm a soul not easily swayed by opposition,
or awed or intimidated by menace--a stout heart and a steady
eye, that can survey, unmoved and undaunted, any mere personal
perils that assail this poor transient, perishing frame--I
may, without disparagement, compare with other men. But there
is a sort of courage which, I frankly confess it, I do not
possess--a boldness to which I dare not aspire--a valor which
I cannot covet. I cannot lay myself down in the way of the
welfare and happiness of my country. That I cannot, I have not
the courage to do. I cannot interpose the power with which I may
be invested--a power conferred not for my personal benefit, not
for my aggrandizement, but for my country's good--to check her
onward march to greatness and glory. I have not courage enough,
I am too cowardly for that. I would not, I dare not, in the
exercise of such a trust, lie down, and place my body across
the path that leads my country to prosperity and happiness.
This is a sort of courage widely different from that which a
man may display in his private conduct and personal relations.
Personal or private courage is totally distinct from that higher
and nobler courage, which prompts the patriot to offer himself
a voluntary sacrifice to his country's good. Apprehensions of
the imputation of the want of firmness sometimes impel us to
perform rash and inconsiderate acts. It is the greatest courage
to be able to bear the imputation of the want of courage. But
pride, vanity, egotism, so unamiable and offensive in private
life, are vices which partake of the character of crimes in
the conduct of public affairs. The unfortunate victim of these
passions cannot see beyond the little, petty, contemptible
circle of his own personal interests. All his thoughts are
withdrawn from his country, and concentrated on his consistency,
his firmness, himself. The high, the exalted, the sublime
emotions of a patriotism, which, soaring towards Heaven, rises
far above all mean, low, or selfish things, and is absorbed
by one soul-transporting thought of the good and the glory of
one's country, are never felt in his impenetrable bosom. That
patriotism which, catching its inspiration from the immortal
God, and leaving at an immeasurable distance below, all lesser,
grovelling, personal interests and feelings, animates and
prompts to deeds of self-sacrifice, of valor, of devotion, and
of death itself--that is public virtue--that is the noblest, the
sublimest of all public virtues!"
Mr. Rives replied to Mr. Clay, and with respect to the imputed
cabal, the privy council, and his own zealous defence of Mr. Tyler,
said:
"The senator has indulged his fancy in regard to a certain
cabal, which he says it is alleged by rumor (an authority he
seems prone to quote of late) has been formed for the wicked
purpose of breaking up the regular cabinet, and dissolving the
whig party. Though the senator is pleased to acquit me of being
a member of the supposed cabal, he says he should infer, from
the zeal and promptitude with which I have come forward to
defend the motives and conduct of the President, that I was at
least a member of his privy council! I thank God, Mr. President,
that in his gracious goodness he has been pleased to give me a
heart to repel injustice and to defend the innocent, without
being laid under any special engagement, as a privy councillor
or otherwise, to do justice to my fellow-man; and if there be
any gentleman who cannot find in the consciousness of his own
bosom a satisfactory explanation of so natural an impulse, I,
for one, envy him neither his temperament nor his philosophy. If
Mr. Tyler, instead of being a distinguished citizen of my own
State, and filling at this moment, a station of the most painful
responsibility, which entitles him to a candid interpretation of
his official acts at the hands of all his countrymen, had been
a total stranger, unknown to me in the relations of private or
political friendship, I should yet have felt myself irresistibly
impelled by the common sympathies of humanity to undertake his
defence, to the best of my poor ability, when I have seen him
this day so powerfully assailed for an act, as I verily believe,
of conscientious devotion to the constitution of his country and
the sacred obligation of his high trust."
With respect to the half-way house, Mr. Rives admitted his sojourn
there, and claimed a sometime companionship in it with the senator
from Kentucky, just escaped from the lordly mansion, gaudy without,
but rotten and rat-eaten within (the Bank of the United States);
and glad to shelter in this humble but comfortable stopping place.
"The senator from Kentucky says he found me several years ago
in this half-way house, which, after the thorough riddling the
roof had received in the breaking up of the pet bank system, he
had supposed I would have abandoned. How could I find it in my
heart, Mr. President, to abandon it when I found the honorable
senator from Kentucky (even after what he calls the riddling of
the roof) so anxious to take refuge in it from the ruins of his
own condemned and repudiated system, and where he actually took
refuge for four long years, as I have already stated. When I
first had the honor to meet the honorable senator in this body,
I found him not occupying the humble but comfortable half-way
house, which has given him shelter from the storm for the last
four years, but a more lordly mansion, gaudy to look upon, but
altogether unsafe to inhabit; old, decayed, rat-eaten, which has
since tumbled to the ground with its own rottenness, devoted to
destruction alike by the indignation of man and the wrath of
heaven. Yet the honorable senator, unmindful of the past, and
heedless of the warnings of the present, which are still ringing
in his ears, will hear of nothing but the instant reconstruction
of this devoted edifice."
Mr. Rives returned to the imputed cabal, washed his hands of it
entirely, and abjured all desire for a cabinet office, or any public
station, except a seat in the Senate: thus:
"I owe it to myself, Mr. President, before I close, to say one
or two words in regard to this gorgon of a cabal, which the
senator tells us, upon the authority of dame Rumor, has been
formed to break up the cabinet, to dissolve the whig party, and
to form a new or third party. Although the senator was pleased
to acquit me of being a member of this supposed cabal, he yet
seemed to have some lurking jealousies and suspicions in his
mind on the subject. I will tell the honorable senator, then,
that I know of no such cabal, and I should really think that
I was the last man that ought to be suspected of any wish or
design to form a new or third party. I have shown myself at all
times restive under mere party influence and control from any
quarter. All party, in my humble judgment, tends, in its modern
degeneracy, to tyranny, and is attended with serious hazard of
sacrificing an honest sense of duty, and the great interests
of the country, to an arbitrary lead, directed by other aims.
I desire, therefore, to take upon myself no new party bonds,
while I am anxious to fulfil, to the fullest extent that a sense
of duty to the country will permit, every honorable engagement
implied in existing ones. In regard to the breaking up of the
cabinet, I had hoped that I was as far above the suspicion of
having any personal interest in such an event as any man. I
have never sought office, but have often declined it; and will
now give the honorable senator from Kentucky a full quit-claim
and release of all cabinet pretensions now and for ever. He may
rest satisfied that he will never see me in any cabinet, under
this or any other administration. During the brief remnant of my
public life, the measure of my ambition will be filled by the
humble, but honest part I may be permitted to take on this floor
in consultations for the common good."
Mr. Rives finished with informing Mr. Clay of a rumor which he had
heard--the rumor of a dictatorship installed in the capitol, seeking
to govern the country, and to intimidate the President, and to bend
every thing to its own will, thus:
"Having disposed of this rumor of a cabal, to the satisfaction,
I trust, of the honorable senator, I will tell him of another
rumor I have heard, which, I trust, may be equally destitute
of foundation. Rumor is busy in alleging that there is an
organized dictatorship, in permanent session in this capitol,
seeking to control the whole action of the government, in both
the legislative and executive branches, and sending deputation
after deputation to the President of the United States to teach
him his duty, and bring him to terms. I do not vouch for the
correctness of this rumor. I humbly hope it may not be true; but
if it should unfortunately be so, I will say that it is fraught
with far more danger to the regular and salutary action of our
balanced constitution, and to the liberties of the people, than
any secret cabal that ever has existed or ever will exist."
The allusion, of course, was to Mr. Clay, who promptly disavowed
all knowledge of this imputed dictatorship. In this interlude
between Mr. Clay and Mr. Rives, both members of the same party,
the democratic senators took no part; and the subject was dropped,
to be followed by a little conversational debate, of kindred
interest, growing out of it, between Mr. Archer of Virginia, and Mr.
Clay--which appears thus in the Register of Debates:
"Mr. ARCHER, in rising on the present occasion, did not intend
to enter into a discussion on the subject of the President's
message. He thought enough had been said on the subject by the
two senators who had preceded him, and was disposed, for his
part, to let the question be taken without any more debate. His
object in rising was to call the attention of the senator from
Kentucky to a certain portion of his remarks, in which he hoped
the senator, upon reflection, would see that the language used
by him had been too harsh. His honorable friend from Kentucky
had taken occasion to apply some very harsh observations to
the conduct of certain persons who he supposed had instigated
the President of the United States in the course he had taken
in regard to the bill for chartering the Fiscal Bank of the
United States. The honorable senator took occasion to disclaim
any allusion to his colleague [Mr. RIVES], and he would say
beforehand that he knew the honorable senator would except him
also.
"Mr. CLAY said, certainly, sir!"
This was not a parliamentary disclaimer, but a disclaimer from the
heart, and was all that Mr. Archer could ask on his own account; but
he was a man of generous spirit as well as of high sense of honor,
and taking up the case of his colleagues in the House, who seemed
to be implicated, and could not appear in the chamber and ask for
a disclaimer, Mr. Archer generously did so for them; but without
getting what he asked for. The Register says:
"Mr. _Archer_. He would say, however, that the remarks of the
senator, harsh as they were, might well be construed as having
allusion to his colleagues in the other House. He (Mr. A.)
discharged no more than the duty which he knew his honorable
colleagues in the other House would discharge towards him were
an offensive allusion supposed to be made to him where he could
not defend himself, to ask of the honorable senator to make some
disclaimer as regarded them.
"Mr. _Clay_ here said, no, no.
"Mr. ARCHER. The words of the senator were: 'A low, vulgar,
and profligate cabal;' which the senator also designated as
a kitchen cabinet, had surrounded the President, and were
endeavoring to turn out the present cabinet. Now, who would the
public suppose to be that low and infamous cabal? Would the
people of the United States suppose it to be composed of any
other than those who were sent here by the people to represent
them in Congress? He asked the senator from Kentucky to say, in
that spirit of candor and frankness which always characterized
him, who he meant by that cabal, and to disclaim any allusion
to his colleagues in the other House, as he had done for his
colleague and himself in this body.
"Mr. CLAY said, if the honorable senator would make an inquiry
of him, and stop at the inquiry, without going on to make an
argument, he would answer him. He had said this and he would
repeat it, and make no disclaimer--that certain gentlemen,
professing to be the friends, _par excellence_, of the President
of the United States, had put themselves in opposition to all
the leading measures of his administration. He said that rumor
stated that a cabal was formed, for the purpose of breaking down
the present cabinet and forming a new one; and that that cabal
did not amount to enough to make a corporal's guard. He did not
say who they were; but he spoke of rumor only. Now, he would ask
his friend from Virginia [Mr. ARCHER] if he never heard of that
rumor? If the gentleman would tell him that he never heard of
that rumor, it would give him some claims to an answer.
"Mr. ARCHER confessed that he had heard of such a rumor, but he
never heard of any evidence to support it.
"Mr. CLAY. I repeat it here, in the face of the country, that
there are persons who call themselves, _par excellence_, the
friends of John Tyler, and yet oppose all the leading measures
of the administration of John Tyler. I will say that the
gentleman himself is not of that cabal, and that his colleague
is not. Farther than that, this deponent saith not, and will not
say.
"Mr. ARCHER. The gentleman has not adverted to the extreme
harshness of the language he employed when he was first up,
and he would appeal to gentlemen present for the correctness
of the version he (Mr. A.) had given of it. The gentleman said
there was a cabal formed--a vile kitchen cabinet--low and
infamous, who surrounded the President and instigated him to
the course he had taken. That was the language employed by the
honorable senator. Now suppose language such as this had been
used in the other branch of the national legislature, which
might be supposed to refer to him (Mr. A.) where he had not
an opportunity of defending himself; what would be the course
of his colleagues there? The course of those high-minded and
honorable men there toward him, would be similar to that he had
taken in regard to them.
"Mr. CLAY. Mr. President, did I say one word about the
colleagues of the gentleman? I said there was a cabal formed for
the purpose of breaking down the present cabinet, and that that
cabal did not number a corporal's guard; but I did not say who
that cabal was, and do not mean to be interrogated. Any member
on this floor has a right to ask me if I alluded to him; but
nobody else has. I spoke of rumor only.
"Mr. ARCHER said a few words, but he was not heard distinctly
enough to be reported.
"Mr. CLAY. I said no such thing. I said there was a rumor--that
public fame had stated that there was a cabal formed for the
purpose of removing the cabinet, and I ask the gentleman if he
has not heard of that rumor?
"Mr. ARCHER, after some remarks too low to be heard in the
gallery, said it was not the words the gentleman had quoted
to which he referred. It was the remark of the gentleman that
there was a low and infamous cabal--a vile kitchen cabinet--and
the gentleman knew that to his view there could not be a more
odious phrase used than kitchen cabinet--and that it was these
expressions that he wished an explanation of.
"Mr. BERRIEN said it was the concurrent opinion of all the
senators around him, that the senator from Kentucky had spoken
of the cabal as a rumor, and as not coming within his own
knowledge. He hoped the senator would understand him in rising
to make this explanation.
"Mr. ARCHER said he was glad to hear the disclaimer made by the
gentleman from Georgia, and he would therefore sit down, under
the conviction that the gentleman from Kentucky had made no such
blow at his colleagues of the other House, as he had supposed."
Mr. Clay could not disclaim for the Virginia members of the
House--that is to say, for all those members. Rumor was too loud
with respect to some of them to allow him to do that. He rested upon
the rumor; and public opinion justified him in doing so. He named
no one, nor was it necessary. They soon named themselves by the
virulence with which they attacked him.
The vote was taken on the bill over again, as required by the
constitution, and so far from receiving a two-thirds vote, it barely
escaped defeat by a simple majority. The vote was 24 to 24; and the
yeas and nays were:
"YEAS--Messrs. Barrow, Bates, Bayard, Berrien, Choate, Clay
of Kentucky, Dixon, Evans, Graham, Henderson, Huntington,
Kerr, Mangum, Merrick, Miller, Morehead, Porter, Prentiss,
Preston, Simmons, Smith of Indiana, Southard, Tallmadge, White,
Woodbridge.
"NAYS--Messrs. Allen, Archer, Benton, Buchanan, Calhoun, Clay
of Alabama, Clayton, Cuthbert, Fulton, King, Linn, McRoberts,
Mouton, Nicholson, Pierce, Rives, Sevier, Sturgeon, Tappan,
Walker, Williams, Woodbury, Wright, Young."
The rejection of the bank bill gave great vexation to one side, and
equal exultation to the other. Hisses resounded from the galleries
of the Senate: the President was outraged in his house, in the
night, by the language and conduct of a disorderly crowd assembled
about it. Mr. Woodbury moved an inquiry into the extent of these two
disturbances, and their authors; and a committee was proposed to be
charged with the inquiry: but the perpetrators were found to be of
too low an order to be pursued, and the proceeding was dropped. Some
manifestations of joy or sorrow took place, however, by actors of
high order, and went into the parliamentary debates. Some senators
deemed it proper to make a complimentary visit to Mr. Tyler, on the
night of the reception of the veto message, and to manifest their
satisfaction at the service which he had rendered in arresting the
bank charter; and it so happened that this complimentary visit took
place on the same night on which the President's house had been
beset and outraged. It was doubtless a very consolatory compliment
to the President, then sorely assailed by his late whig friends;
and very proper on the part of those who paid it, though there were
senators who declined to join in it--among others, the writer of
this View, though sharing the exultation of his party. On the other
hand the chagrin of the whig party was profound, and especially that
of Mr. Clay, its chief--too frank and impetuous to restrain his
feelings, and often giving vent to them--generally bitterly, but
sometimes playfully. An occasion for a display of the latter kind
was found in the occasion of this complimentary visit of democratic
senators to the President, and in the offering of Mr. Woodbury's
resolution of inquiry into the disturbances; and he amusingly
availed himself of it in a brief speech, of which some extracts are
here given:
"An honorable senator from New Hampshire [Mr. WOODBURY] proposed
some days ago a resolution of inquiry into certain disturbances
which are said to have occurred at the presidential mansion on
the night of the memorable 16th of August last. If any such
proceedings did occur, they were certainly very wrong and highly
culpable. The chief magistrate, whoever he may be, should be
treated by every good citizen with all becoming respect, if not
for his personal character, on account of the exalted office
he holds for and from the people. And I will here say, that I
read with great pleasure the acts and resolutions of an early
meeting, promptly held by the orderly and respectable citizens
of this metropolis, in reference to, and in condemnation of,
those disturbances. But, if the resolution had been adopted, I
had intended to move for the appointment of a select committee,
and that the honorable senator from New Hampshire himself should
be placed at the head of it, with a majority of his friends. And
will tell you why, Mr. President. I did hear that about eight or
nine o'clock on that same night of the famous 16th of August,
there was an irruption on the President's house of the whole
loco foco party in Congress; and I did not know but that the
alleged disorders might have grown out of or had some connection
with that fact. I understand that the whole party were there.
No spectacle, I am sure, could have been more supremely
amusing and ridiculous. If I could have been in a position in
which, without being seen, I could have witnessed that most
extraordinary reunion, I should have had an enjoyment which no
dramatic performance could possibly communicate. I think that
I can now see the principal _dramatis personæ_ who figured in
the scene. There stood the grave and distinguished senator from
South Carolina--
["Mr. CALHOUN here instantly rose, and earnestly insisted on
explaining; but Mr. CLAY refused to be interrupted or to yield
the floor.]
"Mr. CLAY. There, I say, I can imagine stood the senator from
South Carolina--tall, careworn, with furrowed brow, haggard, and
intensely gazing, looking as if he were dissecting the last and
newest abstraction which sprung from metaphysician's brain, and
muttering to himself, in half-uttered sounds, 'This is indeed
a real crisis!' Then there was the senator from Alabama [Mr.
KING], standing upright and gracefully, as if he were ready to
settle in the most authoritative manner any question of order,
or of etiquette, that might possibly arise between the high
assembled parties on that new and unprecedented occasion. Not
far off stood the honorable senators from Arkansas and from
Missouri [Mr. SEVIER and Mr. BENTON], the latter looking at the
senator from South Carolina, with an indignant curl on his lip
and scorn in his eye, and pointing his finger with contempt
towards that senator [Mr. CALHOUN], whilst he said, or rather
seemed to say, 'He call himself a statesman! why, he has never
even produced a decent humbug!'
["Mr. BENTON. The senator from Missouri was not there."]
Mr. Clay had doubtless been informed that the senator from Missouri
was one of the senatorial procession that night, and the readiness
with which he gave his remarks an imaginative turn with respect to
him, and the facility with which he went on with his scene, were
instances of that versatility of genius, and presence of mind, of
which his parliamentary life was so full, and which generally gave
him the advantage in sharp encounters. Though refusing to permit
explanations from Mr. Calhoun, he readily accepted the correction
from Mr. Benton--(probably because neither Mr. Benton, nor his
immediate friends, were suspected of any attempt to alienate Mr.
Tyler from his whig friends)--and continued his remarks, with great
apparent good humor, and certainly to the amusement of all except
the immediate objects of his attention.
"Mr. CLAY. I stand corrected; I was only imagining what you
would have said if you had been there. Then there stood the
senator from Georgia [Mr. CUTHBERT], conning over in his mind
on what point he should make his next attack upon the senator
from Kentucky. On yonder ottoman reclined the other senator
from Missouri on my left [Mr. LINN], indulging, with smiles
on his face, in pleasing meditations on the rise, growth, and
future power of his new colony of Oregon. The honorable senator
from Pennsylvania [Mr. BUCHANAN], I presume, stood forward as
spokesman for his whole party; and, although I cannot pretend to
imitate his well-known eloquence, I beg leave to make an humble
essay towards what I presume to have been the kind of speech
delivered by him on that august occasion:
"May it please your Excellency: A number of your present
political friends, late your political opponents, in company
with myself, have come to deposit at your Excellency's feet the
evidences of our loyalty and devotion; and they have done me the
honor to make me the organ of their sentiments and feelings.
We are here more particularly to present to your Excellency
our grateful and most cordial congratulations on your rescue
of the country from a flagrant and alarming violation of the
constitution, by the creation of a Bank of the United States;
and also our profound acknowledgments for the veto, by which
you have illustrated the wisdom of your administration, and so
greatly honored yourself. And we would dwell particularly on
the unanswerable reasons and cogent arguments with which the
notification of the act to the legislature had been accompanied.
We had been, ourselves, struggling for days and weeks to arrest
the passage of the bill, and to prevent the creation of the
monster to which it gives birth. We had expended all our logic,
exerted all our ability, employed all our eloquence; but in
spite of all our utmost efforts, the friends of your Excellency
in the Senate and House of Representatives proved too strong for
us. And we have now come most heartily to thank your Excellency,
that you have accomplished for us that against your friends,
which we, with our most strenuous exertions, were unable to
achieve."
After this pleasant impersonation of the Pennsylvania senator, Mr.
Clay went on with his own remarks.
"I hope the senator will view with indulgence this effort to
represent him, although I am but too sensible how far it falls
short of the merits of the original. At all events he will
feel that there is not a greater error than was committed by
the stenographer of the Intelligencer the other day, when he
put into my mouth a part of the honorable senator's speech. I
hope the honorable senators on the other side of the chamber
will pardon me for having conceived it possible that, amidst
the popping of champagne, the intoxication of their joy, the
ecstasy of their glorification, they might have been the parties
who created a disturbance, of which they never could have been
guilty had they waited for their '_sober second thoughts_.'
I have no doubt the very learned ex-Secretary of the Treasury,
who conducted that department with such distinguished ability,
and such happy results to the country, and who now has such a
profound abhorrence of all the taxes on tea and coffee, though,
in his own official reports, he so distinctly recommended them,
would, if appointed chairman of the committee, have conducted
the investigation with that industry which so eminently
distinguishes him; and would have favored the Senate with a
report, marked with all his accustomed precision and ability,
and with the most perfect lucid clearness."
Mr. Buchanan, who had been made the principal figure in Mr. Clay's
imaginary scene, took his satisfaction on the spot, and balanced the
account by the description of another night scene, at the east end
of the avenue, not entirely imaginary if Dame Rumor may be credited
on one side of the question, as well as on the other. He said:
"The honorable senator has, with great power of humor, and much
felicity of description, drawn for us a picture of the scene
which he supposes to have been presented at the President's
house on the ever-memorable evening of the veto. It was a happy
effort; but, unfortunately, it was but a fancy sketch--at least
so far as I am concerned. I was not there at all upon the
occasion. But, I ask, what scenes were enacted on that eventful
night at this end of the avenue? The senator would have no cause
to complain if I should attempt, in humble imitation of him,
to present a picture, true to the life, of the proceedings of
himself and his friends. Amidst the dark and lowering clouds of
that never-to-be-forgotten night, a caucus assembled in one of
the apartments of this gloomy building, and sat in melancholy
conclave, deploring the unhappy fate of the whig party. Some
rose, and advocated vengeance; 'their voice was still for war.'
Others, more moderate, sought to repress the ardent zeal of
their fiery compatriots, and advised to peace and prudence.
It was finally concluded that, instead of making open war
upon Captain Tyler, they should resort to stratagem, and, in
the elegant language of one of their number, that they should
endeavor 'to head' him. The question was earnestly debated by
what means they could best accomplish this purpose; and it was
resolved to try the effect of the 'Fiscality' now before us.
Unfortunately for the success of the scheme, 'Captain Tyler' was
forewarned and forearmed, by means of a private and confidential
letter, addressed by mistake to a Virginia coffee-house. It is
by means like this that 'enterprises of great pith and moment'
often fail. But so desperately intent are the whig party still
on the creation of a bank, that one of my friends on this side
of the House told me that a bank they would have, though its
exchanges should be made in bacon hams, and its currency be
small patatoes."
Other senators took the imaginary scene, in which they had been
made to act parts, in perfect good temper; and thus the debate on
the first Fiscal Bank charter was brought to a conclusion with more
amicability than it had been conducted with.
In the course of the consideration of this bill in the Senate, a
vote took place which showed to what degree the belief of corrupt
practices between the old bank and members of Congress had taken
place. A motion was made by Mr. Walker to amend the Fiscal Bank bill
so as to prevent any member of Congress from borrowing money from
that institution. The motion was resisted by Mr. Clay, and supported
by democratic senators on the grounds of the corruptions already
practised, and of which repetitions might be expected. Mr. Pierce,
of New Hampshire, spoke most fully in favor of the motion, and said:
"It was idle--if it were not offensive, he would say absurd--for
gentlemen to discourse here upon the _incorruptibility_ of
members of Congress. They were like other men--and no better,
he believed no worse. They were subject to like passions,
influenced by like motives, and capable of being reached by
similar _appliances_. History affirmed it. The experience of
past years afforded humiliating evidence of the fact. Were
we wiser than our fathers? Wiser than the most sagacious and
patriotic assemblage of men that the world ever saw? Wiser
than the framers of the constitution? What protection did they
provide for the country against the _corruptibility_ of members
of Congress? Why, that no member should hold any office, however
humble, which should be created, or the emoluments of which
should be increased, during his term of service. How could
the influence of a petty office be compared with that of the
large _bank accommodations_ which had been granted and would be
granted again? And yet they were to be told, that in proposing
this guard for the whole people, they were fixing an ignominious
brand upon themselves and their associates. It seemed to him,
that such remarks could hardly be serious; but whether sincere
or otherwise, they were not legislating for themselves--not
legislating for _individuals_--and he felt no apprehension
that the mass, whose rights and interests were involved, would
consider themselves aggrieved by such a _brand_.
"The senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. BUCHANAN] while pressing
his unanswerable argument in favor of the provision, remarked,
that should this bill become a law, no member of Congress
'having a proper sense of delicacy and honor,' with the
question of _repeal_ before him, could accept a loan from the
Bank. That question of 'delicacy and honor' was one to which
he (Mr. P.) did not choose now to address himself. He would,
however, be guided by the light of experience, and he would
take leave to say, that that light made the path before him,
upon this proposition, perfectly luminous. By no vote of his
should a provision be stricken from this bill, the omission
of which would tend to establish a corrupt and corrupting
influence--secret and intangible--in the very bosom of the two
Houses whose province and duty it would be to pass upon that
great question of _repeal_. What had taken place was liable to
occur again. Those who were now here and those who would succeed
to their places, were not more virtuous, not more secure from
the approach of venality, not more elevated above the influence
of _certain appliances_, than their predecessors. Well, what did
history teach in relation to the course of members of Congress
during that most extraordinary struggle between the Bank and the
people for supremacy, which convulsed the whole continent from
1831 to 1834?
"He rose chiefly to advert to that page of history, and whether
noticed here or not, it would be noticed by his constituents,
who, with their children, had an infinitely higher stake in this
absorbing question than members of Congress, politicians, or
bankers.
"He read from the bank report presented to the Senate in
1834, by the present President of the United States, 'Senate
Documents, second session, twenty-third Congress,' p. 320.
From that document it appeared that in 1831 there was loaned
to fifty-nine members of Congress, the sum of three hundred
and twenty-two thousand one hundred and ninety-nine dollars.
In 1832, the year when the bank charter was arrested by the
veto of that stern old man who occupied the house and hearts
of his countrymen, there was loaned to fifty-four members of
Congress, the sum of four hundred and seventy-eight thousand and
sixty-nine dollars. In 1833, the memorable panic year, there was
loaned to fifty-eight members, three hundred and seventy-four
thousand seven hundred and sixty-six dollars. In 1834, hope
began to decline with the Bank, and so, also, did its line of
discounts to members of Congress; but even in that year the loan
to fifty-two members amounted to two hundred and thirty-eight
thousand five hundred and eighty-six dollars.
"Thus in four years of unparalleled political excitement,
growing out of a struggle with the people for the mastery,
did that institution grant accommodations to two hundred and
twenty-three of the people's representatives, amounting to the
vast sum of one million four hundred and thirteen thousand six
hundred and twenty dollars. He presented no argument on these
facts. He would regard it not merely as supererogation, but an
insult to the intelligence of his countrymen. A tribunal of
higher authority than the executive and Congress combined, would
pass upon the question of 'delicacy and honor,' started by the
senator from Pennsylvania, and it would also decide whether in
the bank to loan was dangerous or otherwise. He indulged no
fears as to the decision of the tribunal in the last resort--the
sovereign people."
Mr. Clay remarked that the greater part of these loans were made
to members opposed to the bank. Mr. Buchanan answered, no doubt of
that. A significant smile went through the chamber, with inquiries
whether any one had remained opposed? The yeas and nays were called
upon the question--and it was carried; the two Virginia senators,
Messrs. Archer and Rives, and Mr. Preston, a Virginian by birth,
voting with the democracy, and making the vote 25 yeas to 24 nays.
The yeas were: Messrs. Allen, Archer, Benton, Buchanan, Calhoun,
Clay of Alabama, Cuthbert, Fulton, King, Linn, McRoberts, Mouton,
Nicholson, Pierce, Preston, Rives, Sevier, Smith of Connecticut,
Sturgeon, Tappan, Walker, Williams, Woodbury, Wright and Young. The
nays were: Messrs. Barrow, Bates, Berrien, Choate, Clay of Kentucky,
Clayton, Dixon, Evans, Graham, Henderson, Huntingdon, Leeds Kerr,
Mangum, Merrick, Miller, Morehead, Phelps, Porter, Simmons, Smith
of Indiana, Southard, Tallmadge, White, Woodbridge. This vote,
after the grounds on which the question was put, was considered an
explicit senatorial condemnation of the bank for corrupt practices
with members of Congress.
CHAPTER LXXXI.
SECOND FISCAL AGENT: BILL PRESENTED: PASSED: DISAPPROVED BY THE
PRESIDENT.
This second attempt at a fiscal bill has two histories--one public
and ostensible--the other secret and real: and it is proper to write
them both, for their own sakes, and also to show in what manner the
government is worked. The public history will be given first, and
will be given exclusively from a public source--the debates of
Congress. We begin with it as it begins there--an extemporaneous
graft upon a neglected bill lying on the table of the House of
Representatives. Early in the session a bill had been brought in
from a select committee on the "currency," which had not been
noticed from the time of its introduction. It seemed destined to
sleep undisturbed upon the table to the end of the session, and
then to expire quietly upon lapse of time. Soon after the rejection
of the first fiscal under the qualified veto of the President,
Mr. Sergeant of Pennsylvania moved the House (when in that state
which is called Committee of the Whole) to take up this bill for
consideration: which was done as moved. Mr. Sergeant then stated
that, his intention was to move to amend that bill by striking out
the whole of it after the enacting clause, and inserting a new bill,
which he would move to have printed. Several members asked for the
reading of the new bill, or a statement of its provisions; and Mr.
Sergeant, in compliance with these requests, stood up and said:
"That, as several inquiries had been made of him with regard to
this bill, he would now proceed to make a short statement, to
show in what respects it differed from that recently before this
House. He would say, first, that there were two or three verbal
errors in this bill, and there were words, in two or three
places, which he thought had better have been left out, and
which were intended to have been omitted by the committee. There
were several gentlemen in the present Congress who entertained
extreme hostility to the word 'bank,' and, as far as he was
concerned, he felt every disposition to indulge their feelings;
and he had therefore endeavored throughout this bill to avoid
using the word 'bank.' If that word anywhere remained as
applicable to the being it was proposed to create by this law,
let it go out--let it go out. Now the word 'corporation' sounded
well, and he was glad to perceive it gave pleasure to the House.
At all events, they had a new _word_ to fight against. Now the
difference between this bill and that which passed this House
some days ago, would be seen by comparison. The present differed
from the other principally in three or four particulars, and
there were some other parts of the bill which varied, in minor
particulars, from that which had been before the House a few
days ago. Those differences gentlemen would have no difficulty
in discovering and understanding when the bill should have
been printed. He would now proceed to answer the inquiries of
gentlemen in reference to this bill. Mr. S. then stated the
following as the substantial points of difference between the
two bills:
"1. The capital in the former bill was thirty millions, with
power to extend it to fifty millions. In this bill twenty-one
millions, with power to extend it to thirty-five millions. 2.
The former bill provided for offices of discount and deposit.
In this there are to be agencies only. 3. The dealings of the
corporation are to be confined to buying and selling foreign
bills of exchange, including bills drawn in one State or
territory, and payable in another. There are to be no discounts.
4. The title of the corporation is changed."
This was Friday, the 20th of August. The next day--the bill offered
in amendment by Mr. Sergeant having been printed and the House
gone into committee--that member moved that all debate upon it in
committee of the whole should cease at 4 o'clock that afternoon,
and then proceed to vote upon the amendments which might be
offered, and report those agreed upon to the House. And having
moved this in writing, he immediately moved the previous question
upon it. This was sharp practice, and as new as sharp. It was then
past 12 o'clock. Such rapidity of proceeding was a mockery upon
legislation, and to expose it as such, Mr. Roosevelt of New York
moved to amend the time by substituting, instanter, for 4 o'clock,
remarking that they might as well have no time for discussion as
the time designated. Several members expressing themselves to
the same effect, Mr. Sergeant extended the time to 4 o'clock on
Monday evening. The brevity of the time was still considered by
the minority, and justly, as a mockery upon legislation; and their
opinions to that effect were freely expressed. Mr. Cave Johnson
asked to be excused from voting on Mr. Sergeant's resolution, giving
for the reason that the amendment was a new bill just laid upon the
table of members, and that it would be impossible for them to act
understandingly upon it in the short time proposed. Mr. Charles
Brown of Pennsylvania also asked to be excused from voting, saying
that the amendment was a bill of thirty-eight printed pages--that it
had only been laid upon their tables ten minutes when the motion to
close the debate at 4 o'clock was made--and that it was impossible
to act upon it with the care and consideration due to a legislative
act, and to one of this momentous importance, and which was to
create a great fiscal corporation with vast privileges, and an
exclusive charter for twenty years. Mr. Rhett of South Carolina
asked to be in like manner excused, reducing his reasons to writing,
in the form of a protest. Thus:
"1. Because the rule by which the resolution is proposed is
a violation of the spirit of the Constitution of the United
States, which declares that the freedom of speech and of the
press shall not be abridged by any law of Congress. 2. Because
it destroys the character of this body as a deliberative
assembly: a _right_ to deliberate and discuss measures being
no longer in Congress, but with the majority only. 3. Because
it is a violation of the rights of the people of the United
States, through their representatives, inherited from their
ancestors, and enjoyed and practised time immemorial, to speak
to the taxes imposed on them, when taxes are imposed. 4. Because
by the said rule, a bill may be taken up in Committee of the
Whole, be immediately reported to the House, and, by the aid of
the previous question, be passed into a law, without one word of
debate being permitted or uttered. 5. Because free discussion of
the laws by which the people are governed, is not only essential
to right legislation, but is necessary to the preservation of
the constitution, and the liberties of the people; and to fear
or supress it is the characteristic of tyrannies and tyrants
only. 6. Because the measure proposed to be forced through
the House within less than two days' consideration is one
which deeply affects the integrity of the constitution and the
liberties of the people; and to pass it with haste, and without
due deliberation, would evince a contemptuous disregard of
either, and may be a fatal violation of both."
Besides all other objections to this rapid legislation, it was
a virtual violation of the rules of the House, made under the
constitution, to prevent hasty and inconsiderate, or intemperate
action; and which requires a bill to be read three times, each time
on a different day, and to be voted upon each time. Technically an
amendment, though an entire new bill, is not a bill, and therefore,
is not subject to these three readings and votings: substantially
and truly, such an amendment is a bill; and the reason of the rule
would require it to be treated as such.
Other members asked to be excused from voting; but all being denied
that request by an inexorable majority, Mr. Pickens of South
Carolina stood up and said: "It is now manifest that the House does
not intend to excuse any member from voting. And as enough has been
done to call public attention to the odious resolution proposed to
be adopted, our object will have been attained: and I respectfully
suggest to our friends to go no further in this proceeding!" Cries
of "agreed! agreed!" responded to this appeal; and the motion of Mr.
Sergeant was adopted. He, himself, then spoke an hour in support
of the new bill--one hour of the brief time which was allowed for
discussion. Mr. Wise occupied the remainder of the evening against
the bill. On Monday, on resuming its consideration, Mr. Turney
of Tennessee moved to strike out the enacting clause--which, if
done, would put an end to the bill. The motion failed. Some heated
discussion took place, which could hardly be called a debate on the
bill; but came near enough to it to detect its fraudulent character.
It was the old defunct Bank of the United States, in disguise, to
come to life again in it. That used-up concern was then in the hands
of justice, hourly sued upon its notes, and the contents collected
upon execution; and insolvency admitted. It could not be named in
any charter: no reference could be made to it by name. But there
was a provision in the amended bill to permit it to slip into full
life, and take the whole benefit of the new charter. Corporations
were to be allowed to subscribe for the stock: under that provision
she could take all the stock--and be herself again. This, and other
fraudulent provisions were detected: but the clock struck four! and
the vote was taken, and the bill passed--125 to 94. The title of
the original bill was then amended to conform to its new character;
and, on the motion of Mr. Sergeant was made to read in this wise:
"_An act to provide for the better collection, safe keeping, and
disbursement of the public revenue, by means of a corporation to
be styled the Fiscal Corporation of the United States._" Peals of
laughter saluted the annunciation of this title; and when it was
carried to the Senate, as it immediately was, for the concurrence of
that body, and its strange title was read out, ridicule was already
lying in wait for it; and, under the mask of ridicule, an attack was
made upon its real character, as the resuscitation of Mr. Biddle's
bank: and Mr. Benton exclaimed--
"Heavens what a name! long as the moral law--half sub-treasury,
and half national bank--and all fraudulent and deceptive, to
conceal what it is; and entirely too long. The name is too
long. People will never stand it. They cannot go through all
that. We must have something shorter--something that will do for
every day use. Corporosity! that would be a great abridgment;
but it is still too long. It is five syllables, and people
will not go above two syllables, or three at most, and often
hang at one, in names which have to be incontinently repeated.
They are all economical at that, let them be as extravagant as
they may be in spending their money. They will not spend their
breath upon long names which have to be repeated every day.
They must have something short and pointed; and, if you don't
give it to them, they will make it for themselves. The defunct
Fiscal Bank was rapidly taking the title of fiscality; and, by
alliteration, rascality; and if it had lived, would soon have
been compendiously and emphatically designated by some brief and
significant title. The Fiscal Corporation cannot expect to have
better luck. It must undergo the fate of all great men and of
all great measures, overburdened with titles--it must submit to
a short name. There is much virtue in a name; and the poets tell
us there are many on whose conception Phoebus never smiled,
and at whose birth no muse, or grace, was present. In that
predicament would seem to be this intrusive corporosity, which
we have received from the other House, and sent to our young
committee, and which has mutation of title without alteration
of substance, and without accession of euphony, or addition of
sense. Some say a name is nothing--that a rose by any other
name would smell as sweet. So it will; and a thorn by any other
name would stick as deep. And so of these fiscals, whether to
be called banks or corporations. They will still be the same
thing--a thorn in our side--but a short name they must have.
This corporosity must retrench its extravagance of title.
"I go for short names, and will give reasons for it. The people
will have short names, although they may spoil a fine one; and
I will give you an instance. There was a most beautiful young
lady in New Orleans some years ago, as there always has been,
and still are many such. She was a _Creole_, that is to say,
born in this country, of parents from Europe. A gentleman who
was building a superb steamboat, took it into his head to honor
this young lady, by connecting her name with his vessel; so he
bestowed upon it the captivating designation of LA BELLE CREOLE.
This fine name was painted in golden letters on the sides of his
vessel; and away she went, with three hundred horse power, to
Kentucky and Ohio. The vessel was beautiful, and the name was
beautiful, and the lady was beautiful; but all the beauty on
earth could not save the name from the catastrophe to which all
long titles are subjected. It was immediately abbreviated, and,
in the abbreviation, sadly deteriorated. At first, they called
her the _bell_--not the French _belle_, which signifies fine
or beautiful--but the plain English _bell_, which in the Holy
Scriptures, was defined to be a tinkling cymbal. This was bad
enough; but worse was coming. It so happens that the vernacular
pronunciation of _creole_, in the Kentucky waters, is cre-owl;
so they began to call this beautiful boat the _cre-owl_! but
things did not stop here. It was too extravagant to employ two
syllables when one would answer as well, and be so much more
economical; so the first half of the name was dropped, and
the last retained; and thus _La Belle Creole_--the beautiful
creole--sailed up and down the Mississippi all her life by the
name, style, title, and description of, THE OWL! (Roars of
laughing in the Senate, with exclamations from several, that it
was a good name for a bank--that there was an Owl-Creek Bank in
Ohio once, now dead and insolvent, but, in its day, as good as
the best.)
"Mr. B. continued. I do not know whether owl will do for this
child of long name, and many fathers; but we must have a name,
and must continue trying till we get one. Let us hunt far and
wide. Let us have recourse to the most renowned Æsop and his
fables, and to that one of his fables which teaches us how an
old black cat succeeded in getting at the rats again after
having eaten up too many of them, and become too well known,
under her proper form, to catch any more. She rolled herself
over in a meal tub--converted her black skin into white--and
walked forth among the rats as a new and innocent animal that
they had never seen before. All were charmed to see her! but a
quick application of teeth and claws to the throats and bellies
of the rats, let them see that it was their old acquaintance,
the black cat; and that whitening the skin did not alter the
instincts of the animal, nor blunt the points of its teeth and
claws. The rats, after that, called her the meal-tub cat, and
the mealy cat. May we not call this corporosity the meal-tub
bank? A cattish name would certainly suit it in one particular;
for, like a cat, it has many lives, and a cat, you know, must
be killed nine times before it will die; so say the traditions
of the nursery; and of all histories the traditions of children
are the most veracious. They teach us that cats have nine lives.
So of this bank. It has been killed several times, but here it
is still, scratching, biting, and clawing. Jackson killed it in
1832; Tyler killed it last week. But this is only a beginning.
Seven times more the _Fates_ must cut the thread of its hydra
life before it will yield up the ghost.
"The meal tub! No insignificant, or vulgar name. It lives in
history, and connects its fame with kings and statesmen. We all
know the Stuarts of England--an honest and bigoted race in the
beginning, but always unfortunate in the end. The second Charles
was beset by plots and cabals. There were many attempts, or
supposed attempts to kill him; many plots against him, and some
very ridiculous; among the rest one which goes by the name of
the meal-tub plot; because the papers which discovered it were
found in the meal-tub where the conspirators, or their enemies,
had hid them.
"Sir, I have given you a good deal of meal this morning; but you
must take more yet. It is a _fruitful_ theme, and may give us a
good name before we are done with it. I have a reminiscence, as
the novel writers say, and I will tell it. When a small boy, I
went to school in a Scotch Irish neighborhood, and learnt many
words and phrases which I have not met with since, but which
were words of great pith and power; among the rest shake-poke.
(Mr. ARCHER: I never heard that before.) Mr. BENTON: but you
have heard of poke. You know the adage: do not buy a pig in the
poke; that is to say, in the bag; for poke signifies bag, or
wallet, and is a phrase much used in the north of England, and
among the Scotch Irish in America. A pig is carried to market in
a poke, and if you buy it without taking it out first, you may
be 'taken in.' So corn is carried to a mill in a poke, and when
brought home, ground into meal, the meal remains in the poke, in
the houses of poor families, until it is used up. When the bag
is nearly empty, it is turned upside down, and shaken; and the
meal that comes out is called the shake-poke, that is to say,
the last shake of the bag. By an easy and natural metaphor, this
term is also applied to the last child that is born in a family;
especially if it is puny or a rickety concern. The last child,
like the last meal, is called a shake-poke; and may we not call
this _fiscalous corporation_ a shake-poke also, and for the same
reason? It is the last--the last at all events for the session!
it is the last meal in their bag--their shake-poke! and it is
certainly a rickety concern.
"I do not pretend to impose a name upon this bantling; that
is a privilege of paternity, or of sponsorship, and I stand
in neither relation to this babe. But a name of brevity--of
brevity and significance--it must have; and, if the fathers and
sponsors do not bestow it, the people will: for a long name is
abhorred and eschewed in all countries. Remember the fate of
John Barebone, the canting hypocrite in Cromwell's time. He
had a very good name, John Barebone; but the knave composed a
long verse, like Scripture, to sanctify himself with it, and
intituled himself thus:--'Praise God, Barebone, for if Christ
had not died for you, you would be damned, Barebone.' Now, this
was very sanctimonious; but it was too long--too much of a good
thing--and so the people cut it all off but the last two words,
and called the fellow '_damned Barebone_,' and nothing else but
damned Barebone, all his life after. So let this corporosity
beware: it may get itself damned before it is done with us, and
Tyler too."
The first proceeding in the Senate was to refer this bill to a
committee, and Mr. Clay's select committee would naturally present
itself as the one to which it would go: but he was too much
disgusted at the manner in which his own bill had been treated to be
willing to take any lead with respect to this second one; and, in
fact, had so expressed himself in the debate on the veto message.
A motion was made to refer it to another select committee, the
appointing of which would be in the President of the Senate--Mr.
Southard, of New Jersey. Mr. Southard, like Mr. Sergeant, was the
fast friend of the United States Bank, to be revived under this
bill; and like him conducted the bill to the best advantage for
that institution. Mr. Sergeant had sprung the bill, and rushed it
through, backed by the old bank majority, with a velocity which
distanced shame in the disregard of all parliamentary propriety and
all fair legislation. He had been the attorney of the bank for many
years, and seemed only intent upon its revivification--no matter
by what means. Mr. Southard, bound by the same friendship to the
bank, seemed to be animated by the same spirit, and determined to
use his power in the same way. He appointed exclusively the friends
of the bank, and mostly of young senators, freshly arrived in the
chamber. Mr. King, of Alabama, the often President of the Senate
_pro tempore_, and the approved expounder of the rules, was the
first--and very properly the first--to remark upon the formation of
this one-sided committee; and to bring it to the attention of the
Senate. He exposed it in pointed terms.
"Mr. KING observed, that in the organization of committees by
Congress, the practice had been heretofore invariable--the
usage uniform. The first business, on the meeting of each
House, after the selection of officers and organizing, was to
appoint the various standing committees. In designating those
to whom the various subjects to which it is proposed to call
the attention of Congress shall be referred, the practice
always has been to place a majority of the friends of the
administration on each committee. This is strictly correct,
in order to insure a favorable consideration of the various
measures which the administration may propose to submit to
their examination and decision. A majority, however, of the
friends of the administration, is all that has heretofore been
considered either necessary or proper to be placed on those
committees; and in every instance a minority of each committee
consists of members supposed to be adverse to the measures of
the dominant party. The propriety of such an arrangement cannot
fail to strike the mind of every senator. All measures should be
carefully examined; objections suggested; amendments proposed;
and every proposition rendered as perfect as practicable before
it is reported to the House for its action. This neither can,
nor will, be controverted. In the whole of his [Mr. KING's]
congressional experience, he did not know of a single instance
in which this rule had been departed from, until now. But there
has been a departure from this usage, sanctioned by justice
and undeviating practice, which had given to it the force and
obligation of law; and he [Mr. KING] felt it to be his duty to
call the attention of the Senate to this most objectionable
innovation. Yesterday a bill was reported from the House of
Representatives for the chartering of a fiscal corporation. It
was immediately taken up, read twice on the same day, and, on
the motion of the senator from Georgia, ordered to be referred
to a select committee. This bill embraced a subject of the
greatest importance, one more disputed upon constitutional
grounds, as well as upon the grounds of expediency, than any
other which has ever agitated this country. This bill, of such
vast importance, fraught with results of the greatest magnitude,
in which the whole country takes the liveliest interest, either
for or against its adoption, has been hurried through the other
House in a few days, almost without discussion, and, as he [Mr.
K.], conceived, in violation of the principles of parliamentary
law, following as it did, immediately on the heels of a similar
bill, which had, most fortunately for the country, received the
veto of the President, and ultimately rejected by the Senate.
The rules of the Senate forbade him to speak of the action of
the other House on this subject as he could wish. He regretted
that he was not at liberty to present their conduct plainly
to the people, to show to the country what it has to expect
from the dominant party here, and what kind of measures may be
expected from the mode of legislation which has been adopted.
The fiscal corporation bill has, however, come to us, and he
[Mr. KING] and his friends, much as they were opposed to its
introduction or passage, determined to give it a fair and open
opposition. No objection was made to the motion of the senator
from Georgia to send it to a select committee, and that that
committee should be appointed by the presiding officer. The
President of the Senate made the selection; but, to his [Mr.
K.'s] great surprise, on reading the names this morning in
one of the public papers, he found they were all members of
the dominant party: not one selected for this most important
committee belongs to the minority in this body opposed to the
bill. Why was it, he [Mr. KING] must be permitted to ask, that
the presiding officer had departed from a rule which, in all
the fluctuations of party, and in the highest times of party
excitement, had never before been departed from?
"There must have been a motive in thus departing from a course
sanctioned by time, and by every principle of propriety. It will
be for the presiding officer to state what that motive was. Mr.
King must be permitted to repeat, the more to impress it on the
minds of senators, that during more than twenty years he had
been in Congress, he had never known important committees to
be appointed, either standing or select, in which some member
of the then minority did not constitute a portion, until this
most extraordinary selection of a committee, to report on this
most important bill. Would it not [said Mr. KING] have been
prudent, as well as just, to have given to the minority a
fair opportunity of suggesting their objections in committee?
The friends of the measure would then be apprised of those
objections, and could prepare themselves to meet them. He [Mr.
KING] had not risen to make a motion, but merely to present this
extraordinary proceeding to the view of the Senate, and leave
it there; but, he believed, in justice to his friends, and to
stamp this proceeding with condemnation, he would move that two
additional members be added to the committee."
The President of the Senate, in answer to the remarks of Mr. King,
read a rule from Jefferson's Manual in which it is said that, a bill
must be committed to its friends to improve and perfect it, and
not to its enemies who would destroy it. And under this rule Mr.
Southard said he had appointed the committee. Mr. Benton then stood
up, and said:
"That is the _Lex Parliamentaria_ of England from which you
read, Mr. President, and is no part of our rules. It is English
authority--very good in the British Parliament, but not valid
in the American Senate. It is not in our rules--neither in the
rules of the House nor in those of the Senate; and is contrary
to the practice of both Houses--their settled practice for fifty
years. From the beginning of our government we have disregarded
it, and followed a rule much more consonant to decency and
justice, to public satisfaction, and to the results of fair
legislation, and that was, to commit our business to mixed
committees--committees consisting of friends and foes of the
measure, and of both political parties--always taking care that
the friends of the measure should be the majority; and, if it
was a political question, that the political party in power
should have the majority. This is our practice; and a wise and
good practice it is, containing all the good that there is in
the British rule, avoiding its harshness, and giving both sides
a chance to perfect or to understand a measure. The nature of
our government--its harmonious and successful action--requires
both parties to have a hand in conducting the public business,
both in the committees and the legislative halls; and this is
the first session at which committee business, or legislative
business, has been confined, or attempted to be confined, to one
political party. The clause which you read, Mr. President, I
have often read myself; not for the purpose of sending a measure
to a committee of exclusive friends, but to prevent it from
going to a committee of exclusive enemies--in fact to obtain for
it a mixed committee--such as the democracy has always given
when in power--such as it will again give when in power--and
such as is due to fair, decent, satisfactory, and harmonious
legislation."
Mr. Benton, after sustaining Mr. King in his view of the rules
and the practice, told him that he was deceived in his memory in
supposing there had never been a one-sided committee in the Senate
before: and remarked:
"That senator is very correct at all times; but he will not take
it amiss if I shall suggest to him that he is in error now--that
there has been one other occasion in which a one-sided committee
was employed--and that in a very important case--concerning
no less a power than Mr. Biddle's bank, and even Mr. Biddle
himself. I speak of the committee which was sent by this Senate
to examine the Bank of the United States in the summer of
1834, when charged with insolvency and criminality by General
Jackson--charges which time have proved to be true--and when
the whole committee were of one party, and that party opposed
to General Jackson, and friendly to the bank. And what became
then of the rule of British parliamentary law, which has just
been read? It had no application then, though it would have
cut off every member of the committee; for not one of them was
favorable to the inquiry, but the contrary; and the thing ended
as all expected. I mention this as an instance of a one-sided
committee, which the senator from Alabama has overlooked, and
which deserves to be particularly remembered on this occasion,
for a reason which I will mention; and which is, that both these
committees were appointed in the same case--for the same Bank of
the United States--one to whitewash it--which it did; the other
to smuggle it into existence under a charter in which it cannot
be named. And thus, whenever that bank is concerned, we have to
look out for tricks and frauds (to say no more), even on the
high floors of national legislation."
Mr. Buchanan animadverted with justice and severity upon the tyranny
with which the majority in the House of Representatives had forced
the bill through, and marked the fact that not a single democratic
member had succeeded in getting an opportunity to speak against
it. This was an unprecedented event in the history of parties in
America, or in England, and shows the length to which a bank party
would go in stifling the right of speech. In all great measures,
before or since, and in all countries possessing free institutions,
the majority has always allowed to the adversary the privilege of
speaking to the measures which were to be put upon them: here for
the first time it was denied; and the denial was marked at the
time, and carried at once into parliamentary history to receive the
reprobation due to it. This was the animadversion of Mr. Buchanan:
"The present bill to establish a fiscal corporation was hurried
through the House of Representatives with the celerity, and,
so far as the democracy was concerned, with the silence of
despotism. No democratic member had an opportunity of raising
his voice against it. Under new rules in existence there, the
majority had predetermined that it should pass that body within
two days from the commencement of the discussion. At first,
indeed, the determination was that it should pass the first day;
but this was felt to be too great an outrage; and the mover was
graciously pleased to extend the time one day longer. Whilst
the bill was in Committee of the Whole, it so happened that, in
the struggle for the floor, no democratic member succeeded in
obtaining it; and at the destined hour of four in the afternoon
of the second day, the committee rose, and all further debate
was arrested by the previous question. The voice of that great
party in this country to which I am proud to belong, was,
therefore, never heard through any of its representatives in the
House against this odious measure. Not even one brief hour, the
limit prescribed by the majority to each speaker, was granted to
any democratic member."
The bill went to the committee which had been appointed, without
the additional two members which Mr. King had suggested; and which
suggestion, not being taken up by the majority, was no further
pressed. Mr. Berrien, chairman of that committee, soon reported it
back to the Senate--without alteration; as had been foreseen. He
spoke two hours in its favor--concluding with the expression that
the President would give it his approval--founding that opinion
on the President's message at the commencement of the session--on
his veto message of the first fiscal bill--on the report of the
Secretary of the Treasury--and on this Secretary's subsequent
plan for a bank framed with the view to avoid his constitutional
objections. Mr. Clay declared his intention to vote for the bill,
not that it went as far as he could wish, but that it would go a
good distance--would furnish a sound national currency, and regulate
exchanges. Mr. Archer, who had voted against the first bank, and
who was constitutionally opposed to a national bank, made a speech
chiefly to justify his vote in favor of the present bill. It was
well known that no alteration would be permitted in the bill--that
it had been arranged out of doors, and was to stand as agreed
upon: but some senators determined to offer amendments, merely to
expose the character of the measure, to make attacks upon the most
vulnerable points; and to develope the spirit which conducted it. In
this sense Mr. Benton acted in presenting several amendments, deemed
proper in themselves, and which a foreknowledge of their fate would
not prevent him from offering. The whole idea of the institution
was, that it was to be a treasury bank; and hence the pertinacity
with which "fiscal," synonymous with treasury, was retained in all
the titles, and conformed to in all its provisions: and upon this
idea the offered amendments turned.
"Mr. BENTON said he had an amendment to offer, which the Senate
would presently see was of great importance. It was, to strike
out from the ninth line of the first section the word 'States.'
It was in that provision assigning seventy thousand shares to
individual companies, corporations, or _States_. This was a new
kind of stockholders: a new description of co-partners with
stockjobbers in a banking corporation. States had no right to be
seduced into such company; he would therefore move to have them
struck out: let the word "States" be taken out of that line. To
comprehend the full force and bearing of this amendment it would
be necessary to keep in view that the sixteenth section of this
charter designates the Fiscal Corporation the Treasury of the
United States. It expressly says that--
"'All public moneys in deposit in said corporation, or
standing on its books to the credit of the _Treasurer_,
shall be taken and deemed to be _in the Treasury of the
United States_, and all payments made by the Treasurer
shall be in checks drawn on said corporation.'
"Yes, sir! this _Fisc_ is to be the Treasury of the United
States; and the Treasury of the United States is to be converted
into a corporation, and not only forced into partnership with
individuals, companies, and corporations, but into joint stock
co-partnership with the States. The general government is to
appoint three directors, and the rest of the partners will
have the appointment of the other six. The corporators will
be two to one against the general government, and they will of
course have the control of the Treasury of this Union in their
hands. Now he was for sticking to the constitution, not only
in spirit and meaning, but to the letter; and the constitution
gives no authority to individuals, companies, corporations, and
States, to take the public Treasury of the Union out of the
hands of the general government. The general government alone,
and acting independently of any such control, is required by
the constitution to manage its own fiscal affairs. Here it
is proposed to retain only one-third of the control of this
Treasury in the hands of the general government--the other
two-thirds may fall exclusively into the hands of the States,
and thus the Treasury of the whole Union may be at the disposal
of such States as can contrive to possess themselves of the
two-thirds of the stock they are authorized to take. If it is
the object to let those States have the funds of the Treasury to
apply to their own use, the scheme is well contrived to attain
that end. He, however, was determined not to let that plan be
carried without letting the people know who were its supporters;
he should, therefore, demand the yeas and nays on his amendment."
"Mr. BERRIEN explained that the objection raised against the
sixteenth section was merely technical. The words did not convert
the bank into the United States Treasury; they merely provided for
a conformity with laws regulating the lodgment and withdrawal of
Treasury funds. The question was then taken on the amendment, which
was rejected as follows: Yeas--Messrs. Allen, Benton, Buchanan,
Clay of Alabama, King, Linn, McRoberts, Mouton, Nicholson, Pierce,
Sevier, Smith of Connecticut, Sturgeon, Tappan, Walker, Woodbury,
Wright, and Young--18. Nays--Messrs. Archer, Barrow, Bates, Berrien,
Choate, Clay of Kentucky, Clayton, Dixon, Evans, Graham, Henderson,
Huntington, Kerr, Mangum, Merrick, Miller, Morehead, Phelps, Porter,
Prentiss, Preston, Rives, Simmons, Smith of Indiana, Southard,
Tallmadge, White, and Woodbridge--28."
Mr. Benton then moved to strike out "corporations" from the
enumeration of persons and powers which should possess the faculty
of becoming stockholders in this institution, with the special view
of keeping out the Pennsylvania Bank of the United States, and whose
name could not be presented openly for a charter, or re-charter:
"The late United States Bank had means yet to keep a cohort
of lawyers, agents, cashiers, and directors, who would not
lose sight of the hint, and who were panting to plunge their
hands into Uncle Sam's pocket. There was nothing to prevent
the corporators of the late United States Bank becoming the
sole owners of these two-thirds of the stock in the new
Fiscality. The sixteenth fundamental rule of the eleventh
section is the point where we are to find the constitutionality
of this Fiscality. The little pet banks of every State may be
employed as agents. This is a tempting bait for every insolvent
institution in want of Treasury funds to strain every nerve and
resort to every possible scheme for possessing themselves of
the control of the funds of the United States. This object was
to defeat such machinations. On this amendment he would demand
the yeas and nays. The question was then taken on the amendment,
and decided in the negative as follows: Yeas--Messrs. Allen,
Benton, Buchanan, Calhoun, Clay of Alabama, Fulton, King, Linn,
McRoberts, Mouton, Nicholson, Pierce, Rives, Sevier, Smith of
Connecticut, Sturgeon, Tappan, Walker, Woodbury, Wright, and
Young--21. Nays--Messrs. Archer, Barrow, Bates, Berrien, Choate,
Clay of Kentucky, Clayton, Dixon, Evans, Graham, Henderson,
Huntington, Kerr, Mangum, Merrick, Miller, Morehead, Phelps,
Porter, Prentiss, Preston, Simmons, Smith of Indiana, Tallmadge,
White, and Woodbridge--26."
Mr. Rives objected to the exchange dealings which this fiscal
corporation was to engage in, as being discounts when the exchange
had some time to run. He referred to his former opinions, and
corrected a misapprehension of Mr. Berrien. He was opposed to
discounts in every form; while this bill authorizes discounts to any
amount on bills of exchange. He offered no amendment, but wished
to correct the misunderstanding of Mr. Berrien, who held that this
bill, in this particular, was identical with the amendment offered
to the first bill by Mr. Rives, and that it was in strict conformity
with the President's message.
"Mr. BENTON fully concurred with the senator from Virginia
[Mr. RIVES], that cashing bills of exchange was just as much
a discounting operation as discounting promissory notes; it
was, in fact, infinitely worse. It was the greatest absurdity
in the world, to suppose that the flimsy humbug of calling
the discounting of bills of exchange--gamblers' kites, and
race-horse bills of exchange--a 'dealing in exchanges' within
the meaning of the terms used in the President's veto message.
As if the President could be bamboozled by such a shallow
artifice. Only look at the operation under this bill. A needy
adventurer goes to one of these agencies, and offers his
promissory note with securities, in the old-fashioned way, but
is told it cannot be discounted--the law is against it. The
law, however, may be evaded if he put his note into another
shape, making one of his sureties the drawer, and making the
other, who lives beyond the State line, his drawee, in favor
of himself, as endorser; and in that shape the kite will be
_cashed_, deducting the interest and a per centage besides in
the shape of exchange. Here is discount added to usury; and is
not that worse than discounting promissory notes?"
The President had dwelt much upon "local discounts," confining the
meaning of that phrase to loans obtained on promissory notes. He did
not consider money obtained upon a bill of exchange as coming under
that idea--nor did it when it was an exchange of money--when it was
the giving of money in one place for money in another place. But
that true idea of a bill of exchange was greatly departed from when
the drawer of the bill had no money at the place drawn on, and drew
upon time, and depended upon getting funds there in time; or taking
up the bill with damages when it returned protested. Money obtained
that way was a discount obtained, and on far worse terms for the
borrower, and better for the bank, than on a fair promissory note:
and the rapacious banks forced their loans, as much as possible into
this channel. So that this fiscal bank was limited to do the very
thing it wished to do, and which was so profitable to itself and so
oppressive to the borrower. This, Mr. Tappan, of Ohio, showed in a
concise speech.
"Mr. TAPPAN said, when senators on the other side declare that
this bank bill is intended to withhold from the corporation
created by it the power of making loans and discounts, he felt
himself bound to believe that such was their honest construction
of it. He was, however, surprised that any man, in the slightest
degree acquainted with the banking business of the country, who
had read this bill, should suppose that, under its provisions,
the company incorporated by it would not have unlimited power to
loan their paper and to discount the paper of their customers.
The ninth fundamental article says, that 'the said corporation
shall not, directly or indirectly, deal or trade in any thing
except foreign bills of exchange, _including bills or drafts
drawn in one State or Territory and payable in another_.' This
bill, in this last clause, sanctioned a mode of discounting
paper, and making loans common in the Western country. He spoke
of a mode of doing business which he had full knowledge of, and
he asked senators, therefore, to look at it. A man who wants a
loan from a bank applies to the directors, and is told, we can
lend you the money, but we do not take notes for our loans--you
must give us a draft; but, says the applicant, I have no funds
any where to draw upon; no matter, say the bankers, if your
draft is not met, or expected to be met, because you have no
funds, that need make no difference; you may pay it here,
_with the exchange_, when the time it has to run is out; so
the borrower signs a draft or bill of exchange on somebody in
New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore, and pays the discount
for the time it has to run; when that time comes round, the
borrower pays into the bank the amount of his draft, with two,
four, six, or ten per cent., whatever the rate of exchange may
be, and the affair is settled, and he gets a renewal for sixty
days, by further paying the discount on the sum borrowed; and
if it is an accommodation loan, it it renewed from time to time
by paying the discount and exchange. Very few of the Western
banks, he believed, discounted notes; they found it much more
profitable to deal in exchange, as it is called; but this
dealing in exchange enables the banks to discount as much paper,
and to loan as much of their own notes, as the old-fashioned
mode of discounting; it is a difference in form merely, with
this advantage to the banks, that it enables them to get from
their customers ten or twelve per cent. on their loans, instead
of six, to which, in discounting notes, they are usually
restricted. How then, he asked, could senators say that this
bill did not give the power to make loans and discounts? He had
shown them how, under this law, both loans and discounts will be
made without limitation."
Mr. Benton then went on with offering his amendments, and offered
one requiring all the stockholders in this corporation Fisc (which
was to be the Treasury of the United States), to be citizens of the
United States, for the obvious reason of preventing the national
treasury from falling under the control of foreigners. M. Berrien
considered the amendment unnecessary, as there was already a
provision that none but citizens of the United States should take
the original stock; and the only effect of the provision would
be to lessen the value of the stock. Mr. Benton considered this
provision as a fraudulent contrivance to have the appearance of
excluding foreigners from being stockholders while not doing so.
The prohibition upon them as original subscribers was nothing, when
they were allowed to become stockholders by purchase. His amendment
was intended to make the charter what it fraudulently pretended
to be--a bank owned by American citizens. The word "original"
would be a fraud unless the prohibition was extended to assignees.
And he argued that the senator from Georgia (Mr. Berrien), had
admitted the design of selling to foreigners by saying that the
value of the stock would be diminished by excluding foreigners
from its purchase. He considered the answer of the senator double,
inconsistent, and contradictory. He first considered the amendment
unnecessary, as the charter already confined original subscriptions
to our own citizens; and then considered it would injure the price
of the stock to be so limited. That was a contradiction. The fact
was, he said, that this bill was to resurrect, by smuggling, the
old United States Bank, which was a British concern; and that the
effect would be to make the British the governors and masters of our
treasury: and he asked the yeas and nays on his motion, which was
granted, and they stood--19 to 26, and were: YEAS--Messrs. Allen,
Benton, Buchanan, Clay of Alabama, Cuthbert, Fulton, King, Linn,
McRoberts, Mouton, Nicholson, Pierce, Sevier, Sturgeon, Tappan,
Walker, Woodbury, Wright, and Young--19. NAYS--Messrs. Archer,
Barrow, Bates, Berrien, Clay of Kentucky, Clayton, Dixon, Evans,
Graham, Henderson, Huntington, Kerr, Mangum, Merrick, Miller,
Morehead, Phelps, Porter, Prentiss, Preston, Rives, Simmons, Smith
of Indiana, Tallmadge, White, and Woodbridge--26. Considering this
a vital question, and one on which no room should be left for the
majority to escape the responsibility of putting the United States
Treasury in the hands of foreigners--even alien enemies in time of
war, as well as rival commercial competitors in time of peace--Mr.
Benton moved the same prohibition in a different form. It was to
affix it to the eleventh fundamental rule of the eleventh section
of the bill, which clothes the corporation with power to make rules
to govern the assignment of stock: his amendment was to limit these
assignments to American citizens. That was different from his first
proposed amendment, which included both original subscribers and
assignees. The senator from Georgia objected to that amendment as
unnecessary, because it included a class already prohibited as well
as one that was not. Certainly it was unnecessary with respect to
one class, but necessary with respect to the other--necessary in
the estimation of all who were not willing to see the United States
Treasury owned and managed by foreigners. He wished now to hear what
the senator from Georgia could say against the proposed amendment
in this form. Mr. Berrien answered: "He hoped the amendment would
not prevail. The original subscribers would be citizens of the
United States. To debar them from transferring their stock, would
be to lessen the value of the stock, which they rendered valuable
by becoming the purchasers of it." Mr. Benton rejoined, that his
amendment did not propose to prevent the original subscribers from
selling their stock, or any assignee from selling; the only design
of the amendment was to limit all these sales to American citizens;
and that would be its only effect if adopted. And as to the second
objection, a second time given, that it would injure the value
of the stock, he said it was a strange argument, that the paltry
difference of value in shares to the stockholders should outweigh
the danger of confiding the Treasury of the United States to
foreigners--subjects of foreign potentates. He asked the yeas, which
were granted--and stood--21 to 27: the same as before, with the
addition of some senators who had come in. These several proposed
amendments, and the manner in which they were rejected, completed
the exposure of the design to resuscitate the defunct Bank of the
United States, just as it had been, with its foreign stockholders,
and extraordinary privileges. It was to be the old bank revived,
disguised, and smuggled in. It was to have the same capital as the
old one--thirty-five millions: for while it said the capital was to
be twenty-one millions, there was a clause enabling Congress to add
on fourteen millions--which it would do as soon as the bill passed.
Like the old bank, it was to have the United States for a partner,
owning seven millions of the stock. The stock was all to go to the
old Bank of the United States; for the subscriptions were to be made
with commissioners appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury--who,
it was known, would appoint the friends of the old bank; so that
the whole subscription would be in her hands; and a charter for
her fraudulently and deceptiously obtained. The title of the bill
was fraudulent, being limited to the management of the "_public_"
moneys, while the body of it conferred all the privileges known to
the three distinct kinds of banks:--1. Circulation. 2. Exchange. 3.
Discount and deposit--the discount being in the most oppressive and
usurious form on inland and mere neighborhood bills of exchange,
declared by the charter to be foreign bills for the mere purpose of
covering these local loans.
"Mr. WALKER moved an amendment, requiring that the bills in
which the Bank should deal should be drawn at short dates,
and on goods already actually shipped. It was negatived by
yeas and nays, as follows:--YEAS--Messrs. Allen, Benton,
Buchanan, Calhoun, Clay of Alabama, Fulton, King, Linn,
McRoberts, Mouton, Nicholson, Pierce, Rives, Sevier, Smith
of Connecticut, Sturgeon, Tappan, Walker, Woodbury, Wright,
and Young--21. NAYS--Messrs. Archer, Barrow, Bates, Berrien,
Choate, Clay of Kentucky, Clayton, Dixon, Evans, Graham,
Henderson, Huntington, Kerr, Mangum, Merrick, Miller, Morehead,
Phelps, Porter, Prentiss, Preston, Simmons, Smith of Indiana,
Southard, Tallmadge, White, and Woodbridge--27. Mr. ALLEN moved
an amendment to make the directors, in case of suspension,
personally liable for the debts of the bank. This was negatived
as follows: YEAS--Messrs. Allen, Benton, Buchanan, Clay of
Alabama, Cuthbert, Fulton, King, Linn, McRoberts, Mouton,
Nicholson, Pierce, Sevier, Smith of Connecticut, Sturgeon,
Tappan, Walker, Woodbury, Wright, and Young--20. NAYS--Messrs.
Archer, Barrow, Bates, Berrien, Choate, Clay of Kentucky,
Clayton, Dixon, Evans, Graham, Henderson, Huntington, Kerr,
Mangum, Merrick, Miller, Morehead, Phelps, Porter, Prentiss,
Preston, Rives, Simmons, Smith of Indiana, Southard, Tallmadge,
White, and Woodbridge--28."
The character of the bill having been shown by the amendments
offered and rejected, there was no need to offer any more, and the
democratic senators ceased opposition, that the vote might be taken
on the bill: it was so; and the bill was passed by the standing
majority. Concurred in by the Senate without alteration, it was
returned to the House, and thence referred to the President for
his approval, or disapproval. It was disapproved, and returned to
the House, with a message stating his objections to it; where it
gave rise to some violent speaking, more directed to the personal
conduct of the President than to the objections to the bill stated
in his message. In this debate Mr. Botts, of Virginia, was the
chief speaker on one side, inculpating the President: Mr. Gilmer
of Virginia, and Mr. Proffit of Indiana, on the other were the
chief respondents in his favor. The vote being taken there appeared
103 for the bill, 80 against it--which not being a majority of
two-thirds, the bill was rejected: and so ends the public and
ostensible history of the second attempt to establish a national
bank at this brief session under the guise, and disguise, of a
misnomer: and a long one at that.
The negative votes, when rejected on the final vote for want of
two-thirds of the House, were:
"Messrs. Archibald H. Arrington, Charles G. Atherton, Linn
Banks, Benjamin A. Bidlack, Linn Boyd, David P. Brewster, Aaron
V. Brown, Charles Brown, William O. Butler, Patrick C. Caldwell,
John Campbell, Reuben Chapman, James G. Clinton, Walter Coles,
Richard D. Davis, John B. Dawson, Ezra Dean, Andrew W. Doig, Ira
A. Eastman, John C. Edwards, Joseph Egbert, Charles G. Ferris,
John G. Floyd, Charles A. Floyd, Joseph Fornance, James Gerry,
Thomas W. Gilmer, William O. Goode, Amos Gustine, William A.
Harris, John Hastings, Samuel L. Hays, Isaac E. Holmes, George
W. Hopkins, Jacob Houck, jr., George S. Houston, Edmund W.
Hubard, Robert M. T. Hunter, Charles J. Ingersoll, William
W. Irwin, William Jack, Cave Johnson, John W. Jones, George
M. Keim, Andrew Kennedy, Dixon H. Lewis, Abraham McClellan,
Robert McClellan, James J. McKay, John McKeon, Francis Mallory,
Albert G. Marchand, John Thompson Mason, James Mathews, William
Medill, John Miller, Peter Newhard, William Parmenter, Samuel
Patridge, Wm. W. Payne, Arnold Plumer, George H. Proffit, John
Reynolds, R. Barnwell Rhett, Lewis Riggs, James Rogers, Tristram
Shaw, Benjamin G. Shields, John Snyder, Lewis Steenrod, George
Sweney, Hopkins L. Turney, John Van Buren, Aaron Ward, Harvey M.
Watterson, John B. Weller, John Westbrook, James W. Williams,
Henry A. Wise, Fernando Wood."
CHAPTER LXXXII.
SECRET HISTORY OF THE SECOND BILL FOR A FISCAL AGENT, CALLED FISCAL
CORPORATION: ITS ORIGIN WITH MR. TYLER: ITS PROGRESS THROUGH
CONGRESS UNDER HIS LEAD: ITS REJECTION UNDER HIS VETO.
Soon after the meeting of Congress in this extra session--in the
course of the first week of it--Mr. Gilmer, of Virginia, held a
conversation with a whig member of the House, in which he suggested
to him that "a couple of gentlemen of about their size," might
become important men in this country--leading men--and get the
control of the government. An explanation was requested--and
given. It was to withdraw Mr. Tyler from the whig party, and make
him the head of a third party, in which those who did it would
become chiefs, and have control in the administration. This was
the explanation; and the scheme was based, not upon any particular
circumstances, but upon a knowledge of Mr. Tyler's character and
antecedents: and upon a calculation that he would be dazzled with
the idea of being the head of a party, and let the government
fall into the hands of those who pleased him--his indolence,
and want of business habits disqualifying him for the labors of
administration. Democratic doctrines were to be the basis of the
new party, especially opposition to a national bank: but recruits
from all parties received. The whig member to whom this suggestion
for the third party was made, declined to have any thing to do with
it: nor was he further consulted. But his eyes were opened, and he
had to see; and he saw other whigs do what he would not. And he had
received a clue which led to the comprehension of things which he
did not see, and had got an insight that would make him observant.
But his lips were sealed under an injunction; and remained so, as
far as the public was concerned. I never heard him quoted for a
word on the subject; but either himself, or some one equally well
informed, must have given Mr. Clay exact information; otherwise he
could not have hit the nail on the head at every lick, as he did in
his replies to Mr. Rives and Mr. Archer in the debate on the first
veto message: as shown in the preceding chapter.
The movement went on: Mr. Tyler fell into it: the new party
germinated, microscopically small; but potent in the President's
veto power. A national bank was the touchstone; and that involved
a courtship with the democracy--a breach with the whigs. The
democracy rejoiced, and patted Mr. Tyler on the shoulder--even
those who despised the new party: for they deemed it fair to avail
themselves of a treachery of which they were not the authors; and
felt it to be a retributive justice to deprive the whigs of the
fruits of a victory which they had won by log-cabin, coonskin, and
hard cider tactics; and especially to effect the deprivation in
the person of one whom they had taken from the democratic camp,
and set up against his old friends--the more annoying to them
because he could tell of their supposed misdeeds when he was one
of them. To break their heads with such a stick had retribution
in it, as well as gratification: and Mr. Tyler was greatly
extolled. To the whigs, it was a galling and mortifying desertion,
and ruinous besides. A national bank was their life--the vital
principle--without which they could not live as a party--the
power which was to give them power: which was to beat down their
adversaries--uphold themselves--and give them the political and the
financial control of the Union. To lose it, was to lose the fruits
of the election, with the prospect of losing the party itself.
Indignation was their pervading feeling; but the stake was too great
to be given up in a passion; and policy required the temporizing
expedient of conciliation--the proud spirit of Mr. Clay finding
it hard to bend to it; but yielding a little at first. The breach
with the whigs was resolved on: how to effect it without too much
rudeness--without a violence which would show him an aggressor as
well as a deserter--was the difficulty; and indirect methods were
taken to effect it. Newspapers in his interest--the _Madisonian_ at
Washington and _Herald_ at New York--vituperated the whig party,
and even his cabinet ministers. Slights and neglects were put upon
those ministers: the bank question was to complete the breach; but
only after a long management which should have the appearance of
keeping faith with the whigs, and throwing the blame of the breach
upon them. This brings us to the point of commencing the history of
the second fiscal bank bill, ending with a second veto, and an open
rupture between the President and the whigs.
The beginning of the second bill was laid in the death of the first
one; as the seed of a separation from his cabinet was planted in
the same place. The first veto message, in rejecting one bill, gave
promise to accept another, and even defined the kind of bill which
the President could approve: this was encouraging to the whigs. But
that first veto was resolved upon, and the message for it drawn,
without consultation with his cabinet--without reference to them;
and without their knowledge--except from hearsay and accident. They
first got wind of it in street rumor, and in paragraphs in the
_Madisonian_, and in letters to the _New York Herald_: and got the
first knowledge of it from coming in upon the President while he
was drawing it. This was a great slight to his cabinet, and very
unaccountable to ministers who, only two short months before,
had been solicited to remain in their places--had been saluted
with expressions of confidence; and cheered with the declaration
that their advice and counsel would be often wanted. They felt the
slight of the neglected consultation, as well as the disappointment
in the rejected bill; but the President consoled them for the
disappointment (saying nothing about the slight) by showing himself
ready, and even impatient for another bill. This readiness for
another bill is thus related by Mr. Ewing, the Secretary of the
Treasury, in his letter of resignation of his office addressed to
the President; dated Sept. 11th, 1841:
"On the morning of the 16th of August I called at your chamber,
and found you preparing the first veto message, to be despatched
to the Senate. The Secretary of War came in also, and you read a
portion of the message to us. He observed that though the veto
would create a great sensation in Congress, yet he thought the
minds of our friends better prepared for it than they were some
days ago, and he hoped it would be calmly received, especially
as it did not shut out all hope of a bank. To this you replied,
that you really thought that there ought to be no difficulty
about it; that you had sufficiently indicated the kind of a bank
you would approve, and that Congress might, if they saw fit,
pass such a bill in three days."
Mr. Bell, the Secretary of War, referred to in the foregoing
statement of Mr. Ewing, thus gives his account of the same interview:
"I called on the President on official business on the morning
of Monday the 16th of August, before the first veto message was
sent in. I found him reading the message to the Secretary of the
Treasury. He did me the honor to read the material passages to
me. Upon reading that part of it which treats of the superior
importance and value of the business done by the late Bank of
the United States in furnishing exchanges between different
States and sections of the Union, I was so strongly impressed
with the idea that he meant to intimate that he would have no
objection to a bank which should be restricted to dealing in
exchanges, that I interrupted him in the reading, and asked
if I was to understand (by what he had just read) that he
was prepared to give his assent to a bank in the District of
Columbia, with offices or agencies in the States, having the
privilege, without their assent, to deal in exchanges between
them, and in foreign bills. He promptly replied that he thought
experience had shown the necessity of such a power in the
government. And (after some further remarks favorable to such a
bill) expressed the opinion that nothing could be more easy than
to pass a bill which would answer all necessary purposes--that
it could be done in three days."
Such are the concurrent statements of two of the cabinet; and Mr.
Alexander A. Stuart, a member of the House of Representatives from
Virginia, thus gives his statement to the same effect in his account
of the readiness of the President, amounting to anxiety, for the
introduction and passage of a second bill.
"After the adjournment of the House (on the 16th of August),
Mr. Pearce of Maryland (then a representative in Congress,
now a senator) called at my boarding-house, and informed me
that he was induced to believe that there was still some hope
of compromising the difficulties between Congress and the
President, by adopting a bank bill on the basis of a proposition
which had been submitted by Mr. Bayard (Richard H.) in the
Senate, modified so as to leave out the last clause which
authorized the conversion of the agencies into offices of
discount and deposit on certain contingencies. He produced to me
a portion of the Senate journal, containing that proposition,
with the obnoxious clause crossed out with ink; and requested
me to visit the President and see if we could not adjust the
difficulty. At first I declined, but at length yielded to his
desire, and promised to do so. About 5 o'clock, I drove to the
President's house, but found him engaged with a distinguished
_democratic_ senator. This I thought rather a bad omen; but
I made known my wish for a private audience; which in a few
minutes was granted. This was the first occasion on which I
had ventured to approach the President on the subject. I made
known to him at once the object of my visit, and expressed the
hope that some measure might be adopted to heal the division
between himself and the whig party in Congress. I informed
him of the existence of the committee to which I referred,
and mentioned the names of those who composed it, and relied
on their age and known character for prudence and moderation,
as the best guarantees of the conciliatory spirit of the whig
party in Congress. He seemed to meet me in the proper temper,
and expressed the belief that a fair ground of compromise might
yet be agreed upon. I then made known what I had heard of his
opinions in regard to Mr. Bayard's proposition. He asked me if I
had it with me? I replied in the affirmative, and produced the
paper, which had been given to me by Mr. Pearce with the clause
struck out, as above stated. He read it over carefully, and
said it would do, making no objection whatever to the clause in
regard to the establishment of agencies in the several States
without their assent. But he said the capital was too large, and
referred to Mr. Appleton and Mr. Jaudon as authority to prove
that ten or fifteen millions would be enough. I objected that it
might hereafter be found insufficient; and as the charter had
twenty years to run, it might be as well to provide against a
contingency which would leave the government dependent on the
bank for permission to enlarge the capital; and to obviate the
difficulty I suggested the propriety of giving to Congress the
power to increase it as the public exigencies should require. To
this he assented; and by his direction I made the note on the
margin of the paper; 'capital to be 15 millions of dollars--to
be increased at the option of Congress when public interests
require.' The President then said: 'Now if you will send me this
bill I will sign it in twenty-four hours.' (After informing
the President that there was a statute in Virginia against
establishing agencies of foreign banks in the State, he said),
'This must be provided for:' and he then took the paper and
wrote on the margin the following words, which were to come in
after the word 'or,' and before the word 'bank' in the first
line of the proposition of Mr. Bayard, (the blank line in this
paper), 'In case such agencies are forbidden by the laws of the
State.' I remonstrated against this addition as unnecessary, and
not meeting the objection; but he said: 'Let it stand for the
present; I will think about it.'--The President then instructed
me to go to Mr. Webster, and have the bill prepared at once; and
as I rose to leave him, after cautioning me not to expose him
to the charge of dictating to Congress, he held my right hand
in his left, and raising his right hand upwards, exclaimed with
much feeling: 'Stuart! if you can be instrumental in passing
this bill through Congress, I will esteem you the best friend I
have on earth.'"
The original paper of Mr. Bayard, here referred to, with the
President's autographic emendations upon it, were in the possession
of Mr. Benton, and burnt in the conflagration of his house, books
and papers, in February, 1855.
These statements from Messrs. Ewing, Bell, and Stuart are enough
(though others might be added) to show that Mr. Tyler, at the time
that he sent in the first veto message, was in favor of a second
bill--open and earnest in his professions for it--impatient for its
advent--and ready to sign it within twenty-four hours. The only
question is whether these professions were sincere, or only phrases
to deceive the whigs--to calm the commotion which raged in their
camp--and of which he was well informed--and to avert the storm
which was ready to burst upon him; trusting all the while to the
chapter of contingencies to swamp the bill in one of the two Houses,
or to furnish pretexts for a second veto if it should come back to
his hands. The progress of the narrative must solve the problem;
and, therefore, let it proceed.
The 18th of August--the day on which Mr. Clay was to have spoken in
the Senate on the first veto message, and which subject was then
postponed on the motion of Mr. Berrien for reasons which he declined
to state--Mr. Tyler had a meeting with his cabinet, in which the
provisions of the new bill were discussed, and agreed upon--the two
members picked out (one in each House--Mr. Sergeant and Mr. Berrien)
to conduct it--the cabinet invited to stand by him (the President)
and see that the bill passed. Mr. Ewing gives this account, of this
days' work, in his letter of resignation addressed to the President.
"I then said to you, 'I have no doubt that the House having
ascertained your views will pass a bill in conformity to
them, provided they can be satisfied that it would answer the
purposes of the Treasury, and relieve the country.' You then
said, 'cannot my cabinet see that this is brought about? You
must stand by me in this emergency. Cannot you see that a bill
passes Congress such as I can approve without inconsistency?' I
declared again my belief that such a bill might be passed. And
you then said to me, 'what do you understand to be my opinions?
State them: so that I may see that there is no misapprehension
about them.' I then said that I understood you to be of opinion
that Congress might charter a bank in the District of Columbia,
giving it its location here. To this you assented. That they
might authorize such bank to establish offices of discount and
deposit in the several States, with the assent of the States.
To this you replied, 'don't name discounts: they have been
the source of the most abominable corruptions, and are wholly
unnecessary to enable the bank to discharge its duties to the
country and the government.' I observed in reply that I was
proposing nothing, but simply endeavoring to state what I had
understood to be your opinion as to the powers which Congress
might constitutionally confer on a bank; that on that point I
stood corrected. I then proceeded to say that I understood you
to be of opinion that Congress might authorize such bank to
establish agencies in the several States, with power to deal in
bills of exchange, without the assent of the States, to which
you replied, 'yes, if they be foreign bills, or bills drawn
in one State and payable in another. That is all the power
necessary for transmitting the public funds and regulating
exchanges and the currency.' Mr. Webster then expressed, in
strong terms, his opinion that such a charter would answer
all just purposes of government and be satisfactory to the
people; and declared his preference for it over any which had
been proposed, especially as it dispensed with the assent of
the States to the creation of an institution necessary for
carrying on the fiscal operations of government. He examined
it at some length, both as to its constitutionality and its
influence on the currency and exchanges, in all which views you
expressed your concurrence, desired that such a bill should be
introduced, and especially that it should go into the hands
of some of your _friends_. To my inquiry whether Mr. Sergeant
would be agreeable to you, you replied that he would. You
especially requested Mr. Webster and myself to communicate with
Messrs. Berrien and Sergeant on the subject, to whom you said
you had promised to address a note, but you doubted not that
this personal communication would be equally satisfactory.
You desired us, also, in communicating with those gentlemen,
not to commit you personally, lest, this being recognized as
your measure, it might be made a subject of comparison to your
prejudice in the course of discussion. You and Mr. Webster then
conversed about the particular wording of the 16th fundamental
article, containing the grant of power to deal in exchanges, and
of the connection in which that grant should be introduced; you
also spoke of the name of the institution, desiring that _that_
should be changed. To this I objected, as it would probably be
made a subject of ridicule, but you insisted that there was much
in a name, and this institution ought not to be called a bank.
Mr. Webster undertook to adapt it in this particular to your
wishes. Mr. Bell then observed to Mr. Webster and myself that we
had no time to lose; that if this were not immediately attended
to, another bill, less acceptable, might be got up and reported.
We replied that we would lose no time. Mr. Webster accordingly
called on Messrs. Berrien and Sergeant immediately, and I waited
on them by his appointment at 5 o'clock on the same day, and
agreed upon the principles of the bill in accordance with your
expressed wishes. And I am apprised of the fact, though it did
not occur in my presence, that after the bill was drawn up, and
before it was reported, it was seen and examined by yourself;
that your attention was specially called to the 16th fundamental
article: that on full examination you concurred in its
provisions: that at the same time its name was so modified as to
meet your approbation: and the bill was reported and passed, in
all essential particulars, as it was when it came through your
hands."
The sixteenth fundamental article, here declared to have been
especially examined and approved by the President, was the part
of the bill on which he afterwards rested his objections to its
approval, and the one that had been previously adjusted to suit him
in the interview with Mr. Stuart: Mr. Sergeant, and Mr. Berrien
(mentioned as the President's choice to conduct the bill through
the two Houses), were the two members that actually did it; and
they did it with a celerity which subjected themselves to great
censure; but which corresponded with the President's expressed
desire to have it back in three days. Every part of the bill was
made to suit him. The title, about which he was so solicitous to
preserve his consistency, and about which his cabinet was so fearful
of incurring ridicule, was also adjusted to his desire. Mr. Bell
says of this ticklish point: "A name, he (the President) said, was
important. What should it be? Fiscal Institute would do." It was
objected to by a member of the cabinet, and Fiscal Bank preferred.
He replied, "there was a great deal in a name, and he did not want
the word bank to appear in the bill." Finally, Fiscal Corporation
was agreed upon. Other members of the cabinet, in their letters of
resignation, who were present on the 18th, when the bill was agreed
upon, corroborated the statement of Mr. Ewing, in all particulars.
Mr. Badger said, "It was then distinctly stated and understood
that such an institution (the plan before the cabinet) met the
approbation of the President, and was deemed by him free from
constitutional objections; that he desired (if Congress should deem
it necessary to act upon the subject during the session) that such
an institution should be adopted by that body, and that the members
of his cabinet should aid in bringing about that result: and Messrs.
Webster and Ewing were specially requested by the President to have
a communication on the subject with certain members of Congress.
In consequence of what passed at this meeting I saw such friends
in Congress as I deemed it proper to approach, and urged upon them
the passage of a bill to establish such an institution (the one
agreed upon), assuring them that I did not doubt it would receive
the approbation of the President. Mr. Bell is full and particular
in his statement, and especially on the point of constitutionality
in the 16th fundamental article--the reference to Mr. Webster on
that point--his affirmative opinion, and the concurrence of the
President in it. A part of the statement is here given--enough for
the purpose."
"The President then gave the outline of such a bank, or fiscal
institution, as he thought he could sanction. It was to be in
the District of Columbia, to have the privilege of issuing
its own notes, receive moneys on deposit, and to deal in
bills of exchange between the States, and between the United
States and foreign states. But he wished to have the opinion
of his cabinet upon it. His own consistency and reputation
must be looked to. He considered his cabinet his friends, who
must stand by and defend whatever he did upon the subject.
He appealed particularly to Mr. Webster, for his opinion on
the point of consistency; and whether there was not a clear
distinction between the old bank of the United States--a bank of
discount and deposit--and the one he now thought of proposing;
and whether the constitutional question was not different. He
reminded us that in all his former speeches and reports, he
had taken the ground that Congress had no constitutional power
to charter a bank which had the power of local discount. Mr.
Webster pointed out the distinction between the two plans, which
appeared to be satisfactory to him."
On the point of having himself understood, and all chance for
misunderstanding obviated, the President was very particular, and
requested Mr. Ewing to repeat what he (the President) had said. Mr.
Ewing did so; and having at one point deviated from the President's
understanding, he was stopped--corrected--set right; and then
allowed to go on to the end. Mr. Bell's own words must tell the rest.
"The President said he was then understood. He requested Mr.
Webster particularly to communicate with the gentlemen (Messrs.
Sergeant and Berrien), who had waited upon him that morning,
and to let them know the conclusions to which he had come. He
also requested Mr. Ewing to aid in getting the subject properly
before Congress. He requested that they would take care not to
commit him by what they said to members of Congress, to any
intention to dictate to Congress. They might express their
confidence and belief that such a bill as had just been agreed
upon would receive his sanction; but it should be as matter
of inference from his veto message and his general views. He
thought he might request that the measure should be put into the
hands of some friend of his own upon whom he could rely. Mr.
Sergeant was named, and he expressed himself satisfied that he
should have charge of it. He also expressed a wish to see the
bill before it was presented to the House, if it could be so
managed."
Thus instructed and equipped, the members of the cabinet went
forth as requested, and had such success in preparing a majority
of the members of each House for the reception of this Fiscal
Corporation bill, and for its acceptance also that it was taken
up to the exclusion of all business, hurried along, and passed
incontinently--as shown in the public history of the bill in the
preceding chapter; and with such disregard of decent appearances,
as drew upon the President's two conductors of the bill (Messrs.
Sergeant and Berrien) much censure at the time--to be vetoed, like
the first; and upon objections to that 16th fundamental rule, which
had been the subject of such careful consideration--of autographic
correction--clear understanding--and solemn ratification. And here
the opportunity occurs, and the occasion requires, the correction
of a misapprehension into which senators fell (and to the prejudice
of Mr. Berrien), the day he disappointed the public and the Senate
in putting off the debate on the first veto message, and taking up
the bankrupt bill. He declined to give a reason for that motion,
and suspicion assigned it to an imperious requisition on the part
of the senators who had taken the bankrupt act to their bosoms, and
who held the fate of Mr. Clay's leading measures in their hands.
It was afterwards known that this was a mistake, and that this
postponement, as well as the similar one the day before, were both
yielded to conciliate Mr. Tyler--to save him from irritation (for
he had a nervous terror of Mr. Clay's impending speech) while the
new bill was in process of concoction. This process was commenced
on the 16th of August, continued on the 17th, and concluded on the
18th. Mr. Clay consented to the postponement of his anti-veto speech
both on the 17th and on the 18th, not to disturb this concoction;
and spoke on the 19th--being the day after the prepared bill had
been completed, and confided to its sponsors in the House and
the Senate. All this is derived from Mr. Alexander A. Stuart's
subsequent publication, to comprehend which fully, his account of
his connection with the subject must be taken up from the moment
of his leaving the President's house, that night of the 16th; and
premising, that the whig joint committee of which he speaks, was
a standing little body of eminent whigs, whose business it was to
fix up measures for the action of the whole party in Congress. With
this preliminary view, the important statement of Mr. Stuart will be
given.
"Upon leaving the President, I took a hack, and drove
immediately to Mr. Webster's lodgings, which were at the
opposite end of the city; but, unfortunately he was not at
home. I then returned to my boarding-house, where I told what
had transpired to my messmates, Mr. Summers, and others. After
tea I went to the meeting of the joint committee, of which I
have already spoken. I there communicated to Mr. Sergeant,
before the committee was called to order, what had occurred
between the President and myself. When the committee was first
organized there was a good deal of excitement, and difference of
opinion; and an animated debate ensued on various propositions
which were submitted. Finally I was invited by Mr. Sergeant to
state to the committee what had passed between the President
and myself; which I did, accompanied by such remarks as I
thought would have a tendency to allay excitement, and lead to
wise and dispassionate conclusions. After much deliberation,
the committee concluded to recommend to the whig party, in
both Houses of Congress, to accede to the President's views. A
difficulty was then suggested, that the veto message had been
made the order of the day at noon, and Mr. Clay had the floor;
and it was supposed that the debate might possibly assume such
a character as to defeat our purposes of conciliation. Mr.
Mangum at once pledged himself that Mr. Clay should offer no
obstacle to the adjustment of our difficulties; and engaged
to obtain his assent to the postponement of the orders of the
day, until we should have an opportunity of reporting to a
general meeting of the whig party, and ascertaining whether
they would be willing to accept a bank on the basis agreed on
by Mr. Tyler and myself--with this understanding the committee
adjourned. On the next day (17th of August) Mr. Mangum, with Mr.
Clay's assent, moved the postponement of the discussion of the
veto, and it was agreed to (see Senate Journal, p. 170): and
on the 18th of August the subject was again, with Mr. Clay's
concurrence, postponed, on the motion of Mr. Berrien. (Senate
Journal, p. 173.) During this time the whigs held their general
meeting, and agreed to adopt a bill on the President's plan; and
Mr. Sergeant and Mr. Berrien were requested to see that it was
properly drawn; and, if necessary, to seek an interview with the
President to be certain that there was no misunderstanding as to
his opinions. From this statement, confirmed by the journals of
the Senate, it will be seen with how much truth Mr. Tyler has
charged Mr. Clay with an intolerant and dictatorial spirit, and
a settled purpose to embarrass his administration. So far from
such being the fact, I state upon my own personal knowledge,
that Mr. Clay made every sacrifice consistent with honor and
patriotism, to avoid a rupture with Mr. Tyler. The result of
the labors of Messrs. Sergeant and Berrien, was the second
bank bill, which these distinguished jurists supposed to be in
conformity with the President's views."
From this array of testimony it would seem certain that the
President was sincerely in favor of passing this second bill: but
this account has a _per contra_ side to it; and it is necessary to
give the signs and facts on the other side which show him against
it from the beginning. These items are:--1. The letters in the
_New York Herald_; which, from the accuracy with which they told
beforehand what the President was to do, had acquired a credit
not to be despised; and which foreshadowed the veto, lauding the
President and vituperating his cabinet. 2. A sinister rumor to that
effect circulating in the city, and countenanced by the new friends
who were intimate with the President. 3. The concourse of these at
his house. 4. The bitter opposition to it from the same persons in
the House and the Senate; a circumstance on which Mr. Clay often
remarked in debate, with a significant implication. 5. What happened
to Mr. Bell; and which was this: on the 17th day of August Mr.
Tyler requested him to make up a statement from the operations of
the war department (its receipts and disbursements) to show the
advantage of such a bank as they had agreed upon, and to be used as
an argument for it. Mr. Bell complied with alacrity, and carried
the statement to the President himself the same evening--expecting
to be thanked for his zeal and activity. Quite the contrary. "He
received the statements which I gave him (writes Mr. Bell) with
manifest indifference, and alarmed me by remarking that he began
to doubt whether he would give his assent (as I understood him) to
any bill." 6. What happened to Mr. Webster and Mr. Ewing, and which
is thus related by the latter in his letter of resignation to the
President: "You asked Mr. Webster and myself each to prepare and
present you an argument touching the constitutionality of the bill
(as agreed upon); and before those arguments could be prepared and
read by you, you declared, as I heard and believe, to gentlemen,
members of the House, that you would cut off your right hand rather
than approve it." 7. What passed between Mr. Wise and Mr. Thompson
of Indiana in the debate on the veto of this bill, and which thus
appears on the Congress Register: "Mr. Wise rose and said, that
he had _always_ felt perfectly assured that the President would
not sign a bank: that if he had been waked up at any hour of the
night he would have declared his opposition to a bank." To which
Mr. Thompson: "Then why not tell us so at once? Why all this
subterfuge and prevarication--this disingenuous and almost criminal
concealment? What labor, care, and anxiety he would have saved us."
8. Rumors that Mr. Tyler was endeavoring to defeat the bill while
on its passage. 9. Proof _point blanc_ to that effect. As this is
a most responsible allegation, it requires a clear statement and
exact proof; and they shall both be given. On the 25th of August,
after the bill had passed the House and was still before the Senate,
Mr. Webster wrote a letter to Messrs. Choate and Bates (the two
senators from Massachusetts) in which, speaking in the interest of
the President, and of his personal knowledge, he informed them that
the President had seen the rapid progress of the bill in the House
with regret, and wished it might have been postponed;--and advised
the whigs to press it no further; and justified this change in the
President on Mr. Botts' letter, which had just appeared. This is the
allegation, and here is the proof in the letter itself--afterwards
furnished for publication by Mr. Webster to the editors of the
_Madisonian_:
"GENTLEMEN:--As you spoke last evening of the general policy of
the whigs, under the present posture of affairs, relative to the
bank bill, I am willing to place you in full possession of my
opinion on that subject.
"It is not necessary to go further back, into the history of
the past, than the introduction of the present measure into the
House of Representatives.
"That introduction took place, within two or three days, after
the President's disapproval of the former bill; and I have not
the slightest doubt that it was honestly and fairly intended as
a measure likely to meet the President's approbation. I do not
believe that one in fifty of the whigs had any sinister design
whatever, if there was an individual who had such design.
"But I know that the President had been greatly troubled, in
regard to the former bill, being desirous, on one hand, to meet
the wishes of his friends, if he could, and on the other, to do
justice to his own opinions.
"Having returned this first bill with objections, a new one was
presented in the House, and appeared to be making rapid progress.
"_I know the President regretted this, and wished the whole
subject might have been postponed._ At the same time, I believed
he was disposed to consider calmly and conscientiously whatever
other measure might be presented to him. But in the mean time
Mr. Botts' very extraordinary letter made its appearance. Mr.
Botts is a whig of eminence and influence in our ranks. I need
not recall to your mind the contents of the letter. It is enough
to say, that it purported that the whigs designed to circumvent
their own President, to 'head him' as the expression was and to
place him in a condition of embarrassment. From that moment, I
felt that it was the duty of the whigs to forbear from pressing
the bank bill further, at the present time. I thought it was but
just in them to give decisive proof that they entertained no
such purpose, as seemed to be imputed to them. And since there
was reason to believe, that the President would be glad of time,
for information and reflection, before being called on to form
an opinion on another plan for a bank--a plan somewhat new to
the country--I thought his known wishes ought to be complied
with. I think so still. I think this is a course, just to the
President, and wise on behalf of the whig party. _A decisive
rebuke ought, in my judgment, to be given to the intimation,
from whatever quarter, of a disposition among the whigs to
embarrass the President._ This is the main ground of my opinion;
and such a rebuke, I think, would be found in the general
resolution of the party to postpone further proceedings on the
subject to the next session, now only a little more than three
months off.
"The session has been fruitful of important acts.--The wants of
the Treasury have been supplied; provisions have been made for
fortifications, and for the navy; the repeal of the sub-treasury
has passed; the bankrupt bill, that great measure of justice and
benevolence, has been carried through; and the land bill seems
about to receive the sanction of Congress.
"In all these measures, forming a mass of legislation, more
important, I will venture to say, than all the proceedings
of Congress for many years past, the President has cordially
concurred.
"I agree, that the currency question is, nevertheless, the great
question before the country; but considering what has already
been accomplished, in regard to other things; considering the
difference of opinion which exists upon this remaining one;
and, considering, especially, that it is the duty of the whigs
effectually to repel and put down any supposition, that they
are endeavoring to put the President in a condition, in which
he must act under restraint or embarrassment, I am fully and
entirely persuaded, that the bank subject should be postponed
to the next session. I am gentlemen, your friend and obedient
servant. (Signed, Daniel Webster, and addressed to Messrs.
Choate and Bates, senators from Massachusetts, and dated, August
25th, 1841.)"
This is the proof, and leaves it indisputable that the President
undertook to defeat his own bill. No more can be said on that point.
The only point open to remark, and subject to examination, is the
reason given by Mr. Webster for this conduct in the President;
and this reason is found in Mr. Botts' letter--which had just
made its appearance. That letter might be annoyance--might be
offensive--might excite resentment: but it could not change a
constitutional opinion, or reverse a state policy, or justify a
President in breaking his word to his cabinet and to the party that
had elected him. It required a deeper reason to work such results;
and the key to that reason is found in the tack taken in the first
eight or nine days of the session to form a third party, breaking
with the whigs, settling back on the democracy, and making the bank
veto the point of rupture with one, the cement with the other,
the rallying points of the recruits, and the corner-stone of the
infant Tyler party. That was the reason: and all the temporizing and
double-dealing--pushing the bill forward with one hand, and pulling
back with the other--were nothing but expedients to avert or appease
the storm that was brewing, and to get through the tempest of his
own raising with as little damage to himself as possible. The only
quotable part of this letter was the phrase, "_Head Captain Tyler,
or die:_" a phrase quoted by the public to be laughed at--by Mr.
Webster, to justify Mr. Tyler's attempt to defeat his own bill, so
solemnly prepared and sent to the whigs, with a promise to sign it
in twenty-four hours if they would pass it. The phrase was fair
though it presented a ridiculous image. This "heading," applied to
a person signifies to check, or restrain; applied to animals (which
is its common use in the South and the West) is, to turn one round
which is running the wrong way, and make it go back to the right
place. Taken in either sense, the phrase is justifiable, and could
only mean checking Mr. Tyler in his progress to the new party, and
turning him back to the party that elected him Vice-president. As
for the "dying," that could imply no killing of persons, nor any
death of any kind to "Captain Tyler," but only the political death
of the whigs if their President left them. All this Mr. Webster knew
very well, for he was a good philologist, and knew the meaning of
words. He was also a good lawyer, and knew that an odious meaning
must be given to an innocent word when it is intended to make it
offensive. The phrase was, therefore, made to signify a design
to circumvent the President with a view to embarrass him--Mr.
Clay being the person intended at the back of Mr. Botts in this
supposed circumvention and embarrassment. But circumvent was not
the word of the letter, nor its synonyme; and is a word always used
in an evil sense--implying imposition, stratagem, cheat, deceit,
fraud. The word "heading" has no such meaning: and thus the imputed
offence, gratuitously assumed, makes its exit for want of verity.
Embarrassment is the next part of the offence, and its crowning
part, and fails like the other. Mr. Clay had no such design. That is
proved by Mr. Stuart, and by his own conduct--twice putting off his
speech--holding in his proud spirit until chafed by Mr. Rives--then
mollifying indignant language with some expressions of former regard
to Mr. Tyler. He had no design or object in embarrassing him. No
whig had. And they all had a life and death interest (political) in
conciliating him, and getting him to sign: and did their best to do
so. The only design was to get him to sign his own bill--the fiscal
corporation bill--which he had fixed up himself, title and all--sent
out his cabinet to press upon Congress--and desired to have it back
in three days, that he might sign it in twenty-four hours. The only
solution is, that he did not expect it to come back--that he counted
on getting some whigs turned against it, as tried without avail on
Messrs. Choate and Bates; and that he could appease the whig storm
by sending in the bill, and escape the performance of his promise
by getting it defeated. This is the only solution; and the fact is
that he would have signed no bank bill, under any name, after the
eighth or ninth day of the session--from the day that he gave into
the scheme for the third party, himself its head, and settling back
upon his _ci-devant_ democratic character. From that day a national
bank of any kind was the Jonas of his political ship--to be thrown
overboard to save the vessel and crew.
And this is the secret history of the birth, life and death of the
second fiscal bank, called fiscal corporation--doomed from the first
to be vetoed--brought forward to appease a whig storm--sometimes
to be postponed--commended to the nursing care of some--consigned
to the strangling arts of others: but doomed to be vetoed when it
came to the point as being the corner-stone in the edifice of the
new party, and the democratic baptismal regeneration of Mr. Tyler
himself.
CHAPTER LXXXIII.
THE VETO MESSAGE HISSED IN THE SENATE GALLERIES.
The Senate chamber, and its galleries, were crowded to their utmost
capacity to hear the reading of the veto message, and to witness
the proceedings to which it would give rise. The moment the reading
was finished hisses broke forth, followed by applauses. Both were
breaches of order, and contempts of the Senate; but the hisses most
so, as being contemptuous in themselves, independent of the rule
which forbids them, and as being also the causes of the applauses,
which are only contemptuous by virtue of the rule which forbids
manifestations of satisfaction as well as of dissatisfaction at
any thing done in the Senate: and because a right to applaud would
involve a right to judge; and, by implication, to condemn as well
as to approve. The President of the Senate heard a disturbance, and
gave the raps on the table to restore order: but Mr. Benton, who was
on the look-out for the outrage, was determined that it should not
go off with raps upon the table: he thought there ought to be raps
on the offenders, and immediately stood up and addressed the Chair.
"Mr. President, there were hisses here, at the reading of
the presidential message. I heard them, sir, and I feel
indignant that the American President shall be insulted. I
have been insulted by the hisses of ruffians in this gallery,
when opposing the old Bank of the United States. While I am
here, the President shall never be insulted by hisses in this
hall. I ask for no such thing as clearing the galleries, but
let those who have made the disturbance be pointed out to
the sergeant-at-arms, and be turned out from the galleries.
Those who have dared to insult our form of government--for in
insulting this message they have insulted the President and our
form of government--those ruffians who would not have dared to
insult the King, surrounded by his guard, have dared to insult
the American President in the American Senate; and I move that
the sergeant-at-arms be directed to take them into custody."
This motion of Mr. Benton was opposed by several senators, some
because they did not hear the disturbance, some because it was
balanced, being as much clapping as hissing; some because they were
in doubt about the power to punish for a contempt; and some from an
amiable indisposition to disturb the people who had disturbed the
Senate, and who had only yielded to an ebullition of feeling. This
sort of temporizing with an outrage to the Senate only stimulated
Mr. Benton to persevere in his motion; which he did until the object
was accomplished. The Register of Debates shows the following
remarks and replies; which are given here to show the value of
perseverance in such a case, and to do justice to the Senate which
protected itself:
"Mr. RIVES regretted that any disturbance had taken place. He
doubted not but the senator thought he heard it, but must say,
in all sincerity, he did not hear the hiss. At all events,
it was so slight and of short duration, that the majority of
the Senate scarcely heard it. He hoped that no proceedings of
this kind would take place, and that this manifestation of
disturbance, when so deep an interest was felt, and which was so
immediately quieted, would be passed over. The general opinion
of the senators around him was, that the honorable senator was
mistaken.
"Mr. BENTON. I am not mistaken--I am not.
"Mr. RIVES. He hoped they would pass it by, as one of those
little ebullitions of excitement which were unavoidable, and
which was not offered to insult this body, or the President of
the United States.
"Mr. BENTON heard the hisses, and heard them distinctly; if a
doubt was raised on it, he would bring the matter to a question
of fact, 'true or not true.' No man should doubt whether he
heard them or not. He came here this day prepared to see the
American President insulted by bank bullies; and he told his
friends that it had been done, and that they never could proceed
in action on a bank, when the American Senate would not be
insulted, either by hissing on one side, or clapping on the
other. He told them, if it was done, as sure as the American
President should be insulted this day, by bank ruffians, just
so sure he should rise in his place and move to have those
disturbers of the honor and dignity of the Senate brought to the
bar of the Senate. He would not move to clear the galleries, for
a thousand orderly people were there, who were not to be turned
out for the disturbance of a few ruffians. He would tell the
senator from Virginia that he (the senator) should hang no doubt
on his declaration; and if it were doubted, he would appeal to
senators near him. [Mr. WALKER. I will answer, most directly,
that I heard it, and I believe the same bully is going on now.]
A national bank (continued Mr. B.) is not, as yet, our master,
and shall not be; and he would undertake to vindicate the honor
of the Senate, from the outrages perpetrated on it by the
myrmidons of a national bank. Were the slaves of a national bank
to have the privilege of insulting the Senate, just as often
as a vote passed contrary to their wishes? It was an audacity
that must be checked--and checked before they went with arms in
their hands to fire on those who gave votes contrary to their
wishes, or assassinate them on their way home. He put the whole
at defiance--the entire bank, and its myrmidons.
"Mr. PRESTON said if any thing had occurred in the gallery out
of order, it should be strictly inquired into and punished.
He himself did not hear the manifestations of disapprobation,
alluded to by the senators on the other side; but it was
sufficient for him that the senators heard it, or supposed
that they heard it. [Mr. BENTON. We did not _suppose_ we heard
it; we knew it.] In this case (continued Mr. P.), a formal
investigation should take place. It was a contempt of the
Senate, and, as a member of the Senate, he desired to see an
investigation--to see the charge fixed on some person, and if
properly sustained, to see punishment awarded. Manifestations of
praise or censure were eminently wrong, and eminently dangerous;
and it was due to every member of the Senate that they should
preserve the dignity of the body by checking it. He hoped,
therefore, if a formal motion was made, it would be discovered
who had caused the disturbance, and that they would be properly
punished.
"Mr. BUCHANAN said this was a very solemn and momentous
occasion, which would form a crisis, perhaps, in the politics
of the country; and he should hope, as he believed that every
American citizen present in the galleries would feel the
importance of this crisis, and feel deeply sensible of the
high character to which every man, blessed with birth in this
free country, should aim. He heard, distinctly heard, the hiss
referred to by the senator from Missouri [Mr. BENTON], but he
was bound to say it was not loud and prolonged, but was arrested
in a moment, he believed partly from the senator rising, and
partly from the good sense and good feeling of the people in the
galleries. Under these circumstances, as it only commenced and
did not proceed, if he had the power of persuasion, he would ask
the senator from Missouri to withdraw his motion.
"[Mr. BENTON. I never will, so help me God.]
"He thought it better, far better, that they proceed to the
important business before them, under the consideration that
they should not be disturbed hereafter; and if they were, he
would go as far as the senator from Missouri in immediately
arresting it. He would much rather go on with the business in
hand.
"Mr. LINN reminded the Senate that when the bank bill had passed
the Senate there was a loud manifestation of approbation in
the gallery, of which no notice was taken. He believed on the
present occasion there was approbation as well as hisses; but
both were instantly suppressed. He had distinctly heard both.
No doubt it was the promptness with which his colleague had got
up to check the disturbance, which had prevented it from going
further. He had no doubt some law ought to be passed making it
punishable to commit any outrage of this kind on either House of
Congress.
"Mr. MERRICK thought with the senator from Pennsylvania, that
this was a very solemn occasion. There had been tokens of
assent and dissent. The President of the Senate at the moment
rapped very hard till order was restored. The disorder was but
momentary. He trusted some allowance would be made for the
excitement so natural on the occasion.
"Mr. KING suggested the difficulty that might arise out of
pursuing the matter further. He had witnessed something of the
kind once before, and when the offender was brought to the bar,
great embarrassment was created by not knowing how to get rid
of him. He thought it would be better to pass over the matter
and proceed to the consideration of the message, or to the
appointment of a time for its consideration.
"The CHAIR explained that having heard some noise, without
considering whether it was approbation or disapprobation, he had
called the Senate to order; but could not say that he had or had
not heard hisses.
"Mr. RIVES explained that he did not mean to say the senator
from Missouri did not hear the hisses, but that he himself did
not hear them, and he believed many gentlemen around him did not
hear any. But as the senator from Missouri had avowedly come
prepared to hear them, no doubt he did, more sensitively than
others. He would ask the senator to be satisfied with the crush
which the mother of monsters had got, and not to bear too hard
on the solitary bank ruffian, to use his own expression, who had
disapproved of the monster's fate. He hoped the senator would
withdraw the motion.
"Mr. LINN observed that the senator from Virginia, by his own
remarks, doubting that there were any hisses, had forced the
senator from Missouri to persist in having the proof. However,
he now understood that point was settled; and the object being
accomplished, he hoped his colleague would withdraw the motion.
"Mr. PRESTON again expressed his concurrence in the propriety of
the motion, and hoped effectual steps would be taken to prevent
the recurrence of such a scene.
"Mr. ALLEN made some appropriate remarks, and concluded by
stating that he understood the offender was in custody, and
expressed his sorrow for having done what he was not at the
time aware was an offence; as, therefore, all the ends had been
accomplished which his friend had in view when he refused to
withdraw his motion, he hoped he would now withdraw it.
"Mr. WALKER said, when the senator from Missouri [Mr. BENTON]
pledged himself not to withdraw his motion to arrest the
individual who had insulted the Senate and the country by
hissing the message of the President of the United States,
that pledge arose from the doubt expressed by the senator from
Virginia [Mr. RIVES] whether the hissing had taken place. That
doubt was now solved. When the senator from Missouri appealed to
his friends as to the truth of the fact stated by him, he [Mr.
WALKER] had risen, and pointed to that portion of the gallery
from which the hissing proceeded. Our assistant Sergeant-at-Arms
had proceeded to that quarter of the gallery designated by him
[Mr. W.], and this officer had now in his possession one of the
offenders, who acknowledged his indecent conduct, and who was
prepared to point out many of those who had joined him. The
object of the senator was, therefore, now accomplished; the
fact of the indecorum was established, and the offender, as
moved by the senator from Missouri, was now in custody. This,
Mr. W. hoped, would be sufficient punishment, especially as
Mr. W. understood the offender expressed his penitence for the
act, as one of sudden impulse. As, then, the formal trial of
this individual would occupy much time, Mr. W. hoped the matter
would be dropped here, and let us proceed, as required by the
Constitution, to consider the message of the President returning
the bank bill, with his objections. This message, Mr. W. said,
he regarded as the most important which ever emanated from an
American President, and under circumstances the most solemn and
imposing. The President, in perfect and glorious consistency
with a long life of usefulness and honor, has placed his veto
upon the charter of a National Bank, and, Mr. W. said, his
heart was too full of gratitude to the Giver of all good for
this salvation of the country, and rescue of the Constitution,
to engage in the business of inflicting punishment upon an
individual, said to be respectable, and who had in part atoned
for his offence by the expression of his repentance. Let him go,
then, and sin no more, and let us proceed to the consideration
of that Veto Message, which he, Mr. W. had confidently predicted
at the very commencement of this session, and recorded that
opinion at its date in the journals of the day. Many then
doubted the correctness of this prediction, but, he, Mr. W.
whilst he stated at the time that he was not authorized to speak
for the President of the United States, based his conviction
upon his knowledge of Mr. TYLER as a man and a senator, and upon
his long and consistent opposition to the creation of any such
bank, as was now proposed to be established.
"Mr. BENTON said he had been informed by one of the officers
of the Senate [Mr. BEALE] that one of the persons who made the
disorder in the gallery had been seized by him, and was now
in custody and in the room of the Sergeant-at-Arms. This the
officers had very properly done of their own motion, and without
waiting for the Senate's order. They had done their duty, and
his motion had thus been executed. His motion was to seize the
disorderly, and bring them to the bar of the Senate. One had
been seized; he was in custody in an adjoining room; and if he
was still acting contemptuously to the Senate, he should move
to bring him to the bar; but that was not the case. He was
penitent and contrite. He expressed his sorrow for what he had
done, and said he had acted without ill design, and from no
feelings of contempt to the President or Senate. Under these
circumstances, all was accomplished that his motion intended.
The man is in custody and repentant. This is sufficient. Let him
be discharged, and there is an end of the affair. His motion
now was that the President direct him to be discharged. Mr. B.
said he had acted from reflection, and not from impulse, in
this whole affair. He expected the President to be insulted:
it was incident to the legislation on national bank charters.
When they were on the carpet, the Senate, the President, and
the American people must all be insulted if the bank myrmidons
are disappointed. He told his family before he left home, that
the Senate and the President would be insulted by hisses in
the gallery this day, and that he would not let it pass--that
it would be an insult, not merely to the President and Senate,
but to the whole American people, and to their form of
government--and that it should not pass. He came here determined
to nip this business in the bud--and to prevent an insult to
the President in this chamber from being made a precedent for
it elsewhere. We all know the insolence of the national bank
party--we know the insolence of their myrmidons--we know that
President Tyler, who has signed this veto message, is subject
to their insults--beginning here, and following him wherever he
goes. He [Mr. B.] was determined to protect him here, and, in
doing so, to set the example which would be elsewhere followed.
He repeated: an insult to the President for an official act,
was not an insult to the man, but to the whole American people,
and to their form of government. Would these bank myrmidons
insult a king, surrounded by his guards? Not at all. Then they
should not insult an American President with impunity whenever
he was present. In the Senate or out of it, he would defend
the President from personal outrage and indignity. As to the
numerous and respectable auditory now present, his motion did
not reach them. He had not moved to clear the galleries; for
that would send out the respectable audience, who had conducted
themselves with propriety. The rule of order was "_to clear the
galleries_;" but he had purposely avoided that motion, because
the disorder came from a few, and the respectable part of the
audience ought not to suffer for an offence in which they had
no share. Mr. B. said the man being in custody, his motion was
executed and superseded; its object was accomplished, and, he
being contrite, he would move to discharge him.
"The President of the Senate ordered him to be discharged."
CHAPTER LXXXIV.
RESIGNATION OF MR. TYLER'S CABINET.
This event, with the exception of Mr. Webster who was prevailed upon
to remain, took place on the 11th day of September--being two days
after the second veto message--the one on the fiscal corporation
bill--had been sent to the House of Representatives. It was a thing
to take place in consequence of the President's conduct in relation
to that bill; but the immediate cause, or rather, the circumstance
which gave impulse to the other causes, was the appearance of a
letter from Washington city in the New York Herald in which the
cabinet was much vituperated--accused of remaining in their places
contrary to the will of the President, and in spite of the neglects
and slights which he put upon them with a view to make them resign.
Appearing in that paper, which had come to be considered as the
familiar of the President, and the part in relation to the slights
and neglects being felt to be true, it could not escape the serious
attention of those to whom it referred. But there was something else
in it which seemed to carry its origin directly to the President
himself. There was an account of a cabinet meeting in it, in which
things were told which were strictly confidential between the
President and his ministers--which had actually occurred; and which
no one but themselves or the President could have communicated.
They conferred together: the conviction was unanimous that the
President had licensed this communication: and this circumstance
authorized them to consider the whole letter as his, of course by
subaltern hand. To this letter Mr. Ewing alluded in his letter of
resignation when he said to the President: "The very secrets of
our cabinet councils made their appearance in an infamous paper,
printed in a neighboring city, the columns of which were daily
charged with flattery of yourself and foul abuse of your cabinet."
There was no exception in the letter in favor of any one. All were
equally included: all took their resolutions together (Mr. Granger
excepted who was not present), and determined to resign at once, and
in a body, and to publish their reasons--the circumstances under
which they acted justifying, in their opinion, this abrupt and
unceremonious separation from their chief. All carried this resolve
into effect, except Mr. Webster, who was induced to re-consider his
determination, and to remain. The reasons for this act should be
given, so far as they are essential, in the words of the retiring
ministers themselves: and, accordingly here they are; and first from
Mr. Ewing:
"This bill, framed and fashioned according to your own
suggestions, in the initiation of which I and another member of
your cabinet were made by you the agents and negotiators, was
passed by large majorities through the two Houses of Congress,
and sent to you, and you rejected it. Important as was the part
which I had taken, at your request, in the origination of this
bill, and deeply as I was committed for your action upon it,
you never consulted me on the subject of the veto message. You
did not even refer to it in conversation, and the first notice
I had of its contents was derived from rumor. And to me, at
least, you have done nothing to wipe away the personal indignity
arising out of the act. I gathered, it is true, from your
conversation, shortly after the bill had passed the House, that
you had a strong purpose to reject it; but nothing was said like
softening or apology to me, either in reference to myself or
to those with whom I had communicated at your request, and who
had acted themselves and induced the two Houses to act upon the
faith of that communication. And, strange as it may seem, the
veto message attacks in an especial manner the very provisions
which were inserted at your request; and even the name of the
corporation, which was not only agreed to by you, but especially
changed to meet your expressed wishes, is made the subject of
your criticism. Different men might view this transaction in
different points of light, but, under these circumstances, as
a matter of personal honor, it would be hard for me to remain
of your counsel, to seal my lips and leave unexplained and
undisclosed where lies in this transaction the departure from
straightforwardness and candor. So far indeed from admitting
the encouragement which you gave to this bill in its inception,
and explaining and excusing your sudden and violent hostility
towards it, you throw into your veto message an interrogatory
equivalent to an assertion that it was such a bill as you had
already declared could not receive your sanction. Such is the
obvious effect of the first interrogatory clause on the second
page. It has all the force of an assertion without its open
fairness. I have met and refuted this, the necessary inference
from your language, in my preceding statement, the correctness
of which you I am sure will not call in question."
Of the cause assigned for the President's change in relation to the
bill, namely Mr. Botts' letter, Mr. Ewing thus expresses himself:
"And no doubt was thrown out on the subject (veto of the fiscal
corporation bill) by you, in my hearing, or within my knowledge,
until the letter of Mr. Botts came to your hands. Soon after the
reading of that letter, you threw out strong intimations that
you would veto the bill if it were not postponed. That letter I
did and do most unequivocally condemn, but it did not effect the
constitutionality of the bill, or justify you in rejecting it on
that ground; it could affect only the expediency of your action;
and, whatever you may now believe as to the scruples existing
in your mind, in this and in a kindred source there is strong
ground to believe they have their origin."
Mr. Badger, Secretary of the Navy:
"At the cabinet meeting held on the 18th of August last (the
attorney-general and the postmaster-general being absent), the
subject of an exchange bank, or institution, was brought forward
by the President himself, and was fully considered. Into the
particulars of what passed I do not propose now to enter. It
will be sufficient to say that it was then distinctly stated
and understood that such an institution met the approbation of
the President, and was deemed by him free of constitutional
objections; that he desired (if Congress should deem it
necessary to act upon the subject during the session) that
such an institution should be adopted by that body, and that
the members of his cabinet would aid in bringing about that
result; and Messrs. Webster and Ewing were specially requested
by the President to have a communication upon the subject with
certain members of Congress. In consequence of what passed at
this meeting, I saw such friends in Congress as I deemed it
proper to approach, and urged upon them the passage of a bill
to establish such an institution, assuring them that I did
not doubt it would receive the approbation of the President.
The bill was passed, as the public know, and was met by the
veto. Now, if the President, after the meeting of the 18th
August, had changed his mind as to the constitutional power of
Congress, and had come to doubt or deny what he had admitted in
that meeting (which is the most favorable interpretation that
can be put upon his conduct), it was, in my opinion, a plain
duty on his part to have made known to the gentlemen concerned
this change of sentiment--to have offered them an apology for
the unpleasant situation in which they were placed by his
agency--or, at least, to have softened, by a full explanation
of his motives, his intended veto of a measure in promoting
the success of which they, at his request, had rendered their
assistance. But this the President did not do. Never, from the
moment of my leaving his house on the 18th, did he open his
lips to me on the subject. It was only from the newspapers,
from rumor, from hearsay, I learned that he had denied the
constitutionality of the proposed institution, and had made the
most solemn asseverations that he would never approve a measure
which I knew was suggested by himself, and which had been, at
his own instance, introduced into Congress. It is scarcely
necessary to say that I have not supposed, and do not now
suppose, that a difference merely between the President and his
cabinet, either as to the constitutionality or the expediency
of a bank, necessarily interposes any obstacles to a full and
cordial co-operation between them in the general conduct of his
administration; and therefore deeply as I regretted the veto
of the first bill, I did not feel myself at liberty to retire
on that account from my situation. But the facts attending
the initiation and disapproval of the last bill made a case
totally different from that--one it is believed without a
parallel in the history of our cabinets; presenting, to say
nothing more, a measure embraced and then repudiated--efforts
prompted and then disowned--services rendered and then treated
with scorn or neglect. Such a case required, in my judgment,
upon considerations, private and public, that the official
relations subsisting between the President and myself should be
immediately dissolved."
Mr. BELL, Secretary at War.
"I called to see the President on official business on the
morning (Monday, 16th August) before the first veto message was
sent in. I found him reading the message to the Secretary of the
Treasury. He did me the honor to read the material passages to
me. Upon reading that part of it which treats of the superior
importance and value of the business done by the late bank of
the United States in furnishing exchanges between the different
States and sections of the Union, I was so strongly impressed
with the idea that he meant to intimate that he would have no
objection to a bank which should be restricted in dealing in
exchanges, that I interrupted him in the reading, and asked
if I was to understand, by what he had just read, that he
was prepared to give his assent to a bank in the District of
Columbia, with offices or agencies in the States, having the
privilege, without their assent, to deal in exchanges between
them, and in foreign bills. He promptly replied that he thought
experience had shown the necessity of such a power in the
government. I could not restrain the immediate expression of my
gratification upon hearing this avowal. I said to the President
at once, that what I had feared would lead to fatal dissension
among our friends, I now regarded as rather fortunate than
otherwise; that his veto of the bill then before him (the first
one), would lead to the adoption of a much better one. I also
congratulated him upon the happy circumstance of the delay which
had taken place in sending in his veto message. The heat and
violence which might have been expected if the veto had been
sent in immediately upon the passage of the bill, would now be
avoided. Time had been given for cool reflection, and as the
message did not exclude the idea of a bank in some form, no
unpleasant consequences would be likely to follow. He expressed
his great surprise that there should be so much excitement
upon the subject; said that he had had his mind made up on the
bill before him from the first, but had delayed his message
that there should be time for the excitement to wear off; that
nothing could be more easy than to pass a bill which would
answer all necessary purposes; that it could be done in three
days. The next day, having occasion to see the President again,
he requested me to furnish him with such information as the war
department afforded of the embarrassments attending the transfer
and disbursement of the public revenue to distant points on
the frontier, in Florida, &c. He at the same time requested
me to draw up a brief statement of my views upon the subject,
showing the practical advantages and necessity of such a fiscal
institution as he had thought of proposing. Such information
as I could hastily collect from the heads of the principal
disbursing bureaus of the department I handed to him on the
evening of the same day, knowing that time was of the utmost
importance in the state in which the question then was. He
received the statements I gave him with manifest indifference,
and alarmed me by remarking that he began to doubt whether he
would give his assent (as I understood him) to any bank."
This was Mr. Bell's first knowledge of the second bill--all got from
the President himself, and while he was under nervous apprehension
of the storm which was to burst upon him. He goes on to detail the
subsequent consultations with his cabinet, and especially with Mr.
Webster, as heretofore given; and concludes with expressing the
impossibility of his remaining longer in the cabinet.
Mr. CRITTENDEN, the attorney-general, resigned in a brief and
general letter, only stating that circumstances chiefly connected
with the fiscal agent bills, made it his duty to do so. His reserve
was supposed to be induced by the close friendly relation in which
he stood with respect to Mr. Clay. Palliation for Mr. Tyler's
conduct was attempted to be found by some of his friends in the
alleged hostility of Mr. Clay to him, and desire to brow-beat him,
and embarrass him. No doubt Mr. Clay was indignant, and justly so,
at the first veto, well knowing the cause of it as he showed in
his replies to Mr. Rives and Mr. Archer: but that was after the
veto. But even then the expression of his indignation was greatly
restrained, and he yielded to his friends in twice putting off his
speech on that first veto, that he might not disturb Mr. Tyler in
his preparation of the second bill. The interest at stake was too
great--no less than the loss of the main fruits of the presidential
election--for him to break voluntarily with Mr. Tyler. He restrained
himself, and only ceased his self-restraint, when temporizing would
no longer answer any purpose; and only denounced Mr. Tyler when he
knew that he had gone into the embraces of a third party--taken his
stand against any national bank as a means of reconciling himself
to the democracy--and substituted "_a secret cabal_" (which he
stigmatized as "_a kitchen cabinet_") in place of his constitutional
advisers.
Two days after the appearance of those letters of resignation,
the whole of which came out in the National Intelligencer, Mr.
Webster published his reasons for not joining in that act with his
colleagues: and justice to him requires this paper to be given in
his own words. It is dated September 13th, and addressed to Messrs.
Gales and Seaton, the well reliable whig editors in Washington.
"Lest any misapprehension should exist, as to the reasons
which have led me to differ from the course pursued by my late
colleagues, I wish to say that I remain in my place, first,
because I have seen no sufficient reasons for the dissolution
of the late cabinet, by the voluntary act of its own members.
I am perfectly persuaded of the absolute necessity of an
institution, under the authority of Congress, to aid revenue and
financial operations, and to give the country the blessings of
a good currency and cheap exchanges. Notwithstanding what has
passed, I have confidence that the President will co-operate
with the legislature in overcoming all difficulties in the
attainment of these objects; and it is to the union of the whig
party--by which I mean the whole party, the whig President,
the whig Congress, and the whig people--that I look for a
realization of our wishes. I can look nowhere else. In the
second place, if I had seen reasons to resign my office, I
should not have done so, without giving the President reasonable
notice, and affording him time to select the hands to which he
should confide the delicate and important affairs now pending in
this department."
Notwithstanding the tone of this letter, it is entirely certain
that Mr. Webster had agreed to go out with his colleagues, and
was expected to have done so at the time they sent in their
resignations; but, in the mean while, means had been found to
effect a change in his determination, probably by disavowing
the application of any part of the New York Herald letter to
him--certainly (as it appears from his letter) by promising a
co-operation in the establishment of a national bank (for that is
what was intended by the blessings of a sound currency and cheap
exchanges): and also equally certain, from the same letter, that
he was made to expect that he would be able to keep all whiggery
together--whig President Tyler, whig members of Congress, and whig
people, throughout the Union. The belief of these things shows that
Mr. Webster was entirely ignorant of the formation of a third party,
resting on a democratic basis; and that the President himself was in
regular march to the democratic camp. But of all this hereafter.
The reconstruction of his cabinet became the immediate care of
the President, and in the course of a month it was accomplished.
Mr. Walter Forward, of Pennsylvania, was appointed Secretary of
the Treasury; the department of War was offered to Mr. Justice
McLean of the Supreme Court of the United States, and upon his
refusal to accept the place, it was conferred upon John C. Spencer,
Esq., of New York; Mr. Abel P. Upshur, of Virginia, was appointed
Secretary of the Navy--Hugh S. Legare, Esq., of South Carolina,
Attorney-General--Charles A. Wickliffe, Esq., of Kentucky,
Postmaster-General. This cabinet was not of uniform political
complexion. Mr. Webster had been permanently of that party which,
under whatsoever name, had remained antagonistic to the democracy.
Mr. Forward came into public life democratic, and afterwards acted
with its antagonists: the same of Mr. Wickliffe and Mr. Spencer: Mr.
Upshur a whig, classed with Mr. Calhoun's political friends--Mr.
Legare the contrary, and democratic, and distinguished for
opposition to nullification, secession, and disunion.
CHAPTER LXXXV.
REPUDIATION OF MR. TYLER BY THE WHIG PARTY: THEIR MANIFESTO:
COUNTER MANIFESTO BY MR. CALEB CUSHING.
The conduct of Mr. Tyler in relation to a national bank produced
its natural effect upon the party which had elected him--disgust
and revolt. In both Houses of Congress individual members boldly
denounced and renounced him. He seemed to be crushed there, for his
assailants were many and fierce--his defenders few, and feeble. But
a more formal act of condemnation, and separation was wanted--and
had. On the 11th day of September--the day of the cabinet
resignations, and two days after the transmission of the second
veto message--the whigs of the two Houses had a formal meeting to
consider what they should do in the new, anomalous, and acephalous
condition in which they found themselves. The deliberations were
conducted with all form. Mr. Senator Dixon of Rhode Island and Mr.
Jeremiah Morrow of Ohio--both of them men venerable for age and
character--were appointed presidents; and Messrs. Kenneth Rayner
of North Carolina, Mr. Christopher Morgan of New York, and Richard
W. Thompson of Indiana--all members of the House--were appointed
secretaries. Mr. Mangum of North Carolina, then offered two
resolutions:
"1. That it is expedient for the whigs of the Senate and House
of Representatives of the United States to publish an address
to the people of the United States, containing a succinct
exposition of the prominent proceedings of the extra session
of Congress, of the measures that have been adopted, and those
in which they have failed, and the causes of such failure;
together with such other matters as may exhibit truly the
condition of the whig party and whig prospects.
"2. That a committee of three on the part of the Senate, and
five on the part of the House, be appointed to prepare such
address, and submit it to a meeting of the whigs on Monday
morning next, the 13th inst., at half past 8 o'clock."
Both resolutions were unanimously adopted, and Messrs. Berrien of
Georgia, Tallmadge of New York, and Smith of Indiana were appointed
on the part of the Senate; and Messrs. Everett of Vermont, Mason of
Ohio, Kennedy of Maryland, John C. Clark of New York, and Rayner of
North Carolina, on the part of the House.
At the appointed time the meeting reassembled, and the committee
made their report. Much of it was taken up with views and
recommendations in relation to the general policy of the party: it
is only of what relates to the repudiation of Mr. Tyler that this
history intends to speak: for government with us is a struggle of
parties: and it is necessary to know how parties are put up, and
put down, in order to understand how the government is managed.
An opening paragraph of the address set forth that, for twelve
years the whigs had carried on a contest for the regulation of
the currency, the equalization of exchanges, the economical
administration of the finances, and the advancement of industry--all
to be accomplished by means of a national bank--declaring these
objects to be misunderstood by no one--and the bank itself held to
be secured in the presidential election, and its establishment the
main object of the extra session. The address then goes on to tell
how these cherished hopes were frustrated:
"It is with profound and poignant regret that we find ourselves
called upon to invoke your attention to this point. Upon the
great and leading measure touching this question, our anxious
endeavors to respond to the earnest prayer of the nation have
been frustrated by an act as unlooked for as it is to be
lamented. We grieve to say to you that by the exercise of that
power in the constitution which has ever been regarded with
suspicion, and often with odium, by the people--a power which
we had hoped was never to be exhibited on this subject, by a
whig President--we have been defeated in two attempts to create
a fiscal agent, which the wants of the country had demonstrated
to us, in the most absolute form of proof, to be eminently
necessary and proper in the present emergency. Twice have we,
with the utmost diligence and deliberation, matured a plan
for the collection, safe-keeping and disbursing of the public
moneys through the agency of a corporation adapted to that end,
and twice has it been our fate to encounter the opposition
of the President, through the application of the veto power.
The character of that veto in each case, the circumstances in
which it was administered, and the grounds upon which it has
met the decided disapprobation of your friends in Congress,
are sufficiently apparent in the public documents and the
debates relating to it. This subject has acquired a painful
interest with us, and will doubtless acquire it with you, from
the unhappy developments with which it is accompanied. We are
constrained to say, that we find no ground to justify us in the
conviction that the veto of the President has been interposed
on this question solely upon conscientious and well-considered
opinions of constitutional scruple as to his duty in the case
presented. On the contrary, too many proofs have been forced
upon our observation to leave us free from the apprehension,
that the President has permitted himself to be beguiled into an
opinion that, by this exhibition of his prerogative, he might be
able to divert the policy of his administration into a channel
which should lead to new political combinations, and accomplish
results which must overthrow the present divisions of party in
the country; and finally produce a state of things which those
who elected him, at least, have never contemplated. We have seen
from an early period of the session, that the whig party did
not enjoy the confidence of the President. With mortification
we have observed that his associations more sedulously aimed
at a free communion with those who have been busy to prostrate
our purposes, rather than those whose principles seemed to
be most identified with the power by which he was elected.
We have reason to believe that he has permitted himself to
be approached, counselled and influenced by those who have
manifested least interest in the success of whig measures. What
were represented to be his opinions and designs have been freely
and even insolently put forth in certain portions, and those not
the most reputable, of the public press, in a manner that ought
to be deemed offensive to his honor, as it certainly was to the
feelings of those who were believed to be his friends. In the
earnest endeavor manifested by the members of the whig party in
Congress to ascertain specifically the President's notions in
reference to the details of such a bill relating to a fiscal
agent as would be likely to meet his approbation, the frequent
changes of his opinion, and the singular want of consistency in
his views, have baffled his best friends, and rendered the hope
of adjustment with him impossible."
"The plan of an exchange bank, such as was reported after the
first veto, the President is understood by more than one member
of Congress to whom he expressed his opinion, to have regarded
as a favorite measure. It was in view of this opinion, suggested
as it is in his first veto, and after using every proper effort
to ascertain his precise views upon it, that the committee of
the House of Representatives reported their second bill. It made
provision for a bank without the privilege of local discounting,
and was adapted as closely as possible to that class of
mercantile operations which the first veto message describes
with approbation, and which that paper specifically illustrates
by reference to the 'dealings in the exchanges' of the Bank
of the United States in 1833, which the President affirms
'amounted to upwards of one hundred millions of dollars.' Yet
this plan, when it was submitted to him, was objected to on a
new ground. The last veto has narrowed the question of a bank
down to the basis of the sub-treasury scheme, and it is obvious
from the opinions of that message that the country is not to
expect any thing better than the exploded sub-treasury, or some
measure of the same character, from Mr. TYLER. In the midst
of all these varieties of opinion, an impenetrable mystery
seemed to hang over the whole question. There was no such
frank interchange of sentiment as ought to characterize the
intercourse of a President and his friends, and the last persons
in the government who would seem to have been intrusted with his
confidence on those embarrassing topics were the constitutional
advisers which the laws had provided for him. In this review of
the position into which the late events have thrown the whig
party, it is with profound sorrow we look to the course pursued
by the President. He has wrested from us one of the best fruits
of a long and painful struggle, and the consummation of a
glorious victory; he has even perhaps thrown us once more upon
the field of political strife, not weakened in numbers, nor
shorn of the support of the country, but stripped of the arms
which success had placed in our hands, and left again to rely
upon that high patriotism which for twelve years sustained us in
a conflict of unequalled asperity, and which finally brought us
to the fulfilment of those brilliant hopes which he has done so
much to destroy."
Having thus shown the loss, by the conduct of the President, of all
the main fruits of a great victory after a twelve years' contest,
the address goes on to look to the future, and to inquire what is
to be the conduct of the party in such unexpected and disastrous
circumstances? and the first answer to that inquiry is, to establish
a permanent separation of the whig party from Mr. Tyler, and to
wash their hands of all accountability for his acts.
"In this state of things, the whigs will naturally look with
anxiety to the future, and inquire what are the actual relations
between the President and those who brought him into power;
and what, in the opinion of their friends in Congress, should
be their course hereafter. On both of these questions we feel
it to be our duty to address you in perfect frankness and
without reserve, but, at the same time, with due respect to
others. In regard to the first, we are constrained to say that
the President, by the course he has adopted in respect to the
application of the veto power to two successive bank charters,
each of which there was just reason to believe would meet his
approbation; by his withdrawal of confidence from his real
friends in Congress and from the members of his cabinet; by
his bestowal of it upon others notwithstanding their notorious
opposition to leading measures of his administration, has
voluntarily separated himself from those by whose exertions
and suffrages he was elevated to that office through which he
reached his present exalted station. The existence of this
unnatural relation is as extraordinary as the annunciation of
it is painful and mortifying. What are the consequences and
duties which grow out of it? The first consequence is, that
those who brought the President into power can be no longer,
in any manner or degree, justly held responsible or blamed for
the administration of the executive branch of the government;
and that the President and his advisers should be exclusively
hereafter deemed accountable."
Then comes the consideration of what they are to do? and after
inculcating, in the ancient form, the laudable policy of supporting
their obnoxious President when he was '_right_,' and opposing him
when he was '_wrong_'--phrases repeated by all parties, to be
complied with by none--they go on to recommend courage and unity
to their discomfited ranks--to promise a new victory at the next
election; and with it the establishment of all their measures,
crowned by a national bank.
"The conduct of the President has occasioned bitter
mortification and deep regret. Shall the party, therefore,
yielding to sentiments of despair, abandon its duty, and submit
to defeat and disgrace? Far from suffering such dishonorable
consequences, the very disappointment which it has unfortunately
experienced should serve only to redouble its exertions, and
to inspire it with fresh courage to persevere with a spirit
unsubdued and a resolution unshaken, until the prosperity of
the country is fully re-established, and its liberties firmly
secured against all danger from the abuses, encroachments or
usurpations of the executive department of the government."
This was the manifesto, so far as it concerns the repudiation of Mr.
Tyler, which the whig members of Congress put forth: it was answered
(under the name of an address to his constituents) by Mr. Cushing,
in what may be called a counter manifesto: for it was on the same
subject as the other, and counter to it at all points--especially
on the fundamental point of, _which party the President was to
belong to!_ the manifesto of the whig members assigning him to the
democracy--the counter manifesto claiming him for the whigs! In
this, Mr. Cushing followed the lead of Mr. Webster in his letter of
resignation: and, in fact, the whole of his pleading (for such it
was) was an amplification of Mr. Webster's letter to the editors
of the National Intelligencer, and of the one to Messrs. Bates
and Choate, and of another to Mr. Ketchum, of New York. The first
part of the address of Mr. Cushing, is to justify the President
for changing his course on the fiscal corporation bill; and this
attempted in a thrust at Mr Clay thus:
"A caucus dictatorship has been set up in Congress, which,
not satisfied with ruling that body to the extinguishment of
individual freedom of opinion, seeks to control the President in
his proper sphere of duty, denounces him before you for refusing
to surrender his independence and his conscience to its decree,
and proposes, through subversion of the fundamental provisions
and principles of the constitution, to usurp the command of
the government. It is a question, therefore, in fact, not of
legislative measures, but of revolution. What is the visible,
and the only professed, origin of these extraordinary movements?
The whig party in Congress have been extremely desirous to
cause a law to be enacted at the late session, incorporating a
national bank. Encountering, in the veto of the President, a
constitutional obstacle to the enactment of such a law at the
late session, a certain portion of the whig party, represented
by the caucus dictatorship, proceeds then, in the beginning, to
denounce the President. Will you concur in this denunciation of
the President?"
This was the accusation, first hinted at by Mr. Rives in the
Senate, afterwards obscurely intimated in Mr. Webster's letter to
the two Massachusetts senators; and now broadly stated by Mr.
Cushing; without, however, naming the imputed dictator; which was,
in fact, unnecessary. Every body knew that Mr. Clay was the person
intended; with what justice, not to repeat proofs already given,
let the single fact answer, that these caucus meetings (for such
there were) were all subsequent to Mr. Tyler's change on the bank
question! and in consequence of it! and solely with a view to get
him back! and that by conciliation until after the second veto. In
this thrust at Mr. Clay Mr. Cushing was acting in the interest of
Mr. Webster's feelings as well as those of Tyler; for since 1832
Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster had not been amicable, and barely kept
in civil relations by friends, who had frequently to interpose to
prevent, or compose outbreaks; and even to make in the Senate formal
annunciation of reconciliation effected between them. But the design
required Mr. Clay to be made the cause of the rejection of the bank
bills; and also required him to be crippled as the leader of the
anti-administration whigs. In this view Mr. Cushing resumes:
"When Lord Grenville broke up the whig party of England, in
1807, by the unseasonable pressure of some great question, and
its consequent loss, 'Why,' said Sheridan, 'did they not put it
off as Fox did? I have heard of men running their heads against
a wall; but this is the first time I ever heard of men building
a wall, and squaring it, and clamping it, for the express
purpose of knocking out their brains against it.' This _bon mot_
of Sheridan's will apply to the whig party in Congress, if, on
account of the failure of the bank bill at the late session,
they secede from the administration, and set up as a _Tertium
Quid_ in the government, neither administration nor opposition."
Having presented this spectacle of their brains beaten out against a
wall of their own raising, if the whig party should follow Mr. Clay
into opposition to the Tyler-Webster administration, Mr. Cushing
took the party on another tack--that of the bird in the hand, which
is worth two in the bush; and softly commences with them on the
profit of using the presidential power while they had it:
"Is it wise for the whig party to throw away the actuality of
power for the current four years? If so, for what object? For
some contingent _possibility_ four years hence? If so, what one?
Is the contingent possibility of advancing to power four years
hence any one particular man in its ranks, whoever he may be,
and however eminently deserving, a sufficient object to induce
the whig party to abdicate the power which itself as a body
possesses now?"
And changing again, and from seduction to terror, he presents
to them, as the most appalling of all calamities, the possible
election of a democratic President at the next election through the
deplorable divisions of the whig party.
"If so, will its abdication of power now tend to promote that
object? Is it not, on the contrary, the very means to make sure
the success of some candidate of the democratic party?"
Proceeding to the direct defence of the President, he then boldly
absolves him from any violation of faith in rejecting the two bank
bills. Thus:
"In refusing to sign those bills, then, he violated no
engagement, and committed no act of perfidy in the sense of a
forfeited pledge."
And advancing from exculpation to applause, he makes it an act
of conscience in Mr. Tyler in refusing to sign them, and places
him under the imperious command of a triple power--conscience,
constitution, oath; without the faculty of doing otherwise than he
did.
"But, in this particular, the President, as an upright
man, could do no otherwise than he did. He conscientiously
_disapproved_ those bills. And the constitution, which he was
sworn to obey, _commands_ him, expressly and peremptorily
commands him, if he do not approve of any bill presented to him
for his signature, to return it to the House of Congress in
which it originated. 'If he approve he shall sign it: _if not_,
he SHALL return it,' are the words of the constitution. Would
you as conscientious men yourselves, forbid the President of the
United States to have a conscience?"
Acquittal of the President of all hand in the initiation of the
second bill, is the next task of Mr. Cushing, and he boldly essays
it.
"The President, it is charged, trifled with one or more of the
retiring secretaries. Of what occurred at cabinet meetings, the
public knows and can know nothing. But, as to the main point,
whether he initiated the fiscal corporation bill. This idea is
incompatible with the dates and facts above stated, which show
that the consideration of a new bill was forced on the President
by members of Congress. It is, also, incompatible with the fact
that, on Tuesday, the 17th of August, as it is said by the
Secretary of War, the President expressed to him doubt as to
any bill."
Now what happened in these cabinet meetings is well known to the
public from the concurrent statement of three of the secretaries,
and from presidential declarations to members of Congress, and these
statements cover the main point of the initiation of the second
bill by the President himself; and that not on the 18th, but the
16th of August, and not only to his cabinet but to Mr. Stuart of
Virginia the same evening; and that it was two days afterwards that
the two members of Congress called upon him (Messrs. Sergeant and
Berrien), not to force him to take a bill, but to be forced by him
to run his own bill through in three days. Demurring to the idea
that the President could be forced by members of Congress to adopt
an obnoxious bill, the brief statement is, that it is not true. The
same is to be said of the quoted remark of the Secretary at War, Mr.
Bell, that the President expressed to him a doubt whether he would
sign any bank bill--leaving out the astonishment of the Secretary
at that declaration, who had been requested by the President the
day before to furnish facts in favor of the bill; and who came to
deliver a statement of these facts thus prepared, and in great
haste, upon request; and when brought, received with indifference!
and a doubt expressed whether he would sign any bill. Far from
proving that the President had a consistent doubt upon the subject,
which is the object of the mutilated quotation from Mr. Bell--it
proves just the contrary! proves that the President was for the
bill, and began it himself, on the 16th; and was laying an anchor to
windward for its rejection on the 17th! having changed during the
night.
The retirement of all the cabinet ministers but one, and that
for such reasons as they gave, is treated by Mr. Cushing as a
thing of no signification, and of no consequence to any body but
themselves. He calls it a common fact which has happened under
many administrations, and of no permanent consequence, provided
good successors are appointed. All that is right enough where
secretaries retire for personal reasons, such as are often seen; but
when they retire because they impeach the President of great moral
delinquency, and refuse to remain with him on that account, the
state of the case is altered. He and they are public officers; and
officers at the head of the government; and their public conduct is
matter of national concern; and the people have a right to inquire
and to know the public conduct of public men. The fact that Mr.
Webster remained is considered as overbalancing the withdrawal of
all the others; and is thus noticed by Mr. Cushing:
"And that, whilst those gentlemen have retired, yet the
Secretary of State, in whose patriotism and ability you have
more immediate cause to confide, has declared that he knows
no sufficient cause for such separation, and continues to
co-operate cordially with the President in the discharge of the
duties of that station which he fills with so much honor to
himself and advantage to the country."
Certainly it was a circumstance of high moment to Mr. Tyler that
one of his cabinet remained with him. It was something in such a
general withdrawing, and for such reasons as were given, and was
considered a great sacrifice on the part of Mr. Webster at the time.
As such it was well remembered a short time afterwards, when Mr.
Webster, having answered the purposes for which he was retained, was
compelled to follow the example of his old colleagues. The address
of Mr. Cushing goes on to show itself, in terms, to be an answer to
the address of the whig party--saying:
"Yet an address has gone forth from a portion of the members of
Congress, purporting to be the _unanimous_ act of a meeting of
THE whigs of Congress, which, besides arraigning the President
on various allegations of fact and surmises not fact, recommends
such radical changes of the constitution."
The address itself of the whig party is treated as the work of Mr.
Clay--as an emanation of that caucus dictatorship in Congress of
which he was always the embodied idea. He says:
"Those changes, if effected, would concentrate the chief powers
of government in the hands of that of which this document
(the whig address) itself is an emanation, namely a caucus
dictatorship of Congress."
This defence by Mr. Cushing, the letters of Mr. Webster, and all the
writers in the interests of Mr. Tyler himself, signified nothing
against the concurrent statements of the retiring senators, and
the confirmatory statements of many members of Congress. The whig
party recoiled from him. Instead of that "whig President, whig
Congress, and whig people," formed into a unit, with the vision of
which Mr. Webster had been induced to remain when his colleagues
retired--instead of this unity, there was soon found diversity
enough. The whig party remained with Mr. Clay; the whig Secretary
of State returned to Massachusetts, inquiring, "_where am I to
go?_" The whig defender of Mr. Tyler went to China, clothed with a
mission; and returning, found that greatest calamity, the election
of a democratic President, to be a fixed fact; and being so fixed,
he joined it, and got another commission thereby: while Mr. Tyler
himself, who was to have been the Roman cement of this whig unity,
continued his march to the democratic camp--arrived there--knocked
at the gate--asked to be let in: and was refused. The national
democratic Baltimore convention would not recognize him.
CHAPTER LXXXVI.
THE DANISH SOUND DUES.
This subject was brought to the attention of the President at
this extra session of Congress by a report from the Secretary of
State, and by the President communicated to Congress along with
his message. He did not seem to call for legislative action, as
the subject was diplomatic, and relations were established between
the countries, and the remedy proposed for the evil stated was
simply one of negotiation. The origin and history of these dues,
and the claims and acquiescences on which they rest, are so clearly
and concisely set forth by Mr. Webster, and the amelioration he
proposed so natural and easy for the United States, and the subject
now acquiring an increasing interest with us, that I draw upon his
report for nearly all that is necessary to be said of it in this
chapter; and which is enough for the general reader. The report says:
"The right of Denmark to levy these dues is asserted on the
ground of ancient usage, coming down from the period when that
power had possession of both shores of the Belt and Sound.
However questionable the right or uncertain its origin,
it has been recognised by European governments, in several
treaties with Denmark, some of whom entered into it at as
early a period as the fourteenth century; and inasmuch as our
treaty with that power contains a clause putting us on the same
footing in this respect as other the most favored nations, it
has been acquiesced in, or rather has not been denied by us.
The treaty of 1645, between Denmark and Holland, to which a
tariff of the principal articles then known in commerce, with
a rule of measurement and a fixed rate of duty, was appended,
together with a subsequent one between the same parties in 1701,
amendatory and explanatory of the former, has been generally
considered as the basis of all subsequent treaties, and among
them of our own, concluded in 1826, and limited to continue ten
years from its date, and further until the end of one year,
after notice by either party of an intention to terminate it,
and which is still in force.
"Treaties have also been concluded with Denmark, by Great
Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Russia, Prussia and Brazil,
by which, with one or two exceptions in their favor, they are
placed on the same footing as the United States. There has
recently been a general movement on the part of the northern
powers of Europe, with regard to the subject of these Sound
dues, and which seems to afford to this government a favorable
opportunity, in conjunction with them, for exerting itself
to obtain some such alteration or modification of existing
regulations as shall conduce to the freedom and extension of our
commerce, or at least to relieve it from some of the burdens now
imposed, which, owing to the nature of our trade, operate, in
many instances, very unequally and unjustly on it in comparison
with that of other nations.
"The ancient tariff of 1645, by which the payment of these dues
was regulated, has never been revised, and by means of the
various changes which have taken place in commerce since that
period, and of the alteration in price in many articles therein
included, chiefly in consequence of the settlement of America,
and the introduction of her products, into general commerce, it
has become quite inapplicable. It is presumed to have been the
intention of the framers of that tariff to fix a duty of about
one per centum ad valorem upon the articles therein enumerated,
but the change in value of many of those commodities, and the
absence of any corresponding change in the duty, has, in many
instances, increased the ad valorem from one per centum to
three, four, and even seven; and this, generally, upon those
articles which form the chief exports of the United States, of
South America, and the West India Islands: such as the articles
of cotton, rice, raw sugar, tobacco, rum, Campeachy wood, &c.
On all articles not enumerated in this ancient tariff it is
stipulated by the treaty of 1701 that the 'privileged nations,'
or those who have treaties with Denmark, shall pay an ad valorem
of one per cent.; but the value of these articles being fixed
by some rules known only to the Danish government, or at least
unknown to us, this duty appears uncertain and fluctuating, and
its estimate is very much left to the arbitrary discretion of
the custom house officers at Elsinore.
"It has been, by some of the public writers in Denmark,
contended that goods of privileged nations, carried in the
vessels of unprivileged nations, should not be entitled to the
limitation of one per centum ad valorem, but should be taxed
one and a quarter per centum, the amount levied on the goods of
unprivileged nations; and, also, that this limitation should be
confined to the direct trade, so that vessels coming from or
bound to the ports of a nation not in treaty with Denmark should
pay on their cargoes the additional quarter per cent.
"These questions, although the former is not of so much
consequence to us, who are our own carriers, are still in
connection with each other, of sufficient importance to render
a decision upon them, and a final understanding, extremely
desirable. These Sound dues are, moreover, in addition to the
port charges of light money, pass-money, &c., which are quite
equal to the rates charged at other places, and the payment of
which, together with the Sound dues, often causes to vessels
considerable delay at Elsinore.
"The port charges, which are usual among all nations to whose
ports vessels resort, are unobjectionable, except that, as in
this case, they are mere consequences of the imposition of the
Sound dues, following, necessarily, upon the compulsory delay at
Elsinore of vessels bound up and down the Sound with cargoes,
with no intention of making any importation into any port of
Denmark, and having no other occasion for delay at Elsinore
than that which arises from the necessity of paying the Sound
dues, and, in so doing, involuntarily subjecting themselves to
these other demands. These port duties would appear to have some
reason in them, because of the equivalent; while, in fact, they
are made requisite, with the exception, perhaps, of the expense
of lights, by the delay necessary for the payment of the Sound
dues.
"The amount of our commerce with Denmark, direct, is
inconsiderable, compared with that of our transactions with
Russia, Sweden, and the ports of Prussia, and the Germanic
association on the Baltic; but the sum annually paid to that
government in Sound dues, and the consequent port charges by
our vessels alone, is estimated at something over one hundred
thousand dollars. The greater proportion of this amount is paid
by the articles of cotton, sugar, tobacco, and rice; the first
and last of these paying a duty of about three per cent. ad
valorem, reckoning their value at the places whence they come.
"By a list published at Elsinore, in 1840, it appears that
between April and November of that year, seventy-two American
vessels, comparatively a small number, lowered their topsails
before the castle of Cronberg. These were all bound up the Sound
to ports on the Baltic, with cargoes composed in part of the
above-named products, upon which alone, according to the tariff,
was paid a sum exceeding forty thousand dollars for these dues.
Having disposed of these cargoes, they returned laden with the
usual productions of the countries on the Baltic, on which,
in like manner, were paid duties on going out through the
Sound, again acknowledging the tribute by an inconvenient and
sometimes hazardous ceremony. The whole amount thus paid within
a period of eight months on inward and outward bound cargoes, by
vessels of the United States, none of which were bound for, or
intended to stop at, any port in Denmark, except compulsorily
at Elsinore, for the purpose of complying with these exactions,
must have exceeded the large sum above named."
This is the burden, and the history of it which Mr. Webster
so succinctly presents. The peaceful means of negotiation are
recommended to obtain the benefit of all the reductions in these
dues which should be granted to other nations; and this natural and
simple course is brought before the President in terms of brief and
persuasive propriety.
"I have, therefore, thought proper to bring this subject before
you at this time, and to go into these general statements in
relation to it, which might be carried more into detail, and
substantiated by documents now at the department, to the end
that, if you should deem it expedient, instructions may be
given to the representative of the United States at Denmark to
enter into friendly negotiations with that government, with a
view of securing to the commerce of the United States a full
participation in any reduction of these duties, or the benefits
resulting from any new arrangements respecting them which may be
granted to the commerce of other states."
This is the view of an American statesman. No quarrelling, or
wrangling with Denmark, always our friend: no resistance to duties
which all Europe pays, and were paying not only before we had
existence as a nation, but before the continent on which we live
had been discovered: no setting ourselves up for the liberators
of the Baltic Sea: no putting ourselves in the front of a contest
in which other nations have more interest than ourselves. It is
not even recommended that we should join a congress of European
ministers to solicit, or to force, a reduction or abolition of these
duties; and the policy of engaging in no entangling alliances, is
well maintained in that abstinence from associated negotiation.
The Baltic is a European sea. Great powers live upon its shores:
other great powers near its entrance: and all Europe nearer to it
than ourselves. The dues collected at Elsinore present a European
question which should be settled by European powers, all that we
can ask being (what Denmark has always accorded) the advantage of
being placed on the footing of the most favored nation. We might
solicit a further reduction of the dues on the articles of which
we are the chief carriers to that sea--cotton, rice, tobacco, raw
sugar; but solicit separately without becoming parties to a general
arrangement, and thereby making ourselves one of its guarantees.
Negotiate separately, asking at the same time to be continued on the
footing of the most favored nation. This report and recommendation
of Mr. Webster is a gem in our State papers--the statement of the
case condensed to its essence, the recommendation such as becomes
our geographical position and our policy; the style perspicuous, and
even elegant in its simplicity.
I borrow from the _Boston Daily Advertiser_ (Mr. Hale the writer) a
condensed and clear account of the success of Mr. Webster's just and
wise recommendations on this subject:
"He recommended that 'friendly negotiations' be instituted with
the Danish government, 'with a view to securing to the United
States a full participation in any reduction of these duties,
or the benefits resulting from any new arrangements respecting
them, which may be granted to the commerce of other states.'
"This recommendation was doubtless adopted; for the concluding
papers of the negotiation appear among the documents
communicated to Congress. The Danish government made a complete
revision of the ancient tariff, establishing new specific duties
on all articles of commerce, with one or two exceptions, in
which the one per cent. ad valorem duty was retained.
"The duties were not increased in any instance, and on many of
the articles they were largely reduced; on some of them as large
a discount as 83 per cent. was made, and a great number were
reduced 50 per cent. Of the articles particularly mentioned by
Mr. Webster as forming the bulk of the American commerce paying
these duties, the duty on raw sugar was reduced from 9 stivers
on 100 pounds to 5 stivers; on rice (in paddy) the duty was
reduced from 15 stivers to 6 stivers. On some other articles
of importance to American commerce the duties were reduced in
a larger proportion; on some dyewoods the reduction was from
30 stivers to 8, and on others from 36 to 12, per thousand
pounds; and on coffee the reduction was from 24 to 6 stivers per
100 pounds, thereby making it profitable to ship this article
directly up the Baltic, instead of to Hamburgh, and thence by
land across to Lubec, which had previously been done to avoid
the Sound dues.
"It was also provided that no unnecessary formalities should
be required from the vessels passing through the Sound. The
lowering of top-sails, complained of by Mr. Webster, was
dispensed with. We mention this circumstance because a recent
article in the _New York Tribune_ speaks of this formality as
still required. It was abolished thirteen years ago. A number of
other accommodations were also granted on the part of Denmark in
modification of the harshness of former regulations. The time
for the functionaries to attend at their offices was prolonged,
and an evident disposition was manifested to make great
abatements in the rigor of enforcing as well as in the amount of
the tax.
"These concessions were regarded as eminently favorable, and
as satisfactory to the United States. Mr. Webster cordially
expressed this sentiment in a letter to Mr. Isaac Rand Jackson,
then our Chargé d'Affaires for Denmark, bearing date June 25,
1842, and also in another letter, two days later, to Mr. Steen
Billé, the Danish Chargé d'Affaires in the United States. In the
former letter Mr. Webster praised Mr. Jackson's 'diligence and
fidelity in discharging his duties in regard to this subject.'"
Greatly subordinate as the United States are geographically in this
question, they are equally, and in fact, duly and proportionably
so in interest. Their interest is in the ratio of their distance
from the scene of the imposition; that is to say, as units are to
hundreds, and hundreds to thousands. Taking a modern, and an average
year for the number of vessels of different powers which passed
this Sound and paid these duties--the year 1850--and the respective
proportions stand thus: English, 5,448 vessels; Norwegian, 2,553;
Swedish, 1,982; Dutch, 1,900; Prussian, 2,391; Russian, 1,138;
American, 106--being about the one-fiftieth part of the English
number, and about the one-twentieth part of the other powers. But
that is not the way to measure the American interest. The European
powers aggregately present one interest: the United States sole
another: and in this point of view the proportion of vessels is as
two hundred to one. The whole number of European vessels in a series
of five years--1849 to 1853--varied from 17,563 to 21,586; the
American vessels during the same years varying from 76 to 135. These
figures show the small comparative interest of the United States in
the reduction, or abolition of these dues--large enough to make the
United States desirous of reduction or abolition--entirely too small
to induce her to become the champion of Europe against Denmark: and,
taken in connection with our geographical position, and our policy
to avoid European entanglement, should be sufficient to stamp as
Quixotic, and to qualify as mad, any such attempt.
CHAPTER LXXXVII.
LAST NOTICE OF THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES.
For ten long years the name of this bank had resounded in the two
Halls of Congress. For twenty successive sessions it had engrossed
the national legislature--lauded, defended, supported--treated as
a power in the State: and vaunted as the sovereign remedy for all
the diseases to which the finances, the currency, and the industry
of the country could be heir. Now, for the first time in that long
period, a session passed by--one specially called to make a bank--in
which the name of that institution was not once mentioned: never
named by its friends! seldom by its foes. Whence this silence?
Whence this avoidance of a name so long, so lately, and so loudly
invoked? Alas! the great bank had run its career of audacity, crime,
oppression, and corruption. It was in the hands of justice, for
its crimes and its debts--was taken out of the hands of its late
insolvent directory--placed in the custody of assignees--and passed
into a state of insolvent liquidation. Goaded by public reproaches,
and left alone in a state of suspension by other banks, she essayed
the perilous effort of a resumption. Her credit was gone. It was
only for payment that any one approached her doors. In twenty days
she was eviscerated of six millions of solid dollars, accumulated by
extraordinary means, to enable her to bid for a re-charter at the
extra session. This was the last hope, and which had been resolved
upon from the moment of General Harrison's election. She was empty.
The seventy-six millions of assets, sworn to the month before, were
either undiscoverable, or unavailable. The shortest month in the
year had been too long for her brief resources. Early in the month
of February, her directory issued a new decree of suspension--the
third one in four years; but it was in vain to undertake to pass
off this stoppage for a suspension. It was felt by all to be an
insolvency, though bolstered by the usual protestations of entire
ability, and firm determination to resume briefly. An avalanche of
suits fell upon the helpless institution, with judgments carrying
twelve per cent. damages, and executions to be levied on whatever
could be found. Alarmed at last, the stockholders assembled in
general meeting, and verified the condition of their property. It
was a wreck! nothing but fragments to be found, and officers of the
bank feeding on these crumbs though already gorged with the spoils
of the monster.
A report of the affairs of the institution was made by a committee
of the stockholders: it was such an exhibition of waste and
destruction, and of downright plundering, and criminal misconduct,
as was never seen before in the annals of banking. Fifty-six
millions and three quarters of capital out of sixty-two millions
and one quarter (including its own of thirty-five) were sunk in
the limits of Philadelphia alone: for the great monster, in going
down, had carried many others along with her; and, like the strong
man in Scripture, slew more in her death than in her life. Vast was
her field of destruction--extending all over the United States--and
reaching to Europe, where four millions sterling of her stock was
held, and large loans had been contracted. Universally on classes
the ruin fell--foreigners as well as citizens--peers and peeresses,
as well as the ploughman and the wash-woman--merchants, tradesmen,
lawyers, divines: widows and orphans, wards and guardians: confiding
friends who came to the rescue: deceived stockholders who held on to
their stock, or purchased more: the credulous masses who believed
in the safety of their deposits, and in the security of the notes
they held--all--all saw themselves the victims of indiscriminate
ruin. An hundred millions of dollars was the lowest at which the
destruction was estimated; and how such ruin could be worked, and
such blind confidence kept up for so long a time, is the instructive
lesson for history: and that lesson the report of the stockholders'
committee enables history to give.
From this authentic report it appears that from the year 1830 to
1836--the period of its struggles for a re-charter--the loans and
discounts of the bank were about doubled--its expenses trebled.
Near thirty millions of these loans were not of a mercantile
character--neither made to persons in trade or business, nor
governed by the rules of safe endorsement and punctual payment
which the by-laws of the institution, and the very safety of the
bank, required; nor even made by the board of directors, as the
charter required; but illegally and clandestinely, by the exchange
committee--a small derivation of three from the body of the
committee, of which the President of the bank was _ex officio_ a
member, and the others as good as nominated by him. It follows then
that these, near thirty millions of loans, were virtually made by
Mr. Biddle himself; and in violation of the charter, the by-laws
and the principles of banking. To whom were they made? To members
of Congress, to editors of newspapers, to brawling politicians, to
brokers and jobbers, to favorites and connections: and all with a
view to purchase a re-charter, or to enrich connections, and exalt
himself--having the puerile vanity to delight in being called the
"Emperor Nicholas." Of course these loans were, in many instances,
not expected to be returned--in few so secured as to compel return:
and, consequently, near all a dead loss to the stockholders, whose
money was thus disposed of.
The manner in which these loans were made to members of Congress,
was told to me by one of these members who had gone through this
process of bank accommodation; and who, voting against the bank,
after getting the loan, felt himself free from shame in telling
what had been done. He needed $4,000, and could not get it at home:
he went to Philadelphia--to the bank--inquired for Mr. Biddle--was
shown into an ante-room, supplied with newspapers and periodicals;
and asked to sit, and amuse himself--the president being engaged
for the moment. Presently a side door opened. He was ushered
into the presence--graciously received--stated his business--was
smilingly answered that he could have it, and more if he wished it:
that he could leave his note with the exchange committee, and check
at once for the proceeds: and if inconvenient to give an indorser
before he went home, he could do it afterwards: and, whoever he said
was good, would be accepted. And in telling me this, the member said
he could read "bribery" in his eyes.
The loans to brokers to extort usury upon--to jobbers, to put up
and down the price of stocks--to favorites, connections, and bank
officers, were enormous in amount, indefinite in time, on loose
security, or none: and when paid, if at all, chiefly in stocks at
above their value. The report of the committee thus states this
abuse:
"These loans were generally in large amounts. In the list of
debtors on 'bills receivable' of the first of January 1837,
twenty-one individuals, firms and companies, stand charged,
each with an amount of one hundred thousand dollars and
upwards. One firm of this city received accommodations of this
kind between August 1835, and November 1837, to the extent
of 4,213,878 dollars 30 cents--more than half of which was
obtained in 1837. The officers of the bank themselves received
in this way, loans to a large amount. In March 1836, when the
bank went into operation, under its new charter, Mr. Samuel
Jaudon, then elected its principal cashier, was indebted to it,
100,500 dollars. When he resigned the situation of cashier, and
was appointed foreign agent, he was in debt 408,389 dollars 25
cents; and on the first of March 1841, he still stood charged
with an indebtedness of 117,500 dollars. Mr. John Andrews,
first assistant cashier, was indebted to the bank in March
1836, 104,000 dollars. By subsequent loans and advances made
during the next three years, he received in all, the sum of
426,930 dollars 67 cents. Mr. Joseph Cowperthwaite, then second
assistant cashier, was in debt to the bank in March 1836,
115,000 dollars; when he was appointed cashier in September,
1837, 326,382 dollars 50 cents: when he resigned, and was
elected a director by the board, in June 1840, 72,860 dollars,
and he stands charged March 3, 1841, on the books with the sum
of 55,081 dollars 95 cents. It appears on the books of the bank,
that these three gentlemen were engaged in making investments
on their joint accounts, in the stock and loan of the Camden
and Woodbury railroad company Philadelphia, Wilmington, and
Baltimore railroad company, Dauphin and Lycoming coal lands,
and Grand Gulf railroad and banking company."
These enormous loans were chiefly in the year 1837, at the time
when the bank stopped payment on account of the "specie circular,"
the "removal of the deposits," and other alleged misdoings of the
democratic administrations: and this is only a sample of the way
that the institution went on during that period of fictitious
distress, and real oppression--millions to brokers and favorites,
not a dollar to the man of business.
Two agencies were established in London--one for the bank, under Mr.
Jaudon, to borrow money; the other for a private firm, of which Mr.
Biddle was partner, and his young son the London head--its business
being to sell cotton, bought with the dead notes of the old bank.
Of the expenses and doings of these agencies, all bottomed upon the
money of the stockholders (so far as it was left), the committee
gave this account:
"When Mr. Jaudon was elected to the place of foreign agent, he
was the principal cashier, at a salary of 7,000 dollars per
annum. The bank paid the loss on the sale of his furniture,
5,074 dollars, and the passage of himself and family to London,
a further sum of 1,015 dollars. He was to devote himself
exclusively to the business of the bank, to negotiate an
uncovered credit in England, to provide for the then existing
debt in Europe, to receive its funds, to pay its bills and
dividends, to effect sales of stocks, and generally to protect
the interests of the bank and 'the country at large.' For
these services he was to receive the commission theretofore
charged and allowed to Baring Brothers & Company, equal to
about 28,000 dollars per annum. In addition to which, the
expenses of the agency were allowed him, including a salary of
1,000 pounds sterling to his brother, Mr. Charles B. Jaudon,
as his principal clerk. From the increase of money operations,
arising from facilities afforded by the agency, the amount
upon which commissions were charged was greatly augmented, so
that the sums paid him for his country services up to January,
1841, amounted at nine per cent. exchange to 178,044 dollars
47 cents, and the expenses of the agency to 35,166 dollars 99
cents. In addition to these sums, he was allowed by the exchange
committee, an extra commission of one per cent. upon a loan
effected in October, 1839, of 800,000 pounds, say $38,755 56;
and upon his claim for a similar commission, upon subsequent
loans in France and Holland, to the amount of $8,337,141 90, the
board of directors, under the sanction of a legal opinion, from
counsel of high standing, and the views of the former president,
by whom the agreement with Mr. Jaudon was made, that the case
of extraordinary loans was not anticipated, nor meant to be
included in the original arrangement, allowed the further charge
of $83,970 37. These several sums amount to $335,937, 39, as
before stated."
A pretty expensive agency, although the agent was to devote himself
exclusively to the business of the bank, protecting its interests,
and those of "the country at large"--an addition to his mission,
this protection of the country at large, which illustrates the
insolent pretensions of this imperious corporation. Protect the
country at large! while plundering its own stockholders of their
last dollar. And that furniture of this bank clerk! the loss on
the sale of which was $5,074! and which loss the stockholders made
up: while but few of them had that much in their houses. The whole
amount of loans effected by this agency was twenty-three millions
of dollars; of which a considerable part was raised upon fictitious
bills, drawn in Philadelphia without funds to meet them, and to
raise money to make runs upon the New York banks, compel them to
close again: and so cover her own insolvency in another general
suspension: for all these operations took place after the suspension
of 1837. The committee thus report upon these loans, and the
gambling in stock speculations at home:
"Such were some of the results of the resolution of March,
1835, though it cannot be questioned, that much may be fairly
attributed to the unhappy situation of the business and
exchanges of the country, concurring with the unfortunate
policy pursued by the administration of the bank. Thus the
institution has gone on to increase its indebtedness abroad,
until it has now more money borrowed in Europe, than it has on
loan on its list of active debt in America. To this has been
superadded, extensive dealing in stocks, and a continuation
of the policy of loaning upon stock securities, though it
was evidently proper upon the recharter, that such a policy
should be at once and entirely abandoned. Such indeed was its
avowed purpose, yet one year afterwards, in March, 1837, its
loans on stocks and other than personal security had increased
$7,821,541, while the bills discounted on personal security,
and domestic exchange had suffered a diminution of $9,516,463
78. It seems to have been sufficient, to obtain money on loan,
to pledge the stock of an 'incorporated company,' however
remote its operation or uncertain its prospects. Many large
loans originally made on a pledge of stocks, were paid for in
the same kind of property, and that too at par, when in many
instances they had become depreciated in value. It is very
evident to the committee, that several of the officers of the
bank were themselves engaged in large operations in stocks and
speculations, of a similar character, with funds obtained of the
bank, and at the same time loans were made to the companies in
which they were interested, and to others engaged in the same
kind of operations, in amounts greatly disproportionate to the
means of the parties, or to their proper and legitimate wants
and dealings. The effect of this system, was to monopolize the
active means of the institution, and disable it from aiding and
accommodating men engaged in business really productive and
useful to the community; and as might have been anticipated, a
large part of the sums thus loaned were ultimately lost, or the
bank compelled, on disadvantageous terms as to price, to take in
payment stocks, back lands and other fragments of the estates of
great speculators."
The cotton agency seemed to be an ambidextrous concern--both
individual and corporation--its American office in the Bank of the
United States--the purchases made upon ten millions of its defunct
notes--the profits going to the private firm--the losses to the
bank. The committee give this history:
"In the course of the investigation the attention of the
committee has been directed to certain accounts, which appear
on the books as 'advances on merchandise,' but which were,
in fact, payments for cotton, tobacco and other produce,
purchased by the direction of the then President, Mr. Nicholas
Biddle, and shipped to Europe on account of himself and others.
These accounts were kept by a clerk in the foreign exchange
department, this department being under the charge of Mr.
Cowperthwaite, until September 22, 1837, when he was elected
cashier, and of Mr. Thomas Dunlap, until March 20, 1840, when
he was chosen president. The original documents, necessary to
enable the committee to arrive at all the facts in relation to
these transactions, were not accessible, having been retained,
as was supposed, by the parties interested, as private papers. A
succinct view of the whole matter, sufficient to convey to the
stockholders a general idea of its character, may be drawn from
the report of a committee of the board of directors, appointed
on the 21st of July, 1840, for the purpose of adjusting and
settling these accounts, and who reported on the 21st of
December, 1840, which report with the accompanying accounts, is
spread at large upon the minutes. The first transactions were in
July, 1837, and appear as advances, to A. G. Jaudon, to purchase
cotton for shipment to Baring Brothers & Co. of Liverpool, the
proceeds to be remitted to their house in London, then acting
as the agents of the bank. The amount of these shipments was
2,182,998 dollars 28 cents. The proceeds were passed to the
credit of the bank, and the account appears to be balanced.
The results, as to the profit and loss, do not appear, and the
committee had no means of ascertaining them, nor the names of
the parties interested. In the autumn of 1837, when the second
of these transactions commenced, it will be recollected, that
Mr. Samuel Jaudon had been appointed the agent of the bank
to reside in London. About the same time, a co-partnership
was formed between Mr. May Humphreys, then a director of the
bank, and a son of Mr. Nicholas Biddle, under the firm of
Biddle & Humphreys. This house was established at Liverpool,
and thenceforward acted as agents for the sale of the produce
shipped to that place which comprised a large proportion of the
whole amount. In explanation of these proceedings, the committee
annex to their report a copy of a letter dated Philadelphia,
December 28, 1840, to the president and directors of the bank,
from Mr. Joseph Cabot, one of the firm of Bevan & Humphreys, and
who became a director at the election in January, 1838. This
letter was read to the board, December 29, 1840, but was not
inserted on the minutes.
"This arrangement continued during the years 1837, 1838 and
1839, the transactions of which amounted to 8,969,450 dollars
95 cents. The shipments were made principally to Biddle and
Humphreys, were paid for by drafts on Bevan and Humphreys--the
funds advanced by the bank, and the proceeds remitted to Mr.
Samuel Jaudon, agent of the bank in London. It appears that
there was paid to Messrs. Bevan and Humphreys by the bank in
Philadelphia during the months of March, April, and May, 1839,
the sum of eight hundred thousand dollars, and the account was
thus balanced. The committee have reason to believe, that this
sum constituted a part or perhaps the whole of the profits
derived from the second series of shipments. How, and among
whom, it was distributed, they have not been informed, but from
the terms of the final settlement, to be adverted to presently,
each one will be at liberty to make his own inferences. The
third and last account, amounting to 3,241,042 dollars 83 cents,
appears on the books, as 'bills on London, advances S. V. S.
W.' These letters stand for the name of S. V. S. Wilder, of New
York.--Messrs. Humphreys and Biddle, to whom these consignments
were made, continued their accounts in the name of Bevan and
Humphreys, but without the knowledge of that firm, as appears
by Mr. Cabot's letter of December 28, 1840. The result of these
last shipments, was a loss of 962,524 dollars 13 cents. Of this
amount the sum of 553,908 dollars 57 cents was for excess of
payments by Messrs. Humphreys and Biddle to the London agency,
beyond the proceeds of sale, with interest thereon. The
parties interested, claimed and were allowed a deduction for
loss on 526,000 dollars of southern funds, used in the purchase
of cotton, when at a discount, the sum of 310,071 dollars 30
cents; and also this sum, being banker's commission to Messrs.
Humphreys and Biddle on advances to Samuel Jaudon, agent, 21,061
dollars 86 cents, making 331,133 dollars 16 cents, and leaving
to be settled by the parties the sum of 631,390 dollars 97
cents."
Thus, the profit of eight hundred thousand dollars on the first
shipments of cotton went to this private firm, though not shown
on the books to whom; and the loss of nine hundred and sixty-two
thousand five hundred and twenty-four dollars and thirteen cents
on the last shipments went to the bank; but this being objected
to by some of the directors, it was settled by Mr. Biddle and
the rest--the bank taking from them stocks, chiefly of Texas, at
par--the sales of the same being slow at a tithe of their face. The
bank had also a way of guaranteeing the individual contracts of Mr.
Biddle for millions; of which the report gives this account:
"Upon the eighteenth day of August, 1838, the bank guaranteed a
contract made by Mr. Nicholas Biddle in his individual capacity,
for the purchase of two thousand five hundred bonds of the State
of Mississippi, of two thousand dollars each, amounting in the
whole to 5,000,000 dollars. The signature of Mr. Thomas Dunlap,
then second assistant cashier, was affixed to the guarantee, in
behalf of the bank, upon the verbal authority of the president.
Upon the 29th of January, 1839, the bank guaranteed to the
State of Michigan, the punctual fulfilment of the obligations
of the Morris canal and banking company, for the purchase of
bonds of that state, to the extent of 3,145,687 dollars 50
cents. for 2,700,000 taken at par, and including interest on the
instalments payable every three months up to January, 1843. On
the 29th of April, 1839, the bank guaranteed a contract entered
into by Mr. Thomas Dunlap in his individual capacity for the
purchase of one million of dollars of the 'Illinois and Michigan
canal stock.' In regard to these transactions, the committee can
find no authority on the minutes of the board, and have been
referred to none, by the president, upon whom they called for
information."
Unintelligible accounts of large amounts appeared in the profit and
loss side of the bank ledger; which, not explaining themselves,
the parties named as receiving the money, were called upon for
explanations--which they refused to give. Thus:
"In this last account there is a charge under date of June
30, 1840, of $400,000 to 'parent bank notes account,' which
has not been explained to the satisfaction of the committee.
It must be also mentioned, that among the expenditures of the
bank, there is entered, at various dates, commencing May 5,
1836, sums amounting in all to 618,640 dollars 15 cents, as
paid on the 'receipts of Mr. N. Biddle,' of 'Mr. N. Biddle and
J. Cowperthwaite,' and 'cashier's vouchers.' As the committee
were unable to obtain satisfactory information upon the subject
of these expenses from the books or officers of the bank,
application was made by letter to Mr. N. Biddle and Mr. J.
Cowperthwaite, from whom no reply has been received."
These enormous transactions generally without the knowledge of the
directory, usually upon the initials of a member of the exchange
committee; and frequently upon a deposit of stock in the cash
drawer. Besides direct loans to members of Congress, and immense
fees, there was a process of entertainment for them at immense
expense--nightly dinners at hotels--covers for fifty: and the most
costly wines and viands: and this all the time. Besides direct
applications of money in elections, the bank became a fountain of
supply in raising an election fund where needed, taking the loss on
itself. Thus, in 1833, in the presidential election in Kentucky,
some politicians went into the branch bank at Lexington, assessed
the party in each county for the amount wanted in that county--drew
drafts for the amount of the assessment on some ardent friends in
the county, received the cash for the drafts from the bank, and
applied it to the election--themselves not liable if the assessment
was not paid, but the same to go to the profit and loss account of
the bank. In such operations as all these, and these are not all, it
was easy for the bank to be swallowed up: and swallowed up it was
totally.
The losses to the stockholders were deplorable, and in many
instances attended with circumstances which aggravated the
loss. Many were widows and children, their _all_ invested where
it was believed to be safe; and an ascertained income relied
on as certain, with eventual return of the capital. Many were
unfortunately deceived into the purchase or retention of stock, by
the delusive bank reports. The makers of these reports themselves
held no quantity of the stock--only the few shares necessary to
qualify them for the direction. Foreign holders were numerous,
attracted by the, heretofore, high credit of American securities,
and by the implications of the name--Bank of the United States;
implying a national ownership, which guaranteed national care
in its management, and national liability on its winding up.
Holland, England, France suffered, but the English most of all the
foreigners. The London Banker's Circular thus described their loss:
"The proportion of its capital held by British subjects is
nearly four millions sterling; it may be described as an entire
loss. And the loss we venture, upon some consideration, to say
is greater than the aggregate of all the losses sustained by
the inhabitants of the British Islands, from failure of banks
in this country, since Mr. Patterson established the banks of
England and Scotland at the close of the seventeenth century.
The small population of Guernsey and Jersey hold £200,000 of the
stock of this U. States Bank. Call it an entire loss, and it is
equal to a levy of three or four pounds on every man, woman, and
child in the whole community of those islands--a sum greater
than was ever raised by taxation in a single year on any people
in the whole world. Are these important facts? if facts they
be. Then let statesmen meditate upon them, for by their errors
and reckless confidence in delusive theories they have been
produced."
The credit of the bank, and the price of stock was kept up by
delusive statements of profits, and fictitious exhibition of assets
and false declarations of surpluses. Thus, declaring a half-yearly
dividend of four per centum, January 1st, 1839, with a surplus of
more than four millions; on the first of July of the same year,
another half-yearly dividend of four per centum, with a surplus of
more than four millions; on the 15th of January, the same year,
announcing a surplus of three millions; and six weeks thereafter, on
the first of January, announcing a surplus of five millions; while
the assets of the bank were carried up to seventy-six millions.
In this way credit was kept up. The creating of suspensions--that
of 1837, and subsequent--cost immense sums, and involved the most
enormous villainy; and the last of these attempts--the run upon the
New York banks to stop them again before she herself stopped for
the last time--was gigantically criminal, and ruinous to itself.
Mr. Joseph Cowperthwaite (perfectly familiar with the operation)
describes it to the life, and with the indifference of a common
business transaction. Premising that a second suspension was coming
on, it was deemed best (as in the first one of 1837) to make it
begin in New York; and the operation for that purpose is thus
narrated:
"After the feverish excitement consequent on this too speedy
effort to return to cash payments had in a good degree subsided,
another crisis was anticipated, and it was feared that the
banks generally would be obliged again to suspend. This was,
unhappily, too soon to be realized, for the storm was then ready
to burst, but, instead of meeting its full force at once, it
was deemed best to make it fall first upon the banks of New
York. To effect this purpose, large means were necessary, and to
procure these, resort was had to the sale of foreign exchange.
The state of the accounts of the bank with its agents abroad did
not warrant any large drafts upon them, especially that of the
Messrs. Hottinguer in Paris. This difficulty, however, it was
thought might be avoided, by shipping the coin to be drawn from
the New York banks immediately to meet the bills. Accordingly,
large masses of exchange, particularly bills on Paris, which
were then in great demand, were sent to New York to be sold
without limit. Indeed, the bills were signed in blank, and so
sent to New York; and although a large book was thus forwarded,
it was soon exhausted, and application was made to the agent
of the Paris house in New York for a further supply, who drew
a considerable amount besides. The proceeds of these immense
sales of exchange created very heavy balances against the New
York banks, which, after all, signally failed in producing the
contemplated effect. The bills not being provided for, nor even
regularly advised, as had uniformly been the custom of the bank,
were dishonored; and although the agent in London did every
thing which skill and judgment could accomplish, the credit of
the bank was gone, and from that day to the present its effects
upon the institution have been more and more disastrous."
"Deemed best to make the storm fall first upon the banks of New
York;" and for that purpose to draw bills without limit, without
funds to meet them, in such rapid succession as to preclude the
possibility of giving notice--relying upon sending the gold which
they drew out of the New York banks to Paris, to meet the same bills
(all the while laying that exportation of gold to the wickedness of
the specie circular), and failing to get the money there as fast
as these "race-horse" bills went--they returned dishonored--came
rolling back by millions, protested in Paris, to be again protested
in Philadelphia. Then the bubble burst. The credit which sustained
the monster was gone. Ruin fell upon itself, and upon all who put
their trust in it; and certainly this last act, for the criminality
of its intent and the audacity of its means, was worthy to cap and
crown the career of such an institution.
It was the largest ruin, and the most criminal that has been
seen since the South Sea and Mississippi schemes; yet no one was
punished, or made to refund. Bills of indictment were found by the
grand jury of the county of Philadelphia against Nicholas Biddle,
Samuel Jaudon, and John Andrews, for a conspiracy to defraud the
stockholders in the bank; and they were arrested, and held to bail
for trial. But they surrendered themselves into custody, procured
writs of _habeas corpus_ for their release; and were discharged in
vacation by judges before whom they were brought. It has been found
difficult in the United States to punish great offenders--much
more so than in England or France. In the cases of the South Sea
and Mississippi frauds, the principal actors, though men of high
position, were criminally punished, and made to pay damages. While
these delinquencies were going on in the Bank of the United States,
an eminent banker of London--Mr. Fauntleroy--was hanged at Tyburn,
like a common felon--for his bank misdeeds: and while some plundered
stockholders are now (autumn of 1855) assembled in Philadelphia,
searching in vain for a shilling of their stock, three of the
greatest bankers in London are receiving sentence of transportation
for fourteen years for offences, neither in money nor morals, the
hundredth part of the ruin and crime perpetrated by our American
bank--bearing the name of the United States. The case presents
too strong a contrast, and teaches too great a lesson to criminal
justice to be omitted; and here it is:
"The firm had been in existence for nearly two centuries. The
two elder partners of the firm had been distinguished for
munificent charities, for an advocacy of great moral reforms,
and an active participation in the religious or philanthropic
measures of the day. They had always been liberal givers,
had presided at Exeter Hall meetings, built chapels, and
generally acted the part of liberal and useful members of
society; and one of them, Sir John Dean Paul, was a baronet
by descent, and allied to some of the highest nobility of
England. He was first cousin to the present Lord Ravensworth,
the honorable Augustus and Adolphus Liddell, the rector of St.
Paul's, Knightsbridge, the Countess of Hardwicke, Viscountess
Barrington, Lady Bloomfield; and, above all, the honorable
Mrs. Villiers, sister-in-law to the Earl of Clarendon. These
connections, however, in a country where rank and social
position have peculiar influence, did not save them from a
criminal trial and utter disgrace. One of their customers, in
obedience to what he believed to be a duty to society, having
personally inquired into the affairs of the firm, proceeded to
lay a criminal information against Messrs. Strahan, Paul, and
Bates, which led to their indictment and subsequent trial before
the criminal court. This gentleman was the Rev. Dr. Griffith,
Prebendary of Rochester, a wealthy ecclesiastic and a personal
friend of all the partners of the firm, with which he had
been a large depositor for many years. On the twenty-fifth of
October the trial came on before Mr. Baron Alderson, assisted
by Baron Martin and Justice Willes. The defendants appeared
in court, attended by Sir Frederick Thesiger, Mr. Ballantyne,
Sergeant Byles, and other almost equally eminent counsel. The
Attorney-general appeared for the prosecution, and the evidence
adduced at the trial, disclosed the following facts: Dr.
Griffith, the prosecutor in the proceedings, and who, at the
time of the failure of the defendants, had money and securities
on deposit with them to the amount of £22,000, about five years
ago empowered them to purchase for him on three different
occasions, Danish five per cent. bonds to the value of £5,000.
The defendants purchased the bonds, upon which they regularly
received the dividends, and credited Dr. Griffith with the same
on their books. This continued until March, 1854, when Sir John
D. Paul, to relieve the embarrassments under which the firm
were laboring, sold these securities, together with others
with which they were entrusted, and appropriated the proceeds,
amounting to over £12,000, to the use of the firm. This, as we
have stated, was no offence at common law, and the indictment
was preferred upon a statutory provision found in the 7th and
8th of George IV., cap. 29. The rigid severity of the penal
law in England on this subject will be better appreciated when
we add, that the bonds were replaced by others of equal value,
in the June following their misappropriation, just one year
previous to the failure of the firm; and that the indictment
only charged the defendants with misappropriating them in this
single instance, although it was shown that the second set of
bonds were again sold for the use of the firm in April, 1855;
Dr. Griffith having, in the interval, regularly received his
dividends; so that, although the firm might be perfectly solvent
at this moment, the fact that they had sold the bonds in March,
1851, even if they had replaced them in June, 1854, and had
credited Dr. Griffith with the dividends on them between those
dates, would still render them liable to an indictment. The
case, therefore, overlooking the final misappropriation of the
bonds, and the failure of the firm in 1855, was narrowed down to
the single issue--whether they had been sold in 1854 without the
consent of Dr. Griffith."
For misappropriating sixty thousand dollars of one of their
customers--using it without his consent--these three great London
bankers were sentenced to fourteen years' transportation: for
misappropriating thirty-five millions, and sinking twenty-one
millions more in other institutions, the wrong-doers go free in the
United States--giving some countenance among us to the sarcasm of
the Scythian philosopher, that laws are cobwebs which catch the weak
flies, and let the strong ones break through. The Judge (Mr. Baron
Alderson) who tried this case (that of the three London bankers),
had as much heart and feeling as any judge, or man ought to have;
but he also had a sense of his own duty, and of his obligations to
the laws, and to the country; and in sentencing men of such high
position, and with whom he had been intimate and social, he combined
in the highest degree the feelings of a man with the duties of the
judge. He said to the prisoners:
"William Strahan, Sir John Dean Paul, and Robert Makin Bates,
the jury have now found you guilty of the offence charged upon
you in the indictment--the offence of disposing of securities
which were entrusted by your customers to you as bankers, for
the purpose of being kept safe for their use, and which you
appropriated, under circumstances of temptation, to your own.
A greater and more serious offence can hardly be imagined in a
great commercial city like this. It tends to shake confidence
in all persons in the position you occupied, and it has shaken
the public confidence in establishments like that you for a
long period honorably conducted. I do very, very much regret
that it falls to my lot to pass any sentence on persons in
your situation; but yet the public interest and public justice
require it; and it is not for me to shrink from the discharge of
any duty, however painful, which properly belongs to my office.
I should have been very glad, if it had pleased God that some
one else now had to discharge that duty. I have seen (continued
the learned judge, with deep emotion) at least one of you under
very different circumstances, sitting at my side in high office,
instead of being where you now are, and I could scarcely then
have fancied to myself that it would ever come to me to pass
sentence on you. But so it is, and this is a proof, therefore,
that we all ought to pray not to be led into temptation. You
have been well educated, and held a high position in life, and
the punishment which must fall on you will consequently be the
more seriously and severely felt by you, and will also greatly
affect those connected with you, who will most sensitively feel
the disgrace of your position. All that I have to say is, that
I cannot conceive any worse case of the sort arising under the
act of Parliament, applicable to your offence. Therefore, as I
cannot conceive any worse case under the act, I can do nothing
else but impose the sentence therein provided for the worst
case, namely, the most severe punishment, which is, that you be
severally transported for fourteen years."
For the admiration of all in our America--for the imitation of
those who may be called to act in the like cases--with the sad
conviction that the administration of criminal justice is not equal
in our Republic to what it is in the monarchies of Europe: for
the benefit of all such, this brief notice of judicial action in
an English court against eminent, but culpable bankers, is here
given--contrasting so strikingly with the vain attempts to prosecute
those so much more culpable in our own country.
CHAPTER LXXXVIII.
END AND RESULTS OF THE EXTRA SESSION.
This extraordinary session, called by President Harrison, held
under Mr. Tyler, dominated by Mr. Clay, was commenced on the
31st of May and ended the 13th of September: seventy-five days'
session--and replete with disappointed calculations, and nearly
barren of permanent results. The whigs expected from it an easy and
victorious course of legislation, and the consolidation of their
power by the inauguration of their cherished measures for acting on
the people--national bank--paper money national currency--union of
bank and state--distribution of public money--bankrupt act--monopoly
of office. The democracy saw no means of preventing these measures;
but relied upon the goodness of their cause, the badness of the
measures to be adopted by the whigs, and the blunders they would
commit, to give them eventual victory, and soon to restore parties
to their usual relative positions. The defection of Mr. Tyler was
not foreseen: his veto of a national bank was not counted upon: the
establishment of that institution was considered certain: and the
only remedy thought of was in the repeal of the law establishing
it. As a public political corporation, that repealability came
within the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in
the Dartmouth College case; and being established for the good of
the state, it became amenable to the judgment of the State upon the
question of good, or evil--to be decided by the political power.
Repealability was then the reliance against a national bank; and
that ground was immediately taken, and systematically urged--both
for the purpose of familiarizing the people with the idea of repeal,
and of deterring capitalists from taking its stock. The true service
that Mr. Tyler did the democratic party was in rejecting the bank
charters (for such they both were, though disguised with ridiculous
names). Numerically he weakened the whig ranks but little:
potentially not at all--as those who joined him, took office: and
became both useless to him, and a reproach. That _beau ideal_, of a
whig unity--"whig President, whig Congress, and whig people"--which
Mr. Webster and Mr. Cushing were to realize, vanished: and they
with it--leaving Mr. Tyler without whig, and without democratic
adherents; but with a small party of his own as long as he was in
a condition to dispense office. The legislation of the session was
a wreck. The measures passed, had no duration. The bankrupt act,
and the distribution act, were repealed by the same Congress that
passed them--under the demand of the people. The new tariff act,
called revenue--was changed within a year. The sub-treasury system,
believed to have been put to death, came to life again. Gold and
silver, intended to have been ignored as a national currency,
had become that currency--both for the national coffers, and the
people's pockets. Of all the measures of that extraordinary session,
opening with so much hope, nothing now remains to recall the idea
of its existence, but, _first_--THE HOME SQUADRON! keeping idle
watch on our safe coasts, at the cost of a million per annum.
_Next_, THE OCEAN LINE STEAMERS! plundering the country of two
millions annually, oppressing fair competition and damaging the
character of Congress. And last, not least, THAT ONE HOUR RULE!
which has silenced the representatives of the people in the House
of Representatives, reduced the national legislation to blind
dictation, suppressed opposition to evil measures, and deprived the
people of the means of knowing the evil that Congress is doing.
To the democracy it was a triumphant session--triumphant in every
thing that constitutes moral and durable triumph. They had broken
down the whig party before the session was over--crushed it upon
its own measures; and were ready for the elections which were to
reverse the party positions. The Senate had done it. The House,
oppressed by the hour rule, and the tyrannical abuse of the previous
question, had been able to make but little show. The two-and-twenty
in the Senate did the work; and never did I see a body of men more
effective or brilliant--show a higher spirit or a more determined
persistence. To name the speakers, would be to enumerate all--except
Mr. Mouton, who not having the English language perfect was limited
to his vote--always in place, and always faithful. The Globe
newspaper was a powerful assistant, both as an ally working in
its own columns, and as a vehicle of communication for our daily
debates. Before the session was over we felt ourselves victorious,
and only waiting for the day when the elections were to show it. Of
all our successes, that of keeping the hour rule, and the previous
question out of the American Senate, was the most brilliant, and
durably beneficent--rising above party--entering the high region of
free government--preserving the liberty of speech--preserving to
republican government its distinctive and vital feature, that of
free debate; and saving national legislation from unresisted party
dictation.
CHAPTER LXXXIX.
FIRST ANNUAL MESSAGE OF PRESIDENT TYLER.
This message coming in so soon after the termination of the extra
session--only two months after it--was necessarily brief and
meagre of topics, and presents but few points worthy of historical
remembrance. The first subject mentioned was the acquittal of
McLeod, which had taken place in the recess: and with which result
the British government was content. The next subject was, the
kindred matter of the Caroline; on which the President had nothing
satisfactory to communicate, but expressed a high sense of the
indignity which had been offered to the United States, and evinced a
becoming spirit to obtain redress for it. He said:
"I regret that it is not in my power to make known to you an
equally satisfactory conclusion in the case of the Caroline
steamer, with the circumstances connected with the destruction
of which, in December, 1837, by an armed force fitted out in
the Province of Upper Canada, you are already made acquainted.
No such atonement as was due for the public wrong done to the
United Stares by this invasion of her territory, so wholly
irreconcilable with her rights as an independent power, has yet
been made. In the view taken by this government, the inquiry
whether the vessel was in the employment of those who were
prosecuting an unauthorized war against that Province, or was
engaged by the owner in the business of transporting passengers
to and from Navy Island in hopes of private gain, which was
most probably the case, in no degree alters the real question
at issue between the two governments. This government can
never concede to any foreign government the power, except in
a case of the most urgent and extreme necessity, of invading
its territory, either to arrest the persons or destroy the
property of those who may have violated the municipal laws of
such foreign government, or have disregarded their obligations
arising under the law of nations. The territory of the United
States must be regarded as sacredly secure against all such
invasions, until they shall voluntarily acknowledge their
inability to aquit themselves of their duties to others. And in
announcing this sentiment, I do but affirm a principle which
no nation on earth would be more ready to vindicate, at all
hazards, than the people and government of Great Britain."
The finances were in a bad condition, and the President chiefly
referred to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury upon
them. Of the loan of twelve millions authorized at the previous
session, only five millions and a half had been taken--being the
first instance, and the last in our financial history in which,
in time of peace, our government was unable to borrow money. A
deficiency existed in the revenues of the year, and for the ensuing
year that deficiency was estimated, would amount to a fraction
over fourteen millions of dollars. To meet this large deficit the
secretary recommended--_first_, an extension of the term for the
redeemability of the remainder of the authorized loan, amounting
to $6,500,000. _Secondly_, the re-issue of the five millions of
treasury notes authorized at the previous session. _Thirdly_,
the remainder ($2,718,570) to be made up by additional duties on
imported articles. While recommending these fourteen millions and
a quarter to be raised by loans, treasury notes, and duties, the
President recommended the land revenue should still remain as a fund
for distribution to the States, and was solicitous that, in the
imposition of new duties, care should be taken not to impair the
mutual assurance for each other's life which the land distribution
bill, and the compromise clause contained in the tariff bill of the
extra session provided for each other--saying: "It might be esteemed
desirable that no such augmentation of the duties should take place
as would have the effect of annulling the land proceeds distribution
act of the last session, which act it declared to be inoperative the
moment the duties are increased beyond 20 per centum--the maximum
rate established by the compromise act." This recommendation, so
far as it applied to the compromise act, was homage to the dead;
and so far as it related to continuing the distribution of the
land revenue was, probably, the first instance in the annals of
nations in which the chief magistrate of a country has recommended
the diversion and gratuitous distribution of a large branch of its
revenues, recommending at the same time, money to be raised by
loans, taxes, and government notes to supply the place of that given
away. The largeness of the deficiency was a point to be accounted
for; and that was done by showing the great additional expenses to
be incurred--and especially in the navy, for which the new secretary
(Mr. Upshur) estimated enormously, and gave rise to much searching
discussion in Congress: of which, in its place. But the chief item
in the message was another modification of the fiscalities of the
extra session, with a new name, and an old countenance upon it,
except where it was altered for the worse. This new plan was thus
introduced by the President:
"In pursuance of a pledge given to you in my last message to
Congress, which pledge I urge as an apology for adventuring
to present you the details of any plan, the Secretary of the
Treasury will be ready to submit to you, should you require
it, a plan of finance which, while it throws around the
public treasure reasonable guards for its protection, and
rests on powers acknowledged in practice to exist from the
origin of the government, will, at the same time, furnish to
the country a sound paper medium, and afford all reasonable
facilities for regulating the exchanges. When submitted, you
will perceive in it a plan amendatory of the existing laws
in relation to the Treasury department--subordinate in all
respects to the will of Congress directly, and the will of
the people indirectly--self-sustaining should it be found in
practice to realize its promises in theory, and repealable at
the pleasure of Congress. It proposes by effectual restraints,
and by invoking the true spirit of our institutions, to
separate the purse from the sword; or more properly to speak,
denies any other control to the President over the agents who
may be selected to carry it into execution, but what may be
indispensably necessary to secure the fidelity of such agents;
and, by wise regulations, keeps plainly apart from each other
private and public funds. It contemplates the establishment of
a Board of Control at the seat of government, with agencies
at prominent commercial points, or wherever else Congress
shall direct, for the safe-keeping and disbursement of the
public moneys, and a substitution, at the option of the public
creditor, of treasury notes, in lieu of gold and silver.
It proposes to limit the issues to an amount not to exceed
$15,000,000--without the express sanction of the legislative
power. It also authorizes the receipt of individual deposits
of gold and silver to a limited amount, and the granting
certificates of deposit, divided into such sums as may be
called for by the depositors. It proceeds a step further, and
authorizes the purchase and sale of domestic bills and drafts,
resting on a real and substantial basis, payable at sight, or
having but a short time to run, and drawn on places not less
than one hundred miles apart--which authority, except in so far
as may be necessary for government purposes exclusively, is only
to be exerted upon the express condition, that its exercise
shall not be prohibited by the State in which the agency is
situated."
This was the prominent feature of the message, and appeared to
Mr. Benton to be so monstrous and dangerous that it ought not to
be allowed to get out of the Senate without a mark of reprobation
should be first set upon it. The moment the reading was finished,
the usual resolve was offered to print extra copies, when he rose
and inveighed against the new fiscality with great vehemence, saying:
"He could not reconcile it to himself to let the resolution pass
without making a few remarks on that part of the message which
related to the new fiscal agent. Looking at that feature of it,
as read, he perceived that the President gave an outline of his
plan, leaving it to the Secretary of the Treasury to furnish
the details in his report. He (Mr. BENTON) apprehended that
nothing in those details could reconcile him to the project, or
in any manner meet his approbation. There were two main points
presented in the plan, to which he never could agree--both being
wholly unconstitutional and dangerous. One was that of emitting
bills of credit, or issuing a treasury currency. Congress had
no constitutional authority to issue paper money, or emit
federal bills of credit; and the other feature is to authorize
this government to deal in exchanges. The proposition to issue
bills of credit, when under consideration at the formation
of the constitution, was struck out with the express view of
making this government a hard money government--not capable of
recognizing any other than a specie currency--a currency of gold
and silver--a currency known and valued, and equally understood
by every one. But here is a proposition to do what is expressly
refused to be allowed by the framers of the constitution--to
exercise a power not only not granted to Congress, but a power
expressly denied. The next proposition is to authorize the
federal government to deal in and regulate exchanges, and to
furnish exchange to merchants. This is a new invention--a modern
idea of the power of this government, invented by Mr. Biddle,
to help out a national bank. Much as General Hamilton was in
favor of paper money, he never went the length of recommending
government bills of credit, or dealings in exchange by the
United States Treasury. The fathers of the church, Macon, and
John Randolph, and others, called this a hard money government:
they objected to bank paper; but here is government paper; and
that goes beyond Hamilton, much as he was in favor of the paper
system. The whole scheme making this government a regulator of
exchange--a dealer in exchange--a furnisher of exchange--is
absurd, unconstitutional, and pernicious, and is a new thing
under the sun.
"Now he (Mr. BENTON) objected to this government becoming a
seller of exchange to the country (which is transportation of
money), for which there is no more authority than there is for
its furnishing transportation of goods or country produce. There
is not a word in the constitution to authorize it--not a word
to be found justifying the assumption. The word exchange is not
in the constitution. What does this message propose? Congress
is called upon to establish a board with agencies, for the
purpose of furnishing the country with exchanges. Why should
not Congress be also called on to furnish that portion of the
community engaged in commerce with facilities for transporting
merchandise? The proposition is one of the most pernicious
nature, and such as must lead to the most dangerous consequences
if adopted.
"The British debt began in the time of Sir Robert Walpole, on
issues of exchequer bills--by which system the British nation
has been cheated, and plunged irretrievably in debt to the
amount of nine hundred millions of pounds. The proposition that
the government should become the issuer of exchequer notes,
is one borrowed from the system introduced in England by Sir
Robert Walpole, whose whig administration was nothing but a high
tory administration of Queen Anne: and infinitely worse; for
Walpole's exchequer bills were for large sums, for investment:
this scheme goes down to five dollar notes for common and petty
circulation. He (Mr. BENTON) had much to say on this subject,
but this was not the time for entering at large into it. This
perhaps was not the proper occasion to say more; nor would it,
he considered, be treating the President of the United States
with proper respect to enter upon a premature discussion. He
could not, however, in justice to himself, allow this resolution
to pass without stating his objections to two such obnoxious
features of the proposed fiscality, looking, as he did, upon the
whole thing as one calculated to destroy the whole structure of
the government, to change it from the hard money it was intended
to be, to the paper money government it was intended not to
be, and to mix it up with trade, which no one ever dreamed
of. He (Mr. BENTON) had on another occasion stated that this
administration would go back not only to the federal times of
'98, but to the times of Sir Robert Walpole and Queen Anne, and
the evidence is now before us.
"He (Mr. BENTON) had only said a few words on this occasion,
because he could not let the proposition to sanction bills
of credit go without taking the very earliest opportunity
of expressing his disapprobation, and denouncing a system
calculated to produce the same results which had raised the
funded debt of Great Britain from twenty-one millions to nine
hundred millions of pounds. He should avail himself of the first
appropriate opportunity to maintain the ground he had assumed as
to the identity of this policy with that of Walpole, by argument
and references, that this plan of the President's was utterly
unconstitutional and dangerous--part borrowed from the system
of English exchequer issues, and part from Mr. Biddle's scheme
of making the federal government an exchange dealer--though Mr.
Biddle made the government act indirectly through a board of
bank directors, and this makes it act directly through a board
of treasury directors and their agents.
"This is the first time that a formal proposition has been
made to change our hard money government (as it was intended
to be) into a paper money machine; and it is the first time
that there has been a proposal to mix it up with trade and
commerce, by making it a furnisher of exchanges, a bank of
deposit, a furnisher of paper currency, and an imitator of
the old confederation in its continental bills and a copyist
of the English exchequer system. Being the first time these
unconstitutional and pernicious schemes were formally presented
to Congress, he felt it to be his duty to disclose his
opposition to them at once. He would soon speak more fully."
The President in his message referred to the accompanying report of
the Secretary of the Treasury (Mr. Walter Forward), for the details
of his plan; and in looking at these they were found to comprise
all the features of a bank of circulation, a bank of deposit, and
a bank of discount upon bills of exchange--all in the hands of
the government, and they to become the collectors and keepers of
the public moneys, and the furnishers of a national paper money
currency, in sums adapted to common dealings, both to the people
and the federal government. It was a revolting scheme, and fit for
instant condemnation, but in great danger of being adopted from the
present predominance of that party in all the departments of the
government which was so greatly addicted to the paper system.
CHAPTER XC.
THIRD PLAN FOR A FISCAL AGENT, CALLED EXCHEQUER BOARD: MR.
BENTON'S SPEECH AGAINST IT: EXTRACTS.
MR. PRESIDENT:--I have said on several occasions since the present
administration was formed, that we had gone back not merely to the
federal times of General Hamilton, but far beyond them--to the whig
times of Sir Robert Walpole, and the tory times of Queen Anne. When
I have said this I did not mean it for sarcasm, or for insult, or to
annoy the feelings of those who had just gotten into power. My aim
was far higher and nobler--that of showing the retrograde movement
which our government was making, and waking up the country to a
sense of its dangers before it was too late; and to the conviction
of the necessity of arresting that movement, and recovering the
ground which we have lost. When I had said that we had gone back
to the Walpole and Queen Anne times of the British government, I
knew full well the extent of the declaration which I had made,
and the obligation which I had imposed on myself to sustain my
assertion, and I knew that history would bear me out in it. I knew
all this; and I felt that if I could show to the American people
that we had retrograded to the most calamitous period of British
history--the period from which her present calamities all date--and
that we were about to adopt the systems of policy which she then
adopted, and which has led to her present condition; I felt that
if I could do this, I might succeed in rousing up the country to
a sense of its danger before it was too late to avoid the perils
which are spread before us. The administration of Sir Robert Walpole
was the fountain-head of British woes. All the measures which have
led to the present condition of the British empire, and have given
it more debt and taxes, more paupers, and more human misery than
ever before was collected under the sway of one sceptre: all these
date from the reigns of the first and second George; when this
minister, for twenty-five years, was the ruler of parliament by
means of the moneyed interest, and the ruler of kings by beating the
tories at their own game of non-resistance and passive obedience to
the royal will. The tories ruled under Queen Anne: they went for
church and state, and rested for support on the landed interest.
The whigs came into power with the accession of George the First:
they went for bank and state; and rested for support on the moneyed
interest. Sir Robert Walpole was the head of the whig party; and
immediately became the favorite of that monarch, and afterwards of
his successor; and, availing himself during that long period of
power of all the resources of genius, unimpeded by the obstacle of
principles, he succeeded in impressing his own image upon the age in
which he lived, and giving to the government policy the direction
which it has followed ever since. Morals, politics, public and
private pursuits, all received the impress of the minister's genius;
and what that genius produced I will now proceed to show: I read
from Smollet's continuation of Hume:
"This was the age of interested projects, inspired by a
venal spirit of adventure, the natural consequence of that
avarice, fraud, and profligacy which the MONEYED CORPORATIONS
had introduced. The vice, luxury, and prostitution of the
age--the almost total extinction of sentiment, honor, and
public spirit--had prepared the minds of men for slavery and
corruption. The means were in the hands of the ministry: the
public treasure was at their devotion: they multiplied places
and pensions, to increase the number of their dependents:
they squandered away the national treasure without taste,
discernment, decency, or remorse: they enlisted an army of the
most abandoned emissaries, whom they employed to vindicate the
worst measures in the face of truth, common sense, and common
honesty; and they did not fail to stigmatize as Jacobites, and
enemies to the government, all those who presumed to question
the merit of their administration. The interior government
of Great Britain was chiefly managed by Sir Robert Walpole,
a man of extraordinary talents, who had from low beginnings
raised himself to the head of the ministry. Having obtained
a seat in the House of Commons, he declared himself one of
the most forward partisans of the whig faction. He was endued
with a species of eloquence which, though neither nervous nor
elegant, flowed with great facility, and was so plausible on
all subjects, that even when he misrepresented the truth,
whether from ignorance or design, he seldom failed to persuade
that part of his audience for whose hearing his harangue was
chiefly intended. He was well acquainted with the nature of the
public funds, and understood the whole mystery of stockjobbing.
This knowledge produced a connection between him and the MONEY
CORPORATIONS, which served to enhance his importance."
Such was the picture of Great Britain in the time of Sir Robert
Walpole, and such was the natural fruit of a stockjobbing
government, composed of bank and state, resting for support on
heartless corporations, and lending the wealth and credit of the
country to the interested schemes of projectors and adventurers.
Such was the picture of Great Britain during this period; and who
would not mistake it (leaving out names and dates) for a description
of our own times, in our own America, during the existence of the
Bank of the United States and the thousand affiliated institutions
which grew up under its protection during its long reign of power
and corruption? But, to proceed, with English history:
Among the corporations brought into existence by Sir Robert
Walpole, or moulded by him into the form which they have since
worn, were the South Sea Company, the East India Company, the Bank
of England, the Royal Insurance Company, the London Insurance
Company, the Charitable Corporation, and a multitude of others,
besides the exchequer and funding systems, which were the machines
for smuggling debts and taxes upon the people and saddling them on
posterity. All these schemes were brought forward under the pretext
of paying the debts of the nation, relieving the distresses of the
people, assisting the poor, encouraging agriculture, commerce,
and manufactures; and saving the nation from the burden of loans
and taxes. Such were the pretexts for all the schemes. They were
generally conceived by low and crafty adventurers, adopted by the
minister, carried through parliament by bribery and corruption,
flourished their day; and ended in ruin and disgrace. A brief
notice of the origin and pretensions of the South Sea scheme, may
serve for a sample of all the rest, and be an instructive lesson
upon the wisdom of all government projects for the relief of the
people. I say, a notice of its origin and pretensions; for the
progress and termination of the scheme are known to everybody, while
few know (what the philosophy of history should be most forward
to teach) that this renowned scheme of fraud, disgrace, and ruin,
was the invention of a London scrivener, adopted by the king and
his minister, passed through parliament by bribes to the amount
of £574,000; and that its vaunted object was to pay the debts of
the nation, to ease the burdens of the subject, to encourage the
industry of the country, and to enrich all orders of men. These
are the things which should be known; these are the things which
philosophy, teaching by the example of history, proposes to tell,
in order that the follies of one age or nation may be a warning to
others; and this is what I now want to show. I read again from the
same historian:
"The king (George I.) having recommended to the Commons the
consideration of proper means for lessening the national
debt, was a prelude to the famous South Sea act, which became
productive of so much mischief and infatuation. The scheme was
projected by Sir John Blunt, who had been bred a scrivener, and
was possessed of all the cunning, plausibility and boldness
requisite for such an undertaking. He communicated his plan
to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as well as to one of the
Secretaries of State. He answered all their objections, and the
plan was adopted. They foresaw their own private advantage in
the execution of the design. The pretence for the scheme was
to discharge the national debt, by reducing all the funds into
one. The Bank and the South Sea Company outbid each other. The
South Sea Company altered their original plan, and offered
such high terms to government that the proposals of the Bank
were rejected: and a bill was ordered to be brought into the
House of Commons, formed on the plan presented by the South Sea
Company. The bill passed without amendment or division; and on
the 7th day of April, 1720, received the royal assent. Before
any subscription could be made, a fictitious stock of £574,000
had been disposed of by the directors to facilitate the passing
of the bill. Great part of this was distributed among the Earl
Sunderland, Mr. Craggs, Secretary of State, the Chancellor of
the Exchequer, the Duchess of Kendall, the Countess of Platen,
and her two nieces" (mistresses of the king, &c.)
This is a sample of the origin and pretensions of nearly all the
great corporations which were chartered and patronized by the
Walpole whigs: all of them brought forward under the pretext of
relieving the people and the government--nearly all of them founded
in fraud or folly--carried through by corruption--and ending in
disgrace and calamity. Leaving out names, and who would not suppose
that I had been reading the history of our own country in our own
times? The picture suits the United States in 1840 as well as
it suited England in 1720: but at one point, the comparison, if
pushed a step further, would entirely fail; all these corporation
plunderers were punished in England! Though favored by the king
and ministry, they were detested by the people, and pursued to
the extremity of law and justice. The South Sea swindlers were
fined and imprisoned--their property confiscated--their names
attainted--and themselves declared incapable of holding any office
of honor or profit in the kingdom. The president and cashier of
the _charitable corporation_--(which was chartered to relieve the
distresses of the poor, and which swindled the said poor out of
£600,000 sterling)--this president and this cashier were pursued
into Holland--captured--brought back--criminally punished--and made
to disgorge their plunder. Others, authors and managers of various
criminal corporations, were also punished: and in this the parallel
ceases between the English times and our own. With us, the swindling
corporations are triumphant over law and government. Their managers
are in high places--give the tone to society--and riot in wealth.
Those who led, or counselled the greatest ruin which this, or any
country ever beheld--the Bank of the United States--these leaders,
their counsellors and abettors, are now potential with the federal
government--furnish plans for new systems of relief--and are as
bold and persevering as ever in seizing upon government money and
government credit to accomplish their own views. In all this, the
parallel ceases; and our America sinks in the comparison.
Corporation credit was ruined in Great Britain, by the explosions of
banks and companies--by the bursting of bubbles--by the detection
of their crimes--and by the crowning catastrophe of the South Sea
scheme: it is equally ruined with us, and by the same means, and
by the crowning villany of the Bank of the United States. Bank and
state can no longer go together in our America: the government can
no longer repose upon corporations. This is the case with us in
1841; and it was the case with Great Britain in 1720. The South
Sea explosion dissolved (for a long time) the connection there;
the explosion of the Bank of the United States has dissolved it
here. New schemes become indispensable: and in both countries the
same alternative is adopted. Having exhausted corporation credit
in England, the Walpole whigs had recourse to government credit,
and established a Board of Exchequer, to strike government paper.
In like manner, the new whigs, having exhausted corporation credit
with us, have recourse to government credit to supply its place; and
send us a plan for a federal exchequer, copied with such fidelity
of imitation from the British original that the description of one
seems to be the description of the other. Of course I speak of the
exchequer feature of the plan alone. For as to all the rest of our
cabinet scheme--its banking and brokerage conceptions--its exchange
and deposit operations--its three dollar issues in paper for one
dollar specie in hand--its miserable one-half of one per centum
on its Change-alley transactions--its Cheapside under-biddings of
rival bankers and brokers:--as to all these follies (for they do not
amount to the dignity of errors) they are not copied from any part
of the British exchequer system, or any other system that I ever
heard of, but are the uncontested and unrivalled production of our
own American genius. I repeat it: our administration stands to-day
where the British government stood one hundred and twenty years ago.
Corporation credit exhausted, public credit is resorted to; and
the machinery of an exchequer of issues becomes the instrument of
cheating and plundering the people in both countries. The British
invent: we copy: and the copy proves the scholar to be worthy of the
master. Here is the British act. Let us read some parts of it: and
recognize in its design, its structure, its object, its provisions,
and its machinery, the true original of this plan (the exchequer
part) which the united wisdom of our administration has sent down
to us for our acceptance and ratification. I read, not from the
separate and detached acts of the first and second George, but from
the revised and perfected system as corrected and perpetuated in the
reign of George the Third. (Here Mr. Benton compared the two systems
through the twenty sections which compose the British act, and the
same number which compose the exchequer bill of this administration.)
Here, resumed Mr. B. is the original of our exchequer scheme!
here is the original of which our united administration has
unanimously sent us down a faithful copy. In all that relates to
the exchequer--its design--operation--and mode of action--they are
one and the same thing! identically the same. The design of both is
to substitute government credit for corporation credit--to strike
paper money for the use of the government--to make this paper a
currency, as well as a means of raising loans--to cover up and hide
national debt--to avoid present taxes in order to increase them an
hundred fold in future--to throw the burdens of the present day
upon a future day; and to load posterity with our debts in addition
to their own. The design of both is the same, and the structure of
both is the same. The English board consists of the lord treasurer
for the time being, and three commissioners to be appointed by the
king; our board is to consist of the Secretary of the Treasury
and the Treasurer for the time being, and three commissioners to
be appointed by the President and Senate. The English board is to
superintend and direct the form and mode of preparing and issuing
the exchequer bills; our board is to do the same by our treasury
notes. The English bills are to be receivable in all payments to
the public; our treasury notes are to be received in like manner
in all federal payments. The English board appoints paymasters,
clerks and officers to assist them in the work of the exchequer;
ours is to appoint agents in the States, with officers and clerks
to assist them in the same work. The English paymasters are to
give bonds, and be subject to inspection; our agents are to do and
submit to the same. The English exchequer bills are to serve for a
currency; and for that purpose the board may contract with persons,
bodies politic and corporate, to take and circulate them; our board
is to do the same thing through its agencies in the States and
territories. The English exchequer bills are to be exchanged for
ready money; ours are to be exchanged in the same manner. In short,
the plans are the same, one copied from the other, identical in
design, in structure, and in mode of operation; and wherein they
differ (as they do in some details), the advantage is on the side
of the British. For example: 1. The British pay interest on their
bills, and raise the interest when necessary to sustain them in the
market. Ours are to pay no interest, and will depreciate from the
day they issue. 2. The British cancel and destroy their bills when
once paid: we are to reissue ours, like common bank notes, until
worn out with use. 3. The British make no small bills; none less
than £100 sterling ($500), we begin with five dollars, like the old
continentals; and, like them, will soon be down to one dollar, and
to a shilling. 4. The British board could issue no bill except as
specially authorized from time to time by act of Parliament: ours
is to keep out a perpetual issue of fifteen millions; thus creating
a perpetual debt to that amount. 5. The British board was to have
no deposit of government stocks: ours are to have a deposit of five
millions, to be converted into money when needed, and to constitute
another permanent debt to that amount. 6. The British gave a true
title to their exchequer act: we give a false one to ours. They
entitled theirs, "_An act for regulating the issuing and paying off,
of exchequer bills:_" we entitle ours, "_A bill amendatory of the
several acts establishing the Treasury department_." In these and
a few other particulars the two exchequers differ; but in all the
essential features--design--structure--operation--they are the same.
Having shown that our proposed exchequer was a copy of the
British system, and that we are having recourse to it under the
same circumstances: that in both countries it is a transit from
corporation credit deceased, to government credit which is to bear
the brunt of new follies and new extravagances: having shown this,
I next propose to show the manner in which this exchequer system
has worked in England, that, from its workings there, we may judge
of its workings here. This is readily done. Some dates and figures
will accomplish the task, and enlighten our understandings on a
point so important. I say some dates and figures will do it. Thus:
at the commencement of this system in England the annual taxes were
5 millions sterling: they are now 50 millions. The public debt
was then 40 millions: it is now 900 millions, the unfunded items
included. The interest and management of the debt were then 1-1/2
millions: they are now 30 millions.
Here Mr. B. exhibited a book--the index to the British Statutes
at large--containing a reference to all the issues of exchequer
bills from the last year of the reign of George I. (1727) to the
fourth year of the reign of her present Majesty (1840). He showed
the amounts issued under each reign, and the parallel growth of the
national debt, until these issues exceeded a thousand millions,
and the debt, after all payments made upon it, is still near one
thousand millions. Mr. B. here pointed out the annual issues under
each reign, and then the totals for each reign, showing that the
issues were small and far between in the beginning--large and close
together in the conclusion--and that it was now going on faster than
ever.
The following was the table of the issues under each reign:
Geo. I. in 1727 (one year), £370,000
Geo. II. from 1727 to 1760 (33 years), 11,500,000
Geo. III. from 1760 to 1820 (60 years), 542,500,000
Geo. IV. from 1820 to 1831 (11 years), 320,000,000
Will. IV. from 1831 to 1837 (6 years), 160,000,000
Victoria I. from 1837 to 1840 (4 years), 160,000,000
--------------
£1 140,370,000
Near twelve hundred millions of pounds sterling in less than a
century and a quarter--we may say three-quarters of a century, for
the great mass of the issues have taken place since the beginning
of the reign of George III. The first issue was the third of a
million; under George II., the average annual issue was the third
of a million; under George III., the annual average was nine
millions; under George IV. it was thirty millions; under William
IV. twenty-three millions; and under Victoria, it is twenty-one
millions. Such is the progress of the system--such the danger
of commencing the issue of paper money to supply the wants of a
government.
This, continued Mr. B., is the fruit of the exchequer issues in
England, and it shows both the rapid growth and dangerous perversion
of such issues. The first bills of this kind ever issued in that
country were under William III., commonly called the Prince of
Orange, in the year 1696. They were issued to supply the place
temporarily of the coin, which was all called in to be recoined
under the superintendence of Sir Isaac Newton. The first bills
were put out by King William only for this temporary purpose, and
were issued as low as ten pounds and five pounds sterling. It was
not until more than thirty years afterwards, and when corporation
credit had failed, that Sir Robert Walpole revived the idea of these
bills, and perverted them into a currency, and into instruments for
raising money for the service of the government. His practice was to
issue these bills to supply present wants, instead of laying taxes
or making a fair and open loan. When due, a new issue took up the
old issue; and when the quantity would become great, the whole were
funded; that is to say saddled upon posterity. The fruit of the
system is seen in the 900,000,000 of debt which Great Britain still
owes, after all the payments made upon it. The amount is enormous,
overwhelming, appalling; such as never could have been created under
any system of taxes or loans. In the nature of things government
expenditure has its limits when it has to proceed upon taxation or
borrowing. Taxes have their limit in the capacity of the people to
pay: loans have their limit in the capacity of men to lend; and
both have their restraints in the responsibility and publicity of
the operation. Taxes cannot be laid without exciting the inquiry of
the people. Loans cannot be made without their demanding wherefore.
Money, i. e. gold and silver, cannot be obtained, but in limited and
reasonable amounts, and all these restraints impose limits upon the
amount of government expenditure and government debt. Not so with
the noiseless, insidious, boundless progress of debt and expenditure
upon the issue of government paper! The silent working of the press
is unheard heard by the people. Whether it is one million or twenty
millions that is struck, is all one to them. When the time comes
for payment, the silent operation of the funding system succeeds to
the silent operation of the printing press; and thus extravagant
expenditures go on--a mountain of debt grows up--devouring interest
accrues--and the whole is thrown upon posterity, to crush succeeding
ages, after demoralizing the age which contracted it.
The British debt is the fruit of the exchequer system in Great
Britain, the same that we are now urged to adopt, and under the
same circumstances; and frightful as is its amount, that is only
one branch--one part of the fruit--of the iniquitous and nefarious
system. Other parts remain to be stated, and the first that I name
is, that a large part of this enormous debt is wholly false and
factitious! McCulloch states two-fifths to be fictitious; other
writers say more; but his authority is the highest, and I prefer to
go by it. In his commercial dictionary, now on my table, under the
word "_funds_," he shows the means by which a stock for £100 would
be granted when only £60 or £70 were paid for it; and goes on to say:
"In consequence of this practice, the principal of the debt
now existing amounts to nearly two-fifths more than the amount
actually advanced by the lender."
So that the English people are bound for two-fifths more of
capital, and pay two-fifths more of annual interest, on account of
their debt than they ever received. Two-fifths of 900,000,000 is
360,000,000; and two-fifths of 30,000,000 is 12,000,000; so that
here is fictitious debt to the amount of $1,600,000,000 of our
money, drawing $60,000,000 of interest, for which the people of
England never received a cent; and into which they were juggled and
cheated by the frauds and villanies of the exchequer and funding
systems! those systems which we are now unanimously invited by our
administration to adopt. The next fruit of this system is that of
the kind of money, as it was called, which was considered lent, and
which goes to make up the three-fifths of the debt admitted to have
been received; about the one-half of it was received in depreciated
paper during the long bank suspension which took place from 1797
to 1823, and during which time the depreciation sunk as low as 30
per centum. Here, then, is another deduction of near one-third to
be taken off the one-half of the three-fifths which is counted as
having been advanced by the lenders. Finally, another bitter drop
is found in this cup of indebtedness, that the lenders were mostly
jobbers and gamblers in stocks, without a shilling of their own to
go upon, and who by the tricks of the system became the creditors
of the government for millions. These gentry would puff the stocks
which they had received--sell them at some advance--and then lend
the government a part of its own money. These are the lenders--these
the receivers of thirty millions sterling of taxes--these the scrip
nobility who cast the hereditary nobles into the shade, and who hold
tributary to themselves all the property and all the productive
industry of the British empire. And this is the state of things
which our administration now proposes for our imitation.
This is the way the exchequer and funding system have worked in
England; and let no one say they will not work in the same manner
in our own country. The system is the same in all countries, and
will work alike every where. Go into it, and we shall have every
fruit of the system which the English people now have; and of this
most of our young States, and of our cities, and corporations, which
have gone into the borrowing business upon their bonds, are now
living examples. Their bonds were their exchequer bills. They used
them profusely, extravagantly, madly, as all paper credit is used.
Their bonds were sold under par, though the discount was usually hid
by a trick: pay was often received in depreciated paper. Sharpers
frequently made the purchase, who had nothing to pay but a part of
the proceeds of the same bonds when sold. And thus the States and
cities are bound for debts which are in a great degree fictitious,
and are bound to lenders who had nothing to lend; and such are the
frauds of the system which is presented to us, and must be our fate,
if we go into the exchequer system.
I have shown the effect of an exchequer of issues in Great Britain
to strike paper money for a currency, and as a substitute for
loans and taxes. I have shown that this system, adopted by Sir
Robert Walpole upon the failure of corporation credit, has been
the means of smuggling a mountain load of debt upon the British
people, two-fifths of which is fraudulent and fictitious; that
it has made the great body of the people tributaries to a handful
of fundholders, most of whom, without owning a shilling, were
enabled by the frauds of the paper system and the funding system,
to lend millions to the government. I have shown that this system,
thus ruinous in England, was the resort of a crafty minister to
substitute government credit for the exhausted credit of the moneyed
corporations, and the exploded bubbles; and I have shown that the
exchequer plan now presented to us by our administration, is a
faithful copy of the English original. I have shown all this; and
now the question is, shall we adopt this copy? This is the question;
and the consideration of it implies the humiliating conclusion, that
we have forgot that we have a constitution, and we have gone back to
the worst era of English history--to times of the South Sea bubble,
to take lessons in the science of political economy. Sir, we have
a Constitution! and if there was any thing better established than
another, at the time of its adoption, it was that the new government
was a hard-money government, made by hard-money men, who had seen
and felt the evils of government paper, and who intended for ever to
cut off the new government from the use of that dangerous expedient.
The question was made in the Convention (for there was a small paper
money party in that body), and solemnly decided that the government
should not emit paper money, bills of credit, or paper currency
of any kind. It appears from the history of the Convention, that
the first draft of the constitution contained a paper clause, and
that it stood in connection with the power to raise money; thus:
"_To borrow money, and emit bills, on the credit of the United
States._" When this clause came up for consideration, Mr. Gouverneur
Morris moved to strike out the words, "_and emit bills_," and was
seconded by Mr. Pierce Butler. "Mr. Madison thought it sufficient
to prevent them from being made a tender." "Mr. Ellsworth thought
this a favorable moment to shut and bar the door against paper
money. The mischief of the various experiments which had been made,
were now fresh in the public mind, and had excited the disgust of
all the respectable part of America. By withholding the power from
the new government, more friends of influence would be gained to
it than by almost any thing else. Paper money can in no case be
necessary. Give the government credit, and other resources will
offer. The power may do harm, never good." Mr. Wilson said: "It will
have a most salutary influence on the credit of the United States,
to remove the possibility of paper money. This expedient can never
succeed while its mischiefs are remembered; and as long as it can
be resorted to, it will be a bar to other resources." "Mr. Butler
remarked that paper was a legal tender in no country in Europe. He
was urgent for disarming the government of such a power." "Mr. Read
thought the words, if not struck out, would be as alarming as the
mark of the beast in Revelations." "Mr. Langdon had rather reject
the whole plan than retain the three words, 'and emit bills.'" A few
members spoke in favor of retaining the clause; but, on taking the
vote, the sense of the convention was almost unanimously against it.
Nine States voted for striking out: two for retaining.
If there were a thousand constitutional provisions in favor of
paper money, I should still be against it--against the thing
itself, _per se_ and _propter se_--on account of its own inherent
baseness and vice. But the Constitution is against it--clearly so
upon its face; upon its history; upon its early practice; upon its
uniform interpretation. The universal expression at the time of its
adoption was, that the new government was a hard money government,
made by hard money men, and that it was to save the country from
the curse of paper money. This was the universal language--this
the universal sentiment; and this hard money character of the new
government was one of the great recommendations in its favor, and
one of the chief inducements to its adoption. All the early action
of the government conformed to this idea--all its early legislation
was as true to hard money as the needle is to the pole. The very
first act of Congress for the collection of duties on imports,
passed in the first year of the new government's existence, and
enacted by the very men who had framed the Constitution--this first
act required those duties to be paid "_in gold and silver coin
only;_" the word _only_, which is a contraction for the old English
_onely_, being added to cut off the possibility of an intrusion,
or an injection of a particle of paper money into the Treasury of
the United States. The first act for the sale of public lands
required them to be paid for in "_specie_"--the specie circular of
1836 was only the enforcement of that act; and the hard money clause
in the independent treasury was a revival of these two original
and fundamental revenue laws. Such were the early legislative
interpretations of the Constitution by the men who made it; and
corresponding with these for a long time after the commencement of
the government, were the interpretations of all public men, and of
no one more emphatically than of him who is now the prominent member
of this administration, and to whose hand public opinion attributes
the elaborate defence of the Cabinet Exchequer plan which has been
sent down to us. In two speeches, delivered by that gentleman in the
House of Representatives in the year 1816, he thus expressed himself
on the hard money character of our government, and on the folly and
danger of the paper system:
"No nation had a better currency than the United States. There
was no nation which had guarded its currency with more care: for
the framers of the Constitution and those who had enacted the
early statutes on the subject, were hard money men. They had
felt and duly appreciated the evils of a paper medium: they,
therefore, sedulously guarded the currency of the United States
from debasement. The legal currency of the United States was
gold and silver coin: this was a subject in regard to which
Congress had run into no folly. Gold and silver currency was
the law of the land at home, and the law of the world abroad:
there could, in the present condition of the world, be no other
currency."
So spake the present Secretary of State in February, 1816; and
speaking so, he spoke the language of the Constitution, of the
statesman, and of the enlightened age in which we live. He was right
in saying that Congress, up to that time, had run into no folly
in relation to the currency; that is to say, had not attempted to
supersede the hard money of the Constitution by a national currency
of paper. I can say the same for Congress up to the present day.
Can the Secretary answer in like manner for the cabinet of which he
is a member? Can he say of _it_, that _it_ has run into no folly in
relation to the currency? The secretary is right again in saying
that, in the present condition of the world, there can be no other
currency than gold and silver. Certainly he is right. Gold and
silver is the measure of values. The actual condition of the world
requires that measure to be uniform and universal. The whole world
is now in a state of incessant intercommunication. Commercial,
social, political relations are universal. Dealings and transactions
are immense. All nations, civilized and barbarian, acknowledge the
validity of the gold and silver standard; and the nation that should
attempt to establish another, would derange its connections with the
world, and put itself without the pale of its monetary system. The
Secretary was right in saying that, in the present condition of the
world, in the present state of the universal intercommunications of
all mankind, there could be no measure of values but that which was
universally acknowledged, and that all must conform to that measure.
In this he showed a grasp of mind--a comprehension and profundity of
intellect--which merits encomium, and which casts far into the shade
the lawyer-like argument, in the shape of a report, which has been
sent down to us.
The senator from Virginia [Mr. Rives] felicitates himself upon the
character of these proposed exchequer bills, because they are not
to be declared by law to be a legal tender: as if there was any
necessity for such a declaration! Far above the law of the land is
the law of necessity! far above the legal tender, which the statute
enacts, is the forced tender which necessity compels. There is no
occasion for the statutory enactment: the paper will soon enact the
law for itself--that law which no power can resist, no weakness can
shun, no art elude, no cunning escape. It is the prerogative of all
paper money to expel all hard money; and then to force itself into
every man's hand, because there is nothing else for any hand to
receive. It is the prerogative of all paper money to do this, and
of government paper above all other. Let this government go into
the business of paper issues: let it begin to stamp paper for a
currency, and it will quickly find itself with nothing but paper on
its hands;--paper to pay out--paper to receive in;--the specie basis
soon gone--and the vile trash depreciating from day to day until it
sinks into nothing, and perishes on the hands of the ignorant, the
credulous, and the helpless part of the community.
The same senator [Mr. RIVES] consoles himself with the small amount
of these exchequer bills which are to be issued--only fifteen
millions of dollars. Alas! sir, does he recollect that that sum is
seven times the amount of our first emission of continental bills?
that it is fifteen times the amount of Sir Robert Walpole's first
emission of exchequer bills? and double the amount of the first
emission of the French assignats? Does he consider these things, and
recollect that it is the first step only which costs the difficulty?
and that, in the case of government paper money, the subsequent
progress is rapid in exact proportion to the difficulty of the first
step? Does he not know that the first emission of our continental
bills was two millions of dollars, and that in three years they
amounted to two hundred millions? that the first issue of Sir Robert
Walpole's exchequer bills was the third of a million, and that they
have since exceeded a thousand millions? that the first emission of
assignats was the third of a milliard of francs, and that in seven
years they amounted to forty-five thousand milliards? Thus it has
been, and thus it will be. The first issues of government paper are
small, and with difficulty obtained, and upon plausible pretexts of
necessity and relief. The subsequent issues are large, and obtained
without opposition, and put out without the formality of an excuse.
This is the course, and thus it will be with us if we once begin. We
propose fifteen millions for the start: grant it: it will soon be
fifteen hundred millions! and those who go to that excess will be
far less blamable than those who made the first step.
I have said that the present administration have gone back far
beyond the times of General Hamilton--that they have gone to
the times of Sir Robert Walpole; and I prove it by showing how
faithfully they copy his policy in pursuing the most fatal of his
measures. Yes, sir, they have gone back not merely far beyond
where General Hamilton actually stood, but to the point to which
he refused to go. He refused to go to government paper money. That
great man, though a friend to bank paper, was an enemy to government
paper. He condemned and deprecated the whole system of government
issues. He has left his own sentiments on record on this point, and
they deserve in this period of the retrogression of our government
to be remembered, and to be cited on this floor. In his report on a
national bank in 1791, he ran a parallel between the dangers of bank
paper and government paper, assigning to the latter the character of
far greatest danger and mischief--an opinion in which I fully concur
with him. In that report, he thus expressed himself on the dangers
of government paper:
"The emitting of paper money by the authority of the government
is wisely prohibited to the individual States by the National
Constitution: and the spirit of the prohibition should not be
disregarded by the government of the United States. Though
paper emissions, under a general authority, might have some
advantages not applicable, and be free from disadvantages which
are applicable, to the like emissions by the States separately,
yet they are of a nature so liable to abuse--and, it may even
be affirmed, so certain of being abused--that the wisdom of the
government will be shown in never trusting itself with the use
of so seducing and dangerous an expedient. The stamping of paper
is an operation so much easier than the laying of taxes, that
a government in the practice of paper emissions would rarely
fail, in any such emergency, to indulge itself too far in the
employment of that resource, to avoid, as much as possible, one
less auspicious to present popularity. If it should not even be
carried so far as to be rendered an absolute bubble, it would at
least be likely to be extended to a degree which would occasion
an inflated and artificial state of things, incompatible with
the regular and prosperous course of the political economy."
A division has taken place in the great whig party on this point.
It has split into two wings--a great, and a small wing. The body of
the party stand fast on the Hamiltonian ground of 1791: a fraction
of the party have slid back to the Walpole ground of 1720. The point
of difference between them is a government bank and government paper
on one hand, and a banking company under a national charter, issuing
bank notes, on the other. This is the point of difference, and it is
a large one, very visible to every eye; and I am free to say that,
with all my objections to the national bank and its paper, I am far
more opposed to government banking, and to government issues of
paper money.
The Tyler-Webster whigs are for government banking--for making
the transit from corporation credit, no longer available, to
government credit, which is to stand the brunt of new follies and
new extravagances. They go for the British exchequer system, with
all the folly and degradation of modern banking superadded and
engrafted upon it. And what are the pretexts for this flagrant
attempt? The same that were urged by the scrivener, John Blunt, in
favor of his South Sea bubble--and by the gambler, John Law, in
favor of the Mississippi scheme. To relieve the public distress--to
aid the government and the people--to make money plenty, and to
raise the price of property and wages: these are the pretexts
which usher in our exchequer scheme, and which have ushered in all
the paper money bubbles and projects which have ever afflicted
and disgraced mankind. Relief to the people has been the pretext
for the whole; and they have all ended in the same way--in the
enrichment of sharpers--the plunder of nations--and the shame of
governments. All these schemes have been brought forward in the same
way, and although base upon their face, and clearly big with shame
and ruin, and opposed by the wise and good of the times, yet there
seem to be seasons of national delusion when the voice of judgment,
reason, and honor is drowned under the clamor of knaves and dupes;
and when the highest recommendation of a new plan is its absolute
folly, knavery, and audacity. Thus it was in England during the
reign of the moneyed corporations under the protection of Walpole.
Wise men opposed all the mad schemes of that day, and exposed in
advance all their disastrous and disgraceful issues. Mr. Shippen,
Sir Joseph Jekyll, Mr. Barnard, Sir William Wyndham, Mr. Pulteney,
Lord Morpeth (that Howard blood which has not yet degenerated), all
these and many others opposed the South Sea, exchequer issues, and
other mad schemes of their day--to be overpowered then, but to be
remembered, and quoted with honor now. The chancellor of France, the
wise and virtuous D'Aguesseau, was exiled from Paris by the Regent
Duke of Orleans for opposing and exposing the Mississippi scheme
of the gambler, John Law; but his name lives in the pantheon of
history; and I take a pleasure in citing it here, in the American
Senate, as well in honor to him, as to encourage others to sacrifice
themselves in the noble task of resisting the mad delusions of the
day. Every nation has its seasons of delusion. They seem to come,
like periodical epidemics, once in so many ages or centuries; and
while they rage, neither morals nor reason can make head against
them. The have to run out. We have just had our season of this
delusion, when every folly, from a national bank whose notes were
to circulate in China, to the _morus multicaulis_ whose leaves were
to breed fortunes to the envied possessors; when every such folly
had its day of triumph and exultation over reason, judgment, morals
and common sense. Happily this season is passing away--the delusion
is wearing off--before this cabinet plan of a government bank, with
its central board, its fifty-two branches, its national engine to
strike paper, its brokerage and exchange dealings, its Cheapside and
Change-Alley operations in real business transactions, its one-half
of one per centum profits, its three dollars in paper money to any
one who was fool enough to deposit one dollar in the hard: happily
our season of delusion is passing off before this monstrous scheme
was presented. Otherwise, its adoption would have been inevitable.
Its very monstrosity would have made it irresistibly captivating to
the diseased public appetite if presented while still in its morbid
state.
But the senator from Virginia who sits over the way [Mr. RIVES], who
has spoken in this debate, and who appears as a _quasi_ defender of
this cabinet plan of relief, he demands if the senator from Missouri
(my poor self) will do nothing to relieve the distress of the people
and of the government? He puts the question to me, and I answer it
readily; yes! I will do my part towards relieving this distress, but
not exactly in the mode which he seems to prefer--not by applying
a cataplasm of lamp-black and rags to the public wounds! whether
that cataplasm should be administered by a league of coon-box
banks in the States, or by a Biddle king bank in Philadelphia, or
by a Walpole exchequer bank in Washington city. I would relieve
the distress by the application of appropriate remedies to
notorious diseases--a bankrupt act to bankrupt banks--taxation
to bank issues--restoration of the land revenue to its proper
destination--the imposition of economy upon this taxing, borrowing,
squandering, gold-hating, paper-loving administration; and by
restoring, as soon as possible, the reign of democracy, economy, and
hard money.
The distress! still the distress. Distress, still the staple of all
the whig speeches made here, and of all the cabinet reports which
come down to us. Distress is the staple of the whole. "Motley is
their only wear." Why, sir, I have heard about that distress before;
and I am almost tempted to interrupt gentlemen in the midst of their
pathetic rehearsals as the Vicar of Wakefield interrupted Jenkinson
in the prison, when he began again the same learned dissertation
upon the cosmogony or creation of the world; and gave him the same
quotations from Sanconiathan, Manetho, Berosus, and Lucanus Ocellus,
with which he entertained the good old Vicar at the fair, while
cheating him out of Blackberry, after having cheated Moses out of
the colt. You know the incident, said Mr. B. (addressing himself to
Mr. Archer, who was nodding recognition), you remember the incident,
and know the Vicar begged pardon for interrupting so much learning,
with the declaration of his belief that he had had the honor to hear
it all before. In like manner, I am almost tempted to stop gentlemen
with a beg-pardon for interrupting so much distress, and declaring
my belief that I have heard it all before. Certain it is, that for
ten years past I have been accustomed to hear the distress orations
on this floor; and for twenty-two years I have been accustomed to
see distress in our country; but never have I seen it, or heard of
it, that it did not issue from the same notorious fountain--the
MONEYED CORPORATIONS--headed and conducted by the Juggernaut of
federal adoration, the Biddle King Bank of the United States! I have
seen this distress for two and twenty years; first, from 1819 to
1826; then again in 1832--'33--'34--'37--'39; and I see something
of it now. The Bank of the United States commenced the distress
in 1819, and gave a season of calamity which lasted as long as
one of the seven years' plagues of Egypt. It was a seven years'
agony; but at that time distress was not the object, but only the
effect of her crimes and follies. In 1832 she renewed the distress
as an object _per se_ and _propter se_ to force a renewal of her
charter. In 1833-'34 she entered upon it with new vigor--with vast
preparation--upon an immense scale--and all her forces--to coerce
a restoration of the deposits, which the patriot President had
saved by taking from her. In 1837 she headed the conspiracy for the
general suspension (and accomplished it by the aid of the deposit
distribution act) for the purpose of covering up and hiding her
own insolvency in a general catastrophe, and making the final,
agonizing death-struggle, to clutch the re-charter. In 1839 she
forced the second suspension (which took place all south and west
of New York) and endeavored to force it all north and east of that
place, and make it universal, in order to conceal her own impending
bankruptcy. She failed in the universality of this second suspension
only for want of the means and power which the government deposits
would have given her. She succeeded with her limited means, and
in her crippled condition, over three-fourths of the Union; and
now the only distress felt is in the places which have felt her
power;--in the parts of the country which she has regulated--and
arises from the institutions which have followed her lead--obeyed
her impulse--imitated her example--and now keep up, for their own
profit, and on their own account, the distress of which they were
nothing but the vicarious agents in the beginning. Sir, there has
been no distress since 1819 which did not come from the moneyed
corporations; and since 1832, all the distress which we have seen
has been factitious and factious--contrived of purpose, made to
order, promulgated upon edict--and spread over the people, in order
to excite discontents against the administration, to overturn the
democracy, to re-establish federalism, to unite bank and state--and
to deliver up the credit and revenue of the Union, and the property
and industry of the people, to the pillage and plunder of the
muckworm nobility which the crimes of the paper system have made
the lords of the land. This is the only distress we have seen; and
had it not been that God had given our country a Jackson, their
daring schemes would all have succeeded; and we and our children,
and all the property and labor of our country, would have been as
completely tributary to the moneyed corporations of America, as the
people of Great Britain are to the Change-alley lords who hold the
certificates of their immense national debt.
Distress!--what, sir, are not the whigs in power, and was not all
distress to cease when the democracy was turned out? Did they not
carry the elections? Has Mr. Van Buren not gone to Kinderhook? Is
General Jackson not in the Hermitage? Are democrats not in the
minority in Congress, and expelled from office every where? Were
not "_Tippecanoe_ and _Tyler too_" both elected? Is not whiggery in
entire possession of the government? Have they not had their extra
session, called to relieve the country, and passed all the relief
measures, save one?--all save one!--all except their national bank,
of which this fine exchequer bank is to be the metempsychosis.
The cry is distress! and the remedy a national poultice of
lamp-black and rags! This is the disease, and this the medicine.
But let us look before we act. Let us analyze the case--examine
the pathology of the disease--that is the word, I believe (looking
at Dr. LINN, who nodded assent), and see its cause and effect, the
habits and constitution of the patient, and the injuries he may
have suffered. The complaint is, distress: the specifications are,
depreciated currency, and deranged exchanges. The question is,
where? all over the Union? not at all--only in the South and West.
All north and east of New York is free from distress--the exchanges
fair--the currency at par: all south and west of that city the
distress prevails--the exchanges (as they are called) being deranged
and the currency depreciated. Why? Because, in one quarter--the
happy quarter--the banks pay their debts: in the other--the
distressed quarter--they refuse to pay. Here then is the cause, and
the effect. This is the analysis of the case--the discovery of the
nature and locality of the disease--and the key to its cure. Make
the refractory banks comply with their promises; and there is an end
of depreciated paper and deranged exchanges, and of all the distress
which they create; and that without a national bank, or its base
substitute, an exchequer bank; or a national institution of any kind
to strike paper money. Make the delinquent banks pay up, or wind up.
And why not? Why should not the insolvent wind up, and the solvent
pay up? Why should not the community know the good from the bad?
Suspension puts all on a level, and the community cannot distinguish
between them. Our friend Sancho (looking at Mr. MOUTON) has a
proverb that suits the case: "_De noche todos los gatos son pardos._"
"M. MOUTON: '_De nuit tous les chats sont gris._'"
"Mr. BUCHANAN: What is all that?"
"Mr. BENTON: It is this: Our friend, Sancho Panza, says that, in
the dark all the cats are of one color. [A laugh.] So of these
banks. In a state of suspension they are all of one credit; but as
the light of a candle soon discriminates the black cats from the
white ones, so would the touch of a bankrupt act speedily show the
difference between a rotten bank and a solvent one.
But currency--currency--a national currency of uniform value, and
universal circulation: this is what modern whigs demand, and call
upon Congress to give it; meaning all the while a national currency
of paper money. I deny the power of Congress to give it, and aver
its folly if it had. The word currency is not in the constitution,
nor any word which can be made to signify paper money. Coin is the
only thing mentioned in that instrument; and the only power of
Congress over it is to regulate its value. It is an interpolation,
and a violation of truth to say that the constitution authorizes
Congress to regulate the value of paper money, or to create paper
money. It is a calumny upon the constitution to say any such thing;
and I defy the whole phalanx of the paper money party to produce
one word in that instrument to justify their imputation. Coin, and
not paper, is the thing to be regulated; coin, and not paper, is
the currency mentioned and intended; and this coin it is the duty
of Congress to preserve, instead of banishing it from circulation.
Paper banishes coin; and by creating, or encouraging paper, Congress
commits a double violation of the constitution; _first_, by favoring
a thing which the constitution condemns; and, _secondly_, by
destroying the thing which it meant to preserve. But the paper money
party say there is not gold and silver enough in the world to answer
the purposes of a currency; and, therefore, they must have paper.
I answer, if this was true, we must first alter our constitution
before we can create, or adopt paper money. But it is not true! the
assertion is unfounded and erroneous to the last degree, and implies
the most lamentable ignorance of the specie resources of commercial
and agricultural countries. The world happens to contain more specie
than such countries can use; and it depends upon each one to have
its share when it pleases. This is an assertion as easily proved
as made; and I proceed to the proof of it, because it is a point
on which there is much misunderstanding; and on which the public
good requires authentic information. I will speak first of our own
country, and of our own times--literally, my own times.
I have some tabular statements on hand, Mr. President, made at the
Treasury, on my motion, and which show our specie acquisitions
during the time that I have sat in this chair: I say, sat in _this_
chair, for I always sit in the same place. I never change my
position, and therefore never have to find it or define it. These
tables show our imports of gold and silver during this time--a
period of twenty-one years--to have been on the custom-house books,
182 millions of dollars: making an allowance for the amounts
brought by passengers, and not entered on the books, and the total
importation cannot be less than 200 millions. The coinage at our
Mint during the same period, is 66 millions of dollars. The product
of our gold mines during that period has been several millions; and
many millions of gold have been dragged from their hiding places
and restored to circulation by the gold bill of 1834. Putting all
together, and our specie acquisitions must have amounted to 220 or
230 millions of dollars in these twenty-one years; being at the
average rate of ten or eleven millions per annum.
Not specie enough in the world to do the business of the country!
What an insane idea! Do people who talk in that way know any thing
about the quantity of specie that there is in the world, or even in
Europe and America, and the amount that different nations, according
to their pursuits, can employ in their business? If they do not, let
them listen to what Gallatin and Gouge say upon the subject, and
let them learn something which a man should know before he ventures
an opinion upon currency. Mr. Gallatin, in 1831, thus speaks of the
quantity of gold and silver in Europe and America:
"The total amount of gold and silver produced by the mines
of America, to the year 1803, inclusively, and remaining
there or exported to Europe, has been estimated by Humboldt
at about five thousand six hundred millions of dollars; and
the product of the years 1804-1830, may be estimated at seven
hundred and fifty millions. If to this we add one hundred
millions, the nearly ascertained product, to this time, of
the mines of Siberia, about four hundred and fifty millions
for the African gold dust, and for the product of the mines
of Europe (which yielded about three millions a year, in the
beginning of this century), from the discovery of America to
this day, and three hundred millions for the amount existing in
Europe prior to the discovery of America, we find a total not
widely differing from the fact, of seven thousand two hundred
millions of dollars. It is much more difficult to ascertain
the amount which now remains in Europe and America together.
The loss by friction and accidents might be estimated, and
researches made respecting the total amount which has been
exported to countries beyond the Cape of Good Hope; but that
which has been actually consumed in gilding, plated ware, and
other manufactures of the same character, cannot be correctly
ascertained. From the imperfect data within our reach, it may,
we think, be affirmed, that the amount still existing in Europe
and America certainly exceeds four thousand, and most probably
falls short of five thousand millions of dollars. Of the
medium, or four thousand five hundred millions, which we have
assumed, it appears that from one-third to two-fifths is used
as currency, and that the residue consists of plate, jewels,
and other manufactured articles. It is known, that of the gross
amount of seven thousand two hundred millions of dollars, about
eighteen hundred millions, or one-fourth of the whole in value,
and one-forty-eighth in weight, consisted of gold. Of the four
thousand five hundred millions, the presumed remaining amount
in gold and silver, the proportion of gold is probably greater,
on account of the exportation to India and China having been
exclusively in silver, and of the greater care in preventing
every possible waste in an article so valuable as gold."
Upon this statement, Mr. Gouge, in his Journal of Banking, makes the
following remarks:
"We begin to-day with Mr. Gallatin's estimate of the quantity
of gold and silver in Europe and America. In a work published
by him in 1831, entitled 'Considerations on the Currency and
Banking system of the United States,' he estimates the amount of
precious metals in these two quarters of the world at between
four thousand and five thousand million dollars. This, it will
be recollected, was ten years ago. The amount has since been
considerably increased, as the mines have annually produced
millions, and the demand for the China trade has been greatly
diminished.
"Taking the medium, however, of the two sums stated by Mr.
Gallatin--four thousand five hundred million dollars--and
supposing the population of Europe and America to be two
hundred and seventy-seven millions, it will amount to sixteen
dollars and upwards for every man, woman, and child, on the two
continents. The same gentleman estimates the whole amount of
currency in the United States in 1829, paper and specie together
at only six dollars a head.
"It is not too much to say, that if the natural laws of supply
and demand had not been interfered with, the United States
would have, in proportion to population, four, five, six,
seven, yea, eight times as much gold and silver as many of the
countries of Europe. Take it at only the double of the average
for the population of the two continents, and it will amount
to thirty-two dollars a head, or to five hundred and fourteen
millions. This would give us one-ninth part of the stock of
gold and silver of Europe and America, while our population is
but one-sixteenth: but for the reasons already stated, under a
natural order of things, we should have, man for man, a much
larger portion of the precious metals, than falls to the lot of
most countries of Europe.
"Suppose, however, we had but the average of sixteen dollars a
head. This would amount to two hundred and fifty-seven millions.
"On two points do people (that is, some people) capitally err.
First, in regard to the quantity of gold and silver in the
world: this is much greater than they imagine it to be. Next, in
regard to the amount of money required for commercial purposes:
this is much smaller than they suppose it to be. Under a sound
money, sound credit, and sound banking system, ten dollars a
head would probably be amply sufficient in the United States."
The points on which the statesman's attention should be fixed in
these statements are: 1. The quantity of gold and silver in Europe
and America, to wit, $4,500,000,000. 2. Our fair proportion of that
quantity, to wit, $257,000,000, or $16 per head. 3. Our inability
to use more than $10 a head. 4. The actual amount of our whole
currency, paper and specie, in 1830 (when the Bank of the United
States was in all its glory), and which was only $6 a head. 5. The
ease with which the United States can supply itself with its full
proportion of the whole quantity if it pleased, and have $16 per
head (if it could use it, which it cannot) for every human being in
the Union.
These are the facts which demand our attention, and it is only at a
single point that I now propose to illustrate, or to enforce them;
and that is, as to the quantity of money per head which any nation
can use. This differs among different nations according to their
pursuits, the commercial and manufacturing people requiring most,
because their payments are daily or weekly for every thing they use:
food, raiment, labor and raw materials. With agricultural people it
is less, because they produce most of what they consume, and their
large payments are made annually from the proceeds of the crops.
Thus, England and France (both highly manufacturing and commercial)
are ascertained to employ fourteen dollars per head (specie and
paper combined) for their whole population: Russia, an agricultural
country, is ascertained to employ only four dollars per head; and
the United States, which is chiefly agricultural, but with some
considerable admixture of commerce and manufactures, ten dollars
are believed to be the maximum which they could employ. In this
opinion I concur. I think ten dollars per head, an ample average
circulation for the Union; and it is four dollars more than we had
in 1830, when the Bank of the United States was at the zenith of
its glory. The manufacturing and commercial districts might require
more--all the agricultural States less;--and perhaps an agricultural
State without a commercial town, or manufactures, like Mississippi,
could not employ five dollars per head. Here then are the results:
Our proportion of the gold and silver in Europe and America is two
hundred and fifty-seven millions of dollars: we had but twenty
millions in 1830: we have ninety millions now; and would require
but eighty millions more (one hundred and seventy millions in the
whole) in the present state of our population, slaves included (for
their labor is to be represented by money and themselves supported),
to furnish as much currency, and that in gold and silver, as the
country could possibly use; consequently sustaining the prices of
labor and property at their maximum amount. Of that sum, we now
have about the one-half in the country, to wit, ninety millions;
making five dollars per head; and as that sum was gained in seven
years of Jacksonian policy, it follows of course, that another seven
years of the same policy, would give us the maximum supply that we
could use of the precious metals; and that gold, silver, and the
commercial bill of exchange, could then constitute the safe, solid,
constitutional, moral, and never-failing currency of the Union.
The facility with which any industrious country can supply itself
with a hard-money currency--can lift itself out of the mud and
mire of depreciated paper, and mount the high and clean road of
gold and silver; the ease with which any industrious people can
do this, has been sufficiently proved in our own country, and in
many others. We saw it in the ease with which the Jackson policy
gained us ninety millions of dollars in seven years. We saw it at
the close of the Revolution, when the paper money sunk to nothing,
ceased to circulate, and specie re-appeared, as by magic. I have
asked the venerable Mr. MACON how long it was after paper stopped,
before specie re-appeared at that period of our history? his answer
was: No time at all. As soon as one stopped, the other came. We
have seen it in England at the end of the long bank suspension,
which terminated in 1823. Parliament allowed the bank four years
to prepare for resumption: at the end of two years--half the
time--she reported herself ready--having in that short space
accumulated a mass of twenty millions sterling (one hundred millions
of dollars) in gold; and, above all, we have seen it in France,
where the great Emperor restored the currency in the short space
of six years, from the lowest degree of debasement to the highest
point of brilliancy. On becoming First Consul, in 1800, he found
nothing but depreciated assignats in the county:--in six years his
immortal campaigns--Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland--all the expenses
of his imperial court, surpassing in splendor that of the Romans,
and rivalling the almost fabulous magnificence of the Caliphs of
Bagdad--all his internal improvements--all his docks, forts, and
ships--all the commerce of his forty millions of subjects--all
these were carried on by gold and silver alone; and from having the
basest currency in the world, France, in six years, had near the
best; and still retains it. These instances show how easy it is for
any country that pleases to supply itself with an ample currency
of gold and silver--how easy it will be for us to complete our
supplies--that in six or seven years we could saturate the land with
specie! and yet we have a formal cabinet proposition to set up a
manufactory of paper money!
The senator from Mississippi [Mr. WALKER] who sits on my right, has
just visited the island of Cuba, and has told us what he has seen
there--a pure metallic currency of gold--twelve millions of dollars
of it to a population of one million of souls, half slaves--not a
particle of paper money--prices of labor and property higher than
in the United States--industry active--commerce flourishing: a
foreign trade of twenty-four millions of dollars, which, compared
to population and territory, is so much greater than ours that it
would require ours to be four hundred and twenty-five millions to
be equal to it! This is what the senator from Mississippi tells us
that he has seen; and would to God that we had all seen it. Would to
God that the whole American Congress had seen it. Devoutly do I wish
that it was the custom now, as in ancient times, for legislators
to examine the institutions of older countries before they altered
those of their own country. The Solons and Lycurguses of antiquity
would visit Egypt, and Crete, and other renowned places in the
East, before they would touch the laws of Sparta or Athens; in like
manner I should rejoice to see our legislators visit the hard money
countries--Holland, France, Cuba--before they went further with
paper money schemes in our own country. The cabinet, I think, should
be actually put upon such a voyage. After what they have done, I
think they should be shipped on a visit to the lands of hard money.
And although it might seem strange, under our form of government,
thus to travel our President and cabinet, yet I must be permitted to
say that I can find constitutional authority for doing so, just as
soon as they can find constitutional authority for sending such a
scheme of finance and currency as they have spread before us.
Holland and Cuba have the best currencies in the world: it is gold
and the commercial bill of exchange, with small silver for change,
and not a particle of bank paper. France has the next best: it is
gold, with the commercial bill of exchange, much silver, and not a
bank note below five hundred francs (say one hundred dollars). And
here let me do justice to the wisdom and firmness of the present
king of the French. The Bank of France lately resolved to reduce the
minimum size of its notes to two hundred francs (say forty dollars).
The king gave them notice that if they did it, the government would
consider it an injury to the currency, and would take steps to
correct the movement. The Bank rescinded its resolution; and Louis
Philippe, in that single act (to say nothing of others) showed
himself to be a patriot king, worthy of every good man's praise,
and of every legislator's imitation. The United States have the
basest currency in the world: it is paper, down to cents; and that
paper supplied by irresponsible corporations, which exercise the
privilege of paying, or not, just as it suits their interest or
politics. We have the basest currency upon the face of the earth;
but it will not remain so. Reform is at hand; probably from the mild
operation of law; if not, certainly from the strong arm of ruin. God
has prescribed morality, law, order, government, for the conduct of
human affairs; and he will not permit these to be too long outraged
and trampled under foot. The day of vindicating the outraged law
and order of our country, is at hand; and its dawn is now visible.
The excess of bank enormity will cure itself under the decrees of
Providence; and the cure will be more complete and perfect, than any
that could come from the hands of man.
It may seem paradoxical, but it is true, that there is no abundant
currency, low interest, and facility of loans, except in hard money
countries: paper makes scarcity, high interest, usury, extortion,
and difficulty of borrowing. Ignorance supposes that to make money
plenty, you must have paper: this is pure nonsense. Paper drives
away all specie, and then dies itself for want of specie; and leaves
the country penniless until it can recruit.
The Roman historians, Mr. President, inform us of a strange species
of madness which afflicted the soldiers of Mark Antony on their
retreat from the Parthian war. Pressed by hunger they ate of unknown
roots and herbs which they found along the base of the Armenian
mountains, and among the rest, of one which had the effect of
depriving the unfortunate man of memory and judgment. Those who ate
of this root forgot that they were Romans--that they had arms--a
general--a camp, and their lives, to defend. And wholly possessed of
a single idea, which became fixed, they neglected all their duties
and went about turning over all the stones they could find, under
the firm conviction that there was a great treasure under it which
would make them rich and happy. Nothing could be more deplorable,
say the historians, than to see these heroic veterans, the pride of
a thousand fields, wholly given up to this visionary pursuit, their
bodies prone to the earth, day after day, and turning over stones in
search of this treasure, until death from famine, or the Parthian
arrow, put an end at once to their folly and their misery. Such
is the account which historians give us of this strange madness
amongst Antony's soldiers; and it does seem to me that something
like it has happened to a great number of our Americans, and even
to our cabinet council--that they have forgotten that we have such
a thing as a constitution--that there are such things as gold and
silver--that there are limitations upon government power--and that
man is to get his living by toil and labor, and the sweat of his
brow, and not by government contrivances; that they have forgot all
this, and have become possessed of a fixed idea, that paper money is
the _summum bonum_ of human life; that lamp-black and rags, perfumed
with the odor of nationality, is a treasure which is to make
everybody rich and happy; and, thereupon incontinently pursue this
visionary treasure--this figment of the brain--this disease of the
mind. Possessed of this idea, they direct all their thoughts to the
erection of a national institution--no matter what--to strike paper
money, and circulate it upon the faith of the credit and revenues of
the Union: and no argument, no reason, no experience of our own, or
of other nations, can have the least effect in dislodging that fixed
and sovereign conception. To this we are indebted for the cabinet
plan of the federal exchequer and its appurtenances, which has been
sent down to us. To this we are indebted for the crowds who look
for relief from the government, instead of looking for it in their
own labor, their own industry, and their own economy. To this we
are indebted for all the paper bubbles and projects which are daily
presented to the public mind: and how it all is to end, is yet in
the womb of time; though I greatly suspect that the catastrophe of
the federal exchequer and its appurtenances will do much towards
curing the delusion and turning the public mind from the vain
pursuit of visionary government remedies, to the solid relief of
hard money, hard work, and instant compulsion of bank resumption.
The proposition which has been made by our President and cabinet,
to commence a national issue of paper money, has had a very natural
effect upon the public mind, that of making people believe that the
old continental bills are to be revived, and restored to circulation
by the federal government. This belief, so naturally growing out of
the cabinet movement, has taken very wide and general root in the
public mind; and my position in the Senate and connection with the
currency questions, have made me the centre of many communications
on the point. Daily I receive applications for my opinion, as to
the revival of this long deceased and venerable currency. The very
little boys at the school have begged my little boy to ask their
father about it, and let them know, that they may hunt up the one
hundred dollar bills which their mothers had given them for thumb
papers, and which they had thrown by on account of their black
and greasy looks. I receive letters from all parts of the Union,
bringing specimens of these venerable relics, and demanding my
opinion of the probability of their resuscitation. These letters
contain various propositions--some of despair--some of hope--some
of generous patriotism--and all evidently sincere. Some desire me
to exhibit the bundle they enclose to the Senate, to show how the
holders have been cheated by paper money; some want them paid; and
if the government cannot pay at present, they wish them funded, and
converted into a national stock, as part of the new national debt.
Some wish me to look at them, on my own account; and from this
sample, to derive new hatred to paper money, and to stand up to the
fight with the greater courage, now that the danger of swamping
us in lamp-black and rags is becoming so much greater than ever.
Others, again, rising above the degeneracy of the times, and still
feeling a remnant of that patriotism for which our ancestors were
so distinguished, and which led them to make so many sacrifices for
their country, and hearing of the distress of the government and its
intention to have recourse to an emission of new continental bills,
propose at once to furnish it with a supply of the old bills. Of
this number is a gentleman whose letter I received last night, and
which, being neither confidential in its nature, nor marked so, and
being, besides, honorable to the writer, I will, with the leave of
the Senate, here read:
"EAST WEYMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS,
January 8, 1842.
"DEAR SIR:--Within you have a few continentals, or promises
to pay in gold or silver, which may now be serviceable to the
Treasury, which the whigs have bankrupted in the first year of
their reign, and left members without pay for their landlords.
They may serve to start the new fiscality upon; and, if they
should answer the purpose, and any more are wanted, please let
me know, and another batch will come on from your friend and
servant,
"LOWELL BICKNELL.
"Hon. THOMAS H. BENTON, United States Senate,
Washington city."
This is the letter, resumed Mr. B., and these the contents (holding
up a bundle of old continentals). This is an assortment of them,
beginning at nine dollars, and descending regularly through eight,
seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, and the fractional parts
of a dollar, down to the one-sixth part of a dollar. I will read
the highest and lowest in the bundle, as a sample of the whole. The
highest runs thus:
"This bill entitles the bearer to receive nine Spanish milled
dollars, or the value thereof in gold or silver, according to
the resolves of the Congress held at Philadelphia, the 10th day
of May, 1775.
"Signed,
WILLIAM CRAIG."
The margins are covered with the names of the States, and with the
words _continental currency_, in glaring capitals, and the Latin
motto, _Sustine vel abstine_ (Sustain it, or let it alone). The
lowest runs thus:
"One-sixth of a dollar, according to a resolve of Congress
passed at Philadelphia, February 17th, 1776.
"Signed,
B. BRANNAN."
The device on this note is a sun shining through a glass, with
the word _fugio_ (I fly) for the motto--a motto sufficiently
appropriate, whether emblematic of the fugitive nature of time, or
of paper money.
These are a sample of the bills sent me in the letter which I have
just read; and now the mind naturally reverts to the patriotic
proposition to supply the administration with these old bills
instead of putting out a new emission. For myself I incline to the
proposition. If the question is once decided in favor of a paper
emission, I am decidedly in favor of the old continental currency
in preference to any new edition--as much so as I prefer the old
Revolutionary whigs to the new whigs of this day. I prefer the old
bills; and that for many and cogent reasons. I will enumerate a few
of these reasons:--1. They are ready made to our hand, and will
save all the expense and time which the preparations of new bills
would require. The expense would probably be no objection with this
administration; but, in the present condition of the Treasury, the
other consideration, that of time, must have great weight. 2. They
cannot be counterfeited. Age protects them from that. The wear and
tear of seventy long years cannot be impressed on the face of the
counterfeits, cunning as their makers may be. 3. Being limited in
quantity, and therefore incapable of contraction or inflation at the
will of jobbers in stocks or politics, they will answer better for
a measure of values. 4. They are better promises than any that will
be made at this day; for they are payable in Spanish milled dollars,
which are at a premium of three per cent, in our market over other
dollars; and they are payable in gold _or_ silver, disjunctively, so
as to give the holder his option of the metals. 5. They are made by
better men than will make the bills of the present day--men better
known to Europe and America--of higher credit and renown--whose
names are connected with the foundation of the republic, and with
all the glorious recollections of the revolution. Without offence
to any, I can well say that no Congress of the present day can rank
with our Revolutionary assemblies who signed the Declaration of
Independence with ropes round their necks, staked life, honor, and
fortune in a contest where all the chances were against them; and
nobly sustained what they had dared to proclaim. We cannot rank with
them, nor our paper ever have the credit of theirs. 6. They are of
all sizes, and therefore ready for the catastrophe of the immediate
flight, dispersion, absconding, and inhumation of all the specie
in the country, for which the issue of a government paper would be
the instant and imperative signal. Our cabinet plan comes no lower
than five dollars, whereby great difficulty in making change at the
Treasury would accrue until a supplementary act could be passed, and
the small notes and change tickets be prepared. The adoption of the
old continental would prevent this balk, as the notes from one to
ten dollars inclusive would be ready for all payments which ended
in even dollars; and the fractional notes would be ready for all
that ended in shillings or sixpences. 7. And, finally, because it is
right in itself that we should take up the old continentals before
we begin to make new ones. For these, and other reasons, I am bold
to declare that if we must have a Congress paper-money, I prefer
the paper of the Congress of 1776 to that of 1842.
Sir, the Senate must pardon me. It is not my custom to speak
irreverently of official matters; but there are some things too
light for argument--too grave for ridicule--and which it is
difficult to treat in a becoming manner. This cabinet plan of a
federal exchequer is one of those subjects; and to its strange and
novel character, part tragic and part farcical, must be attributed
my more than usually defective mode of speaking. I plead the subject
itself for the imperfection of my mode of treating it.
CHAPTER XCI.
THE THIRD FISCAL AGENT, ENTITLED A BOARD OF EXCHEQUER.
This measure, recommended by the President, was immediately taken
up in each branch of Congress. In the House of Representatives a
committee of a novel character--one without precedent, and without
imitation--was created for it: "_A select committee on the finances
and the currency_," composed of nine members, and Mr. Caleb Cushing
its chairman. Through its chairman this committee, with the
exception of two of its members (Mr. Garret Davis of Kentucky, and
Mr. John P. Kennedy, of Maryland), made a most elaborate report,
recommending the measure, and accompanied by a bill to carry it
into effect. The ruling feature of the whole plan was a national
currency of paper-money, to be issued by the federal government, and
to be got into circulation through payments made by it, and by its
character of receivability in payment of public dues. To clear the
ground for the erection of this new species of national currency,
all other kinds of currency were reviewed and examined--their
good and their bad qualities stated--and this government currency
pronounced to combine the good qualities, and to avoid the bad of
all other kinds. National bank-notes were condemned for one set of
reasons: local bank-notes for another: and as for gold and silver,
the reporter found so many defects in such a currency, and detailed
them with such precision, that it looked like drawing up a bill of
indictment against such vicious substitutes for money. In this view
the report said
"But the precious metals themselves, in addition to their uses
for coin, are likewise, whether coined or uncoined, a commodity,
or article of production, consumption, and merchandise.
Themselves are a part of that general property of the community,
of all the rest of which they are the measure; and they are
of actual value different in different places, according to
the contingencies of government or commerce. Their aggregate
quantity is subject to be diminished by casual destruction or
absorption in the arts of manufacture, or to be diminished
or augmented by the greater or less number or productiveness
of mines; and thus their aggregate value relatively to other
commodities is liable to perpetual change. The influence of
these facts upon prices, upon public affairs, and upon commerce,
is visible in all the financial history of modern times. Besides
which, coin is subject to debasement, or to be made a legal
tender, at a rate exceeding its actual value, by the arbitrary
act of the government, which controls its coinage and prescribes
its legal value. In times when the uses of a paper currency
and of public stocks were not understood or not practised, and
communities had not begun to resort to a paper symbol or nominal
representative of money, capable of being fabricated at will,
the adulteration of coin, instead of it, was, it is well known,
the frequent expedient of public necessity or public cupidity
to obtain relief from some pressing pecuniary embarrassment.
Moreover, the precious metals, though of less bulk in proportion
to their value than most other commodities, yet cannot be
transported from place to place without cost and risk; coin
is subject to be stolen or lost, and in that case cannot be
easily identified, so as to be reclaimed; the continual counting
of it in large sums is inconvenient; it would be unsafe, and
would cause much money to remain idle and unfruitful, if every
merchant kept constantly on hand a sum of coin for all his
transactions; and the displacement of large amounts of coin, its
transfer from one community or one country to another, is liable
to occasion fluctuations in the value of property or labor, and
to embarrass commercial operations."
Having thus shown the demerit of all other sorts of currency,
and cleared the way for this new species, the report proceeds to
recommend it to the adoption of the legislature, with an encomium
upon the President, and on the select committee on the finances and
the currency, who had so well discharged their duty in proposing it;
thus:
"The President of the United States, in presenting this plan to
Congress, has obeyed the injunction of the constitution, which
requires him to recommend to their consideration such measures
as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he has fully redeemed
the engagements in this respect which he had previously made to
Congress: and thus he has faithfully discharged his whole duty
to the constitution and the Union. The committee, while animated
by the highest respect for his views, have yet deemed it due to
him, to themselves, to the occasion, and to the country, to give
to those views a free and unbiassed examination. They have done
so; and in so doing, they have also discharged their duty. They
respectfully submit the result to the House in the bill herewith
reported. They believe this measure to contain the elements of
usefulness and public good; and, as such, they recommend it to
the House. But they feel no pride of opinion concerning it; and,
if in error, they are ready to follow the lead of better lights,
if better there be, from other quarters; being anxious only
to minister to the welfare of the people whom they represent.
It remains now for Congress to act in the matter; the country
demands that in some way we shall act; and the times appeal to
us to act with decision, with moderation, with impartiality,
with independence. Long enough, the question of the national
finances has been the sport of passion and the battle-cry of
party. Foremost of all things, the country, in order to recover
itself, needs repose and order for its material interest, and
a settled purpose in that respect (what it shall be is of less
moment, but at any rate _some_ settled purpose) on the part of
the federal government. If, careless of names and solicitous
only for things, aiming beyond all intermediate objects to
the visible mark of the practicable and attainable good--if
Congress shall in its wisdom concur at length in some equitable
adjustment of the currency question, it cannot fail to deserve
and secure the lasting gratitude of the people of the United
States."
After reading this elaborate report, Mr. Cushing also read the
equally elaborate bill which accompanied it: and that was the
last of the bill ever heard of in the House. It was never called
up for consideration, but died a natural death on the calendar on
which it was placed. In the Senate the fate of the measure was
still more compendiously decided. The President's recommendation,
the ample report of the Secretary of the Treasury, and the bill
drawn up at the Treasury itself, were all sent to the Committee of
Finance; which committee, deeming it unworthy of consideration,
through its chairman, Mr. Evans, of Maine, prayed to be discharged
from the consideration of it: and were so discharged accordingly.
But, though so lightly disposed of, the measure did not escape
ample denunciation. Deeming the proposition an outrage upon
the constitution, an insult to gold and silver, and infinitely
demoralizing to the government and dangerous to the people, Mr.
Benton struck another blow at it as it went out of the Senate to the
committee. It was on the motion to refer the subject to the Finance
Committee, that he delivered a speech of three hours against it: of
which some extracts were given in Chapter XC.
CHAPTER XCII.
ATTEMPTED REPEAL OF THE BANKRUPT ACT.
As soon as Congress met in the session 1841-'2 the House of
Representatives commenced the repeal of this measure. The period
for the act to take effect had been deferred by an amendment in
the House from the month of November, which would be before the
beginning of the regular session, to the month of February--for the
well-known purpose of giving Congress an opportunity to repeal it
before it went into operation. The act was odious in itself, and the
more so from the manner in which it was passed--coercively, and by
the help of votes from those who condemned it, but who voted for it
to prevent its friends from defeating the bank bill, and the land
distribution bill. Those two measures were now passed, and many of
the coerced members took their revenge upon the hated bill to which
they had temporarily bowed. The repeal commenced in the House,
and had a rapid progress through that body. A motion was made to
instruct the Judiciary Committee to bring in a bill for the repeal;
and that motion succeeded by a good majority. The bill was brought
in, and, under the pressure of the previous question, was quickly
brought to a vote. The yeas were 124--the nays 96. It then went to
the Senate, where it was closely contested, and lost by one vote--22
for the repeal: 23 against it. Thus a most iniquitous act got into
operation, by the open joining of measures which could not pass
alone; and by the weak calculation of some members of the House, who
expected to undo a bad vote before it worked its mischief. The act
was saved by one vote; but met its fate at the next session--having
but a short run; while the two acts which it passed were equally,
and one of them still more short lived. The fiscal bank bill,
which was one that it carried, never became a law at all: the land
distribution bill, which was the other, became a law only to be
repealed before it had effect. The three confederate criminal bills
which had mutually purchased existence from each other, all perished
prematurely, fruitless and odious--inculcating in their history and
their fate, an impressive moral against vicious and foul legislation.
CHAPTER XCIII.
DEATH OF LEWIS WILLIAMS, OF NORTH CAROLINA, AND NOTICE OF HIS
LIFE AND CHARACTER.
He was one of those meritorious and exemplary members whose labors
are among the most useful to their country: diligent, modest,
attentive, patriotic, inflexibly honest--a friend to simplicity
and economy in the working of the government, and an enemy to all
selfish, personal, and indirect legislation. He had the distinction
to have his merits and virtues commemorated in the two Houses of
Congress by two of the most eminent men of the age--Mr. Clay and
Mr. Adams--who respectively seconded in the House to which each
belonged, the customary motion for funeral honors to his memory. Mr.
Adams said:
"Mr. Speaker, I second the motion, and ask the indulgence of
the House for the utterance of a few words, from a heart full
to overflowing with anguish which no words can express. Sir,
my acquaintance with Mr. Williams commenced with the second
Congress of his service in this House. Twenty-five years have
since elapsed, during all which he has been always here at his
post, always true to his trust, always adhering faithfully to
his constituents and to his country--always, and through every
political vicissitude and revolution, adhered to faithfully by
them. I have often thought that this steadfastness of mutual
attachment between the representative and the constituent was
characteristic of both; and, concurring with the idea just
expressed with such touching eloquence by his colleague (Mr.
Rayner), I have habitually looked upon Lewis Williams as the
true portraiture and personification of the people of North
Carolina. Sir, the loss of such a man at any time, to his
country, would be great. To this House, at this juncture, it
is irreparable. His wisdom, his experience, his unsullied
integrity, his ardent patriotism, his cool and deliberate
judgment, his conciliatory temper, his firm adherence to
principle--where shall we find a substitute for them? In the
distracted state of our public counsels, with the wormwood and
the gall of personal animosities adding tenfold bitterness to
the conflict of rival interests and discordant opinions, how
shall we have to deplore the bereavement of _his_ presence, the
very light of whose countenance, the very sound of whose voice,
could recall us, like a talisman, from the tempest of hostile
passions to the calm composure of harmony and peace.
"Mr. Williams was, and had long been, in the official language
which we have adopted from the British House of Commons, the
_Father_ of the House; and though my junior by nearly twenty
years, I have looked up to him in this House, with the reverence
of filial affection, as if he was the father of us all. The
seriousness and gravity of his character, tempered as it was
with habitual cheerfulness and equanimity, peculiarly fitted him
for that relation to the other members of the House, while the
unassuming courtesy of his deportment and the benevolence of
his disposition invited every one to consider him as a brother.
Sir, he is gone! The places that have known him shall know him
no more; but his memory shall be treasured up by the wise and
the good of his contemporaries, as eminent among the patriots
and statesmen of this our native land; and were it possible for
any Northern bosom, within this hall, ever to harbor for one
moment a wish for the dissolution of our National Union, may
the spirit of our departed friend, pervading every particle of
the atmosphere around us, dispel the delusion of his soul, by
reminding him that, in that event, he would no longer be the
countryman of Lewis Williams."
Mr. Clay, in the Senate, who was speaker of the House when the then
young Lewis Williams first entered it, bore his ample testimony
from intimate personal knowledge, to the merits of the deceased;
and, like Mr. Adams, professed a warm personal friendship for the
individual, as well as exalted admiration for the public man.
"Prompted by a friendship which existed between the deceased and
myself, of upwards of a quarter of a century's duration, and
by the feelings and sympathies which this melancholy occasion
excites, will the Senate allow me to add a few words to those
which have been so well and so appropriately expressed by my
friend near me [Mr. Graham], in seconding the motion he has
just made? Already, during the present session, has Congress,
and each House, paid the annual instalment of the great debt of
Nature. We could not have lost two more worthy and estimable men
than those who have been taken from us. My acquaintance with the
lamented Lewis Williams commenced in the fall of 1815, when he
first took his seat as a member of the House of Representatives
from the State of North Carolina, and I re-entered that House
after my return from Europe. From that period until his death,
a cordial and unbroken friendship has subsisted between us;
and similar ties were subsequently created with almost every
member of his highly respectable family. When a vacancy arose
in the responsible and laborious office of chairman of the
Committee of Claims, which had been previously filled by another
distinguished and lamented son of North Carolina (the late Mr.
Yancy), in virtue of authority vested in me, as the presiding
officer of the House, I appointed Mr. Williams to fill it.
Always full of labor, and requiring unremitting industry, it was
then, in consequence of claims originating in the late war, more
than ever toilsome. He discharged his complicated duties with
the greatest diligence, ability, impartiality, and uprightness,
and continued in the office until I left the House in the year
1825. He occasionally took part in the debates which sprung up
on great measures brought for the advancement of the interests
of the country, and was always heard with profound attention,
and, I believe, with a thorough conviction of his perfect
integrity. Inflexibly adhering always to what he believed to
be right, if he ever displayed warmth or impatience, it was
excited by what he thought was insincere, or base, or ignoble.
In short, Lewis Williams was a true and faithful image of the
respectable State which he so long and so ably served in the
national councils--intelligent, quiet, unambitious, loyal to the
Union, and uniformly patriotic. We all feel and deplore, with
the greatest sensibility, the heavy loss we have so suddenly
sustained. May it impress us with a just sense of the frailty
and uncertainty of human life! And, profiting by his example,
may we all be fully prepared for that which is soon to follow."
Mr. Williams reflected the character of his State; and that was a
distinction so obvious and so honorable that both speakers mentioned
it, and in doing so did honor both to the State and the citizen. And
she illustrated her character by the manner in which she cherished
him. Elected into the General Assembly as soon as age would permit,
and continued there until riper age would admit him into the Federal
Congress, he was elected into that body amongst the youngest of
its members; and continued there by successive elections until
he was the longest sitting member, and became entitled to the
Parliamentary appellation of Father of the House. Exemplary in all
the relations of public and private life, he crowned a meritorious
existence by an exemplary piety, and was as remarkable for the
close observance of all his christian obligations as he was for the
discharge of his public duties.
CHAPTER XCIV.
THE CIVIL LIST EXPENSES: THE CONTINGENT EXPENSES OF CONGRESS:
AND THE REVENUE COLLECTION EXPENSE.
Pursuing the instructive political lesson to be found in the study
of the progressive increased expenditures of the government, we
take up, in this chapter, the civil list in the gross, and two
of its items in detail--the contingent expenses of Congress, and
the expense of collecting the revenue--premising that the civil
list, besides the salaries of civil officers, includes the foreign
diplomatic intercourse, and a variety of miscellanies. To obtain
the proper comparative data, recourse is again had to Mr. Calhoun's
speech of this year (1842) on the naval appropriation.
"The expenditures under the first head have increased since
1823, when they were $2,022,093, to $5,492,030 98, the amount
in 1840; showing an increase, in seventeen years, of 2 7-10 to
1, while the population has increased only about 3/4 to 1, that
is, about 75 per cent.--making the increase of expenditures,
compared to the increase of population, about 3 6-10 to 1. This
enormous increase has taken place although a large portion of
the expenditures under this head, consisting of salaries to
officers, and the pay of members of Congress, has remained
unchanged. The next year, in 1841, the expenditure rose to
$6,196,560. I am, however, happy to perceive a considerable
reduction in the estimates for this year, compared with the last
and several preceding years; but still leaving room for great
additional reduction to bring the increase of expenditures to
the same ratio with the increase of population, as liberal as
that standard of increase would be.
"That the Senate may form some conception, in detail, of this
enormous increase, I propose to go more into particulars in
reference to two items: the contingent expenses of the two
Houses of Congress, and that of collecting the duties on
imports. The latter, though of a character belonging to the
civil list, is not included in it, or either of the other heads;
as the expenses incident to collecting the customs, are deducted
from the receipts, before the money is paid into the Treasury.
"The contingent expenses (they exclude the pay and mileage of
members) of the Senate in 1823 were $12,841 07, of which the
printing cost $6,349 56, and stationery $1,631 51; and that
of the House, $37,848 95, of which the printing cost $22,314
41, and the stationery $3,877 71. In 1840, the contingent
expenses of the Senate were $77,447 22, of which the printing
cost $31,285 32, and the stationery $7,061 77; and that of the
House $199,219 57, of which the printing cost $65,086 46, and
the stationery $36,352 99. The aggregate expenses of the two
Houses together rose from $50,690 02 to $276,666; being an
actual increase of 5 4-10 to 1, and an increase, in proportion
to population, of about 7 2-10 to one. But as enormous as this
increase is, the fact that the number of members had increased
not more than about ten per cent. from 1823 to 1840, is
calculated to make it still more strikingly so. Had the increase
kept pace with the increase of members (and there is no good
reason why it should greatly exceed it), the expenditures would
have risen from $50,690 to $55,759, only making an increase of
but $5,069; but, instead of that, it rose to $276,666, making
an increase of $225,970. To place the subject in a still more
striking view, the contingent expenses in 1823 were at the rate
of $144 per member, which one would suppose was ample, and in
1840, $942. This vast increase took place under the immediate
eyes of Congress; and yet we were told at the extra session, by
the present chairman of the Finance Committee, that there was no
room for economy, and that no reduction could be made; and even
in this discussion he has intimated that little can be done.
As enormous as are the contingent expenses of the two Houses,
I infer from the very great increase of expenditures under the
head of civil list generally, when so large a portion is for
fixed salaries, which have not been materially increased for the
last seventeen years, that they are not much less so throughout
the whole range of this branch of the public service.
"I shall now proceed to the other item, which I have selected
for more particular examination, the increased expenses of
collecting the duties on imports. In 1823 it was $766,699, equal
to 3 86-100 per cent. on the amount collected, and 98-100 on
the aggregate amount of imports; and in 1840 it had increased
to $1,542,319 24, equal to 14 13-100 per cent. on the amount
collected, and to 1 58-100 on the aggregate amount of the
imports, being an actual increase of nearly a million, and
considerably more than double the amount of 1823. In 1839 it
rose to $1,714,515.
"From these facts, there can be little doubt that more than a
million annually may be saved under the two items of contingent
expenses of Congress, and the collection of the customs, without
touching the other great items comprised under the civil list,
the executive and judicial departments, the foreign intercourse,
light-houses, and miscellaneous. It would be safe to put down a
saving of at least a half million for them."
The striking facts to be gleaned from these statements are--That
the civil list in 1821 was about two millions of dollars; in 1839,
four and a half millions; and in 1841, six millions and a fraction.
That the contingent expenses of Congress during the same periods
respectively, were, $50,000, and $276,000. And the collection
of the custom house revenue at the same periods, the respective
sums of $766,000, and $1,542,000. These several sums were each
considered extravagant, and unjustifiable, at the time Mr. Calhoun
was speaking; and each was expected to feel the pruning knife of
retrenchment. On the contrary, all have risen higher--inordinately
so--and still rising: the civil and diplomatic appropriation having
attained 17 millions: the contingent expenses of Congress 4 to
510,000: and the collection of the customs to above two millions.
CHAPTER XCV.
RESIGNATION AND VALEDICTORY OF MR. CLAY
In the month of March, of this year, Mr. Clay resigned his place
in the Senate, and delivered a valedictory address to the body,
in the course of which he disclosed his reasons. Neither age, nor
infirmities, nor disinclination for public service were alleged as
the reasons. Disgust, profound and inextinguishable, was the ruling
cause--more inferrible than alleged in his carefully considered
address. Supercession at the presidential convention of his party to
make room for an "available" in the person of General Harrison--the
defection of Mr. Tyler--the loss of his leading measures--the
criminal catastrophe of the national bank for which he had so often
pledged himself--and the insolent attacks of the petty adherents
of the administration in the two Houses, (too annoying for his
equanimity, and too contemptible for his reply): all these causes
of disgust, acting upon a proud and lofty spirit, induced this
withdrawal from a splendid theatre for which, it was evident, he
had not yet lost his taste. The address opened with a retrospect of
his early entrance into the Senate, and a grand encomium upon its
powers and dignity as he had found it, and left it. Memory went back
to that early year, 1806, when just arrived at senatorial age, he
entered the American Senate, and commenced his high career--a wide
and luminous horizon before him, and will and talent to fill it.
After some little exordium, he proceeded:
"And now, allow me, Mr. President, to announce, formally and
officially, my retirement from the Senate of the United States,
and to present the last motion which I shall ever make within
this body; but, before making that motion, I trust I shall be
pardoned for availing myself of this occasion to make a few
observations. At the time of my entry into this body, which took
place in December, 1806, I regarded it, and still regard it,
as a body which may be compared, without disadvantage, to any
of a similar character which has existed in ancient or modern
times; whether we look at it in reference to its dignity, its
powers, or the mode of its constitution; and I will also add,
whether it be regarded in reference to the amount of ability
which I shall leave behind me when I retire from this chamber.
In instituting a comparison between the Senate of the United
States and similar political institutions, of other countries,
of France and England, for example, he was sure the comparison
might be made without disadvantage to the American Senate. In
respect to the constitution of these bodies: in England, with
only the exception of the peers from Ireland and Scotland, and
in France with no exception, the component parts, the members
of these bodies, hold their places by virtue of no delegated
authority, but derive their powers from the crown, either by
ancient creation of nobility transmitted by force of hereditary
descent, or by new patents as occasion required an increase
of their numbers. But here, Mr. President, we have the proud
title of being the representatives of sovereign States or
commonwealths. If we look at the powers of these bodies in
France and England, and the powers of this Senate, we shall find
that the latter are far greater than the former. In both those
countries they have the legislative power, in both the judicial
with some modifications, and in both perhaps a more extensive
judicial power than is possessed by this Senate; but then the
last and undefined and undefinable power, the treaty-making
power, or at least a participation in the conclusions of
treaties with foreign powers, is possessed by this Senate, and
is possessed by neither of the others. Another power, too, and
one of infinite magnitude, that of distributing the patronage
of a great nation, which is shared by this Senate with the
executive magistrate. In both these respects we stand upon
ground different from that occupied by the Houses of Peers of
England and of France. And I repeat, that with respect to the
dignity which ordinarily prevails in this body, and with respect
to the ability of its members during the long period of my
acquaintance with it, without arrogance or presumption, we may
say, in proportion to its numbers, the comparison would not be
disadvantageous to us compared with any Senate either of ancient
or modern times."
He then gave the date of the period at which he had formed the
design to retire, and the motive for it--the date referring to the
late presidential election, and the motive to find repose in the
bosom of his family.
"Sir, I have long--full of attraction as public service in the
Senate of the United States is--a service which might fill the
aspirations of the most ambitious heart--I have nevertheless
long desired to seek that repose which is only to be found in
the bosom of one's family--in private life--in one's home.
It was my purpose to have terminated my senatorial career in
November, 1840, after the conclusion of the political struggle
which characterized that year."
The termination of the presidential election in November, was the
period at which Mr. Clay intended to retire: the determination
was formed before that time--formed from the moment that he found
himself superseded at the head of his party by a process of
intricate and trackless filtration of public opinion which left
himself a dreg where he had been for so many years the head. It was
a mistake, the effect of calculation, which ended more disastrously
for the party than for himself. Mr. Clay could have been elected at
that time. The same power which elected General Harrison could have
elected him. The banks enabled the party to do it. In a state of
suspension, they could furnish, without detriment to themselves, the
funds for the campaign. Affecting to be ruined by the government,
they could create distress: and thus act upon the community with the
double battery of terror and seduction. Lending all their energies
and resources to a political party, they elected General Harrison
in a hurrah! and could have done the same by Mr. Clay. With him the
election would have been a reality--a victory bearing fruit: with
General Harrison and Mr. Tyler--through Providence with one, and
defection in the other--the triumph, achieved at so great expense,
became ashes in the mouths of the victors. He then gave his reasons
for not resigning, as he had intended, at the termination of the
election: it was the hope of carrying his measures at the extra
session, which he foresaw was to take place.
"But I learned very soon, what my own reflections indeed
prompted me to suppose would take place, that there would be an
extra session; and being desirous, prior to my retirement, to
co-operate with my friends in the Senate in restoring, by the
adoption of measures best calculated to accomplish that purpose,
that degree of prosperity to the country, which had been, for a
time, destroyed, I determined upon attending the extra session,
which was called, as was well known, by the lamented Harrison.
His death, and the succession which took place in consequence
of it, produced a new aspect in the affairs of the country. Had
he lived, I do not entertain a particle of doubt that those
measures which, it was hoped, might be accomplished at that
session, would have been consummated by a candid co-operation
between the executive branch of the government and Congress;
and, sir, allow me to say (and it is only with respect to the
extra session), that I believe if there be any one free from
party feelings, and free from bias and from prejudice, who will
look at its transactions in a spirit of candor and of justice,
but must come to the conclusion to which, I think, the country
generally will come, that if there be any thing to complain of
in connection with that session, it is not as to what was done
and concluded, but as to that which was left unfinished and
unaccomplished."
Disappointed in his expectations from the extra session, by means
which he did not feel it necessary to recapitulate, Mr. Clay
proceeds to give the reasons why he still deferred his proposed
resignation, and appeared in the Senate again at its ensuing regular
session.
"After the termination of that session, had Harrison lived,
and had the measures which it appeared to me it was desirable
to have accomplished, been carried, it was my intention to
have retired; but I reconsidered that determination, with
the vain hope that, at the regular session of Congress, what
had been unaccomplished at the extra session, might then be
effected, either upon the terms proposed or in some manner
which would be equivalent. But events were announced after the
extra session--events resulting, I believe, in the failure
to accomplish certain objects at the extra session--events
which seemed to throw upon our friends every where present
defeat--this hope, and the occurrence of these events, induced
me to attend the regular session, and whether in adversity or
in prosperity, to share in the fortunes of my friends. But I
came here with the purpose, which I am now about to effectuate,
of retiring as soon as I thought I could retire with propriety
and decency, from the public councils."
Events after the extra session, as well as the events of the
session, determined him to return to the regular one. He does
not say what those subsequent events were. They were principally
two--the formation of a new cabinet wholly hostile to him, and the
attempt of Messrs. Tyler, Webster and Cushing to take the whig
party from him. The hostility of the cabinet was nothing to him
personally; but it indicated a fixed design to thwart him on the
part of the President, and augured an indisposition to promote any
of his measures. This augury was fulfilled as soon as Congress met.
The administration came forward with a plan of a government bank,
to issue a national currency of government paper--a thing which
he despised as much as the democracy did; and which, howsoever
impossible to succeed itself, was quite sufficient, by the diversion
it created, to mar the success of any plan for a national bank.
Instead of carrying new measures, it became clear that he was to
lose many already adopted. The bankrupt act, though forced upon
him, had become one of his measures; and that was visibly doomed
to repeal. The distribution of the land revenue had become a
political monstrosity in the midst of loans, taxes and treasury
notes resorted to to supply its loss: and the public mind was in
revolt against it. The compromise act of 1833, for which he was so
much lauded at the time, and the paternity of which he had so much
contested at the time, had run its career of folly and delusion--had
left the Treasury without revenue, and the manufacturers without
protection; and, crippled at the extra session, it was bound to die
at this regular one--and that in defiance of the mutual assurance
for continued existence put into the land bill; and which, so far
from being able to assure the life of another bill, was becoming
unable to save its own. Losing his own measures, he saw those
becoming established which he had most labored to oppose. The
specie circular was taking effect of itself, from the abundance of
gold and the baseness of paper. The divorce of Bank and State was
becoming absolute, from the delinquency of the banks. There was no
prospect ahead either to carry new measures, or to save old ones,
or to oppose the hated ones. All was gloomy ahead. The only drop
of consolation which sweetened the cup of so much bitterness was
the failure of his enemies to take the whig party from him. That
parricidal design (for these enemies owed their elevation to him)
exploded in its formation--aborted in its conception; and left those
to abjure whiggism, and fly from its touch, who had lately combined
to consolidate Congress, President and people into one solid whig
mass. With this comfort he determined to carry into effect his
determination to resign, although it was not yet the middle of the
session, and that all-important business was still on the anvil of
legislation--to say nothing of the general diplomatic settlement, to
embrace questions from the peace of 1783, which it was then known
Great Britain was sending out a special mission to effect. But, to
proceed with the valedictory. Having got to the point at which he
was to retire, the veteran orator naturally threw a look back upon
his past public course.
"From the year 1806, the period of my entering upon this noble
theatre of my public service, with but short intervals, down
to the present time, I have been engaged in the service of my
country. Of the nature and value of those services which I may
have rendered during my long career of public life, it does not
become me to speak. History, if she deigns to notice me, and
posterity--if a recollection of any humble service which I may
have rendered shall be transmitted to posterity--will be the
best, truest, and most impartial judges; and to them I defer
for a decision upon their value. But, upon one subject, I may
be allowed to speak. As to my public acts and public conduct,
they are subjects for the judgment of my fellow-citizens; but
my private motives of action--that which prompted me to take
the part which I may have done, upon great measures during
their progress in the national councils, can be known only to
the Great Searcher of the human heart and myself; and I trust I
shall be pardoned for repeating again a declaration which I made
thirty years ago: that whatever error I may have committed--and
doubtless I have committed many during my public service--I may
appeal to the Divine Searcher of hearts for the truth of the
declaration which I now make, with pride and confidence, that I
have been actuated by no personal motives--that I have sought no
personal aggrandizement--no promotion from the advocacy of those
various measures on which I have been called to act--that I have
had an eye, a single eye, a heart, a single heart, ever devoted
to what appeared to be the best interests of the country."
With this retrospection of his own course was readily associated the
recollection of the friends who had supported him in his long and
eventful, and sometimes, stormy career.
"But I have not been unsustained during this long course of
public service. Every where on this widespread continent
have I enjoyed the benefit of possessing warm-hearted, and
enthusiastic, and devoted friends--friends who knew me, and
appreciated justly the motives by which I have been actuated.
To them, if I had language to make suitable acknowledgments, I
would now take leave to present them, as being all the offering
that I can make for their long continued, persevering and
devoted friendship."
These were general thanks to the whole body of his friends, and to
the whole extent of his country; but there were special thanks due
to nearer friends, and the home State, which had then stood by him
for forty-five years (and which still stood by him ten years more,
and until death), and fervidly and impressively he acknowledged this
domestic debt of gratitude and affection.
"But, sir, if I have a difficulty in giving utterance to an
expression of the feelings of gratitude which fill my heart
towards my friends, dispersed throughout this continent, what
shall I say--what can I say--at all commensurate with my
feelings of gratitude towards that State whose humble servitor
I am? I migrated to the State of Kentucky nearly forty-five
years ago. I went there as an orphan, who had not yet attained
his majority--who had never recognized a father's smile--poor,
penniless, without the favor of the great--with an imperfect
and inadequate education, limited to the means applicable to
such a boy;--but scarcely had I set foot upon that generous
soil, before I was caressed with parental fondness--patronized
with bountiful munificence--and I may add to this, that her
choicest honors, often unsolicited, have been freely showered
upon me; and when I stood, as it were, in the darkest moments
of human existence--abandoned by the world, calumniated by a
large portion of my own countrymen, she threw around me her
impenetrable shield, and bore me aloft, and repelled the attacks
of malignity and calumny, by which I was assailed. Sir, it is to
me an unspeakable pleasure that I am shortly to return to her
friendly limits; and that I shall finally deposit (and it will
not be long before that day arrives) my last remains under her
generous soil, with the remains of her gallant and patriotic
sons who have preceded me."
After this grateful overflow of feelings to faithful friends and
country, came some notice of foes, whom he might forgive, but not
forget.
"Yet, sir, during this long period, I have not escaped the
fate of other public men, in this and other countries. I have
been often, Mr. President, the object of bitter and unmeasured
detraction and calumny. I have borne it, I will not say
always with composure, but I have borne it without creating
any disturbance. I have borne it, waiting in unshaken and
undoubting confidence, that the triumphs of truth and justice
would ultimately prevail; and that time would settle all things
as they ought to be settled. I have borne them under the
conviction, of which no injustice, no wrong, no injury could
deprive me, that I did not deserve them, and that He to whom we
are all to be finally and ultimately responsible, would acquit
me, whatever injustice I might experience at the hands of my
fellow-men."
This was a general reference to the attacks and misrepresentations
with which, in common with all eminent public men of decided
character, he had been assailed; but there was a recent and
offensive imputation upon him which galled him exceedingly--as much
so for the source from which it came as for the offence itself: it
was the imputation of the dictatorship, lavished upon him during the
extra session; and having its origin with Mr. Tyler and his friends.
This stung him, coming from that source--Mr. Tyler having attained
his highest honors through his friendship: elected senator by his
friends over Mr. Randolph, and taken up for Vice-President in the
whig convention (whereby he became both the second and the first
magistrate of the republic) on account of the excessive affection
which he displayed for Mr. Clay. To this recent, and most offensive
imputation, he replied specially:
"Mr. President, a recent epithet (I do not know whether for the
purpose of honor or of degradation) has been applied to me; and
I have been held up to the country as a dictator! Dictator!
The idea of dictatorship is drawn from Roman institutions; and
there, when it was created, the person who was invested with
this tremendous authority, concentrated in his own person the
whole power of the state. He exercised unlimited control over
the property and lives of the citizens of the commonwealth.
He had the power of raising armies, and of raising revenue by
taxing the people. If I have been a dictator, what have been
the powers with which I have been clothed? Have I possessed
an army, a navy, revenue? Have I had the distribution of the
patronage of the government? Have I, in short, possessed any
power whatever? Sir, if I have been a dictator, I think those
who apply the epithet to me must at least admit two things: in
the first place, that my dictatorship has been distinguished
by no cruel executions, stained by no deeds of blood, soiled by
no act of dishonor. And they must no less acknowledge, in the
second place (though I do not know when its commencement bears
date, but I suppose, however, that it is intended to be averred,
from the commencement of the extra session), that if I have been
invested with, or have usurped the dictatorship, I have at least
voluntarily surrendered the power within a shorter period than
was assigned by the Roman laws for its continuance."
Mr. Clay led a great party, and for a long time, whether he dictated
to it or not, and kept it well bound together, without the usual
means of forming and leading parties. It was a marvel that, without
power and patronage (for the greater part of his career was passed
in opposition as a mere member of Congress), he was able so long and
so undividedly to keep so great a party together, and lead it so
unresistingly. The marvel was solved on a close inspection of his
character. He had great talents, but not equal to some whom he led.
He had eloquence--superior in popular effect, but not equal in high
oratory to that of some others. But his temperament was fervid, his
will strong, and his courage daring; and these qualities, added to
his talents, gave him the lead and supremacy in his party--where
he was always dominant, but twice set aside by the politicians. It
was a galling thing to the President Tyler, with all the power and
patronage of office, to see himself without a party, and a mere
opposition member at the head of a great one--the solid body of
the whigs standing firm around Mr. Clay, while only some flankers
and followers came to him; and they importunate for reward until
they got it. Dictatorship was a natural expression of resentment
under such circumstances; and accordingly it was applied--and
lavishly--and in all places: in the Senate, in the House, in the
public press, in conversation, and in the manifesto which Mr.
Cushing put out to detach the whigs from him. But they all forgot
to tell that this imputed dictatorship at the extra session, took
place after the defection of Mr. Tyler from the whig party, and as a
consequence of that defection--some leader being necessary to keep
the party together after losing the two chiefs they had elected--one
lost by Providence, the other by treachery. This account settled,
he turned to a more genial topic--that of friendship; and to make
atonement, reconciliation and peace with all the senators, and
they were not a few, with whom he had had some rough encounters in
the fierce debate. Unaffectedly acknowledging some imperfection of
temper, he implored forgiveness from all whom he had ever offended,
and extended the hand of friendship to every brother member.
"Mr. President, that my nature is warm, my temper ardent, my
disposition in the public service enthusiastic, I am ready to
own. But those who suppose they may have seen any proof of
dictation in my conduct, have only mistaken that ardor for what
I at least supposed to be patriotic exertions for fulfilling
the wishes and expectations by which I hold this seat; they
have only mistaken the one for the other. Mr. President,
during my long and arduous services in the public councils,
and especially during the last eleven years, in the Senate,
the same ardor of temperament has characterized my actions,
and has no doubt led me, in the heat of debate, in endeavoring
to maintain my opinions in reference to the best course to
be pursued in the conduct of public affairs, to use language
offensive, and susceptible of ungracious interpretation, towards
my brother senators. If there be any who entertain a feeling of
dissatisfaction resulting from any circumstance of this kind,
I beg to assure them that I now make the amplest apology. And,
on the other hand, I assure the Senate, one and all, without
exception and without reserve, that I leave the Senate chamber
without carrying with me to my retirement a single feeling of
dissatisfaction towards the Senate itself or any one of its
members. I go from it under the hope that we shall mutually
consign to perpetual oblivion whatever of personal animosities
or jealousies may have arisen between us during the repeated
collisions of mind with mind."
This moving appeal was strongly responded to in spontaneous advances
at the proper time--deferred for a moment by a glowing and merited
tribute to his successor (Mr. Crittenden), and his own solemn
farewell to the Senate.
"And now, allow me to submit the motion which is the object
that induced me to arise upon this occasion. It is to present
the credentials of my friend and successor, who is present to
take my place. If, Mr. President, any void could be created by
my withdrawal from the Senate of the United States, it will be
filled to overflowing by my worthy successor, whose urbanity,
gallant bearing, steady adherence to principle, rare and
uncommon powers of debate, are well known already in advance to
the whole Senate. I move that the credentials be received, and
at the proper moment that the oath required be administered.
And now, in retiring as I am about to do from the Senate, I
beg leave to deposit with it my fervent wishes, that all the
great and patriotic objects for which it was instituted, may be
accomplished--that the destiny designed for it by the framers of
the constitution may be fulfilled--that the deliberations, now
and hereafter, in which it may engage for the good of our common
country, may eventuate in the restoration of its prosperity, and
in the preservation and maintenance of her honor abroad, and
her best interests at home. I retire from you, Mr. President,
I know, at a period of infinite distress and embarrassment. I
wish I could have taken leave of the public councils under more
favorable auspices: but without meaning to say at this time,
upon whom reproaches should fall on account of that unfortunate
condition, I think I may appeal to the Senate and to the country
for the truth of what I say, when I declare that at least no
blame on account of these embarrassments and distresses can
justly rest at my door. May the blessings of Heaven rest upon
the heads of the whole Senate, and every member of it; and may
every member of it advance still more in fame, and when they
shall retire to the bosoms of their respective constituencies,
may they all meet there that most joyous and grateful of all
human rewards, the exclamation of their countrymen, 'well done,
thou good and faithful servant.' Mr. President, and Messieurs
Senators, I bid you, one and all, a long, a last, a friendly
farewell."
Mr. Preston concluded the ceremony by a motion to adjourn. He
said he had well observed from the deep sensation which had
been sympathetically manifested, that there could be but little
inclination to go on with business in the Senate, and that he could
not help participating in the feeling which he was sure universally
prevailed, that something was due to the occasion. The resignation
which had just taken place was an epoch in the annals of the
country. It would undoubtedly be so considered in history. And he
did not know that he could better consult the feelings of the Senate
than by moving an adjournment: which motion was made and agreed to.
Senators, and especially those who had had their hot words with the
retiring statesman, now released from official restraint, went up,
and made return of all the kind expressions which had been addressed
to them. But the valedictory, though well performed, did not escape
the criticism of senators, as being out of keeping with the usages
of the body. It was the first occasion of the kind; and, thus far,
has been the last; and it might not be recommendable for any one,
except another Henry Clay--if another should ever appear--to attempt
its imitation.
CHAPTER XCVI.
MILITARY DEPARTMENT: PROGRESS OF ITS EXPENSE.
There is no part of the working of the government, at which that
part of the citizens who live upon their own industry should look
more closely, than into its expenditures. The progress of expense
in every branch of the public service should be their constant
care; and for that purpose retrospective views are necessary, and
comparisons between different periods. A preceding chapter has given
some view of this progress and comparison in the Navy Department:
the present one will make the same retrospect with respect to the
army, and on the same principles--that of taking the aggregate
expense of the department, and then seeing the effective force
produced, and the detailed cost of such force. Such comparative
view was well brought up by Mr. Calhoun for a period of twenty
years--1822 to 1842--in the debate on the naval appropriations; and
it furnishes instructive data for this examination. He said:
"I shall now pass to the military, with which I am more
familiar. I propose to confine my remarks almost entirely to
the army proper, including the Military Academy, in reference
to which the information is more full and minute. I exclude
the expenses incident to the Florida war, and the expenditures
for the ordnance, the engineer, the topographical, the Indian,
and the pension bureaus. Instead of 1823, for which there is
no official and exact statement of the expenses of the army,
I shall take 1821, for which there is one made by myself, as
Secretary of War, and for the minute correctness of which, I
can vouch. It is contained in a report made under a call of the
House of Representatives, and comprises a comparative statement
of the expenses of the army proper, for the years 1818, '19,
'20, and '21, respectively, and an estimate of the expense of
1823. It may be proper to add, which I can with confidence, that
the comparative expense of 1823, if it could be ascertained,
would be found to be not less favorable than 1821. It would
probably be something more so.
"With these remarks, I shall begin with a comparison, in the
first place, between 1821 and the estimate for the army proper
for this year. The average aggregate strength of the army in
the year 1821, including officers, professors, cadets, and
soldiers, was 8,109, and the proportion of officers, including
the professors of the Military Academy, to the soldiers,
including cadets, was 1 to 12 18-100, and the expenditure
$2,180,093 53, equal to $263 91 for each individual. The
estimate for the army proper for 1842, including the Military
Academy, is $4,453,370 16. The actual strength of the army,
according to the return accompanying the message at the opening
of the session, was 11,169. Assuming this to be the average
strength for this year, and adding for the average number of the
Academy, professors and cadets, 300, it will give within a very
small fraction $390 for each individual, making a difference
of $136 in favor of 1821. How far the increase of pay, and the
additional expense of two regiments of dragoons, compared to
other descriptions of troops, would justify this increase, I
am not prepared to say. In other respects, I should suppose,
there ought to be a decrease rather than an increase, as the
prices of clothing, provisions, forage, and other articles of
supply, as well as transportation, are, I presume, cheaper than
in 1821. The proportion of officers to soldiers I would suppose
to be less in 1842, than in 1821, and of course, as far as that
has influence, the expense of the former ought to be less per
man than the latter. With this brief and imperfect comparison
between the expense of 1821 and the estimates for this year,
I shall proceed to a more minute and full comparison between
the former and the year 1837. I select that year, because the
strength of the army, and the proportion of officers to men (a
very material point as it relates to the expenditure) are almost
exactly the same.
"On turning to document 165 (H. R., 2d sess., 26th Con.),
a letter will be found from the then Secretary of War (Mr.
Poinsett) giving a comparative statement, in detail, of the
expense of the army proper, including the Military Academy,
for the years 1837, '38, '39 and '40. The strength of the army
for the first of these years, including officers, professors,
cadets, and soldiers, was 8,107, being two less than in 1821.
The proportion of officers and professors, to the cadets
and soldiers, 11 46-100, being 72-100 more than 1821. The
expenditure for 1837, $3,308,011, being $1,127,918 more than
1821. The cost per man, including officers, professors, cadets,
and soldiers, was in 1837 $408 03, exceeding that of 1821 by
$144 12 per man. It appears by the letter of the Secretary,
that the expense per man rose in 1838 to $464 35; but it is
due to the head of the department, at the time, to say, that
it declined under his administration, the next year, to $381
65; and in the subsequent, to $380 63. There is no statement
for the year 1841; but as there has been a falling off in
prices, there ought to be a proportionate reduction in the cost,
especially during the present year, when there is a prospect of
so great a decline in almost every article which enters into the
consumption of the army. Assuming that the average strength
of the army will be kept equal to the return accompanying the
President's message, and that the expenditure of the year
should be reduced to the standard of 1821, the expense of the
army would not exceed $2,895,686, making a difference, compared
with the estimates, of $1,557,684; but that, from the increase
of pay, and the greater expense of the dragoons, cannot be
expected. Having no certain information how much the expenses
are necessarily increased from those causes, I am not prepared
to say what ought to be the actual reductions; but, unless the
increase of pay, and the increased cost because of the dragoons
are very great, it ought to be very considerable.
"I found the expense of the army in 1818, including the
Military Academy, to be $3,702,495, at a cost of $451 57 per
man, including officers, professors, cadets, and soldiers, and
reduced it in 1821 to $2,180,098, at a cost of $263 91; and
making a difference between the two years, in the aggregate
expenses of the army, of $1,522,397, and $185 66 per man. There
was, it is true, a great fall in prices in the interval; but
allowing for that, by adding to the price of every article
entering into the supplies of the army, a sum sufficient to
raise it to the price of 1818, there was still a difference in
the cost per man of $163 95. This great reduction was effected
without stinting the service or diminishing the supplies, either
in quantity or quality. They were, on the contrary, increased
in both, especially the latter. It was effected through an
efficient organization of the staff, and the co-operation of
the able officers placed at the head of each of its divisions.
The cause of the great expense at the former period, was found
to be principally in the neglect of public property, and the
application of it to uses not warranted by law. There is less
scope, doubtless, for reformation in the army now. I cannot
doubt, however, but that the universal extravagance which
pervaded the country for so many years, and which increased so
greatly the expenses both of government and individuals, has
left much room for reform in this, as well as other branches of
the service."
This is an instructive period at which to look. In the year 1821,
when Mr. Calhoun was Secretary at War, the cost of each man in
the military service (officers and cadets included) was, in round
numbers, 264 dollars per man: in the year 1839, when Mr. Poinsett
was Secretary, and the Florida war on hand, the cost per man was
380 dollars: in the year 1842, the second year of Mr. Tyler's
administration, the Florida war still continuing, it was 390 dollars
per man: now, in 1855, it is about 1,000 dollars a man. Thus, the
cost of each man in the army has increased near three fold in the
short space of about one dozen years. The same result will be
shown by taking the view of these increased expenses in a different
form--that of aggregates of men and of cost. Thus, the aggregate
of the army in 1821 was 8,109 men, and the expense was $2,180,093:
in 1839 the aggregate of the army was about 8,000 men--the cost
$3,308,000: in 1842 the return of the army was 11,169--the
appropriation asked for, and obtained $4,453,370. Now, 1854, the
aggregate of the army is 10,342--the appropriations ten millions and
three quarters! that is to say, with nearly one thousand men less
than in 1842, the cost is upwards of six millions more. Such is the
progress of waste and extravagance in the army--fully keeping up
with that in the navy.
In a debate upon retrenchment at this session, Mr. Adams proposed to
apply the pruning knife at the right place--the army and navy: he
did not include the civil and diplomatic, which gave no sign at that
time of attaining its present enormous proportions, and confined
himself to the naval and military expenditure. After ridiculing the
picayune attempts at retrenchment by piddling at stationery and
tape, and messengers' pay, he pointed to the army and navy; and said:
"There you may retrench millions! in the expenses of Congress,
you retrench picayunes. You never will retrench for the benefit
of the people of this country, till you retrench the army and
navy twenty millions. And yet he had heard of bringing down the
expenditures of the government to twenty millions. Was this
great retrenchment to be effected by cutting off the paper of
members, by reducing the number of pages, and cutting down the
salaries of the door-keepers? How much could be retrenched in
that way? If there was to be any real retrenchment, it must
be in the army and navy. A sincere and honest determination
to reduce the expenses of the government, was the spirit of a
very large portion of the two parties in the House; and that
was a spirit in which the democracy had more merit than the
other party. He came here as an humble follower of those who
went for retrenchment; and, so help him God, so long as he kept
his seat here, he would continue to urge retrenchment in the
expenditures of the military and naval force. Well, what was the
corresponding action of the Executive on this subject? It was a
recommendation to increase the expenditures both for the army
and navy. They had estimates from the War and Navy Departments
of twenty millions. The additions proposed to the armed force,
as he observed yesterday, fifteen millions would not provide
for. Where was the spirit of retrenchment on the part of the
Executive, which Congress had a right to expect? How had he
met the spirit manifested by Congress for retrenchment of the
expenditures of the government? By words--words--and nothing
else but words."
A retrenchment, to be effectual, requires the President to
take the lead, as Mr. Jefferson did at the commencement of his
administration. A solitary member, or even several members acting
together, could do but little: but they should not on that account
forbear to "_cry aloud and spare not_." Their voice may wake up the
people, and lead to the election of a President who will be on the
side of republican economy, instead of royal extravagance. This
writer is not certain that 20 millions, on these two heads, could
have been retrenched at the time Mr. Adams spoke; but he is sure of
it now.
CHAPTER XCVII.
PAPER MONEY PAYMENTS: ATTEMPTED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT:
RESISTED: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH.
The long continued struggle between paper money and gold was now
verging to a crisis. The gold bill, rectifying the erroneous
valuation of that metal, had passed in 1834: an influx of gold
coin followed. In seven years the specie currency had gone up from
twenty millions to one hundred. There was five times as much specie
in the country as there was in 1832, when the currency was boasted
to be solid under the regulation of the Bank of the United States.
There was as much as the current business of the country and of the
federal government could use: for these 100 millions, if allowed
to circulate and to pass from hand to hand, in every ten hands
that they passed through, would do the business of one thousand
millions. Still the administration was persistent in its attempts
to obtain a paper money currency: and the national bank having
failed, and all the efforts to get up paper money machines (under
the names of fiscal agent, fiscal corporation, and exchequer board)
having proved abortive, recourse was had to treasury notes, with
the quality of re-issuability attached to them. Previous issues
had been upon the footing of any other promissory note: when once
paid at the treasury, it was extinguished and cancelled. Now they
were made re-issuable, like common bank notes; and a limited issue
of five millions of dollars became unlimited from its faculty of
successive emission. The new administration converted these notes
into currency, to be offered to the creditors of the government in
the proportion of two-thirds paper, and one-third specie; and, from
the difficulty of making head against the government, the mass of
the creditors were constrained to take their dues in this compound
of paper and specie. Mr. Benton determined to resist it, and to
make a case for the consideration and judgment of Congress and the
country, with the view of exposing a forced unconstitutional tender,
and inciting the country to a general resistance. For this purpose
he had a check drawn for a few days' compensation as senator, and
placed it in the hands of a messenger for collection, inscribed,
"the hard, or a protest." The hard was not delivered: the protest
followed: and Mr. Benton then brought the case before the Senate,
and the people, in a way which appears thus in the register of the
Congress debates (and which were sufficient for their objects as the
forced tender of the paper money was immediately stopped):
Mr. Benton rose to offer a resolution, and to precede it with some
remarks, bottomed upon a paper which he held in his hand, and which
he would read. He then read as follows:
[COMPENSATION NO. 149.]
OFFICE OF SECRETARY OF THE SENATE OF THE U. S. A.
WASHINGTON, _31st January, 1842_.
Cashier of the Bank of Washington,
Pay to Hon. THOMAS H. BENTON, or order one hundred and forty-two
dollars. $142 (Signed) ASBURY DICKENS,
Secretary of the Senate.
(Endorsed). [pointing finger symbol] "_The hard, or a protest._
"THOMAS H. BENTON."
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,
Washington County, Set:
Be it known, That on the thirty-first day of January, 1842,
I, George Sweeny, Notary Public, by lawful authority duly
commissioned and sworn, dwelling in the County and District
aforesaid, at the request of the honorable Thomas H. Benton,
presented at the bank of Washington, the original check whereof
the above is a true copy, and demanded there payment of the sum
of money in the said check specified, whereunto the cashier of
said bank answered: "The whole amount cannot be paid in specie,
as treasury notes alone have been deposited here to meet the
Secretary of the Senate's checks; but I am ready to pay this
check in one treasury note for one hundred dollars, bearing six
per cent. interest, and the residue in specie."
Therefore I, the said notary, at the request aforesaid, have
protested, and by these presents do solemnly protest, against
the drawer and endorser of this said check, and all others whom
it doth or may concern, for all costs, exchange, or re-exchange,
charges, damages, and interests, suffered and to be suffered for
want of payment thereof.
[SEAL]
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and affixed my
Seal Notarial, this first day of February, 1842.
GEORGE SWEENY,
Notary Public.
Protesting, $1 75.
Recorded in Protest Book, G. S. No. 4, page 315.
Mr. B. said this paper explained itself. It was a check and a
protest. The check was headed "_compensation_," and was drawn by
the Secretary of the Senate for so much pay due to him (Mr. B.) for
his per diem attendance in Congress. It had been presented at the
proper place for payment, and it would be seen by the protest that
payment was refused, unless he (Mr. B.) would consent to receive
two-thirds paper and about one-third specie. He objected to this,
and endorsed upon the check, as an instruction to the messenger
who carried it, these words: "_The hard, or a protest._" Under
instructions the protest came, and with it notarial fees to the
amount of $1,75, which were paid in the hard. Mr. B. said this was
what had happened to himself, here at the seat of government; and he
presumed the same thing was happening to others, and all over the
Union. He presumed the time had arrived when paper money payments,
and forced tenders of treasury notes, were to be universal, and
when every citizen would have to decide for himself whether he
would submit to the imposition upon his rights, and to the outrage
upon the Constitution, which such a state of things involved. Some
might not be in a situation to submit. Necessity, stronger than any
law, might compel many to submit; but there were others who were
in a situation to resist; and, though attended with some loss and
inconvenience, it was their duty to do so. Tyranny must be resisted;
oppression must be resisted; violation of the Constitution must be
resisted; folly or wickedness must be resisted; otherwise there is
an end of law, of liberty, and of right. The government becomes
omnipotent, and rides and rules over a prostrate country, as it
pleases. Resistance to the tyranny or folly of a government becomes
a sacred duty, which somebody must perform, and the performance of
which is always disagreeable, and sometimes expensive and hazardous.
Mr. Hampden resisted the payment of ship money in England: and his
resistance cost him money, time, labor, losses of every kind, and
eventually the loss of his life. His share of the ship money was
only twenty shillings, and a suggestion of self-interest would
have required him to submit to the imposition, and put up with the
injury. But a feeling of patriotism prompted him to resist for
others, not for himself--to resist for the benefit of those who
could not resist for themselves; and, above all, to resist for the
sake of the Constitution of the country, trampled under foot by
a weak king and a profligate minister. Mr. Hampden resisted the
payment of ship money to save the people of England from oppression,
and the constitution from violation. Some person must resist the
payment of paper money here, to save the people from oppression, and
the Constitution from violation; and if persons in station, and at
the seat of government will not do it, who shall? Sir, resistance
must be made; the safety of the country, and of the Constitution
demands it. It must be made here: for here is the source and
presence of the tyranny. It must be made by some one in station: for
the voice of those in private life could not be heard. Some one must
resist, and for want of a more suitable person, I find myself under
the necessity of doing it--and I do it with the less reluctance
because it is in my line, as a hard-money man; and because I do not
deem it quite as dangerous to resist our paper money administration
as Hampden found it to resist Charles the First and the Duke of
Buckingham.
There is no dispute about the fact, and the case which I present is
neither a first one, nor a solitary one. The whig administration,
in the first year of its existence, is without money, and without
credit, and with no other means of keeping up but by forced
payments of paper money, which it strikes from day to day to force
into the hands, and to stop the mouths of its importunate creditors.
This is its condition; and it is the natural result of the folly
which threw away the land revenue--which repealed the hard money
clause of the independent treasury--which repealed the prohibition
against the use of small notes by the federal government--which
has made war upon gold, and protected paper--and which now demands
the establishment of a national manufactory of paper money for the
general and permanent use of the federal government. Its present
condition is the natural result of these measures; and bad as it
is, it must be far worse if the people do not soon compel a return
to the hard money and economy of the democratic administrations.
This administration came into power upon a promise to carry on the
government upon thirteen millions per annum; the first year is not
yet out; it has already had a revenue of twenty odd millions, a loan
bill for twelve millions, a tax bill for eight or ten millions, a
treasury note bill for five millions: and with all this, it declares
a _deficit_, and shows its insolvency, by denying money to its
creditors, and forcing them to receive paper, or to go without pay.
In a season of profound peace, and in the first year of the whig
administration, this is the condition of the country! a condition
which must fill the bosom of every friend to our form of government
with grief and shame.
Sir, a war upon the currency of the constitution has been going on
for many years; and the heroes of that war are now in power. They
have ridiculed gold, and persecuted it in every way, and exhausted
their wits in sarcasms upon it and its friends. The humbug gold bill
was their favorite phrase; and among other exhibitions in contempt
of this bill and its authors, were a couple of public displays--one
in May, 1837, the other in the autumn of 1840--at Wheeling, in
Virginia, by two gentlemen (Mr. Tyler and Mr. Webster), now high
functionaries in this government, in which empty purses were held
up to the contemplation of the crowd, in derision of the gold bill
and its authors. Sir, that bill was passed in June, 1834; and from
that day down to a few weeks ago, we were paid in gold. Every one
of us had gold that chose it. Now the scene is reversed. Gold is
gone; paper has come. Forced payments, and forced tenders of paper,
is the law of the whig administration! and empty purses may now
be held up with truth, and with sorrow, as the emblem both of the
administration and its creditors.
The cause of this disgraceful state of things, Mr. B. said, he
would not further investigate at present. The remedy was the point
now to be attended to. The government creditor was suffering; the
constitution was bleeding; the character of the country was sinking
into disgrace; and it was the duty of Congress to apply a remedy
to so many disasters. He, Mr. B. saw the remedy; but he had not
the power to apply it. The power was in other hands; and to them
he would wish to commit the inquiry which the present condition of
things imperiously required of Congress to make.
Mr. B. said here was a forced payment of paper money--a forced
tender of paper money--and forced loans from the citizens. The loan
to be forced out of him was $100, at 6 per cent.; but he had not
the money to lend, and should resist the loan. Those who have money
will not lend it, and wisely refuse to lend it to an administration
which throws away its rich pearl--the land revenue. The senator from
North Carolina [Mr. MANGUM] proposes a reduction of the pay of the
members by way of relief to the Treasury, but Mr. B. had no notion
of submitting to it: he had no notion of submitting to a deduction
of his pay to enable an administration to riot in extravagance, and
to expend in a single illegal commission in New York (the Poindexter
custom house inquisition), more than the whole proposed saving from
the members' pay would amount to. He had no notion of submitting
to such curtailments, and would prefer the true remedy, that of
restoring the land revenue to its proper destination; and also
restoring economy, democracy, and hard money to power.
Mr. Benton then offered the following resolution, which was adopted:
"_Resolved_, That the Committee on Finance be instructed to
inquire into the nature of the payments now made, or offered to
be made, by the federal government to its creditors. Whether
the same are made in hard money or in paper money? Whether the
creditors have their option? Whether the government paper is at
a discount? And what remedy, if any, is necessary to enable the
government to keep its faith with its creditors, so as to save
them from loss, the Constitution from violation, and the country
from disgrace?"
CHAPTER XCVIII.
CASE OF THE AMERICAN BRIG CREOLE, WITH SLAVES FOR NEW ORLEANS,
CARRIED BY MUTINY INTO NASSAU, AND THE SLAVES LIBERATED.
At this time took place one of those liberations of slaves in
voyages between our own ports, of which there had already been four
instances; but no one under circumstances of such crime and outrage.
Mutiny, piracy, and bloodshed accompanied this fifth instance of
slaves liberated by British authorities while on the voyage from one
American port to another. The brig Creole, of Richmond, Virginia,
had sailed from Norfolk for New Orleans, among other cargo, having
135 slaves on board. When out a week, and near the Bahama Islands,
a mutiny broke out among the slaves, or rather nineteen of them, in
the night, manifesting itself instantly and unexpectedly upon the
officers and crew of the brig, and the passengers. The mutineers,
armed with knives and handspikes, rushed to the cabin, where the
officers not on duty, the wife and children of the captain, and
passengers were asleep. They were knocked down, stabbed and killed,
except as they could save themselves in the dark. In a few minutes
the mutineers were masters of the vessel, and proceeded to arrange
things according to their mind. All the slaves except the 19 were
confined in the hold, and great apprehensions entertained of them,
as they had refused to join in the mutiny, many of them weeping
and praying--some endeavoring to save their masters, and others
hiding to save themselves. The living, among the officers, crew and
passengers were hunted up, and their lives spared to work the ship.
They first demanded that they should be carried to Liberia--a design
which was relinquished upon representations that there was not water
and provisions for a quarter of the voyage. They then demanded to
go to a British island, and placing the muzzle of a musket against
the breast of the severely wounded captain, menaced him with
instant death if he did not comply with their demand. Of course he
complied, and steered for Nassau, in the island of Providence. The
lives of his wife and children were spared, and they, with other
surviving whites, were ordered into the forward hold. Masters of the
ship, the 19 mutineers took possession of the cabin--ate there--and
had their consultations in that place. All the other slaves were
rigorously confined in the hold, and fears expressed that they would
rise on the mutineers. Not one joined them. The affidavits of the
master and crew taken at Nassau, say:
"None but the 19 went into the cabin. They ate in the cabin,
and others ate on deck as they had done the whole voyage. The
19 were frequently closely engaged in secret conversation, but
the others took no part in it, and appeared not to share in
their confidence. The others were quiet and did not associate
with the mutineers. The only words that passed between the
others and the 19, were when the others asked them for water
_or grub_, or something of the kind. The others were kept under
as much as the whites were. The 19 drank liquor in the cabin
and invited the whites to join them, but not the other negroes.
Madison, the ring-leader, gave orders that the cooking for all
but the 19 should be as it was before, and appointed the same
cook for them. The nineteen said that all they had done was for
their freedom. The others said nothing about it. They were much
afraid of the nineteen. They remained forward of the mainmast.
The nineteen took possession of the after part of the brig, and
stayed there the whole time or were on watch. The only knives
found after the affray, were two sheath knives belonging to the
sailors. The captain's bowie knife and the jack knife. None of
the other negroes had any other knives. Madison sometimes had
the bowie knife, and sometimes Ben had it. No other negro was
seen with that knife. On Monday afternoon Madison got the pistol
from one of the nineteen, and said he did not wish them to have
any arms when they reached Nassau. The nineteen paraded the
deck armed, while the other negroes behaved precisely as they
had done before the mutiny. About 10 o'clock, P. M., on the 8th
day of November, 1841, they made the light of Abaco. Ben had
the gun. About 10 o'clock P. M. he fired at Stevens, who came
on deck as already stated. Merritt and Gifford (officers of the
vessel) alternately kept watch. Ben, Madison, Ruffin and Morris
(four principal mutineers) kept watch by turns, the whole time
up to their arrival at Nassau, with knives drawn. So close was
the watch, that it was impossible to rescue the brig. Neither
passengers, officers or sailors were allowed to communicate with
each other. The sailors performed their usual duties."
Arrived at Nassau, a pilot came on board--all the men in his boat
being negroes. He and his men on coming on board, mingled with
the slaves, and told them they were free men--that they should
go on shore, and never be carried away from there. The regular
quarantine officer then came on board, to whom Gifford, first mate
of the vessel, related all the circumstances of the mutiny. Going
ashore with the quarantine officer, Gifford related all the same
circumstances to the Governor of the island, and to the American
Consul at Nassau. The consul, in behalf of the vessel and all
interested, requested that a guard should be sent on board to
protect the vessel and cargo, and keep the slaves on board until it
could be known what was to be done. The Governor did so--sending a
guard of twenty-four negro soldiers in British uniform, with loaded
muskets and fixed bayonets. The affidavits then say:
"From Tuesday the 10th, till Friday the 12th day of November,
they tied Ben Blacksmith, Addison, Ruffin, and Morris, put
them in the long boat, placed a sentry over them, and fed them
there. They mingled with the negroes, and told the women they
were free, and persuaded them to remain in the island. Capt.
Fitzgerald, commanding the company, told many of the slaves
owned by Thomas McCargo, in presence of many other of the
slaves, how foolish they were, that they had not, when they
rose, killed all the whites on board, and run the vessel ashore,
and then they would have been free, and there would have been
no more trouble about it. This was on Wednesday. Every day the
officers and soldiers were changed at 9 o'clock, A.M. There are
500 regular soldiers on the island, divided into four equal
companies, commanded by four officers, called captains. There
was a regular sentry stationed every night, and they put all the
men slaves below, except the four which were tied, and placed a
guard over the hatchway. They put them in the hold at sunset,
and let them out at sunrise. There were apparently from twelve
to thirteen thousand negroes in the town of Nassau and vicinity,
and about three or four thousand whites."
The next day the Queen's attorney-general for this part of her
West Indian possessions, came on board the brig, attended by three
magistrates and the United States consul, and took the depositions
of all the white persons on board in relation to the mutiny. That
being done, the attorney-general placed the 19 mutineers in the
custody of the captain and his guard of 24 negro soldiers, and
ordered them upon the quarter-deck. The affidavits then continue:
"There were about fifty boats lying round the brig, all filled
with men from the shore, armed with clubs, and subject to the
order of the attorney-general, and awaiting a signal from one
of the civil magistrates; a sloop was towed from the shore by
some of our boats, and anchored near the brig--this sloop was
also filled with men armed with clubs; all the men in the boats
were negroes. The fleet of boats was under the immediate command
of the pilot who piloted the brig into the harbor. This pilot,
partly before the signal was given by one of the magistrates,
said that he wished they would get through the business; that
they had their time and he wanted his.
"The attorney-general here stepped on the quarter-deck, and
addressing himself to all the persons except the nineteen who
were in custody, said, 'My friends, you have been detained a
short time on board the Creole for the purpose of ascertaining
the individuals who were concerned in this mutiny and murder.
They have been identified, and will be detained, and the rest
of you are free, and at liberty to go on shore, and wherever
you please.' Then addressing the prisoners he said: 'Men, there
are nineteen of you who have been identified as having been
engaged in the murder of Mr. Hewell, and in an attempt to kill
the captain and others. You will be detained and lodged in
prison for a time, in order that we may communicate with the
English government, and ascertain whether your trial shall take
place here or elsewhere.' At this time Mr. Gifford, the mate
of the vessel, then in command, the captain being on shore,
under the care of a physician, addressed the attorney-general
in the presence of the magistrates, protested against the boats
being permitted to come alongside of the vessel, or that the
negroes other than the mutineers should be put on shore. The
attorney-general replied that Mr. Gifford had better make no
objection, but let them go quietly on shore, for if he did,
there might be bloodshed. At this moment one of the magistrates
ordered Mr. Merritt, Mr. McCargo, and the other passengers, to
look to their money and effects, as he apprehended that the
cabin of the Creole would be sacked and robbed.
"The attorney-general with one of the magistrates, stepped into
his boat and withdrew into the stream, a short distance from
the brig, when they stopped. A magistrate on the deck of the
Creole gave the signal for the boats to approach instantly. With
a hurrah and a shout, a fleet of boats came alongside of the
brig, and the magistrates directed the men to remain on board
of their own boats, and commanded the slaves to leave the brig
and go on board the boats. They obeyed his orders, and passing
from the Creole into the boats, were assisted, many of them,
by this magistrate. During this proceeding, the soldiers and
officers were on the quarter-deck of the Creole, armed with
loaded muskets and bayonets fixed, and the attorney-general
with one of the magistrates in his boat, lay at a convenient
distance, looking on. After the negroes had embarked in the
boats, the attorney-general and magistrate pushed out their
boat, and mingled with the fleet, congratulating the slaves on
their escape, and shaking hands with them. Three cheers were
then given, and the boats went to the shore, where thousands
were waiting to receive them."
The 19 mutineers were then taken on shore, and lodged in prison,
while many of the slaves--the greater part of them--who were
proclaimed to be liberated, begged to be allowed to proceed with
their masters to New Orleans, but were silenced by threats, and the
captain told that his vessel should be forfeited if he attempted to
carry any of them away. Only four, by hiding themselves, succeeded
in getting off with their masters. The next day a proceeding
took place in relation to what was called "the baggage of the
passengers;" which is thus stated in the affidavits:
"On Monday following these events, being the 15th day of
November, the attorney-general wrote a letter to Captain Ensor,
informing him that the _passengers_ of the Creole, as he called
the slaves, had applied to him for assistance in obtaining their
baggage which was still on board the brig, and that he should
assist them in getting it on shore. To this letter, Gifford,
the officer in command of the vessel, replied that there was no
baggage on board belonging to the slaves that he was aware of,
as he considered them cargo, and the property of their owners,
and that if they had left any thing on board the brig, it was
the property also of their masters; and besides he could not
land any thing without a permit from the custom house, and an
order from the American consul. The attorney-general immediately
got a permit from the custom-house, but no order from the
American consul, and put an officer of the customs on board the
brig, and demanded the delivery of the baggage of the slaves
aforesaid to be landed in the brig's boat. The master of the
Creole, not feeling himself at liberty to refuse, permitted the
officer with his men to come on board and take such baggage and
property as they chose to consider as belonging to the slaves.
They went into the hold of the vessel, and took all the wearing
apparel, blankets, and other articles, as also one bale of
blankets, belonging to Mr. Lockett, which had not been opened.
These things were put on board of the boat of the officer of the
customs, and carried on shore."
The officers of the American brig earnestly demanded that the
mutineers should be left with them to be carried into a port of the
United States to be tried for their mutiny and murder; but this
demand was positively refused--the attorney-general saying that they
would take the orders of the British government as to the place.
This was tantamount to an acquittal, and even justification of all
they had done, as according to the British judicial decisions a
slave has a right to kill his master to obtain his freedom. This
outrage (the forcible liberation of the slaves, refusal to permit
the mutineers to be brought to their own country for trial, and the
abstraction of articles from the brig belonging to the captain and
crew), produced much exasperation in the slave States. Coming so
soon after four others of kindred character, and while the outrage
on the Caroline was still unatoned for, it bespoke a contempt for
the United States which was galling to the feelings of many besides
the inhabitants of the States immediately interested. It was a
subject for the attention both of the Executive government and the
Congress; and accordingly received the notice of both. Early in the
session of '41-'42, Mr. Calhoun submitted a call in the Senate, in
which the President was requested to give information of what he had
heard of the outrage, and what steps he had taken to obtain redress.
He answered through the Secretary of State (Mr. Webster), showing
that all the facts had been regularly communicated, and that he (the
Secretary) had received instructions to draw up a despatch on the
subject to the American minister in London (Mr. Edward Everett);
which would be done without unnecessary delay. On receiving this
message, Mr. Calhoun moved to refer it to the Committee on Foreign
Relations--prefacing his motion with some remarks, and premising
that the Secretary had answered well as to the facts of the case.
"As to the remaining portion of the resolution, that which asked
for information as to what steps had been taken to bring the
guilty in this bloody transaction to justice, and to redress
the wrong done to our citizens, and the indignity offered to
our flag, he regretted to say, the report of the Secretary is
very unsatisfactory. He, Mr. C., had supposed, in a case of
such gross outrage, that prompt measures for redress would have
been adopted. He had not doubted, but that a vessel had been
despatched, or some early opportunity seized for transmitting
directions to our minister at the court of St. James, to demand
that the criminals should be delivered to our government for
trial; more especially, as they were detained with the view of
abiding the decision of the government at home. But in all this
he had been in a mistake. Not a step has been yet taken--no
demand made for the surrender of the murderers, though the
Executive must have been in full possession of the facts for
more than a month. The only reply is, that he (the Secretary)
had received the orders of the President to prepare a despatch
for our minister in London, which would be 'prepared without
unnecessary delay.' He (Mr. Calhoun) spoke not in the spirit of
censure; he had no wish to find fault; but he thought it due to
the country, and more especially, of the portion that has so
profound an interest in this subject, that he should fearlessly
state the facts as they existed. He believed our right to demand
the surrender of the murderers clear, beyond doubt, and that,
if the case was fairly stated, the British government would be
compelled, from a sense of justice, to yield to our demand; and
hence his deep regret that there should have been such long
delay in making any demand. The apparent indifference which it
indicates on the part of the government, and the want of our
views on the subject, it is to be feared, would prompt to an
opposite decision, before any despatch can now be received by
our minister.
"He repeated that the case was clear. He knew that an effort
had been made, and he regretted to say, even in the South, and
through a newspaper in this District, but a morning or two
since, to confound the case with the ordinary one of a criminal
fleeing from the country where the crime was perpetrated, to
another. He admitted that it is a doubtful question whether,
by the laws of nations, in such a case, the nation to which he
fled, was bound to surrender him on the demand of the one where
the crime was committed. But that was not this case, nor was
there any analogy between them. This was mutiny and murder,
committed on the ocean, on board of one of our vessels, sailing
from one port to another on our own coast, in a regular voyage,
committed by slaves, who constituted a part of the cargo, and
forcing the officers and crew to steer the vessel into a port
of a friendly power. Now there was nothing more clear, than
that, according to the laws of nations, a vessel on the ocean
is regarded as a portion of the territory of the State to
which she belongs, and more emphatically so, if possible, in a
coasting voyage; and that if forced into a friendly port by an
unavoidable necessity, she loses none of the rights that belong
to her on the ocean. Contrary to these admitted principles, the
British authorities entered on board of the Creole, took the
criminals under their own jurisdiction, and that after they had
ascertained them to be guilty of mutiny and murder, instead
(as they ought to have done) of aiding the officers and crew
in confining them, to be conveyed to one of our ports, where
they would be amenable to our laws. The outrage would not have
been greater, nor more clearly contrary to the laws of nations,
if, instead of taking them from the Creole, they had entered
our territory, and forcibly taken them from one of our jails;
and such, he could scarcely doubt, would be the decision of
the British government itself, if the facts and reasons of the
case be fairly presented before its decision is made. It would
be clearly the course she would have adopted had the mutiny
and murder been perpetrated by a portion of the crew, and it
can scarcely be that she will regard it less criminal, or less
imperiously her duty, to surrender the criminals, because the
act was perpetrated by slaves. If so, it is time we should know
it."
The Secretary soon had his despatch ready and as soon as it was
ready, it was called for at the instance of a friend of the
Secretary, communicated to the Senate and published for general
information, clearly to counteract the impressions which Mr.
Calhoun's remarks had made. It gave great satisfaction in its mode
of treating the subject, and in the intent it declared to demand
redress:
"The British government cannot but see that this case, as
presented in these papers, is one calling loudly for redress.
The 'Creole' was passing from one port of the United States
to another, in a voyage perfectly lawful, with merchandise
on board, and also with slaves, or persons bound to service,
natives of America, and belonging to American citizens, and
which are recognized as property by the constitution of the
United States in those States in which slavery exists. In the
course of the voyage some of the slaves rose upon the master and
crew, subdued them, murdered one man, and caused the vessel to
be carried into Nassau. The vessel was thus taken to a British
port, not voluntarily, by those who had the lawful authority
over her, but forcibly and violently, against the master's will,
and with the consent of nobody but the mutineers and murderers:
for there is no evidence that these outrages were committed with
the concurrence of any of the slaves, except those actually
engaged in them. Under these circumstances, it would seem to
have been the plain and obvious duty of the authorities at
Nassau, the port of a friendly power, to assist the American
consul in putting an end to the captivity of the master and
crew, restoring to them the control of the vessel, and enabling
them to resume their voyage, and to take the mutineers and
murderers to their own country to answer for their crimes
before the proper tribunal. One cannot conceive how any other
course could justly be adopted, or how the duties imposed by
that part of the code regulating the intercourse of friendly
states, which is generally called the comity of nations, could
otherwise be fulfilled. Here was no violation of British law
attempted or intended on the part of the master of the 'Creole,'
nor any infringement of the principles of the law of nations.
The vessel was lawfully engaged in passing from port to port,
in the United States. By violence and crime she was carried,
against the master's will, out of her course, into the port
of a friendly power. All was the result of force. Certainly,
ordinary comity and hospitality entitled him to such assistance
from the authorities of the place as should enable him to resume
and prosecute his voyage and bring the offenders to justice.
But, instead of this, if the facts be as represented in these
papers, not only did the authorities give no aid for any such
purpose, but they did actually interfere to set free the slaves,
and to enable them to disperse themselves beyond the reach of
the master of the vessel or their owners. A proceeding like this
cannot but cause deep feeling in the United States."
Mr. Calhoun was so well satisfied with this despatch that, as soon
as it was read, he stood up, and said:
"The letter which had been read was drawn up with great ability,
and covered the ground which had been assumed on this subject
by all parties in the Senate. He hoped that it would have a
beneficial effect, not only upon the United States, but Great
Britain. Coming from the quarter it did, this document would do
more good than in coming from any other quarter."
This was well said of the letter, but there was a paragraph in it
which damped the expectations of some senators--a paragraph which
referred to the known intention to send out a special minister (Lord
Ashburton) to negotiate a general settlement of differences with
Great Britain--and which expressed a wish that this special minister
should be clothed with power to settle this case of the Creole. That
looked like deferring it to a general settlement, which, in the
opinion of some, was tantamount to giving it up.
CHAPTER XCIX.
DISTRESS OF THE TREASURY: THREE TARIFF BILLS, AND TWO VETOES:
END OF THE COMPROMISE ACT.
Never were the coffers and the credit of the Treasury--not even
in the last year of the war with Great Britain (1814)--at a lower
ebb, or more pitiable point, than at present. A deficit of fourteen
millions in the Treasury--a total inability to borrow, either at
home or abroad, the amount of the loan of twelve millions authorized
the year before--treasury-notes below par--a million and a half of
protested demands--a revenue from imports inadequate and decreasing:
such was the condition of the Treasury, and all the result of three
measures forced upon the previous administration by the united power
of the opposition, and the aid of temporizing friends, too prone
to take alarm in transient difficulties, and too ready to join
the schemes of the opposition for temporary relief, though more
injurious than the evils they were intended to remedy. These three
measures were: 1. Compromise act of 1833. 2. The distribution of
surplus revenue in 1837. 3. The surrender of the land revenue to the
States. The compromise act, by its slow and imperceptible reductions
of revenue during its first seven years, created a large surplus: by
its abrupt and precipitous falling off the last two, made a deficit.
The distribution of this surplus, to the amount of near thirty
millions, took away the sum which would have met this deficiency.
And the surrender of the land revenue diverted from its course the
second largest stream of revenue that came into the Treasury: and
the effect of the whole was to leave it without money and without
credit: and with a deficit which was ostentatiously styled, "_the
debt of the late administration_." Personally considered, there
was retributive justice in this calamitous visitation. So far as
individuals were concerned it fell upon those who had created it.
Mr. Tyler had been the zealous promoter of all these measures: the
whig party, whose ranks he had joined, had been their author: some
obliging democrats were the auxiliaries, without which they could
not have been carried. The administration of President Tyler now
needed the money: his former whig friends had the power to grant, or
withhold it: and they chose, either to withhold, or to grant upon
terms which Mr. Tyler repulsed. They gave him two tariff revenue
bills in a month, which he returned with vetoes, and had to look
chiefly to that democracy whom he had left to join the whigs (and of
whom he had become the zealous opponent), for the means of keeping
his administration alive.
A bill called a "_provisional tariff_" was first sent to him: he
returned it with the objections which made it impossible for him to
approve it: and of which these objections were the chief:
"It suspends, in other words, abrogates for the time, the
provision of the act of 1833, commonly called the 'compromise
act.' The only ground on which this departure from the solemn
adjustment of a great and agitating question seems to have
been regarded as expedient is, the alleged necessity of
establishing, by legislative enactments, rules and regulations
for assessing the duties to be levied on imports, after the
30th June, according to the home valuation; and yet the bill
expressly provides that 'if before the 1st of August there be no
further legislation upon the subject, the laws for laying and
collecting duties shall be the same as though this act had not
been passed.' In other words, that the act of 1833, imperfect as
it is considered, shall in that case continue to be, and to be
executed under such rules and regulations as previous statutes
had prescribed, or had enabled the executive department to
prescribe for that purpose, leaving the supposed chasm in the
revenue laws just as it was before.
"The bill assumes that a distribution of the proceeds of the
public lands is, by existing laws, to be made on the first day
of July, 1842, notwithstanding there has been an imposition of
duties on imports exceeding twenty per cent. up to that day,
and directs it to be made on the 1st of August next. It seems
to me very clear that this conclusion is equally erroneous and
dangerous; as it would divert from the Treasury a fund sacredly
pledged for the general purposes of the government, in the event
of a rate of duty above twenty per cent. being found necessary
for an economical administration of the government. The act of
September last, which provides for the distribution, couples it
inseparably with the condition that it shall cease--first, in
case of war; second, as soon and so long as the rate of duties
shall, for any reason whatever, be raised above twenty per cent.
Nothing can be more clear, express, or imperative, than this
language. It is in vain to allege that a deficit in the Treasury
was known to exist, and that means were taken to supply this
deficit by loan when the act was passed."
These reasons show the vice and folly of the acts which a pride of
consistency still made him adhere to. That compromise act of 1833
assumed to fix the tariff to eternity, _first_, by making existing
duties decline through nine years to a uniform ad valorem of twenty
per centum on all dutied articles; _next_, by fixing it there for
ever, giving Congress leave to work under it on articles then
free; but never to go above it: and the mutual assurance entered
into between this act and the land distribution act of the extra
session, was intended to make sure of both objects--the perpetual
twenty per centum, and the land distribution. One hardly knows which
to admire most, the arrogance, or the folly, of such presumptuous
legislation: and to add to its complication there was a clear
division of opinion whether any duty at all, for want of a law
appointing appraisers, could be collected after the 30th of June.
Between the impracticability, and the unintelligibility of the acts,
and his consistency, he having sanctioned all these complicated and
dependent measures, it was clear that Mr. Tyler's administration was
in a deplorable condition. The low credit of the government, in the
impossibility of getting a small loan, was thus depicted:
"Who at the time foresaw or imagined the possibility of the
present real state of things, when a nation that has paid off
her whole debt since the last peace, while all the other great
powers have been increasing theirs, and whose resources already
so great, are yet but in the infancy of their development,
should be compelled to haggle in the money market for a paltry
sum, not equal to one year's revenue upon her economical system."
Not able to borrow, even in time of peace, a few millions for three
years! This was in the the time of paper money. Since gold became
the federal currency, any amount, and in time of war, has been at
the call of the government; and its credit so high, and its stock
so much above par, that twenty per centum premium is now paid for
the privilege of paying, before they are due, the amounts borrowed
during the Mexican war:
"This connection (the mutual assurance between the compromise
act and the land distribution) thus meant to be inseparable,
is severed by the bill presented to me. The bill violates
the principle of the acts of 1833, and September, 1841, by
suspending the first, and rendering, for a time, the last
inoperative. Duties above twenty per cent. are proposed to
be levied, and yet the _proviso_ in the distribution act is
disregarded. The proceeds of the sales are to be distributed
on the 1st of August; so that, while the duties proposed
to be enacted exceed twenty per cent. no suspension of the
distribution to the States is permitted to take place. To
abandon the principle for a month is to open the way for its
total abandonment. If such is not meant, why postpone at
all? Why not let the distribution take place on the 1st of
July, if the law so directs? (which, however, is regarded as
questionable.) But why not have limited the provision to that
effect? Is it for the accommodation of the Treasury? I see no
reason to believe that the Treasury will be in better condition
to meet the payment on the 1st of August, than on the 1st of
July."
Here Mr. Tyler was right in endeavoring to get back, even
temporarily, the land revenue; but slight as was this relaxation
of their policy, it brought upon him keen reproaches from his old
friends. Mr. Fillmore said:
"On what principle was this veto based? The President could not
consent that the distribution of the proceeds of the public
lands should cease for a single day. Now, although that was the
profession, yet it appeared to have been but a pretence. Mr. F.
wished to speak with all respect to the chief magistrate, but of
his message he must speak with plainness. What was the law which
that message vetoed? It authorized the collection of duties
for a single month as they were levied on the first of January
last, to allow time for the consideration of a permanent revenue
for the country; it postponed the distribution of the proceeds
of the public lands till the month should expire, and Congress
could provide the necessary supplies for the exhausted Treasury.
But what would be the effect of the veto now on the table? Did
it prevent the distribution? By no means; it reduced the duties,
in effect, to twenty per cent., and authorized the distribution
of the land fund among the States; and that distribution would,
in fact, take place the day after to-morrow. That would be the
practical operation of this paper. When Congress had postponed
the distribution for a month, did it not appear like pretence
in the chief magistrate to say that he was forced to veto the
bill from Congress, to prevent the distribution, which his
veto, and that alone, would cause to take place? Congress had
been willing to prevent the distribution, but the President, by
one and the same blow, cut down the revenue at a moment when
his Secretary could scarce obtain a loan on any terms, and in
addition to this distributed the income from the public domain!
In two days the distribution must take place. Mr. F. said he
was not at all surprised at the joy with which the veto had
been hailed on the other side of the house, or at the joyful
countenances which were arrayed there; probably this act was
but the consummation of a treaty which had been long understood
as in process of negotiation. If this was the ratification of
such treaty, Mr. F. gave gentlemen much joy on the happy event.
He should shed no tears that the administration had passed into
its appropriate place. This, however, was a matter he should
not discuss now; he should desire the message might be laid on
the table till to-morrow and be printed. Mr. F. said he was
free to confess that we were now in a crisis which would shake
this Union to its centre. Time would determine who would yield
and who was right; whether the President would or would not
allow the representatives of the people to provide a revenue in
the way they might think best for the country, provided they
were guilty of no violation of the constitution. The President
had now told them, in substance, that he had taken the power
into his own hands; and although the highest financial officer
of the government declared it as his opinion, that it was
doubtful whether the duties could be collected which Congress
had provided by law, the President told the House that any
further law was unnecessary; that he had power enough in his own
hands, and he should use it; that he had authorized the revenue
officers to do all that was necessary. This then would be in
fact the question before the country: whether Congress should
legislate for the people of this country or the Executive?"
Mr. Alexander H. H. Stuart, of Virginia, took issue with the
President on the character of the land distribution bill, and
averred it to have been an intended part of the compromise from the
beginning. He said:
"That the President has rested his veto upon the grounds
of expediency alone, and not upon any conscientious or
constitutional scruples. He withholds his assent because of
its supposed conflict with the compromise act of 1833. I take
issue with the President in regard to this matter of fact,
and maintain that there is no such conflict. The President's
particular point of objection to the temporary tariff bill is
that it contemplates a prospective distribution of the land
proceeds. Now, conceding that the President has put a correct
construction on our bill, I aver that it is no violation of the
compromise act to withdraw the land proceeds from the ordinary
purposes of the government, and distribute them among the
States. On the contrary, I maintain that that act distinctly
contemplates the distribution of the land proceeds, that the
_distribution was one of the essential elements of the
compromise_, and that the _failure to distribute_ the land fund
now _would of itself be a violation of the_ true understanding
of those who adopted the _compromise_, and a palpable fraud upon
the rights of one of the parties to it."
Mr. Caruthers, of Tennessee, was still more pointed to the
same effect, referring to Mr. Tyler's conduct in the Virginia
General Assembly to show that he was in favor of the land revenue
distribution, and considered its cessation as a breach of the
compromise. He referred to his,
"Oft-quoted resolutions in the legislature of Virginia, in
1839, urging the distribution, and conveying the whole proceeds
of the lands, not only ceded but acquired by purchase and by
treaty. Mr. C. also referred to the adroit manner in which Mr.
Tyler had at that time met the charge of his opponents (that he
desired to violate the compromise act) by the introduction of
the well known proviso, that the General Assembly did not mean
to infringe or disturb the provisions of the compromise act."
The vote was taken upon the returned bill, as required by the
constitution; and falling far short of the required two-thirds,
it was rejected. But the exigencies of the Treasury were so great
that a further effort to pass a revenue bill was indispensable;
and one was accordingly immediately introduced into the House. It
differed but little from the first one, and nothing on the land
revenue distribution clause, which it retained in full. That clause
had been the main cause of the first veto: it was a challenge for a
second! and under circumstances which carried embarrassment to the
President either way. He had been from the beginning of the policy,
a supporter of the distribution; and at the extra session had
solemnly recommended it in his regular message. On the other hand,
he had just disapproved it in his message returning the tariff bill.
He adhered to this latter view; and said:
"On the subject of distributing the proceeds of the sales of
the public lands, in the existing state of the finances, it has
been my duty to make known my settled convictions on various
occasions during the present session of Congress. At the opening
of the extra session, upwards of twelve mouths ago, sharing
fully in the general hope of returning prosperity and credit,
I recommended such a distribution; but that recommendation was
even then expressly coupled with the condition that the duties
on imports should not exceed the rate of twenty per cent,
provided by the compromise act of 1833. The bill which is now
before me proposes, in its 27th section, the total repeal of one
of the provisos in the act of September; and, while it increases
the duties above twenty per cent., directs an unconditional
distribution of the land proceeds. I am therefore subjected a
second time, in the period of a few days, to the necessity of
either giving my approval to a measure which, in my deliberate
judgment, is in conflict with great public interests; or of
returning it to the House in which it originated, with my
objections. With all my anxiety for the passage of a law which
would replenish an exhausted Treasury, and furnish a sound and
healthy encouragement to mechanical industry, I cannot consent
to do so at the sacrifice of the peace and harmony of the
country, and the clearest convictions of public duty."
The reasons were good, and ought to have prevented Congress from
retaining the clause; but party spirit was predominant, and in each
House the motion to strike out the clause had been determined by
a strict party vote. An unusual course was taken with this second
veto message: it was referred to a select committee of thirteen
members, on the motion of Mr. Adams; and from that committee
emanated three reports upon it--one against it, and two for it; the
committee dividing politically in making them. The report against
it was signed by ten members; the other two by the remaining three
members; but they divided, so as to present two signatures to one
report, and a single one to the other. Mr. Adams, as the chairman,
was the writer of the majority report, and made out a strong case
against Mr. Tyler personally, but no case at all in favor of the
distribution clause. The report said:
"Who could imagine that, after this most emphatic _coupling_
of the revenue from duties of impost, with revenue from the
proceeds of the sales of the public lands, the first and
paramount objection of the President to this bill should be,
that it unites two subjects which, so far from having any
affinity to one another, are wholly incongruous in their
character; which two subjects are identically the same with
those which _he_ had coupled together in his recommendation
to Congress at the extra session? If there was no affinity
between the parties, why did he join them together? If the
union was illegitimate, who was the administering priest of
the unhallowed rites? It is objected to this bill, that it is
both a revenue and an appropriation bill? What then? Is not the
act of September 4, 1841, approved and signed by the President
himself, both a revenue and an appropriation bill? Does it not
enact that, in the event of an insufficiency of impost duties,
not exceeding twenty per centum ad valorem, to defray the
current expenses of the government, the proceeds of the sales
of the lands shall be levied as part of the same revenue, and
appropriated to the same purposes?"
The report concluded with a strong denunciation of, what it
considered, an abuse of the veto power, and a contradiction of the
President's official recommendation and conduct:
"The power of the present Congress to enact laws essential to
the welfare of the people has been struck with apoplexy by the
Executive hand. Submission to his will, is the only condition
upon which he will permit them to act. For the enactment of
a measure earnestly recommended by himself, he forbids their
action, unless _coupled_ with a _condition_ declared by himself
to be on a subject so totally different, that he will not
suffer them to be coupled in the same law. With that condition,
Congress cannot comply. In this state of things, he has assumed,
as the committee fully believe, the exercise of the whole
legislative power to himself, and is levying millions of money
upon the people, without any authority of law. But the final
decision of this question depends neither upon legislative
nor executive, but upon judicial authority; nor can the final
decision of the Supreme Court upon it be pronounced before the
close of the present Congress."
The returned bill being put to the vote, was found to lack as much
as the first of the two-thirds majority, and was rejected. But
revenue was indispensable. Daily demands upon the government were
undergoing protest. The President in his last message had given in
$1,400,000 of such dishonored demands. The existing revenue from
imports, deficient as it was, was subjected to a new embarrassment,
that of questioned legality for want of a law of appraisement under
the compromise, and merchants paid their duties under protest, and
with notices of action against the collector to recover them back.
It was now near the end of August. Congress had been in session
nine months--an unprecedentedly long session, and that following
immediately on the heels of an extra session of three months and
a half. Adjournment could not be deferred, and could not take
place without providing for the Treasury. The compromise and the
land distribution were the stumbling-blocks: it was determined
to sacrifice them together, but without seeming to do so. A
contrivance was fallen upon: duties were raised above twenty per
centum: and that breach of the mutual assurance in relation to the
compromise, immediately in terms of the assurance, suspended the
land revenue distribution--to continue it suspended while duties
above the compromise limit continued to be levied. And as that
has been the case ever since, the distribution of the revenue has
been suspended ever since. Such were the contrivances, ridiculous
inventions, and absurd circumlocutions which Congress had recourse
to to get rid of that land distribution which was to gain popularity
for its authors; and to get rid of that compromise which was
celebrated at the time as having saved the Union, and the breach of
which was deprecated in numerous legislative resolves as the end of
the Union, and which all the while was nothing but an arrogant piece
of monstrosity, patched up between two aspiring politicians, to get
rid of a stumbling-block in each other's paths for the period of two
presidential elections. In other respects one of the worst features
of that personal and pestiferous legislation has remained--the
universal ad valorems--involving its army of appraisers, their
diversity of appraisement from all the imperfections to which the
human mind is subject--to say nothing of the chances for ignorance,
indifference, negligence, favoritism, bribery and corruption. The
act was approved the 30th day of August; and Congress forthwith
adjourned.
CHAPTER C.
MR. TYLER AND THE WHIG PARTY: CONFIRMED SEPARATION.
At the close of the extra session, a vigorous effort was made to
detach the whig party from Mr. Clay. Mr. Webster in his published
letter, in justification of his course in remaining in the cabinet
when his colleagues left it, gave as a reason the expected unity
of the party under a new administration. "A whig president, a
whig Congress, and a whig people," was the vision that dazzled
and seduced him. Mr. Cushing published his address, convoking
the whigs to the support of Mr. Tyler. Mr. Clay was stigmatized
as a dictator, setting himself up against the real President.
Inducements as well as arguments were addressed to the whig ranks
to obtain recruits: all that came received high reward. The arrival
of the regular session was to show the fruit of these efforts, and
whether the whig party was to become a unity under Mr. Tyler, Mr.
Webster, and Mr. Cushing, or to remain embodied under Mr. Clay. It
remained so embodied. Only a few, and they chiefly who had served an
apprenticeship to party mutation in previous changes, were seen to
join him: the body of the party remained firm, and militant--angry
and armed; and giving to President Tyler incessant proofs of their
resentment. His legislative recommendations were thwarted, as most
of them deserved to be: his name was habitually vituperated or
ridiculed. Even reports of committees, and legislative votes, went
the length of grave censure and sharp rebuke. The select committee
of thirteen, to whom the consideration of the second tariff, in
a report signed by nine of its members, Mr. Adams at their head,
suggested impeachment as due to him:
"The majority of the committee believe that the case has
occurred, in the annals of our Union, contemplated by the
founders of the constitution by the grant to the House of
Representatives of the power to impeach the President of the
United States; but they are aware that the resort to that
expedient might, in the present condition of public affairs,
prove abortive. They see that the irreconcilable difference of
opinion and of action between the legislative and executive
departments of the government is but sympathetic with the same
discordant views and feelings among the people."
A rebuking resolve, and of a retributive nature, was adopted by the
House. It has been related (Vol. I.) that when President Jackson
sent to the Senate a protest against the senatorial condemnation
pronounced upon him in 1835, the Senate refused to receive it, and
adopted resolutions declaring the protest to be a breach of the
privileges of the body in interfering with the discharge of their
duties. The resolves so adopted were untrue, and the reverse of the
truth--the whole point of the protest being that the condemnation
was extra-judicial and void, coming under no division of power
which belonged to the Senate: not legislative, for it proposed
no act of legislation: not executive, for it applied to no treaty
or nomination: not judicial, for it was founded in no articles of
impeachment from the House, and without forming the Senate into
a court of impeachment. The protest considered the condemnatory
sentence, and justly, as the act of a town meeting, done in the
Senate-chamber, and by senators; but of no higher character than if
done by the same number of citizens in a voluntary town meeting.
This was the point, and whole complaint of the protest; but the
Senate, avoiding to meet it in that form, put a different face
upon it, as an interference with the constitutional action of
the Senate, attacking its independence; and, therefore, a breach
of its privileges. Irritated by the conduct of the House in its
reports upon his tariff-veto messages, Mr. Tyler sent in a protest
also, as President Jackson had done, but without attending to the
difference of the cases, and that, in its action upon the veto
messages, the House was clearly acting within its sphere--within
its constitutional legislative capacity; and, consequently, however
disagreeable to him this action might be, it was still legislative
and constitutional, and such as the House had a legal _right_ to
adopt, whether just or unjust. Overlooking this difference, Mr.
Tyler sent in his protest also: but the House took the distinction;
and applied legitimately to the conduct of Mr. Tyler what had been
illegally applied to General Jackson, with the aggravation of
turning against himself his own votes on that occasion--Mr. Tyler
being one of the senators who voted in favor of the three resolves
against President Jackson's protest. When this protest of Mr. Tyler
was read in the House, Mr. Adams stood up, and said:
"There seemed to be an expectation on the part of some gentlemen
that he should propose to the House some measure suitable to be
adopted on the present occasion. Mr. A. knew of no reason for
such an expectation, but the fact that he had been the mover of
the resolution for the appointment of the committee which had
made the report referred to in the message; had been appointed
by the Speaker, chairman of the committee; and that the report
against which the President of the United States had sent to
the House such a multitude of protests, was written by him. So
far as it had been so written, Mr. A. held himself responsible
to the House, to the country, to the world, and to posterity;
and, so far as he was the author of the report, he held himself
responsible to the President also. The President should hear
from him elsewhere than here on that subject. Mr. A. went on
to say that it was because the report had been adopted by the
House, and not because it had been written by him, that the
President had sent such a bundle of protests; and therefore Mr.
A. felt no necessity or obligation upon himself to propose what
measures the House ought to adopt for the vindication of its own
dignity and honor; and perhaps, from considerations of delicacy,
he was indeed the very last man in the House who should propose
any measure, under the circumstances."
Mr. Botts, of Virginia, a member of the committee which had made the
report, after some introductory remarks, went on to say:
"In 1834 the Senate had adopted certain resolutions, condemning
the course of President Jackson in the removal of the deposits
from the Bank of the United States to the State banks. In
consequence of this movement on the part of the Senate,
President Jackson sent to that body a _protest_ against the
right of the Senate to express any opinion censuring his public
course; and, what made the case then stronger than the present
case, was, that the Senate constituted the jury by whom he was
to be tried, should any impeachment be brought against him.
The Senate, after a long, elaborate discussion of the whole
matter, and the most eloquent and overpowering torrent of debate
that ever was listened to in this country, adopted the three
following resolutions:
'1. _Resolved_, That, while the Senate is, and ever will be,
ready to receive from the President all such messages and
communications as the constitution and laws, and the usual
course of business, authorize him to transmit to it; yet it
cannot recognize any right in him to make a formal protest
against votes and proceedings of the Senate, declaring such
votes and proceedings to be illegal and unconstitutional, and
requesting the Senate to enter such protests on its journal.'
"On this resolution the yeas and nays were taken; and it was
adopted, by a vote of 27 to 16: and, among the recorded votes in
its favor, stood the names of John Tyler, now acting President
of the United States, and Daniel Webster, now his prime minister.
"The second resolution was as follows:
'2. _Resolved_, That the aforesaid protest is a breach of the
privileges of the Senate, and that it be not entered on the
journal.'
"The same vote, numerically, was given in favor of this
resolution; and among the yeas stood the names of John Tyler,
now acting President of the United States, and of Daniel
Webster, now his prime minister.
"The third resolutions read as follows:
'3. _Resolved_, That the President of the United States has
no right to send a protest to the Senate against any of its
proceedings.'
"And in sanction of this resolution also, the record shows the
names of the same John Tyler and Daniel Webster."
Mr. Botts forbore to make any remarks of his own in support of
the adoption of these resolutions, but read copious extracts from
the speech of Mr. Webster in support of the same resolutions when
offered in the Senate; and, adopting them as his own, called for the
previous question; which call was sustained; and the main question
being put, and the vote taken on the resolutions separately, they
were all carried by large majorities. The yeas and nays on the first
resolve, were:
"YEAS--Messrs. Adams, Landaff W. Andrews, Arnold, Babcock,
Barnard, Birdseye, Blair, Boardman, Borden, Botts, Brockway,
Jeremiah Brown, Calhoun, William B. Campbell, Thomas J.
Campbell, Caruthers, Chittenden, John C. Clark, Cowen, Garrett
Davis, John Edwards, Everett, Fillmore, Gamble, Gentry, Graham,
Granger, Green, Habersham, Hall, Halsted, Howard, Hudson,
Joseph R. Ingersoll, Isaac D. Jones, John P. Kennedy, King,
Linn, McKennan, S. Mason, Mathiot, Mattocks, Maxwell, Maynard,
Mitchell, Moore, Morrow, Osborne, Owsley, Pope, Powell, Ramsey,
Benj. Randall, A. Randall, Randolph, Rayner, Ridgway, Rodney,
William Russell, James M. Russell, Saltonstall, Shepperd,
Simonton, Slade, Truman Smith, Sprigg, Stanly, Stratton,
Summers, Taliaferro, John B. Thompson, Richard W. Thompson,
Tillinghast, Toland, Tomlinson, Triplett, Trumbull, Underwood,
Van Rensselaer, Wallace, Warren, Washington, Thomas W. Williams,
Joseph L. Williams, Yorke, and Augustus Young--87.
"NAYS--Messrs. Arrington, Atherton, Black, Boyd, Aaron V. Brown,
Burke, Wm. O. Butler, P. C. Caldwell, Casey, Coles, Cross,
Cushing, Richard D. Davis, Dawson, Gordon, Harris, Hastings,
Hays, Hopkins, Hubbard, William W. Irwin, Cave Johnson, John
W. Jones, Abraham McClellan, Mallory, Medill, Newhard, Oliver,
Parmenter, Payne, Proffit, Read, Reding, Reynolds, Riggs,
Rogers, Shaw, Shields, Steenrod, Jacob Thompson, Van Buren,
Ward, Weller, James W. Williams, Wise, and Wood--46."
The other two resolves were adopted by, substantially, the same
vote--the whole body of the whigs voting for the adoption. And
this may be considered, so far as Congress was concerned, as the
authoritative answer to that idea of whig unity which had induced
Mr. Webster to remain in the cabinet. General Jackson was then
alive, and it must have looked to him like retributive justice to
see two of those (Mr. Tyler and Mr. Webster) who had voted his
protest to be a breach of privilege, when it was not, now receiving
the same vote from their own party; and that in a case where the
breach of privilege was real.
CHAPTER CI.
LORD ASHBURTON'S MISSION, AND THE BRITISH TREATY.
Sixty years had elapsed since the treaty of peace between the United
States and Great Britain which terminated the war of the revolution,
and established the boundaries between the revolted colonies, now
independent States, and the remaining British possessions in North
America. A part of these boundaries, agreed upon in the treaty of
peace, remained without acknowledgment and without sanction on the
part of the British government: it was the part that divided the
(now) State of Maine from Lower Canada, and was fixed by the words
of the treaty, "_along the highlands which divide the waters which
empty themselves into the river St. Lawrence from those which fall
into the Atlantic Ocean_." Nothing could be more simple, or of more
easy ascertainment than this line. Any man that knew his right hand
from his left, and who could follow a ridge, and not get off of it
to cross any water flowing to the right or the left, could trace
the boundary, and establish it in the very words of the treaty. In
fact there was no tangible dispute about it. The British government
had agreed to it under a misapprehension as to the course of these
highlands; and as soon as their true course was found out, that
government refused to carry that part of the treaty into effect,
and for a reason which was very frankly told, _after the treaty of
1842_, by a British civil engineer who had been employed by his
government to search out the course of the boundary along those
highlands. He said:
"The treaty of 1783 proposed to establish the boundary between
the two countries along certain highlands. The Americans claimed
these highlands to run in a northeasterly direction from the
head of the Connecticut River, in a course which would have
brought the boundary within the distance of twenty miles from
the river St. Lawrence, and which, besides cutting off the
posts and military routes leading from the province of New
Brunswick to Quebec, would have given them various military
positions to command and overawe that river and the fortress of
Quebec."
This was the objection to the highland boundary. It brought the
United States frontier within twenty miles of Quebec, and went one
degree and a half north of Quebec! skirting and overlooking Lower
Canada all the way, and cutting off all communication between that
inland province and the two Atlantic provinces of Nova Scotia and
New Brunswick, and between Quebec and Halifax. It was a boundary
which commanded the capital of British North America, and which
flanked and dominated the principal British province for one hundred
and fifty miles. Military considerations rendered such a boundary
just as repugnant to the British as the same considerations rendered
it acceptable to us; and from the moment it was seen that the
State of Maine was projected far north of Quebec and brought up
to the long line of heights which looked down upon that capital,
the resolution was not to abide that boundary. Negotiation began
immediately, and continued, without fruit, for thirty years.
That brought the parties to the Ghent Treaty, at the end of the
war of 1812, where all attempts to settle the boundary ended in
making provision for referring the question to the arbitrament of
a friendly sovereign. This was done, the king of the Netherlands
being agreed upon as the arbiter. He accepted the trust--executed
it--and made an award nearly satisfactory to the British government
because it cut off a part of the northern projection of Maine, and
so admitted a communication, although circuitous, between Halifax
and Quebec; but still leaving the highland boundary opposite that
capital. The United States rejected the award because it gave up a
part of the boundary of 1783; and thus the question remained for
near thirty years longer--until the treaty of 1842--Great Britain
demanding the execution of the award--the United States refusing
it. And thus the question stood when the special mission arrived
in the United States. That mission was well constituted for its
purposes. Lord Ashburton, as Mr. Alexander Baring, and head of the
great banking house of Baring and Brothers, had been known for more
than a generation for his friendly sentiments towards the United
States, and business connection with the people and the government;
and was, besides, married to an American lady. The affability of his
manners was a further help to his mission, the whole of which was so
composed (Mr. Mildmay, Mr. Bruce and Mr. Stepping, all gentlemen of
mind, tact, and pleasing deportment) as to be real auxiliaries in
accomplishing the object of his mission. It was a special mission,
sent to settle questions, and return; and so confined to its
character of special, that Mr. Fox, the resident minister, although
entirely agreeable to the United States and his own government, was
not joined in it. It was the first time the United States had been
so honored by Great Britain, and the mission took the character of
beneficent, in professing to come to settle all questions between
the two governments; but ended in only settling such as suited
Great Britain, and in the way that suited her. At the head of those
questions was the northeastern boundary, which was settled by giving
up the line of 1783, retiring the whole line from the heights which
flanked Lower Canada, cutting off as much of Maine as admitted of
a pretty direct communication between Halifax and Quebec; and thus
granting to Great Britain far more than the award gave her, and with
which she had been content. The treaty also made a new boundary in
the northwest, from Lake Superior to the Lake of the Woods, also
to the prejudice of the United States, retiring the line to the
south, and depriving the United States' fur traders of the great
line of transportation between these two lakes, which the treaty
of 1783 gave to them. The treaty also bound the United States to
pay for Rouse's Point, at the outlet of Lake Champlain, which the
treaty of '83 and the award of the king of the Netherlands gave to
us as a matter of right. It also bound the United States to keep
up a squadron, in conjunction with the British, on the coast of
Africa for the suppression of the slave trade--nominally for five
years, but in reality indefinitely, by the addition of that clause
(so seductive and insidious, and so potent in saddling an onerous
measure permanently upon a people) which is always resorted to when
perpetuity is intended, and cannot be stipulated--the clause which
continues the provision in force, after its limited term, until one
of the parties give notice to the contrary. An extradition clause
was also wanted by Great Britain, and she got it--broad enough to
cover the recapture of her subjects whether innocent or guilty, and
to include political offenders while professing to take only common
felons. These were the points Great Britain wished settled; and she
got them all arranged according to her own wishes: others which
the United States wished settled, were omitted, and indefinitely
adjourned. At the head of these was the boundary beyond the Rocky
Mountains. Oregon was in dispute. The United States wished it
settled: Great Britain wished that question to remain as it was, as
she had the possession, and every day was ripening her title. Oregon
was adjourned. The same of the Caroline, the Schlosser outrage--the
liberation of slaves at Bermuda and Nassau--the refusal to shelter
fugitive slaves in Canada: all were laid over, and for ever. Every
thing that the United States wished settled was left unsettled,
especially Oregon--a question afterwards pregnant with "inevitable
war." Besides obtaining all she wished by treaty, Great Britain
also made a great acquisition by statute law. An act of Congress
was passed to fit the case of McLeod (in future), and to take such
offenders out of the hands of the States.
Notwithstanding its manifold objections the treaty was so framed
as to secure its ratification, and to command acquiescence in the
United States while crowned with the greatest applause in Great
Britain. Lord Ashburton received the formal thanks of parliament for
his meritorious labors. Ministers and orators united in declaring
that he had accomplished every object that Great Britain desired,
and in the way she desired it--and left undone every thing which
she wished to remain as it was. The northeastern boundary being
altered to suit her, they made a laugh, even in parliament, of the
manner in which they had served us. It had so happened, immediately
after the peace of '83, that the king's geographer made a map
of the United States and the Canadas, to show their respective
boundaries; and on that map the line of '83 was laid down correctly,
along the highlands, overlooking and going beyond Quebec; and
had marked it with a broad red line. He made it for the king,
George the Third, who wrote upon it with his own hand--_This is
Oswald's line._ (Mr. Richard Oswald being the British negotiator
of the provisional treaty of peace of '82 which established that
boundary, and which was adopted in the definitive treaty of peace
in '83.) This map disappeared from its accustomed place about the
time Lord Ashburton's mission was resolved upon, not to be brought
over to America by him to assist in finding the true line, but to
be hid until the negotiation was over. Some member of parliament
hinted at this removal and hiding, during the discussion on the
motion of thanks, with an intimation that he thought British
honor would have been better consulted by showing this map to
the American negotiator: Lord Brougham, the mover of the motion,
amused himself at this conception, and thought it would have been
carrying frankness a little too far, in such a negotiation, for
the British negotiator to have set out with showing, "_that he had
no case_"--"_that he had not a leg to stand on_." His lordship's
speech on the occasion, which was more amusing to himself and the
parliament than it can be to an American, nevertheless deserves
a place in this history of the British treaty of 1842; and,
accordingly, here it is:
"It does so happen that there was a map published by the King's
geographer in this country in the reign of his Majesty George
III., and here I could appeal to an illustrious Duke whom I
now see, whether that monarch was not as little likely to err
from any fulness of attachment towards America, as any one
of his faithful subjects? [The Duke of _Cambridge_.] Because
he well knows that there was no one thing which his reverend
parent had so much at heart as the separation from America, and
there was nothing he deplored so much as that separation having
taken place. The King's geographer, Mr. Faden, published his
map 1783, which contains, not the British, but the American
line. Why did not my noble friend take over a copy of that map?
My noble friend opposite (Lord Aberdeen) is a candid man; he
is an experienced diplomatist, both abroad and at home; he is
not unlettered, but thoroughly conversant in all the craft of
diplomacy and statesmanship. Why did he conceal this map? We
have a right to complain of that; and I, on the part of America,
complain of that. You ought to have sent out the map of Mr.
Faden, and said, 'this is George the Third's map.' But it never
occurred to my noble friend to do so. Then, two years after Mr.
Faden published that map, another was published, and that took
the British line. This, however, came out after the boundary
had become matter of controversy _post litem motam_. But, at all
events, my noble friend had to contend with the force of the
argument against Mr. Webster, and America had a right to the
benefit of both maps. My noble friend opposite never sent it
over, and nobody ever blamed him for it. But that was not all.
What if there was another map containing the American line, and
never corrected at all by any subsequent chart coming from the
same custody? And what if that map came out of the custody of a
person high in office in this country--nay, what if it came out
of the custody of the highest functionary of all--of George III.
himself? I know that map--I know a map which I can trace to the
custody of George III., and on which there is the American line
and not the English line, and upon which there is a note, that
from the handwriting, as it has been described to me, makes me
think it was the note of George III. himself: 'This is the line
of Mr. Oswald's treaty in 1783,' written three or four times
upon the face of it. Now, suppose this should occur--I do not
say that it has happened--but it may occur to a Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs,--either to my noble friend or Lord
Palmerston, who, I understand by common report, takes a great
interest in the question; and though he may not altogether
approve of the treaty, he may peradventure envy the success
which attended it, for it was a success which did not attend any
of his own American negotiations. But it is possible that my
noble friend, or Lord Palmerston, may have discovered that there
was this map, because George III.'s library by the munificence
of George IV. was given to the British Museum, and this map must
have been there; but it is a curious circumstance that it is
no longer there. I suppose it must have been taken out of the
British Museum for the purpose of being sent over to my noble
friend in America; and that, according to the new doctrines of
diplomacy, he was bound to have used it when there, in order to
show that he had no case--that he had not a leg to stand upon.
Why did he not take it over with him? Probably he did not know
of its existence. I am told that it is not now in the British
Museum, but that it is in the Foreign Office. Probably it was
known to exist; but somehow or other that map, which entirely
destroys our contention and gives all to the Americans, has
been removed from the British Museum, and is now to be found at
the Foreign Office. Explain it as you will, that is the simple
fact, that this important map was removed from the Museum to the
Office, and not in the time of my noble friend (Lord Aberdeen)."
Thus did our simplicity, and their own dexterity, or ambi-dexterity,
as the case may be, furnish sport for the British parliament: and
thus, "_without a case_," and, "_without a leg to stand upon_,"
was Lord Ashburton an overmatch for our Secretary-negotiator, with
a good case to show, and two good legs to rest on. This map with
its red line, and the King's autographic inscription upon it, was
afterwards shown to Mr. Everett, upon his request, by Lord Aberdeen;
and the fact communicated by him to the Department of State. But the
effect of the altered line was graphically stated at a public dinner
in honor of it by the same gentleman (Mr. Featherstonhaugh), whose
view of the old boundary has already been given.
"Now, gentlemen, if you will divert your attention for a moment
from the conflicting statements you may have read in regard to
the merits of the compromise which has been made, I will explain
them to you in a few words. The American claim, instead of
being maintained, has been altogether withdrawn and abandoned;
the territory has been divided into equal moieties, as nearly
as possible; we have retained that moiety which secures to us
every object that was essential to the welfare of our colonies;
all our communications, military and civil, are for ever placed
beyond hostile reach; and all the military positions on the
highlands claimed by America are, without exception, secured for
ever to Great Britain."
So spoke a person who had searched the country under the orders of
the British government--who knew what he said--and who says there
was a compromise, in which our territory (for that is the English of
it) was divided into two equal parts, and the part that contained
every thing that gave value to the whole, was retained by Great
Britain for her share. But there were some members of the American
Senate, as will be seen in the sequel, who had no occasion to wait
for parliamentary revelations, or dinner-table exultations, in
order to understand the merits of this treaty of 1842; and who put
their opinions in a form and place, while the treaty was undergoing
ratification, to speak for themselves in after time.
Many anomalies attended the conducting of the negotiations which
ended in the production of the treaty. As far as could be seen
there was no negotiation--none in the diplomatic sense of the term.
There were no protocols, minutes, or record to show the progress of
things--to show what was demanded, what was offered, and what was
agreed upon. Articles came forth ripe and complete, without a trace
of their progression; and when thus produced a letter would be
drawn up to recommend it--not to the British government, who needed
no recommendation of any part of it--but to the American people, who
otherwise might not have perceived its advantages. In the next place
the treaty was made by a single negotiator on each side, Mr. Fox the
resident minister not having been joined with Lord Ashburton, and
no one on the American side joined with Mr. Webster, and he left
without instructions from the President. On this point Mr. Benton
remarked in the debate on the treaty:
"In this case the employment of a single negotiator was
unjustifiable. The occasion was great, and required several,
both for safety and for satisfaction. The negotiation was here.
Our country is full of able men. Two other negotiators might
have been joined without delay, without trouble, and almost
without expense. The British also had another negotiator here
(Mr. Fox); a minister of whom I can say without disparagement to
any other, that, in the two and twenty years which I have sat
in this Senate, and had occasion to know the foreign ministers,
I have never known his superior for intelligence, dignity,
attention to his business, fidelity to his own Government, and
decorum to ours. Why not add Mr. Fox to Lord Ashburton, unless
to prevent an associate from being given to Mr. Webster? Was
it arranged in London that the whole negotiation should be
between two, and that these two should act without a witness,
and without notes or minutes of their conferences? Be this as it
may, the effect is the same; and all must condemn this solitary
business between two ministers, when the occasion so imperiously
demanded several."
The want of instructions was also animadverted upon by Mr. Benton,
as a departure from the constitutional action of the government,
and injurious in this case, as the three great sections of the
Union had each its peculiar question to get settled, and the
Secretary-negotiator belonged to one only of these sections, and the
only one whose questions had been settled.
"By the theory of our government, the President is the head of
the Executive Department, and must treat, through his agents and
ministers, with foreign powers. He must tell them what to do,
and should tell that in unequivocal language, that there may be
no mistake about it. He must command and direct the negotiation;
he must order what is done. This is the theory of our
government, and this has been its practice from the beginning
of Washington's to the end of Mr. Van Buren's administration;
and never was it more necessary than now. Being but one
negotiator, and he not approved by the Senate for that purpose,
and being from an interested State, it was the bounden duty of
the President to have guided and directed every thing. He is the
head of the Union, and should have attended to the interest of
the whole Union; on the contrary, he abandons every thing to his
Secretary, and this Secretary takes care of one section of the
Union, and of his own State, and of Great Britain; and leaves
the other two sections of the Union out of the treaty. The
Northern States, coterminous with Canada, get their boundaries
adjusted; Massachusetts gets money, which her sister States are
to pay; and Great Britain takes two slices, and all her military
frontiers, from the State of Maine! the Southern and Western
States are left as they were."
It was known that certain senators were consulted as the treaty went
along, not publicly, but privately, visiting the negotiators upon
request for that purpose, agreeing to it in these conferences; and
thus forestalling their official action. This anomaly Mr. Benton
thus exposed:
"The irregular manner in which the ratification of this treaty
has been sought, by consultations with individual members,
before it was submitted to the Senate. Here I tread upon
delicate ground; and if I am wrong, this is the time and the
place to correct me. I speak in the hearing of those who must
know whether I am mistaken. I have reason to believe that the
treaty has been privately submitted to senators--their opinions
obtained--the judgment of the body forestalled; and then sent
here for the forms of ratification. [One senator said he had not
been consulted.] Mr. B. in continuation: Certainly not, as the
senator says so; and so of any other gentleman who will say the
same. I interrogate no one. I have no right to interrogate any
one. I do not pretend to say that all were consulted; that would
have been unnecessary; and besides, I know I was not consulted
myself; and I know many others who were not. All that I intend
to say is, that I have reason to think that this treaty has been
ratified out of doors! and that this is a great irregularity,
and bespeaks an undue solicitude for it on the part of its
authors, arising from a consciousness of its indefensible
character."
The war argument was also pressed into the service of the
ratification, and vehemently relied upon as one of the most cogent
arguments in its favor. The treaty, or war! was the constant
alternative presented, and not without effect upon all persons of
gentle and temporizing spirit. Mr. Benton also exposed the folly
and mischief of yielding to such a threat--declaring it to be
groundless, and not to be yielded to if it was not.
"The fear of war. This Walpole argument is heavily pressed
upon us, and we are constantly told that the alternatives lie
between this treaty--the whole of it, just as it is--or war!
This is a degrading argument, if true; and infamous, if false!
and false it is: and more than that, it is as shameless as it
is unfounded! What! the _peace_ mission come to make war! It
is no such thing. It comes to take advantage of our deplorable
condition--to take what it pleases, and to repulse the rest.
Great Britain is in no condition to go to war with us, and every
child knows it. But I do not limit myself to argument, and
general considerations, to disprove this war argument. I refer
to the fact which stamps it with untruth. Look to the notes of
Sir Charles Vaughan and Mr. Bankhead, demanding the execution of
the award, and declaring that _its execution would remove every
impediment to the harmony of the two countries_. After that, and
while holding these authentic declarations in our hands, are we
to be told that the peace mission requires more than the award?
requires one hundred and ten miles more of boundary? requires
$500,000 for Rouse's Point, which the award gave us without
money? requires a naval and diplomatic alliance, which she
dared not mention in the time of Jackson or Van Buren? requires
the surrender of '_rebels_' under the name of criminals?
and puts the South and West at defiance, while conciliating
the non-slaveholding States? and gives us war, if we do not
consent to all this degradation, insult, and outrage? Are we
to be told this? No, sir, no! There is no danger of war; but
this treaty may make a war, if it is ratified. It gives up all
advantages; leaves us with great questions unsettled; increases
the audacity of the British; weakens and degrades us; and leaves
us no alternative but war to save the Columbia, to prevent
impressment, to resist search, to repel Schlosser invasions, and
to avoid a San Domingo insurrection in the South, excited from
London, from Canada, and from Nassau."
The mission had been heralded as one of peace--as a beneficent
overture for a universal settlement of all difficulties--and as a
plan to establish the two countries on a footing of friendship and
cordiality, which was to leave each without a grievance, and to
launch both into a career of mutual felicity. On the contrary only a
few were settled, and those few the only ones which concerned Great
Britain and the northern States: the rest which peculiarly concerned
the South and the West, were adjourned to London--that is to say,
to the Greek calends. On this point Mr. Benton said:
"We were led to believe, on the arrival of the special minister,
that he came as a messenger of peace, and clothed with full
powers to settle every thing; and believing this, his arrival
was hailed with universal joy. But here is a disappointment--a
great disappointment. On receiving the treaty and the papers
which accompany it, we find that _all_ the subjects in dispute
have not been settled; that, in fact, only three out of seven
are settled; and that the minister has returned to his country,
leaving four of the contested subjects unadjusted. This is a
disappointment; and the greater, because the papers communicated
confirm the report that the minister came with full powers
to settle every thing. The very first note of the American
negotiator--and that in its very first sentence, confirms this
belief, and leaves us to wonder how a mission that promised
so much, has performed so little. Mr. Webster's first note
runs thus: 'Lord Ashburton having been charged by the Queen's
government with full powers to negotiate and settle all matters
in discussion between the United States and England, and having
on his arrival at Washington announced,' &c., &c. Here is a
declaration of full power to settle every thing; and yet, after
this, only part is settled, and the minister has returned
home. This is unexpected, and inconsistent. It contradicts the
character of the mission, balks our hopes, and frustrates our
policy. As a confederacy of States, our policy is to settle
every thing or nothing; and having received the minister for
that purpose, this complete and universal settlement, or
nothing, should have been the _sine qua non_ of the American
negotiator.
"From the message of the President which accompanies the
treaty, we learn that the questions in discussion between the
two countries were: 1. The Northern boundary. 2. The right of
search in the African seas, and the suppression of the African
slave trade. 3. The surrender of fugitives from justice. 4. The
title to the Columbia River. 5. Impressment. 6. The attack on
the Caroline. 7. The case of the Creole, and of other American
vessels which had shared the same fate. These are the subjects
(seven in number) which the President enumerates, and which he
informs us occupied the attention of the negotiators. He does
not say whether these were all the subjects which occupied
their attention. He does not tell us whether they discussed
any others. He does not say whether the British negotiator
opened the question of the State debts, and their assumption or
guarantee by the Federal government! or whether the American
negotiator mentioned the point of the Canadian asylum for
fugitive slaves (of which twelve thousand have already gone
there) seduced by the honors and rewards which they receive,
and by the protection which is extended to them. The message
is silent upon these further subjects of difference if not of
discussion, between the two countries; and, following the lead
of the President, and confining ourselves (for the present) to
the seven subjects of dispute named by him, and we find three
of them provided for in the treaty--four of them not: and this
constitutes a great objection to the treaty--an objection which
is aggravated by the nature of the subjects settled, or not
settled. For it so happens that, of the subjects in discussion,
some were general, and affected the whole Union; others were
local, and affected sections. Of these general subjects, those
which Great Britain had most at heart are provided for; those
which most concerned the United States are omitted: and of
the three sections of the Union which had each its peculiar
grievance, one section is quieted, and two are left as they
were. This gives Great Britain an advantage over us as a nation:
it gives one section of the Union an advantage over the two
others, sectionally. This is all wrong, unjust, unwise, and
impolitic. It is wrong to give a foreign power an advantage over
us: it is wrong to give one section of the Union an advantage
over the others. In their differences with foreign powers, the
States should be kept united: their peculiar grievances should
not be separately settled, so as to disunite their several
complaints. This is a view of the objection which commends
itself most gravely to the Senate. We are a confederacy of
States, and a confederacy in which States classify themselves
sectionally, and in which each section has its local feelings
and its peculiar interests. We are classed in three sections;
and each of these sections had a peculiar grievance against
Great Britain; and here is a treaty to adjust the grievances
of one, and but one, of these three sections. To all intents
and purposes, we have a separate treaty--a treaty between the
Northern States and Great Britain; for it is a treaty in which
the North is provided for, and the South and West left out.
Virtually, it is a separate treaty with a part of the States;
and this forms a grave objection to it in my eyes.
"Of the nine Northern States whose territories are coterminous
with the dominions of her Britannic Majesty, six of them had
questions of boundary or of territory, to adjust; and all of
these are adjusted. The twelve Southern slaveholding States
had a question in which they were all interested--that of the
protection and liberation of fugitive or criminal slaves in
Canada and the West Indies: this great question finds no place
in the treaty, and is put off with phrases in an arranged
correspondence. The whole great West takes a deep interest in
the fate of the Columbia River, and demands the withdrawal of
the British from it: this large subject finds no place in the
treaty, nor even in the correspondence which took place between
the negotiators. The South and West must go to London with
their complaints: the North has been accommodated here. The
mission of peace has found its benevolence circumscribed by the
metes and boundaries of the sectional divisions in the Union.
The peace-treaty is for one section: for the other two sections
there is no peace. The non-slaveholding States, coterminous
with the British dominions are pacified and satisfied: the
slaveholding and the Western States, remote from the British
dominions, are to suffer and complain as heretofore. As a friend
to the Union--a friend to justice--and as an inhabitant of the
section which is both slaveholding and Western, I object to
the treaty which makes this injurious distinction amongst the
States."
The merits of the different stipulations in the treaty were fully
spoken to by several senators--among others, by Mr. Benton--some
extracts from whose speech will constitute some ensuing chapters.
CHAPTER CII.
BRITISH TREATY: THE PRETERMITTED SUBJECTS: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH:
EXTRACTS.
I. THE COLUMBIA RIVER AND ITS VALLEY.
The omitted or pretermitted subjects are four: the Columbia
River--impressment--the outrage on the Caroline--and the liberation
of American slaves, carried by violence or misfortune into the
British West India islands, or enticed into Canada. Of these, I
begin with the Columbia, because equal in importance to any, and,
from position, more particularly demanding my attention. The country
on this great river is ours: diplomacy has endangered its title:
the British have the possession and have repulsed us from the whole
extent of its northern shore, and from all the fur region on both
sides of the river, and up into all the valleys and gorges of the
Rocky Mountains. Our citizens are beginning to go there; and the
seeds of national contestation between the British and Americans
are deeply and thickly sown in that quarter. From the moment that
we discovered it, Great Britain has claimed this country; and for
thirty years past this claim has been a point of contested and
deferred diplomacy, in which every step taken has been a step for
the benefit of her claim, and for the injury of ours. The germ of a
war lies there; and this mission of peace should have eradicated
that germ. On the contrary, it does not notice it! Neither the
treaty nor the correspondence names or notices it! and if it were
not for a meagre and stinted paragraph in the President's message,
communicating and recommending the treaty, we should not know
that the name of the Oregon had occurred to the negotiators. That
paragraph is in these words:
"After sundry informal communications with the British minister
upon the subject of the claims of the two countries to territory
west of the Rocky Mountains, so little probability was found to
exist of coming to any agreement on that subject at present,
that it was not thought expedient to make it one of the
subjects of formal negotiation, to be entered upon between this
government and the British minister, as part of his duties under
his special mission."
This is all that appears in relation to a disputed country, equal in
extent to the Atlantic portion of the old thirteen United States;
superior to them in climate, soil, and configuration; adjacent to
the valley of the Mississippi; fronting Asia; holding the key to
the North Pacific Ocean; the only country fit for colonization on
the extended coast of Northwest America; a country which belongs
to the United States by a title as clear as their title to the
District of Columbia; which a resolve of Congress, during Mr.
Monroe's administration, declared to be occluded against European
colonization; which Great Britain is now colonizing; and the title
to which has been a subject of diplomatic discussion for thirty
years. This is all that is heard of such a country, and such a
dispute, in this mission of peace, which was to settle every
thing. To supply this omission, and to erect some barrier against
the dangers of improvident, indifferent, ignorant, or treacherous
diplomacy in future negotiations in relation to this great country,
it is my purpose at present to state our title to it; and, in doing
so, to expose the fallacy of the British pretensions; and thus to
leave in the bosom of the Senate, and on the page of our legislative
history, the faithful evidences of our right, and which shall attest
our title to all succeeding generations.
(Here Mr. Benton went into a full derivation of the American title
to the Columbia River and its valley, between the parallels of 42
and 49 degrees of north latitude--taking the latter boundary from
the tenth article of the treaty of Utrecht, and the former from the
second article of the Florida treaty of 1819, with Spain.)
The treaty of Utrecht between France and England, as all the world
knows, was the treaty which put an end to the wars of Queen Anne and
Louis XIV., and settled their differences in America as well as in
Europe. Both England and France were at that time large territorial
possessors in North America--the English holding Hudson's Bay and
New Britain, beyond Canada, and her Atlantic colonies on this side
of it; and France holding Canada and Louisiana. These were vast
possessions, with unfixed boundaries. The tenth article of the
treaty of Utrecht provided for fixing these boundaries. Under this
article, British and French commissioners were appointed to define
the possessions of the two nations; and by these commissioners two
great points were fixed (not to speak of others), which have become
landmarks in the definition of boundaries in North America, namely:
the Lake of the Woods, and the 49th parallel of north latitude west
of that lake. These two points were established above a century and
a quarter ago, as dividing the French and British dominions in that
quarter. As successful rebels, we acquired one of these points at
the end of the Revolution. The treaty of Independence of 1783 gave
us the Lake of the Woods as a landmark in the (then) north-west
corner of the Union. As successors to the French in the ownership of
Louisiana, we acquired the other; the treaty of 1803 having given
us that province as France and Spain had held it; and that was, on
the north, by the parallel of 49 degrees. Beginning in the Lake
of the Woods, our northern Louisiana boundary followed the 49th
parallel to the west. How far? is now the important question; and
I repeat the words of the report of the commissioners, accepted by
their respective nations, when I answer--"INDEFINITELY!" I quote the
words of the report when I answer (omitting all the previous parts
of the line), "_to the latitude of 49 degrees north of the equator,
and along that parallel indefinitely to the west_." [A senator
asked where all this was found.] Mr. BENTON. I find it in the state
papers of France and England above an hundred years ago, and in
those of the United States since the acquisition of Louisiana. I
quote now from Mr. Madison's instructions, when Secretary of State
under Mr. Jefferson in 1804, to Mr. Monroe, then our minister in
London; and given to him to fortify him in his defence of our new
acquisition. The cardinal word in this report of the commissioners
is the word "_indefinitely_;" and that word it was the object of the
British to expunge, from the moment that we discovered the Columbia,
and acquired Louisiana--events which were of the same era in our
history, and almost contemporaneous. In the negotiations with Mr.
Monroe (which ended in a treaty, rejected by Mr. Jefferson without
communication to the Senate), the effort was to limit the line, and
to terminate it at the Rocky Mountains; well knowing that if this
line was suffered to continue _indefinitely_ to the west, it would
deprive them of all they wanted; for it would strike the ocean
three degrees north of the mouth of the Columbia. Without giving us
what we were entitled to by right of discoveries, and as successors
to Spain, it would still take from Great Britain all that she
wanted--which was the mouth of the river, its harbor, the position
which commanded it, and its right bank, in the rich and timbered
region of tide-water. The line on the 49th parallel would cut her
off from all these advantages; and, therefore, to mutilate that
line, and stop it at the Rocky Mountains, immediately became her
inexorable policy. At Ghent, in 1814, the effort was renewed. The
commissioners of the United States and those of Great Britain could
not agree; and nothing was done. At London, in 1818, the effort was
successful; and in the convention then signed in that city, the
line of the treaty of Utrecht was stopped at the Rocky Mountains.
The country on the Columbia was laid open for ten years to the
joint occupation of the citizens and subjects of both powers; and,
afterwards, by a renewed convention at London, this joint occupation
was renewed indefinitely, and until one of the parties should give
notice for its termination. It is under this privilege of joint
occupation that Great Britain has taken exclusive possession of
the right bank of the river, from its head to its mouth, and also
exclusive possession of the fur trade on both sides of the river,
into the heart of the Rocky Mountains. My friend and colleague
[Mr. LINN] has submitted a motion to require the President to give
the stipulated notice for the termination of this convention--a
convention so unequal in its operation, from the inequality of
title between the two parties, and from the organized power of the
British in that quarter under the powerful direction of the Hudson's
Bay Fur Company. Thus our title as far as latitude 49, so valid
under the single guarantee of the treaty of Utrecht, without looking
to other sources, has been jeoparded by this improvident convention;
and the longer it stands, the worse it is for us.
A great fault of the treaty of 1818 was in admitting an organized
and powerful portion of the British people to come into possession
of our territories jointly with individual and disconnected
possessors on our part. The Hudson's Bay Company held dominion there
on the north of our territories. They were powerful in themselves,
perfectly organized, protected by their government, united with
it in policy, and controlling all the Indians from Canada and the
Rocky Mountains out to the Pacific Ocean, and north to Baffin's
Bay. This company was admitted, by the convention of 1818, to a
joint possession with us of all our territories on the Columbia
River. The effect was soon seen. Their joint possession immediately
became exclusive on the north bank of the river. Our fur-traders
were all driven from beyond the Rocky Mountains; then driven out
of the mountains; more than a thousand of them killed: forts were
built; a chain of posts established to communicate with Canada and
Hudson's Bay; settlers introduced; a colony planted; firm possession
acquired; and, at the end of the ten years when the _joint_
possession was to cease, the intrusive possessors, protected by
their government, refused to go--began to set up title--and obtained
a renewal of the convention, without limit of time, and until they
shall receive notice to quit. This renewed convention was made in
1828; and, instead of joint possession with us for ten years, while
we should have joint possession with them of their rivers, bays,
creeks and harbors, for the same time--instead of this, they have
had exclusive possession of our territory, our river, our harbor,
and our creeks and inlets, for above a quarter of a century. They
are establishing themselves as in a permanent possession--making the
fort Vancouver, at the confluence of the Multnomah and Columbia,
in tide-water, the seat of their power and operations. The notice
required never will be given while the present administration is
in power; nor obeyed when given, unless men are in power who will
protect the rights and the honor of their country. The fate of Maine
has doubled the dangers of the Columbia, and nearly placed us in a
position to choose between war and INFAMY, in relation to that river.
Another great fault in the convention was, in admitting a _claim_
on the part of Great Britain to any portion of these territories.
Before that convention, she stated no claim; but asked a favor--the
favor of joint possession for ten years: now she sets up title. That
title is backed by possession. Possession among nations, as well
as among individuals, is eleven points out of twelve; and the bold
policy of Great Britain well knows how to avail itself of these
eleven points. The Madawaska settlement has read us a lesson on that
head; and the success there must lead to still greater boldness
elsewhere. The London convention of 1818 is to the Columbia, what
the Ghent treaty of 1814 was to Maine; that is to say, the first
false step in a game in which we furnish the whole stake, and then
play for it. In Maine the game is up. The bold hand of Great Britain
has clutched the stake; and nothing but the courage of our people
will save the Columbia from the same catastrophe.
I proceed with more satisfaction to our title under the Nootka
Sound treaty, and can state it in a few words. All the world
knows the commotion which was excited in 1790 by the Nootka Sound
controversy between Great Britain and Spain. It was a case in which
the bullying of England and the courage of Spain were both tried to
the _ne plus ultra_ point, and in which Spanish courage gained the
victory. Of course, the British writers relate the story in their
own way; but the debates of the Parliament, and the terms of the
treaty in which all ended, show things as they were. The British,
presuming on the voyages of Captain Cook, took possession of Nootka;
the Spanish Viceroy of Mexico sent a force to fetch the English
away, and placed them in the fortress of Acapulco. Pitt demanded
the release of his English, their restoration to Nootka, and an
apology for the insult to the British Crown, in the violation of
its territory and the persons of its subjects; the Spaniard refused
to release, refused the restoration, and the apology, on the ground
that Nootka was Spanish territory, and declared that they would
fight for its possession. Then both parties prepared for war.
The preparations fixed the attention of all Europe. Great Britain
bullied to the point of holding the match over the touch-hole of
the cannon; but the Spaniards remaining firm, she relaxed, and
entered into a convention which abnegated her claim. She accepted
from the Spaniards the privilege of landing and building huts on
the unoccupied parts of the coast, for the purpose of fishing and
trading; and while this acceptance nullified her claim, yet she
took nothing under it--not even temporary use--never having built
a hut, erected a tent, or commenced any sort of settlement on any
part of the coast. Mr. Fox keenly reproached Mr. Pitt with the terms
of this convention, being, as he showed, a limitation instead of an
acquisition of rights.
Our title is clear: that of the British is null. She sets up
none--that is, she states no derivation of title. There is not a
paper upon the face of the earth, in which a British minister has
stated a title, or even a claim. They have endeavored to obtain
the country by the arts of diplomacy; but never have stated a
title, and never can state one. The fur-trader, Sir Alexander
McKenzie, prompted the acquisition, gave the reason for it, and
never pretended a title. His own discoveries gave no title. They
were subsequent to the discovery of Captain Gray, and far to the
north of the Columbia. He never saw that river. He missed the head
sources of it, fell upon the _Tacouche Tesse_, and struck the
Pacific in a latitude 500 miles (by the coast) to the north of the
Columbia. His subsequent discoveries were all north of that point.
He was looking for a communication with the sea--for a river, a
harbor, and a place for a colony--within the dominions of Great
Britain; and, not finding any, he boldly recommended his government
to seize the Columbia River, to hold it, and to expel the Americans
from the whole country west of the Rocky Mountains. And upon these
pretensions the British claim has rested, until possession has
made them bold enough to exclude it from the subjects of formal
negotiation between the two countries. The peace-mission refused
us peace on that point. The President tells us that there is "_no
probability of coming to any agreement at present!_" Then when can
the agreement be made? If refused now, when is it to come? Never,
until we show that we prefer war to ignominious peace.
This is the British title to the Columbia, and the only one that
she wants for any thing. It suits her to have that river: it is her
interest to have it: it strengthens her, and weakens others, for her
to have it; and, therefore, have it she will. This is her title, and
this her argument. Upon this title and argument, she gets a slice
from Maine, and gains the mountain barrier which covers Quebec; and,
upon this title and argument, she means to have the Columbia River.
The events of the late war, and the application of steam power to
ocean navigation, begat her title to the country between Halifax and
Quebec: the suggestions of McKenzie begat her title to the Columbia.
Improvident diplomacy on our part, a war countenance on her part,
and this strange treaty, have given success to her pretensions in
Maine: the same diplomacy, and the same countenance, have given her
a foothold on the Columbia. It is for the Great West to see that
no traitorous treaty shall abandon it to her. The President, in
his message, says that there was no chance for any "_agreement_"
about it at present; that it would not be made the subject of a
"_formal negotiation_" at present; that it could not be included
in the duties of the "_special mission_." Why so? The mission was
one of peace, and to settle every thing; and why omit this pregnant
question? Was this a war question, and therefore not to be settled
by the peace mission? Why not come to an agreement now, if agreement
is ever intended? The answer is evident. No agreement is ever
intended. Contented with her possession, Great Britain wants delay,
that _time_ may ripen _possession_ into _title_, and fortunate
events facilitate her designs. My colleague and myself were sounded
on this point: our answers forbade the belief that we would
compromise or sacrifice the rights and interests of our country;
and this may have been the reason why there were no "_formal_"
negotiations in relation to it. Had we been "_soft enough_," there
might have been an agreement to divide our country by the river, or,
to refer the whole title to the decision of a friendly sovereign!
We were not _soft enough_ for that; and if such a paper, marked B,
and identified with the initials of our Secretary, had been sent
to the Missouri delegation, as was sent to the Maine commissioners,
instead of subduing us to the purposes of Great Britain, it would
have received from the whole delegation the answer due to treason,
to cowardice, and to insolence.
But, it is demanded, what do we want with this country, so far off
from us? I answer by asking, in my turn, what do the British want
with it, who are so much further off? They want it for the fur
trade; for a colony; for an outlet to the sea; for the communication
across the continent; for a road to Asia; for the command of one
hundred and forty thousand Indians against us; for the port and
naval station which is to command the commerce and navigation
of the North Pacific Ocean, and open new channels of trade with
China, Japan, Polynesia, and the great East. They want it for these
reasons; and we want it for the same; and because it adjoins us, and
belongs to us, and should be possessed by our descendants, who will
be our friends; and not by aliens, who will be our enemies.
Forty years ago, it was written by Humboldt that the valley of the
Columbia invited Europeans to found a fine colony there; and, twenty
years ago, the American Congress adopted a resolve, _that no part
of this continent was open to European colonization_. The remark of
Humboldt was that of a sagacious European; the resolve of Congress
was the work of patriotic Americans. It remains to be seen which
will prevail. The convention of 1818 has done us the mischief; it
put the European power in possession: and possession with nations,
still more than with individuals, is the main point in the contest.
It will require the western pioneers to recover the lost ground;
and they must be encouraged in the enterprise by liberal grants of
lands, by military protection, and by governmental authority. It is
time for the bill of my colleague to pass. The first session of the
first Congress under the new census should pass it. The majority
will be democratic, and the democracy will demand that great work
at their hands. I put no faith in negotiation. I expect nothing but
loss and shame from any negotiation in London. Our safety is in the
energy of our people; in their prompt occupation of the country; and
in their invincible determination to maintain their rights.
I do not dilate upon the value and extent of this great country.
A word suffices to display both. In extent, it is larger than the
Atlantic portion of the old thirteen United States; in climate,
softer; in fertility, greater; in salubrity, superior; in position,
better, because fronting Asia, and washed by a tranquil sea. In
all these particulars, the western slope of our continent is far
more happy than the eastern. In configuration, it is inexpressibly
fine and grand--a vast oblong square, with natural boundaries, and
a single gateway into the sea. The snow-capped Rocky Mountains
enclose it to the east, an iron-bound coast on the west: a frozen
desert on the north, and sandy plains on the south. All its rivers,
rising on the segment of a vast circumference, run to meet each
other in the centre; and then flow together into the ocean, through
a gap in the mountain, where the heats of summer and the colds of
winter are never felt; and where southern and northern diseases
are equally unknown. This is the valley of the Columbia--a country
whose every advantage is crowned by the advantages of position and
configuration: by the unity of all its parts--the inaccessibility
of its borders--and its single introgression to the sea. Such a
country is formed for union, wealth, and strength. It can have but
one capital, and that will be a Thebes; but one commercial emporium,
and that will be Tyre, queen of cities. Such a country can have but
one people, one interest, one government: and that people should be
American--that interest ours--and that government republican. Great
Britain plays for the whole valley: failing in that, she is willing
to divide by the river. Accursed and infamous be the man that
divides or alienates it!
II.--IMPRESSMENT.
Impressment is another of the omitted subjects. This having been
a cause of war in 1812, and being now declared, by the American
negotiator, to be a sufficient cause for future wars, it would
naturally, to my mind, have been included in the labors of a special
mission, dedicated to peace, and extolled for its benevolent
conception. We would have expected to find such a subject, after
such a declaration, included in the labors of such a mission.
Not so the fact. The treaty does not mention impressment. A
brief paragraph in the President's message informs us that there
was a correspondence on this point; and, on turning to this
correspondence, we actually find two letters on the subject: one
from Mr. Webster to Lord Ashburton--one from Lord Ashburton to Mr.
Webster: both showing, from their dates, that they were written
after the treaty was signed; and, from their character, that they
were written for the public, and not for the negotiators. The treaty
was signed on the 9th of August; the letters were written on the 8th
and 9th of the same month. They are a plea, and a reply; and they
leave the subject precisely where they found it. From their date and
character, they seem to be what the lawyers call the _postea_--that
is to say, the _afterwards_; and are very properly postponed to
the end of the document containing the correspondence, where they
find place on the 120th page. They look _ex post facto_ there;
and, putting all things together, it would seem as if the American
negotiator had said to the British lord (after the negotiation
was over): 'My Lord, here is impressment--a pretty subject for a
composition; the people will love to read something about it; so let
us compose.' To which, it would seem, his lordship had answered:
'You may compose as much as you please for your people; I leave that
field to you: and when you are done, I will write three lines for
my own government, to let it know that I stick to impressment.' In
about this manner, it would seem to me that the two letters were got
up; and that the American negotiator in this little business has
committed a couple of the largest faults: _first_, in naming the
subject of impressment at all! _next_, in ever signing a treaty,
after having named it, without an unqualified renunciation of the
pretension!
Sir, the same thing is not always equally proper. Time and
circumstances qualify the proprieties of international, as well
as of individual intercourse; and what was proper and commendable
at one time, may become improper, reprehensible, and derogatory
at another. When George the Third, in the first article of his
first treaty with the United States, at the end of a seven years'
war, acknowledged them to be free, sovereign, and independent
States, and renounced all dominion over them, this was a proud
and glorious consummation for us, and the crowning mercy of a
victorious rebellion. The same acknowledgment and renunciation from
Queen Victoria, at present, would be an insult for her to offer--a
degradation for us to accept. So of this question of impressment.
It was right in all the administrations previous to the late war,
to negotiate for its renunciation. But after having gone to war
for this cause; after having suppressed the practice by war; after
near thirty years' exemption from it--after all this, for our
negotiator to put the question in discussion, was to compromise our
rights! To sign a treaty without its renunciation, after having
proposed to treat about it, was to relinquish them! Our negotiator
should not have mentioned the subject. If mentioned to him by the
British negotiator, he should have replied, that the answer to that
pretension was in the cannon's mouth!
But to name it himself, and then sign without renunciation, and
to be invited to London to treat about it--to do this, was to
descend from our position; to lose the benefit of the late war;
to revive the question; to invite the renewal of the practice, by
admitting it to be an unsettled question--and to degrade the present
generation, by admitting that they would negotiate where their
ancestors had fought. These are fair inferences; and inferences
not counteracted by the euphonious declaration that the American
government is "_prepared to say_" that the practice of impressment
cannot hereafter be allowed to take place!--as if, after great
study, we had just arrived at that conclusion! and as if we had not
declared much more courageously in the case of the Maine boundary,
the Schlosser massacre, and the Creole mutiny and murder! The
British, after the experience they have had, will know how to value
our courageous declaration, and must pay due respect to our flag!
For one, I never liked these declarations, and never made a speech
in favor of any one of them; and now I like them less than ever,
and am _prepared_ to put no further faith in the declarations of
gentlemen who were for going to war for the smallest part of the
Maine boundary in 1838, and now surrender three hundred miles of
that boundary for fear of war, when there is no danger of war.
I am _prepared to say_ that I care not a straw for the heroic
declarations of such gentlemen. I want actions, not phrases. I want
Mr. Jefferson's act in 1806--_rejection of any treaty with Great
Britain that does not renounce impressment_! And after having
declared, by law, black impressment on the coast of Africa to be
piracy; after stipulating to send a fleet there, to enforce our
law against that impressment--after this, I am ready to do the
same thing against white impressment on our own coasts, and on the
high seas. I am ready to enact that the impressment of my white
fellow-citizens out of an American ship is an act of piracy; and
then to follow out that enactment in its every consequence.
The correspondence between our Secretary negotiator and Lord
Ashburton on this subject, has been read to you--that correspondence
which was drawn up after the treaty was finished, and intended
for the American public: and what a correspondence it is! What
an exchange of phrases! One denies the right of impressment: the
other affirms it. Both wish for an amicable agreement; but neither
attempts to agree. Both declare the season of peace to be the proper
time to settle this question; and both agree that the present season
of peace is not the convenient one. Our Secretary rises so high
as to declare that the administration "_is now prepared_" to put
its veto on the practice: the _British negotiator_ shows that his
Government is still prepared to resume the practice whenever her
interest requires it. Our negotiator hopes that his communication
will be received in the spirit of peace: the British minister
replies, that it will. Our secretary then persuades himself that the
British minister will communicate his sentiments in this respect,
to his own government: his Lordship promises it faithfully. And,
thereupon, they shake hands and part.
How different this holiday scene from the firm and virile language
of Mr. Jefferson: "_No treaty to be signed without a provision
against impressment_;" and this language backed by the fact of
the instant rejection of a treaty so signed! Lord Chatham said of
_Magna Charta_ that it was homely Latin, but worth all the classics.
So say I of this reply of Mr. Jefferson: it is plain English, but
worth all the phrases which rhetoric could ever expend upon the
subject. It is the only answer which our secretary negotiator should
have given, after committing the fault of broaching the subject.
Instead of that, he commences rhetorician, new vamps old arguments,
writes largely and prettily; and loses the question by making it
debatable. His adversary sees his advantage, and seizes it. He
abandons the field of rhetoric to the lawyer negotiator; puts in a
fresh claim to impressment; saves the question from being lost by
a non-user; re-establishes the debate, and adjourns it to London.
He keeps alive the pretension of impressment against us, the white
race, while binding us to go to Africa to fight it down for the
black race; and has actually left us on lower ground in relation
to this question, than we stood upon before the late war. If this
treaty is ratified, we must begin where we were in 1806, when
Mr. Monroe and Mr. Pinckney went to London to negotiate against
impressment; we must begin where they did, with the disadvantage
of having yielded to Great Britain all that she wanted, and having
lost all our vantage-ground in the negotiation. We must go to
London, engage in a humiliating negotiation, become the spectacle
of nations, and the sport of diplomacy; and wear out years in
begging to be spared from British seizure, when sitting under our
own flag, and sailing in our own ship: we must submit to all this
degradation, shame and outrage, unless Congress redeems us from the
condition into which we have fallen, and provides for the liberty
of our people on the seas, by placing American impressment where
African impressment has already been placed--piracy by law! For one,
I am ready to vote the act--to execute it--and to abide its every
consequence.
III.--THE LIBERATED SLAVES.
The case of the Creole, as it is called, is another of the omitted
subjects. It is only one of a number of cases (differing in degree,
but the same in character) which have occurred within a few years,
and are becoming more frequent and violent. It is the case of
American vessels, having American slaves on board, and pursuing a
lawful voyage, and being driven by storms or carried by violence
into a British port, and their slaves liberated by British law.
This is the nature of the wrong. It is a general outrage liable to
occur in any part of the British dominions, but happens most usually
in the British West India islands, which line the passage round
the Florida reefs in a voyage between New Orleans and the Atlantic
ports. I do not speak of the 12,000 slaves (worth at a moderate
computation, considering they must be all grown, and in youth or
middle life, at least $6,000,000) enticed into Canada, and received
with the honors and advantages due to the first class of emigrants.
I do not speak of these, nor of the liberation of slaves carried
voluntarily by their owners into British ports: the man who exposes
his property wilfully to the operation of a known law, should abide
the consequences to which he has subjected it. I confine myself
to cases of the class mentioned--such as the Encomium, the Comet,
the Enterprise, the Creole, and the Hermosa--cases in which wreck,
tempest, violence, mutiny and murder were the means of carrying the
vessel into the interdicted port; and in which the slave property,
after being saved to the owners from revolt and tempests, became
the victim and the prey of British law. It is of such cases that
I complain, and of which I say that they furnish no subject for
the operation of injurious laws, and that each of these vessels
should have been received with the hospitality due to misfortune,
and allowed to depart with all convenient despatch, and with all
her contents of persons and property. This is the law of nations:
it is what the civilization of the age requires. And it is not to
be tolerated in this nineteenth century that an American citizen,
passing from one port to another of his own country, with property
protected by the laws of his country, should encounter the perils
of an unfortunate navigator in the dark ages, shipwrecked on a rude
and barbarian coast. This is not to be tolerated in this age, and
by such a power as the United States, and after sending a fleet to
Africa to protect the negroes. Justice, like charity, should begin
at home; and protection should be given where allegiance is exacted.
We cannot tolerate the spoil and pillage of our own citizens, within
sight of our own coasts, after sending 4,000 miles to redress the
wrongs of the black race. But if this treaty is ratified it seems
that we shall have to endure it, or seek redress by other means
than negotiation. The previous cases were at least ameliorated by
compensation to their owners for the liberation of the slaves; but
in the more recent and most atrocious case of the Creole, there is
no indemnity of any kind--neither compensation to the owners whose
property has been taken; nor apology to the Government, whose flag
has been insulted; nor security for the future, by giving up the
practice. A treaty is signed without a stipulation of any kind on
the subject; and as it would seem, to the satisfaction of those who
made it, and of the President, who sends it to us. A correspondence
has been had; the negotiators have exchanged diplomatic notes on the
subject; and these notes are expected to be as satisfactory to the
country as to those who now have the rule of it. The President in
his message says:
"On the subject of the interference of the British authorities
in the West Indies, a confident hope is entertained that the
correspondence which has taken place, showing the _grounds_
taken by this government, and the _engagements_ entered into
by the British minister, will be found such as to satisfy the
just expectation of the people of the United States."--_Message,
August 9._
This is a short paragraph for so large a subject; but it is all the
message contains. But let us see what it amounts to, and what it is
that is expected to satisfy the just expectations of the country. It
is the _grounds_ taken in the correspondence, and the _engagements_
entered into by the British minister, which are to work out this
agreeable effect.
And it is of the _grounds_ stated in the Secretary's two letters,
and the _engagement_, entered into in Lord Ashburton's note, that
the President predicates his belief of the public satisfaction
in relation to this growing and most sensitive question. This
brings us to these grounds, and this engagement, that we may see
the nature and solidity of the one, and the extent and validity
of the other. The grounds for the public satisfaction are in the
Secretary's letters; the engagement is in Lord Ashburton's letter;
and what do they amount to? On the part of the Secretary, I am
free to say that he has laid down the law of nations correctly;
that he has well stated the principles of public law which save
from hazard or loss, or penalty of any kind, the vessel engaged
in a lawful trade, and driven or carried against her will, into a
prohibited port. He has well shown that, under such circumstances,
no advantage is to be taken of the distressed vessel; that she is
to be received with the hospitality due to misfortune, and allowed
to depart, after receiving the succors of humanity, with all her
contents of persons and things. All this is well laid down by our
Secretary. Thus far his grounds are solid. But, alas, this is all
talk! and the very next paragraph, after a handsome vindication of
our rights under the law of nations, is to abandon them! I refer
to the paragraph commencing: "_If your Lordship has no authority
to enter into a stipulation by treaty for the prevention of such
occurrences hereafter_," &c. This whole paragraph is fatal to the
Secretary's grounds, and pregnant with strange and ominous meanings.
In the first place, it is an admission, in the very first line, that
no treaty stipulation to prevent future occurrences of the same
kind can be obtained here! that the special mission, which came to
settle every thing, and to establish peace, will not settle this
thing; which the Secretary, in numerous paragraphs, alleges to be
a dangerous source of future war! This is a strange contradiction,
and most easily got over by our Secretary. In default of a treaty
stipulation (which he takes for granted, and evidently makes no
effort to obtain), he goes on to solicit a personal engagement from
his Lordship; and an engagement of what? That the law of nations
shall be observed? No! but that instructions shall be given to the
British local authorities in the islands, which shall lead them to
regulate their conduct in conformity with the rights of citizens of
the United States, and the just expectations of their government,
and in such manner as shall, in future, take away all reasonable
ground of complaint. This is the extent of the engagement which
was so solicited, and which was to supply the place of a treaty
stipulation! If the engagement had been given in the words proposed,
it would not have been worth a straw. But it is not given in those
words, but with glaring and killing additions and differences. His
Lordship follows the commencement of the formula with sufficient
accuracy; but, lest any possible consequence might be derived from
it, he takes care to add, that when these slaves do reach them "_no
matter by what means_," there is no alternative! Hospitality, good
wishes, friendly feeling, the duties of good neighborhood--all
give way! The British law governs! and that law is too well known
to require repetition. This is the sum and substance of Lord
Ashburton's qualifications of the _engagement_; and they show him
to be a man of honor, that would not leave the Secretary negotiator
the slightest room for raising a doubt as to the nature of the
instructions which he engaged to have given. These instructions
go only to the mode of executing the law. His Lordship engages
only for the civility and gentleness of the manner--_the suaviter
in modo_; while the firm execution of the law itself remains as it
was--_fortiter in re_.
Lord Ashburton proposes London as the best place to consider
this subject. Mr. Webster accepts London, and hopes that her
Majesty's government will give us treaty stipulations to remove
all further cause for complaint on this subject. This is his last
hope, contained in the last sentence of his last note. And now,
why a treaty stipulation hereafter, if this engagement is such (as
the President says it is) as to satisfy the just expectations of
the people of the United States? Why any thing more, if that is
enough? And if treaty stipulations are wanting (as in fact they
are), why go to London for them--the head-quarters of abolitionism,
the seat of the World's Convention for the abolition of slavery,
and the laboratory in which the insurrection of San Domingo was
fabricated? Why go to London? Why go any where? Why delay? Why not
do it here? Why not include it among the beatitudes of the vaunted
peace mission? The excuse that the minister had not powers, is
contradictory and absurd. The Secretary negotiator tells us, in his
first letter, that the minister came with full powers to settle
every subject in discussion. This was a subject in discussion;
and had been since the time of the Comet, the Encomium, and the
Enterprise--years ago. If instructions were forgotten, why not
send for them? What are the steamers for, that, in the six months
that the peace mission was here, they could not have brought these
instructions a dozen times? No! the truth is, the British government
would do nothing upon this subject when she found she could
accomplish all her own objects without granting any thing.
IV.--BURNING OF THE CAROLINE.
The Caroline is the last of the seven subjects in the arrangement
which I make of them. I reserve it for the last; the extreme
ignominy of its termination making it, in my opinion, the natural
conclusion of a disgraceful negotiation. It is a case in which
all the sources of national degradation seem to have been put in
requisition--diplomacy; legislation; the judiciary; and even the
military. To volunteer propitiations to Great Britain, and to
deprecate her wrath, seem to have been the sole concern of the
administration, when signal reparation was due from her to us.
And here again we have to lament the absence of all the customary
disclosures in the progress of negotiations. No protocol, no
minutes, no memorandums: nothing to show how a subject began, went
on, and reached its consummation. Every thing was informal in this
anomalous negotiation. Wat Tyler never hated the ink-horn worse
than our Secretary-negotiator hated it upon this occasion. It was
only after a thing was finished, that the pen was resorted to; and
then merely to record the agreement, and put a face upon it for
the public eye. In this way many things may have been discussed,
which leave no written trace behind them; and it would be a curious
circumstance if so large a subject, and one so delicate as the State
debts, should find itself in that predicament.
The case of the Caroline is now near four years old. It occurred in
December of the year 1838, under Mr. Van Buren's administration; but
it was not until March, 1841, and until the new administration was
in power, that the question assumed its high character of a quarrel
between the United States and Great Britain. Before that time,
the outrage upon the Caroline was only the act of the individuals
engaged in it. The arrest of one of these individuals brought out
the British government. She assumed the offence; alleged the outrage
to have been perpetrated by her authority; and demanded the release
of McLeod, under the clear implication of a national threat if he
was not surrendered. The release was demanded unconditionally--not
the slightest apology or atonement being offered for the outrage on
the Caroline, out of which the arrest of McLeod grew. The arrogant
demand of the British was delivered to the new Secretary of State on
the 12th day of March. Instead of refusing to answer under a threat,
he answered the sooner; and, in his answer went far beyond what the
minister [Mr. Fox] had demanded. He despatched the Attorney-general
of the United States to New York, to act as counsel for McLeod;
he sent a Major-general of the United States army along with him,
to give emphasis to his presence; and he gave a false version to
the law of nations, which would not only cover the McLeod case,
but all succeeding cases of the same kind. I consider all this the
work of the State Department; for General Harrison was too new
in his office, too much overwhelmed by the army of applicants who
besieged him and soon destroyed his life, to have the time to study
the questions to which the arrest of McLeod, and the demand for his
release, and the assumption of his crime by the British government
gave rise. The Romans had a noble maxim--grand in itself, and worthy
of them, because they acted upon it. PARCERE SUBJECTIS, DEBELLARE
SUPERBOS: Spare the humble--humble the proud. Our administration has
invoked this maxim to cover its own conduct. In giving up McLeod
they say it is to lay hold of the sovereign--that the poor servant
is spared while the proud master is to be held to account. Fine
phrases these, which deceive no one: for both master and servant are
let go. Our people were not deceived by these grave professions.
They believed it was all a pretext to get out of a difficulty; that,
what between love and fear of the British, the federal party was
unwilling to punish McLeod, or to see him punished by the State
of New York; that the design was to get rid of responsibility, by
getting rid of the man; and, that when he was gone, we should hear
no more of these new Romans calling his sovereign to account. This
was the opinion of the democracy, very freely expressed at the
time; and so it has all turned out to be. McLeod was acquitted,
and got off; the British government became responsible, on the
administration's own principles; they have not been held to that
responsibility; no atonement or apology has been made for the
national outrage at Schlosser; and the President informs us that no
further complaint, on account of this aggression on the soil and
sovereignty of the Union, and the lives of its citizens, is to be
made!
A note has been obtained from Lord Ashburton, and sent to us by the
President, declaring three things--first, that the burning of the
Caroline, and killing the people, was a serious fact; secondly,
that no disrespect was intended to the United States in doing it;
thirdly, that the British government unfeignedly hopes there will be
no necessity for doing it again. This is the extent, and the whole
extent, to which the special minister, with all his politeness and
good nature, and with all his desire to furnish the administration
with something to satisfy the public, could possibly go. The only
thing which I see him instructed by his government to say, or which
in itself amounts to a positive declaration, is the averment that
her Majesty's government "_considers it a most serious fact_" that,
in the hurried execution of this _necessary_ service, a violation
of the United States territory was committed. This is admitted to
be a fact!--a serious fact!--and a most serious fact! But as for
any sorrow for it, or apology for it, or promise not to commit
such serious facts again, or even not to be so hurried the next
time--this is what the minister nowhere says, or insinuates. On
the contrary, just the reverse is declared; for the justification
of this "_most serious fact_" as being the result of a hurried
execution of a "_necessary service_," is an explicit averment that
the aforesaid "_most serious fact_" will be repeated just so often
as her Majesty's government shall deem it necessary to her service.
As to the polite declaration, that no disrespect was intended to the
United States while invading its territory, killing its citizens,
setting a steamboat on fire, and sending her in flames over the
falls of Niagara--such a declaration is about equivalent to telling
a man that you mean him no disrespect while cudgelling him with both
hands over the head and shoulders.
The celebrated Dr. Johnson was accustomed to say that there was
a certain amount of gullibility in the public mind, which must
be provided for. It would seem that our Secretary-negotiator had
possessed himself of this idea, and charged himself with the duties
under it, and had determined to make full provision for all the
gullibility now extant. He has certainly provided _quantum sufficit_
of humbuggery in this treaty, and in his correspondence in defence
of it, to gorge the stomachs of all the gulls of the present
generation, both in Europe and America.
Our Secretary is full of regret that McLeod was so long imprisoned,
makes excuses for the New York court's decisions against him, and
promises to call the attention of Congress to the necessity of
providing against such detention in future. He says, in his last
letter to Lord Ashburton:
"It was a subject of _regret_ that the release of McLeod was
so long delayed. A State court--and that not of the highest
jurisdiction--decided that, on summary application, embarrassed,
as it would appear, by technical difficulties, he could not
be released by that court. His discharge, shortly afterward,
by a jury, to whom he preferred to submit his case, rendered
unnecessary the further prosecution of the legal question. It
is for the Congress of the United States, whose attention has
been _called_ to the subject to say what further provision ought
to be made to expedite proceedings in such cases."
Such is the valedictory of our Secretary--his sorrows over the
fate of McLeod. That individual had been released for a year
past. His arrest continued but for a few months, with little
personal inconvenience to himself; with no danger to his life, if
innocent; and with the gratification of a notoriety flattering to
his pride, and beneficial to his interest. He is probably highly
delighted with the honors of the occurrence, and no way injured
by his brief and comfortable imprisonment. Yet the sorrow of our
Secretary continues to flow. At the end of a year, he is still in
mourning, and renews the expression of his regret for the poor man's
detention, and gives assurances against such delays in future;--this
in the same letter in which he closes the door upon the fate of his
own countrymen burnt and murdered in the Caroline, and promises
never to disturb the British government about them again. McLeod
and all Canadians are encouraged to repeat their _most serious
facts upon us_, by the perfect immunity which both themselves and
their government have experienced. And to expedite their release,
if hereafter arrested for such _facts_, they are informed that
Congress had been "_called_" upon to pass the appropriate law--and
passed it was! The _habeas corpus_ act against the States, which
had slept for many months in the Senate, and seemed to have sunk
under the public execration--this bill was "_called_" up, and
passed contemporaneously with the date of this letter. And thus
the special minister was enabled to carry home with him an act of
Congress to lay at the footstool of his Queen, and to show that the
measure of atonement to McLeod was complete: that the executive, the
military, the legislative, and the judicial departments had all been
put in requisition, and faithfully exerted themselves to protect
her Majesty's subjects from being harmed for a past invasion,
conflagration, and murder; and to secure them from being called to
account by the State courts for such trifles in future.
And so ends the case of the Caroline and McLeod. The humiliation
of this conclusion, and the contempt and future danger which it
brings upon the country, demand a pause, and a moment's reflection
upon the catastrophe of this episode in the negotiation. The whole
negotiation has been one of shame and injury; but this catastrophe
of the McLeod and Caroline affair puts the finishing hand to our
disgrace. I do not speak of the individuals who have done this work,
but of the national honor which has been tarnished in their hands.
Up to the end of Mr. Van Buren's administration, all was safe for
the honor of the country. Redress for the outrage at Schlosser had
been demanded; interference to release McLeod had been refused;
the false application of the laws of war to a state of peace had
been scouted. On the 4th day of March, 1841, the national honor
was safe; but on that day its degradation commenced. Timing their
movements with a calculated precision, the British government
transmitted their assumption of the Schlosser outrage, their formal
demand for the release of McLeod, and their threat in the event of
refusal, so as to arrive here on the evening of the day on which
the new administration received the reins of government. Their
assumption, demand, and threat, arrived in Washington on the evening
of the 4th day of March, a few hours after the inauguration of
the new powers was over. It seemed as if the British had said to
themselves: This is the time--our friends are in power--we helped
to elect them--now is the time to begin. And begin they did. On
the 8th day of March, Mr. Fox delivered to Mr. Webster the formal
notification of the assumption, made the demand, and delivered the
threat. Then the disgraceful scene began. They reverse the decision
of Mr. Van Buren's administration, and determine to interfere in
behalf of McLeod, and to extricate him by all means from the New
York courts. To mask the ignominy of this interference, they pretend
it is to get at a nobler antagonist; and that they are going to
act the Romans, in sparing the humble and subduing the proud. It
is with Queen Victoria with whom they will deal! McLeod is too
humble game for them. McLeod released, the next thing is to get
out of the scrape with the Queen; and for that purpose they invent
a false reading of the law of nations, and apply the laws of war
to a state of peace. The _jus belli_, and not the _jus gentium_,
then becomes their resort. And here ends their grand imitation of
the Roman character. To assume the laws of war in time of peace,
in order to cover a craven retreat, is the nearest approach which
they make to war. Then the special minister comes. They accept
from him private and verbal explanations, in full satisfaction to
themselves of all the outrage at Schlosser: but beg the minister
to write them a little apology, which they can show to the people.
The minister refuses; and thereupon they assume that they have
received it, and proclaim the apology to the world. To finish this
scene, to complete the propitiation of the Queen, and to send her
minister home with legal and parchment evidence in his hand of our
humiliation, the expression of regret for the arrest and detention
of McLeod is officiously and gratuitously renewed; the prospect
of a like detention of any of her Majesty's subjects in future is
pathetically deplored; and, to expedite their delivery from State
courts when they again invade our soil, murder our citizens, and
burn our vessels, the minister is informed that Congress has been
"_called_" upon to pass a law to protect them from these courts. And
here "_a most serious fact_" presents itself. Congress has actually
obeyed the "_call_"--passed the act--secured her Majesty's subjects
in future--and given the legal parchment evidence of his success to
her minister before he departs for his home. The infamous act--the
habeas corpus against the States--squeamishly called the "_remedial
justice act_"--is now on the statute-book; the original polluting
our code of law, the copy lying at the footstool of the British
Queen. And this is the point we have reached. In the short space of
a year and a half, the national character has been run down, from
the pinnacle of honor to the abyss of disgrace. I limit myself now
to the affair of McLeod and the Caroline alone; and say that, in
this business, exclusive of other disgraces, the national character
has been brought to the lowest point of contempt. It required the
Walpole administration five-and-twenty long years of cowardly
submission to France and Spain to complete the degradation of Great
Britain: our present rulers have completed the same work for their
own country in the short space of eighteen months. And this is the
state of our America! that America which Jackson and Van Buren left
so proud! that America which, with three millions of people fought
and worsted the British empire--with seven millions fought it, and
worsted it again--and now, with eighteen millions, truckles to the
British Queen, and invents all sorts of propitiatory apologies for
her, when the most ample atonement is due to itself. Are we the
people of the Revolution?--of the war of 1812?--of the year 1834,
when Jackson electrified Europe by threatening the King of France
with reprisals!
McLeod is given up because he is too weak; the Queen is excused,
because she is too strong; propitiation is lavished where atonement
is due; an apology accepted where none was offered; the statute of
limitations pleaded against an insult, by the party which received
it! And the miserable performers in all this drama of national
degradation expect to be applauded for magnanimity, when the laws of
honor and the code of nations, stamp their conduct with the brand of
cowardice.
CHAPTER CIII.
BRITISH TREATY: NORTHEASTERN BOUNDARY ARTICLE: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH:
EXTRACT.
The establishment of the low-land boundary in place of the mountain
boundary, and parallel to it. This new line is 110 miles long. It
is on this side of the awarded line--not a continuation of it, but
a deflection from it; and evidently contrived for the purpose of
weakening our boundary, and retiring it further from Quebec. It will
be called in history the Webster line. It begins on the awarded
line, at a lake in the St. Francis River; breaks off at right angles
to the south, passes over the valley of the St. John in a straight
line, and equidistant from that river and the mountain, until it
reaches the north-west branch of the St. John, when approaching
within forbidden distance of Quebec, it deflects to the east; and
then holds on its course to the gorge in the mountain at the head
of Metjarmette creek. A view of the map will show the character
of this new line; the words of the treaty show how cautiously it
was guarded; and the want of protocols hides its paternity from
our view. The character of the line is apparent; and it requires
no military man, or military woman, or military child, to say to
whose benefit it enures. A man of any sort--a woman of any kind--a
child of any age--can tell that! It is a British line, made for the
security of Quebec. Follow its calls on the map, and every eye will
see this design.
The surrender of the mountain boundary between the United States
and Great Britain on the frontiers of Maine. This is a distinct
question from the surrender of territory. The latter belonged to
Maine: the former to the United States. They were national, and not
State boundaries--established by the war of the Revolution, and
not by a State law or an act of Congress; and involving all the
considerations which apply to the attack and defence of nations. So
far as a State boundary is coterminous with another State, it is
a State question, and may be left to the discretion of the States
interested: so far as it is coterminous with a foreign power, it
is a national question, and belongs to the national authority. A
State cannot be permitted to weaken and endanger the nation by
dismembering herself in favor of a foreigner; by demolishing a
strong frontier, delivering the gates and keys of a country into
the hands of a neighboring nation, and giving them roads and passes
into the country. The boundaries in question were national, not
State; and the consent of Maine, even if given, availed nothing.
Her defence belongs to the Union; is to be made by the blood and
treasure of the Union; and it was not for her, even if she had been
willing, to make this defence more difficult, more costly, and
more bloody, by giving up the strong, and substituting the weak
line of defence. Near three hundred miles of this strong national
frontier have been surrendered by this treaty--being double as much
as was given up by the rejected award. The King of the Netherlands,
although on the list of British generals, and in the pay of the
British Crown, was a man of too much honor to deprive us of the
commanding mountain frontier opposite to Quebec; and besides,
Jackson would have scouted the award if he had attempted it. The
King only gave up the old line to the north of the head of the St.
Francis River; and for this he had some reason, as the mountain
there subsided into a plain, and the ridge of the highlands (in
that part) was difficult to follow: our negotiator gives up the
boundary for one hundred and fifty miles on this side the head of
the St. Francis, and without pretext; for the mountain ridge was
there three thousand feet high. The new part given up, from the
head of the St. Francis to Metjarmette portage, is invaluable
to Great Britain. It covers her new road to Quebec, removes us
further from that city, places a mountain between us, and brings
her into Maine. To comprehend the value of this new boundary to
Great Britain, and its injury to us, it is only necessary to follow
it on a map--to see its form--know its height, the depth of its
gorges, and its rough and rocky sides. The report of Capt. Talcott
will show its character--three thousand feet high: any map will
show its form. The gorge at the head of the Metjarmette creek--a
water of the St. Lawrence--is made the _terminus ad quem_ of the
new conventional lowland line: beyond that gorge, the mountain
barrier is yielded to Great Britain. Now take up a map. Begin at
the head of the Metjarmette creek, within a degree and a half of
the New Hampshire line--follow the mountain north--see how it bears
in upon Quebec--approaching within two marches of that great city,
and skirting the St. Lawrence for some hundred miles. All this is
given up. One hundred and fifty miles of this boundary is given
up on this side the awarded line; and the country left to guess
and wonder at the enormity and fatuity of the sacrifice. Look at
the new military road from Halifax to Quebec--that part of it
which approaches Quebec and lies between the mountain and the St.
Lawrence. Even by the awarded line, this road was forced to cross
the mountain at or beyond the head of the St. Francis, and then to
follow the base of the mountain for near one hundred miles; with all
the disadvantages of crossing the spurs and gorges of the mountain,
and the creeks and ravines, and commanded in its whole extent by the
power on the mountain. See how this is changed by the new boundary!
the road permitted to take either side of the mountain--to cross
where it pleases--and covered and protected in its whole extent by
the mountain heights, now exclusively British. Why this new way, and
this security for the road, unless to give the British still greater
advantages over us than the awarded boundary gave? A palliation
is attempted for it. It is said that the mountain is unfit for
cultivation; and the line along it could not be ascertained; and
that Maine consented. These are the palliations--insignificant if
true, but not true in their essential parts. And, first, as to the
poverty of the mountain, and the slip along its base, constituting
this area of 893 square miles surrendered on this side the awarded
line: Captain Talcott certifies it to be poor, and unfit for
cultivation. I say so much the better for a frontier. As to the
height of the mountains, and the difficulty of finding the dividing
ridge, and the necessity of adopting a conventional line: I say all
this has no application to the surrendered boundary on this side
the awarded line at the head of the St. Francis. On this side of
that point, the mountain ridge is lofty, the heights attain three
thousand feet; and navigable rivers rise in them, and flow to the
east and to the west--to the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic. Hear
Captain Talcott, in his letter to Mr. Webster: (The letter read.)
This letter was evidently obtained for the purpose of depreciating
the lost boundary, by showing it to be unfit for cultivation. The
note of the Secretary-negotiator which drew it forth is not given,
but the answer of Captain Talcott shows its character; and its date
(that of the 14th of July) classes it with the testimony which was
hunted up to justify a foregone conclusion. The letter of Captain
Talcott is good for the Secretary's purpose, and for a great deal
more. It is good for the overthrow of all the arguments on which
the plea for a conventional boundary stood. What was that plea?
Simply, that the highlands in the neighborhood of the north-west
corner of Nova Scotia could not be traced; and that it was necessary
to substitute a conventional line in their place. And it is the
one on which the award of the King of the Netherlands turned, and
was, to the extent of a part of his award, a valid one. But it was
no reason for the American Secretary to give one hundred and fifty
miles of mountain line on this side the awarded line, where the
highlands attained three thousand feet of elevation, and turned
navigable rivers to the right and left. Lord Ashburton, in his
letter of the 13th of June, commences with this idea: that the
highlands described in the treaty could not be found, and had been
so admitted by American statesmen; and quotes a part of a despatch
from Mr. Secretary Madison in 1802 to Mr. Rufus King, then U. S.
Minister in London. I quote the whole despatch, and from this it
appears--1. That the part at which the treaty could not be executed,
for want of finding the highlands, was the _point_ to be constituted
by the intersection of the due north line from the head of the St.
Croix with the _line_ drawn along the highlands. 2. That this
_point_ might be substituted by a conventional one agreed upon by
the three commissioners. 3. That from this _point_, so agreed upon,
the _line_ was to go to the _highlands_, and to follow them wherever
they could be ascertained, to the head of the Connecticut River.
This is the clear sense of Mr. Madison's letter and Mr. Jefferson's
message; and it is to be very careless to confound this _point_
(which they admitted to be dubious, for want of highlands at that
place) with the _line_ itself, which was to run near 300 miles on
the elevations of a mountain reaching 3,000 feet high. The King
of the Netherlands took a great liberty with this _point_ when he
brought it to the St. John's River: our Secretary-negotiator took a
far greater liberty with it when he brought it to the head of the
Metjarmette creek; for it is only at the head of this creek that our
_line_ under the new treaty begins to climb the highlands. The King
of the Netherlands had some apology for his conventional _point_
and conventional _line_ to the head of the St. Francis--for the
highlands were sunk into table-land where the _point_ ought to be,
and which was the _terminus a quo_ of his conventional line: but
our negotiator had no apology at all for turning this conventional
line south, and extending it 110 miles through the level lands of
Maine, where the mountain highlands were all along in sight to
the west. It is impossible to plead the difficulty of finding the
highlands for this substitution of the lowland boundary, in the
whole distance from the head of the St. Francis, where the King of
the Netherlands fixed the commencement of our mountain line, to the
head of the Metjarmette, where our Secretary fixed its commencement.
Lord Ashburton's quotation from Mr. Madison's letter is partial and
incomplete: he quotes what answers his purpose, and is justifiable
in so doing. But what must we think of our Secretary-negotiator,
who neglected to quote the remainder of that letter, and show that
it was a conventional _point_, and not a conventional _line_, that
Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison proposed? and that this conventional
_point_ was merely to fix the north-west angle of Nova Scotia,
where, in fact, there were no highlands; after which, the line was
to proceed to the elevated ground dividing the waters, &c., and then
follow the highlands to the head of the Connecticut? Why did our
Secretary omit this correction of the British minister's quotation,
and thus enable him to use American names against us?
To mitigate the enormity of this barefaced sacrifice, our
Secretary-negotiator enters into a description of the soil, and
avers it to be unfit for cultivation. What if it were so? It is
still rich enough to bear cannon, and to carry the smuggler's
cart; and that is the crop Great Britain wishes to plant upon it.
Gibraltar and Malta are rocks; yet Great Britain would not exchange
them for the deltas of the Nile and of the Ganges. It is not for
growing potatoes and cabbages that she has fixed her eye, since
the late war, on this slice of Maine; but for trade and war--to
consolidate her power on our north-eastern border, and to realize
all the advantages which steam power gives to her new military
and naval, and commercial station, in Passamaquoddy Bay; and her
new route for trade and war through Halifax and Maine to Quebec.
She wants it for great military and commercial purposes; and it
is pitiful and contemptible in our negotiator to depreciate the
sacrifice as being poor land, unfit for cultivation, when power and
dominion, not potatoes and cabbages, is the object at stake. But
the fact is, that much of this land is good; so that the excuse for
surrendering it without compensation is unfounded as well as absurd.
I do not argue the question of title to the territory and boundaries
surrendered. That work has been done in the masterly report of the
senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. BUCHANAN], and in the resolve of the
Senate, unanimously adopted, which sanctioned it. That report and
that resolve were made and adopted in the year 1838--seven years
after the award of the King of the Netherlands--and vindicated our
title to the whole extent of the disputed territory. After this
vindication, it is not for me to argue the question of title. I
remit that task to abler and more appropriate hands--to the author
of the report of 1838. It will be for him to show the clearness
of our title under the treaty of 1783--how it was submitted to in
Mr. Jay's treaty of 1794, in Mr. Liston's correspondence of 1798,
in Mr. King's treaty of 1803, in Mr. Monroe's treaty of 1807, and
in the conferences at Ghent--where, after the late war had shown
the value of a military communication between Quebec and Halifax,
a variation of the line was solicited as a favor, by the British
commissioners, to establish that communication. It will be for him
also to show the progress of the British claim, from the solicited
favor of a road, to the assertion of title to half the territory,
and all the mountain frontier of Maine; and it will further be for
him to show how he is deserted now by those who stood by him then.
It will be for him to expose the fatal blunder at Ghent, in leaving
our question of title to the arbitration of a European sovereign,
instead of confiding the marking of the line to three commissioners,
as proposed in all the previous treaties, and agreed to in several
of them. To him, also, it will belong to expose the contradiction
between rejecting the award for adopting a conventional line, and
giving up part of the territory of Maine; and now negotiating a
treaty which adopts two conventional lines, gives up all that the
award did, and more too, and a mountain frontier besides; and then
pays money for Rouse's Point, which came to us without money under
the award. It will be for him to do these things. For what purpose?
some one will say. I answer, for the purpose of vindicating our
honor, our intelligence, and our good faith, in all this affair
with Great Britain; for the purpose of showing how we are wronged
in character and in rights by this treaty; and for the purpose of
preventing similar wrongs and blunders in time to come. Maine may
be dismembered, and her boundaries lost, and a great military power
established on three sides of her; but the Columbia is yet to be
saved? There we have a repetition of the Northeastern comedy of
errors on our part, and of groundless pretension on the British
part, growing up from a petition for joint possession for fishing
and hunting, to an assertion of title and threat of war; this
groundless pretension dignified into a claim by the lamentable
blunder of the convention of London in 1818. We may save the
Columbia by showing the folly, or worse, which has dismembered Maine.
The award of the King of the Netherlands was acceptable to the
British, and that award was infinitely better for us; and it was
not only accepted by the British, but insisted upon; and its
non-execution on our part was made a subject of remonstrance and
complaint against us. After this, can any one believe that the
"_peace mission_" was sent out to make war upon us if we did not
yield up near double as much as she then demanded? No, sir! there
is no truth in this cry of war. It is only a phantom conjured
up for the occasion. From Jackson and Van Buren the British
would gladly have accepted the awarded boundary: the federalists
prevented it, and even refused a new negotiation. Now, the same
federalists have yielded double as much, and are thanking God that
the British condescend to accept it. Such is federalism: and the
British well knew their time, and their men, when they selected
the present moment to send their special mission; to double their
demands; and to use arguments successfully, which would have been
indignantly repelled when a Jackson or a Van Buren was at the head
of the government--or, rather, would never have been used to such
Presidents. The conduct of our Secretary-negotiator is inexplicable.
He rejects the award, because it dismembers Maine; votes against new
negotiations with England; and announces himself ready to shoulder a
musket and march to the highland boundary, and there fight his death
for it. This was under Jackson's administration. He now becomes
negotiator himself; gives up the highland boundary in the first
note; gives up all that was awarded by the King of the Netherlands;
gives up 110 miles on this side of that award; gives up the mountain
barrier which covered Maine, and commanded the Halifax road to
Quebec; gives $500,000 for Rouse's Point, which the King of the
Netherland's allotted us as our right.
CHAPTER CIV.
BRITISH TREATY: NORTHWESTERN BOUNDARY: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH: EXTRACTS.
The line from Lake Superior to the Lake of the Woods never was
susceptible of a dispute. That from the Lake of the Woods to
the head of the Mississippi was disputable, and long disputed;
and it will not do to confound these two lines, so different in
themselves, and in their political history. The line from Lake
Superior was fixed by landmarks as permanent and notorious as the
great features of nature herself--the Isle Royale, in the northwest
of Lake Superior, and the chain of small lakes and rivers which
led from the north of that isle to the Lake of the Woods. Such were
the precise calls of the treaty of 1783, and no room for dispute
existed about it. The Isle Royale was a landmark in the calls of
the treaty, and a great and distinguished one it was--a large rocky
island in Lake Superior, far to the northwest, a hundred miles
from the southern shore; uninhabitable, and almost inaccessible
to the Indians in their canoes; and for that reason believed by
them to be the residence of the Great Spirit, and called in their
language, _Menong_. This isle was as notorious as the lake itself,
and was made a landmark in the treaty of 1783, and the boundary line
directed to go to the north of it, and then to follow the chain of
small lakes and rivers called "Long Lake," which constituted the
line of water communication between Lake Superior and the Lake of
the Woods, a communication which the Indians had followed beyond
the reach of tradition, which was the highway of nations, and which
all travellers and traders have followed since its existence became
known to our first discoverers. A line through the Lake Superior,
from its eastern outlet to the northward of the Isle Royale, leads
direct to this communication; and the line described was evidently
so described for the purpose of going to that precise communication.
The terms of the call are peculiar. Through every lake and every
water-course, from Lake Ontario to the Lake Huron, the language
of the treaty is the same: the line is to follow the _middle_ of
the lake. Through every river it is the same: the _middle_ of the
main channel is to be followed. On entering Lake Superior, this
language changes. It is no longer the _middle_ of the lake that
is to constitute the boundary, but a line through the lake to the
"northward" of Isle Royale--a boundary which, so far from dividing
the lake equally, leaves almost two-thirds of it on the American
side. The words of the treaty are these:
"Thence through Lake Superior, northward of the isles Royale and
Philippeaux, to the Long Lake; thence through the middle of said
Long Lake, and the water communication between it and the Lake
of the Woods, to the Lake of the Woods," &c.
These are the words of the call; and this variation of language,
and this different mode of dividing the lake, were for the obvious
purpose of taking the shortest course to the Long Lake, or Pigeon
River, which led to the Lake of the Woods. The communication through
these little lakes and rivers was evidently the object aimed at; and
the call to the north of Isle Royale was for the purpose of getting
to that object. The island itself was nothing, except as a landmark.
Though large (for it is near one hundred miles in circumference),
it has no value, neither for agriculture, commerce, nor war. It is
sterile, inaccessible, remote from shore; and fit for nothing but
the use to which the Indians consigned it--the fabulous residence of
a fabulous deity. Nobody wants it--neither Indians nor white people.
It was assigned to the United States in the treaty of 1783, not as a
possession, but as a landmark, and because the shortest line through
the lake, to the well-known route which led to the Lake of the
Woods, passed to the north of that isle. All this is evident from
the maps, and all the maps are here the same; for these features
of nature are so well defined that there has never been the least
dispute about them. The commissioners under the Ghent treaty (Gen.
Porter for the United States, and Mr. Barclay for Great Britain),
though disagreeing about several things, had no disagreement about
Isle Royale, and the passage of the line to the north of that isle.
In their separate reports, they agreed upon this; and this settled
the whole question. After going to the north of Isle Royale, to
get out of the lake at a known place, it would be absurd to turn
two hundred miles south, to get out of it at an unknown place. The
agreement upon Isle Royale settled the line to the Lake of the
Woods, as it was, and as it is: but it so happened that, in the
year 1790, the English traveller and fur-trader Mr. (afterwards
Sir Alexander) McKenzie, in his voyage to the Northwest, travelled
up this line of water communication, saw the advantages of its
exclusive possession by the British; and proposed in his "History
of the Fur Trade," to obtain it by turning the line down from Isle
Royale, near two hundred miles, to St. Louis River in the southwest
corner of the lake. The Earl of Selkirk, at the head of the Hudson's
Bay Company, repeated the suggestion; and the British government,
for ever attentive to the interests of its subjects, set up a claim,
through the Ghent commissioners, to the St. Louis River as the
boundary. Mr. Barclay made the question, but too faintly to obtain
even a reference to the arbitrator; and Lord Ashburton had too much
candor and honor to revive it. He set up no pretension to the St.
Louis River, as claimed by the Ghent commissioners: he presented
the Pigeon River as the "long lake" of the treaty of 1783, and only
asked for a point six miles south of that river; and he obtained all
he asked. His letter of the 17th of July is explicit on this point.
He says:
"In considering the second point, it really appears of little
importance to either party how the line be determined through
the wild country between Lake Superior and the Lake of the
Woods, but it is important that some line should be fixed and
known. I would propose that the line be taken from a point
about six miles south of Pigeon River, where the Grand Portage
commences on the lake, and continued along the line of the said
portage, alternately by land and water, to Lac la Pluie--the
existing route by land and by water remaining common by both
parties. This line has the advantage of being known, and
attended with no doubt or uncertainty in running it."
These are his Lordship's words: Pigeon River, instead of St. Louis
River! making no pretension to the four millions of acres of
fine mineral land supposed to have been saved between these two
rivers; and not even alluding to the absurd pretension of the Ghent
commissioner! After this, what are we to think of the candor and
veracity of an official paper, which would make a merit of having
saved four millions of acres of fine mineral land, "northward of the
claim set up by the British commissioner under the Ghent treaty?"
What must we think of the candor of a paper which boasts of having
"included this within the United States," when it was never out of
the United States? If there is any merit in the case, it is in Lord
Ashburton--in his not having claimed the 200 miles between Pigeon
River and St. Louis River. What he claimed, he got; and that was
the southern line, commencing six miles south of Pigeon River, and
running south of the true line to Rainy Lake. He got this; making
a difference of some hundreds of thousands of acres, and giving to
the British the exclusive possession of the best route; and a joint
possession of the one which is made the boundary. To understand the
value of this concession, it must be known that there are two lines
of communication from the Lake Superior to the Lake of the Woods,
both beginning at or near the mouth of Pigeon River; that these
lines are the channels of trade and travelling, both for Indians,
and the fur-traders; that they are water communications; and that it
was a great point with the British, in their trade and intercourse
with the Indians, to have the exclusive dominion of the best
communication, and a joint possession with us of the other. This is
what Lord Ashburton claimed--what the treaty gave him--and what our
Secretary-negotiator became his agent and solicitor to obtain for
him. I quote the Secretary's letter of the 25th of July to Mr. James
Ferguson, and the answers of Mr. Ferguson of the same date, and also
the letter of Mr. Joseph Delafield, of the 20th of July, for the
truth of what I say. From these letters, it will be seen that our
Secretary put himself to the trouble to hunt testimony to justify
his surrender of the northern route to the British; that he put
leading questions to his witnesses, to get the information which he
wanted; and that he sought to cover the sacrifice, by depreciating
the agricultural value of the land, and treating the difference
between the lines as a thing of no importance. Here is the letter. I
read an extract from it:
"What is the general nature of the country between the mouth
of Pigeon River and the Rainy Lake? Of what formation is it,
and how is its surface? and will any considerable part of its
area be fit for cultivation? Are its waters active and running
streams, as in other parts of the United States? Or are they
dead lakes, swamps, and morasses? If the latter be their general
character, at what point, as you proceed westward, do the waters
receive a more decided character as running streams?
"There are said to be two lines of communication, each partly by
water and partly by portages, from the neighborhood of Pigeon
River to the Rainy Lake: one by way of Fowl Lake, the Saganaga
Lake, and the Cypress Lake; the other by way of Arrow River
and Lake; then by way of Saganaga Lake, and through the river
Maligne, meeting the other route at Lake la Croix, and through
the river Namekan to the Rainy Lake. Do you know any reason for
attaching great preference to either of these two lines? Or do
you consider it of no importance, in any point of view, which
may be agreed to? Please be full and particular on these several
points."
Here are leading questions, such as the rules of evidence forbid to
be put to any witness, and the answers to which would be suppressed
by the order of any court in England or America. They are called
"leading," because they _lead_ the witness to the answer which
the lawyer wants; and thereby tend to the perversion of justice.
The witnesses are here led to two points: first, that the country
between the two routes or lines is worth nothing for agriculture;
secondly, that it is of no importance to the United States which
of the two lines is established for the boundary. Thus led to the
desired points, the witnesses answer. Mr. Ferguson says:
"As an agricultural district, this region will always be
valueless. The pine timber is of high growth, equal for spars,
perhaps, to the Norway pine, and may, perhaps, in time, find a
market; but there are no alluvions, no arable lands, and the
whole country may be described as one waste of rock and water.
"You have desired me also to express an opinion as to any
preference which I may know to exist between the several lines
claimed as boundaries through this country, between the United
States and Great Britain.
"Considering that Great Britain abandons her claim by the
Fond du Lac and the St. Louis River; cedes also Sugar Island
(otherwise called St. George's Island) in the St. Marie
River; and agrees, generally, to a boundary following the old
commercial route, commencing at the Pigeon River, I do not
think that any reasonable ground exists to prevent a final
determination of this part of the boundary."
And Mr. Delafield adds:
"As an agricultural district, it has no value or interest,
even prospectively, in my opinion. If the climate were
suitable (which it is not), I can only say that I never saw,
in my explorations there, tillable land enough to sustain
any permanent population sufficiently numerous to justify
other settlements than those of the fur-traders; and, I might
add, fishermen. The fur-traders there occupied nearly all
those places; and the opinion now expressed is the only one
I ever heard entertained by those most experienced in these
northwestern regions.
"There is, nevertheless, much interest felt by the fur-traders
on this subject of boundary. To them, it is of much importance,
as they conceive; and it is, in fact, of national importance.
Had the British commissioner consented to proceed by the Pigeon
River (which is the Long Lake of Mitchell's map), it is probable
there would have been an agreement. There were several reasons
for his pertinacity, and for this disagreement; which belong,
however, to the private history of the commission, and can
be stated when required. The Pigeon River is a continuous
water-course. The St. George's Island, in the St. Marie River,
is a valuable island, and worth as much, perhaps, as most of the
country between the Pigeon River and Dog River route, claimed
for the United States, in an agricultural sense."
These are the answers; and while they are conclusive upon the
agricultural character of the country between the two routes, and
present it as of no value; yet, on the relative importance of the
routes as boundaries, they refuse to follow the _lead_ which the
question held out to them, and show that, as commercial routes,
and, consequently, as commanding the Indians and their trade, a
question of national importance is involved. Mr. Delafield says
the fur-traders feel much interest in this boundary: to them, it
is of much importance; and it is, in fact, of national importance.
These are the words of Mr. Delafield; and they show the reason why
Lord Ashburton was so tenacious of this change in the boundary. He
wanted it for the benefit of the fur-trade, and for the consequent
command which it would give the British over the Indians in time
of war. All this is apparent; yet our Secretary would only look at
it as a corn and potato region! And finding it not good for that
purpose, he surrenders it to the British! Both the witnesses look
upon it as a sacrifice on the part of the United States, and suppose
some equivalent in other parts of the boundary was received for it.
There was no such equivalent: and thus this surrender becomes a
gratuitous sacrifice on the part of the United States, aggravated by
the condescension of the American Secretary to act as the attorney
of the British minister, and seeking testimony by unfair and illegal
questions; and then disregarding the part of the answers which made
against his design.
CHAPTER CV.
BRITISH TREATY: EXTRADITION ARTICLE: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH: EXTRACT.
I proceed to the third subject and last article in the treaty--the
article which stipulates for the mutual surrender of fugitive
criminals. And here again we are at fault for these same protocols.
Not one word is found in the correspondence upon this subject, the
brief note excepted of Lord Ashburton of the 9th of August--the
day of the signature of the treaty--to say that its ratification
would require the consent of the British parliament, and would
necessarily be delayed until the parliament met. Except this note,
not a word is found upon the subject; and this gives no light
upon its origin, progress, and formation--nothing to show with
whom it originated--what necessity for it in this advanced age
of civilization, when the comity of nations delivers up fugitive
offenders upon all proper occasions--and when explanations upon each
head of offences, and each class of fugitives, is so indispensable
to the right understanding and the safe execution of the treaty.
Total and black darkness on all these points. Nor is any ray of
light found in the President's brief paragraphs in relation to it.
Those paragraphs (the work of his Secretary, of course) are limited
to the commendation of the article, and are insidiously deceptive,
as I shall show at the proper time. It tells us nothing that we
want to know upon the origin and design of the article, and how
far it applies to the largest class of fugitive offenders from the
United States--the slaves who escape with their master's property,
or after taking his life--into Canada and the British West Indies.
The message is as silent as the correspondence on all these points;
and it is only from looking into past history, and contemporaneous
circumstances, that we can search for the origin and design of this
stipulation, so unnecessary in the present state of international
courtesy, and so useless, unless something unusual and extraordinary
is intended. Looking into these sources, and we are authorized
to refer the origin and design of the stipulation to the British
minister, and to consider it as one of the objects of the special
mission with which we have been honored. Be this as it may, I do
not like the article. Though fair upon its face, it is difficult
of execution. As a general proposition, atrocious offenders, and
especially between neighboring nations, ought to be given up; but
that is better done as an affair of consent and discretion, than
under the constraints and embarrassments of a treaty obligation.
Political offenders ought not to be given up; but under the stern
requisitions of a treaty obligation, and the benefit of an _ex
parte_ accusation, political offenders may be given up for murder,
or other crimes, real or pretended; and then dealt with as their
government pleases. Innocent persons should not be harassed with
groundless accusations; and there is no limit to these vexations,
if all emigrants are placed at the mercy of malevolent informers,
subjected to arrest in a new and strange land, examined upon _ex
parte_ testimony, and sent back for trial if a probable case is made
out against them.
This is a subject long since considered in our country, and on which
we have the benefit both of wise opinions and of some experience.
Mr. Jefferson explored the whole subject when he was Secretary of
State under President Washington, and came to the conclusion that
these surrenders could only be made under three limitations:--1.
Between coterminous countries. 2. For high offences. 3. A special
provision against political offenders. Under these limitations, as
far back as the year 1793, Mr. Jefferson proposed to Great Britain
and Spain (the only countries with which we held coterminous
dominions, and only for their adjacent provinces) a mutual delivery
of fugitive criminals. His proposition was in these words:
"Any person having committed murder of malice prepense, not of
the nature of treason, or forgery, within the United States or
the Spanish provinces _adjoining_ thereto, and fleeing from the
justice of the country, shall be delivered up by the government
where he shall be found, to that from which he fled, whenever
demanded by the same."
This was the proposition of that great statesman: and how different
from those which we find in this treaty! Instead of being confined
to coterminous dominions, the jurisdiction of the country is taken
for the theatre of the crime; and that includes, on the part of
Great Britain, possessions all over the world, and every ship on
every sea that sails under her flag. Instead of being confined to
two offences of high degree--murder and forgery--one against life,
the other against property--this article extends to seven offences;
some of which may be incurred for a shilling's worth of property,
and another of them without touching or injuring a human being.
Instead of a special provision in favor of political offenders, the
insurgent or rebel may be given up for murder, and then hanged and
quartered for treason; and in the long catalogue of seven offences,
a charge may be made, and an _ex parte_ case established, against
any political offender which the British government shall choose to
pursue.
To palliate this article, and render it more acceptable to us, we
are informed that it is copied from the 27th article of Mr. Jay's
treaty. That apology for it, even if exactly true, would be but
a poor recommendation of it to the people of the United States.
Mr. Jay's treaty was no favorite with the American people, and
especially with that part of the people which constituted the
republican party. Least of all was this 27th article a favorite with
them. It was under that article that the famous Jonathan Robbins,
alias Thomas Nash, was surrendered--a surrender which contributed
largely to the defeat of Mr. Adams, and the overthrow of the federal
party, in 1800. The apology would be poor, if true: but it happens
to be not exactly true. The article in the Webster treaty differs
widely from the one in Jay's treaty--and all for the worse. The
imitation is far worse than the original--about as much worse as
modern whiggery is worse than ancient federalism. Here are the two
articles; let us compare them:
MR. WEBSTER'S TREATY.
"_Article 10._--It is agreed that the United States and her
Britannic Majesty shall, upon mutual requisitions by them, or
their ministers, officers, or authorities, respectively made,
deliver up to justice all persons who, being charged with the
crime of murder, or assault with intent to commit murder, or
piracy, or arson, or robbery, or forgery, or the utterance of
forged papers committed within the jurisdiction of either, shall
seek an asylum, or shall be found, within the territories of
the other: provided, that this shall only be done, upon such
evidence of criminality as, according to the laws of the place
where the fugitive or person so charged shall be found, would
justify his apprehension and commitment for trial, if the crime
or offence had there been committed; and the respective judges
and other magistrates shall have power, jurisdiction, and
authority, upon complaint made under oath, to issue a warrant
for the apprehension of the fugitive or person so charged, that
he may be brought before such judges, or other magistrates,
respectively, to the end that the evidence of criminality may
be heard and considered; and if, on such hearing, the evidence
be deemed sufficient to sustain the charge, it shall be the duty
of the examining judge, or magistrate, to certify the same to
the proper executive authority, that a warrant may issue for the
surrender of such fugitive. The expense of such apprehension and
delivery shall be borne and defrayed by the party who makes the
requisition, and receives the fugitive."
MR. JAY'S TREATY.
"_Article 27._--It is further agreed that his Majesty and the
United States, on mutual requisitions by them, respectively,
or by their respective ministers, or officers, authorized to
make the same, will deliver up to justice all persons who,
being charged with murder, or forgery, committed within the
jurisdiction of either, shall seek an asylum within any of
the countries of the other: provided, that this shall only be
done on such evidence of criminality as, according to the laws
of the place where the fugitive or person so charged shall be
found, would justify his apprehension and commitment for trial
if the offence had there been committed. The expense of such
apprehension and delivery shall be borne and defrayed by those
who make the requisition, and receive the fugitive."
These are the two articles, and the difference between them is great
and striking. First, the number of offences for which delivery of
the offender is to be made, is much greater in the present treaty.
Mr. Jay's article is limited to two offences--murder and forgery:
the two proposed by Mr. Jefferson; but without his qualification
to exclude political offences, and to confine the deliveries to
offenders from coterminous dominions. The present treaty embraces
these two, and five others, making seven in the whole. The five
added offences are--assault, with intent to commit murder; piracy;
robbery; arson; and the utterance of forged paper. These additional
five offences, though high in name, might be very small in degree.
Assault, with intent to murder, might be without touching or hurting
any person; for, to lift a weapon at a person within striking
distance, without striking, is an assault: to level a fire-arm
at a person within carrying distance, and without firing, is an
assault; and the offence being in the intent, is difficult of
proof. Mr. Jefferson excluded it, and so did Jay's treaty; because
the offence was too small and too equivocal to be made a matter of
international arrangement. Piracy was excluded, because it was
absurd to speak of a pirate's country. He has no country. He is
_hostis humani generis_--the enemy of the human race; and is hung
wherever he is caught. The robbery might be of a shilling's worth of
bread; the arson, of burning a straw shed; the utterance of forged
paper, might be the emission or passing of a counterfeit sixpence.
All these were excluded from Jay's treaty, because of their possible
insignificance, and the door they opened to abuse in harassing the
innocent, and in multiplying the chances for getting hold of a
political offender for some other offence, and then punishing him
for his politics.
Striking as these differences are between the present article
and that of Mr. Jay's treaty, there is a still more essential
difference in another part; and a difference which nullifies the
article in its only material bearing in our favor. It is this: Mr.
Jay's treaty referred the delivery of the fugitive to the executive
power. This treaty intervenes the judiciary, and requires two
decisions from a judge or magistrate before the governor can act.
This nullifies the treaty in all that relates to fugitive slaves
guilty of crimes against their masters. In the eye of the British
law, they have no master, and can commit no offence against such
a person in asserting their liberty against him, even unto death.
A slave may kill his master, if necessary to his escape. This is
legal under British law; and, in the present state of abolition
feeling throughout the British dominions, such killing would not
only be considered fair, but in the highest degree meritorious and
laudable. What chance for the recovery of such a slave under this
treaty? Read it--the concluding part--after the word "committed,"
and see what is the process to be gone through. Complaint is to
be made to a British judge or justice. The fugitive is brought
before this judge or justice, that the evidence of the criminality
may be heard and considered--such evidence as would justify the
apprehension, commitment, and trial of the party, if the offence
had been committed there. If, upon this hearing, the evidence be
deemed sufficient to sustain the charge, the judge or magistrate is
to certify the fact to the executive authority; and then, and not
until then, the surrender can be made. This is the process; and in
all this the new treaty differs from Jay's. Under his treaty the
delivery was a ministerial act, referring itself to the authority
of the governor: under this treaty, it becomes a judicial act,
referring itself to the discretion of the judge, who must twice
decide against the slave (first, in issuing the warrant; and next,
in trying it) before the governor can order the surrender. Twice
judicial discretion interposes a barrier, which cannot be forced;
and behind which the slave, who has robbed or killed his master,
may repose in safety. What evidence of criminality will satisfy the
judge, when the act itself is no crime in his eyes, or under his
laws, and when all his sympathies are on the side of the slave? What
chance would there be for the judicial surrender of offending slaves
in the British dominions, under this treaty, when the provisions
of our own constitution, within the States of our own Union, in
relation to fugitive slaves, cannot be executed? We all know that a
judicial trial is immunity to a slave pursued by his owner, in many
of our own States. Can such trials be expected to result better for
the owner in the British dominions, where the relation of master
and slave is not admitted, and where abolitionism is the policy of
the government, the voice of the law, and the spirit of the people?
Killing his master in defence of his liberty, is no offence in the
eye of British law or British people; and no slave will ever be
given up for it.
(Mr. WRIGHT here said, that counterfeiting American securities, or
bank notes, was no offence in Canada; and the same question might
arise there in relation to forgers.)
Mr. BENTON resumed. Better far to leave things as they are. Forgers
are now given up in Canada, by executive authority, when they fly
to that province. This is done in the spirit of good neighborhood;
and because all honest governments have an interest in suppressing
crimes, and repelling criminals. The governor acts from a sense of
propriety, and the dictates of decency and justice. Not so with the
judge. He must go by the law; and when there is no law against the
offence, he has nothing to justify him in delivering the offender.
Conventions for the mutual surrender of large offenders, where
dominions are coterminous, might be proper. Limited, as proposed by
Mr. Jefferson in 1793, and they might be beneficial in suppression
of border crimes and the preservation of order and justice. But
extended as this is to a long list of offenders--unrestricted as
it is in the case of murder--applying to dominions in all parts of
the world, and to ships in every sea--it can be nothing but the
source of individual annoyance and national recrimination. Besides,
if we surrender to Great Britain, why not to Russia, Prussia,
Austria, France, and all the countries of the world? If we give up
the Irishman to England, why not the Pole to Russia, the Italian
to Austria, the German to his prince; and so on throughout the
catalogue of nations? Sir, the article is a pestiferous one; and
as it is determinable upon notice, it will become the duty of the
American people to elect a President who will give the notice, and
so put an end to its existence.
Addressing itself to the natural feelings of the country, against
high crimes and border offenders, and in favor of political liberty,
the message of the President communicating and recommending this
treaty to us, carefully presents this article as conforming to our
feelings in all these particulars. It is represented as applicable
only to high crimes--to border offenders; and to offences not
political. In all this, the message is disingenuous and deceptive,
and calculated to ravish from the ignorant and the thoughtless an
applause to which the treaty is not entitled. It says:
"The surrender to justice of persons who, having committed high
crimes, seek an asylum in the territories of a _neighboring_
nation, would seem to be an act due to the cause of general
justice, and properly belonging to the present state of
civilization and intercourse. The _British provinces_ of North
America are separated from the States of the Union by a line
of several thousand miles; and, along portions of this line,
the amount of population on either side is quite considerable,
_while the passage of the boundary is always easy_.
"Offenders against the law _on the one side transfer themselves
to the other_. Sometimes, with great difficulty they are brought
to justice; but very often they wholly escape. A consciousness
of immunity, from the power of avoiding justice in this way,
instigates the unprincipled and reckless to the commission of
offences; _and the peace and good neighborhood of the border are
consequently often disturbed_.
"In the case of offenders fleeing from Canada into the United
States, the governors of States are often applied to for their
surrender; and questions of a very embarrassing nature arise
from these applications. It has been thought highly important,
therefore, to provide for the whole case by a proper treaty
stipulation. The article on the subject, in the proposed treaty,
is carefully confined to such offences as all mankind agree
to regard as heinous and destructive of the security of life
and of property. In this careful and specific enumeration of
crimes, the object has been to exclude all political offences,
or criminal charges arising from wars or intestine commotions.
Treason, misprision of treason, libels, desertion from military
service, and other offences of a similar character, are
excluded."
In these phrases the message recommends the article to the Senate
and the country; and yet nothing could be more fallacious and
deceptive than such a recommendation. It confines the surrender to
border offenders--Canadian fugitives: yet the treaty extends it
to all persons committing offences under the "_jurisdiction_" of
Great Britain--a term which includes all her territory throughout
the world, and every ship or fort over which her flag waves. The
message confines the surrender to high crimes: yet we have seen
that the treaty includes crimes which may be of low degree--low
indeed! A hare or a partridge from a preserve; a loaf of bread
to sustain life; a sixpenny counterfeit note passed; a shed
burnt; a weapon lifted, without striking! The message says all
political crimes, all treasons, misprision of treason, libels, and
desertions are excluded. The treaty shows that these offences are
not excluded--that the limitations proposed by Mr. Jefferson are
not inserted; and, consequently, under the head of murder, the
insurgent, the rebel, and the traitor who has shed blood, may be
given up; and so of other offences. When once surrendered, he may be
tried for any thing. The fate of Jonathan Robbins, alias Nash, is a
good illustration of all this. He was a British sailor--was guilty
of mutiny, murder, and piracy on the frigate Hermione--deserted
to the United States--was demanded by the British minister as a
murderer under Jay's treaty--given up as a murderer--then tried by a
court-martial on board a man-of-war for mutiny, murder, desertion,
and piracy--found guilty--executed--and his body hung in chains
from the yard-arm of a man-of-war. And so it would be again. The
man given up for one offence, would be tried for another; and in
the number and insignificance of the offences for which he might be
surrendered, there would be no difficulty in reaching any victim
that a foreign government chose to pursue. If this article had
been in force in the time of the Irish rebellion, and Lord Edward
Fitzgerald had escaped to the United States after wounding, as he
did, several of the myrmidons who arrested him, he might have been
demanded as a fugitive from justice, for the assault with intent to
kill; and then tried for treason, and hanged and quartered; and such
will be the operation of the article if it continues.
CHAPTER CVI.
BRITISH TREATY; AFRICAN SQUADRON FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF THE
SLAVE TRADE; MR. BENTON'S SPEECH; EXTRACT.
The suppression of the African slave-trade is the second subject
included in the treaty; and here the regret renews itself at the
absence of all the customary lights upon the origin and progress
of treaty stipulations. No minutes of conference; no protocols; no
draughts or counterdraughts; no diplomatic notes; not a word of any
kind from one negotiator to the other. Nothing in relation to the
subject, in the shape of negotiation, is communicated to us. Even
the section of the correspondence entitled "_Suppression of the
slave-trade_"--even this section professedly devoted to the subject,
contains not a syllable upon it from the negotiators to each other,
or to their Governments; but opens and closes with communications
from American naval officers, evidently extracted from them by the
American negotiator, to justify the forthcoming of preconceived and
foregone conclusions. Never since the art of writing was invented
could there have been a treaty of such magnitude negotiated with
such total absence of necessary light upon the history of its
formation. Lamentable as is this defect of light upon the formation
of the treaty generally, it becomes particularly so at this point,
where a stipulation new, delicate, and embarrassing, has been
unexpectedly introduced, and falls upon us as abruptly as if it fell
from the clouds. In the absence of all appropriate information from
the negotiators themselves, I am driven to glean among the scanty
paragraphs of the President's message, and in the answers of the
naval officers to the Secretary's inquiries. Though silent as to the
origin and progress of the proposition for this novel alliance, they
still show the important particular of the motives which caused it.
Passing from the political consequences of this
entanglement--consequences which no human foresight can reach--I
come to the immediate and practical effects which lie within our
view, and which display the enormous inexpediency of the measure.
First: the expense in money--an item which would seem to be entitled
to some regard in the present deplorable state of the treasury--in
the present cry for retrenchment--and in the present heavy taxation
upon the comforts and necessaries of life. This expense for 80
guns will be about $750,000 per annum, exclusive of repairs and
loss of lives. I speak of the whole expense, as part of the naval
establishment of the United States, and not of the mere expense
of working the ships after they have gone to sea. Nine thousand
dollars per gun is about the expense of the establishment; 80 guns
would be $720,000 per annum, which is $3,600,000 for five years.
But the squadron is not limited to a maximum of 80 guns; that is
the minimum limit: it is to be 80 guns "at the least." And if the
party which granted these 80 shall continue in power, Great Britain
may find it as easy to double the number, as it was to obtain the
first eighty. Nor is the time limited to five years; it is only
determinable after that period by giving notice; a notice not to be
expected from those who made the treaty. At the least, then, the
moneyed expense is to be $3,600,000; if the present party continues
in power, it may double or treble that amount; and this, besides the
cost of the ships. Such is the moneyed expense. In ships, the wear
and tear of vessels must be great. We are to prepare, equip, and
maintain in service, on a coast 4,000 miles from home, the adequate
number of vessels to carry these 80 guns. It is not sufficient
to send the number there; they must be kept up and maintained in
service there; and this will require constant expenses to repair
injuries, supply losses and cover casualties. In the employment of
men, and the waste of life and health, the expenditure must be
large. Ten men and two officers to the gun, is the smallest estimate
that can be admitted. This would require a complement of 960 men.
Including all the necessary equipage of the ship, and above 1,000
persons will be constantly required. These are to be employed at a
vast distance from home; on a savage coast; in a perilous service;
on both sides of the equator; and in a climate which is death to
the white race. This waste of men--this wear and tear of life and
constitution--should stand for something in a Christian land, and
in this age of roaming philanthropy; unless, indeed, in excessive
love for the blacks, it is deemed meritorious to destroy the whites.
The field of operations for this squadron is great; the term "coast
of Africa" having an immense application in the vocabulary of the
slave-trade. On the western coast of Africa, according to the
replies of the naval officers Bell and Paine, the trade is carried
on from Senegal to Cape Frio--a distance of 3,600 miles, following
its windings as the watching squadrons would have to go. But the
track of the slavers between Africa and America has to be watched,
as well as the immediate coast; and this embraces a space in the
ocean of 35 degrees on each side of the equator (say four thousand
miles), and covering the American coast from Cuba to Rio Janeiro;
so that the coast of Africa--the western coast alone--embraces a
diagram of the ocean of near 4,000 miles every way, having the
equator in the centre, and bounded east and west by the New and
the Old World. This is for the western coast only: the eastern is
nearly as large. The same naval officers say that a large trade
in negroes is carried on in the Mahometan countries bordering on
the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and in the Portuguese East India
colonies; and, what is worthy to be told, it is also carried on
in the British presidency of Bombay, and other British Asiatic
possessions. It is true, the officers say the American slavers are
not yet there; but go there they will, according to all the laws of
trading and hunting, the moment they are disturbed, or the trade
fails on the western coast. Wherever the trade exists, the combined
powers must follow it: for good is not to be done by halves, and
philanthropy is not to be circumscribed by coasts and latitudes.
Among all the strange features in the comedy of errors which has
ended in this treaty that of sending American ministers abroad, to
close the markets of the world against the slave-trade, is the most
striking. Not content with the expenses, loss of life, and political
entanglement of this alliance, we must electioneer for insults, and
send ministers abroad to receive, pocket, and bring them home.
In what circumstances do we undertake all this fine work? What
is our condition at home, while thus going abroad in search of
employment? We raise 1,000 men for foreign service, while reducing
our little army at home! We send ships to the coast of Africa, while
dismounting our dragoons on the frontiers of Missouri and Arkansas!
We protect Africa from slave-dealers, and abandon Florida to savage
butchery! We send cannon, shot, shells, powder, lead, bombs, and
balls, to Africa, while denying arms and ammunition to the young
men who go to Florida! We give food, clothes, pay, to the men who
go to Africa, and deny rations even to those who go to Florida! We
cry out for retrenchment, and scatter $3,600,000 at one broad cast
of the hand! We tax tea and coffee, and send the money to Africa!
We are borrowing and taxing, and striking paper money, and reducing
expenses at home, when engaging in this new and vast expense for the
defence of Africa! What madness and folly! Has Don Quixote come to
life, and placed himself at the head of our Government, and taken
the negroes of Africa, instead of the damsels of Spain, for the
objects of his chivalrous protection?
The slave-trade is diabolical and infamous; but Great Britain is not
the country to read us a lesson upon its atrocity, or to stimulate
our exertions to suppress it. The nation which, at the peace of
Utrecht, made the _asiento_--the slave contract--a condition of
peace, fighting on till she obtained it; the nation which entailed
African slavery upon us--which rejected our colonial statutes for
its suppression[4]--which has many, many ten millions, of white
subjects in Europe and in Asia in greater slavery of body and
mind, in more bodily misery and mental darkness, than any black
slaves in the United States;--such a nation has no right to cajole
or to dragoon us into alliances and expenses for the suppression
of slavery on the coast of Africa. We have done our part on that
subject. Considering the example and instruction we had from Great
Britain, we have done a wonderful part. The constitution of the
United States, mainly made by slaveholding States, authorized
Congress to put an end to the importation of slaves by a given day.
Anticipating the limited day by legislative action, the Congress
had the law ready to take effect on the day permitted by the
constitution. On the 1st day of January, 1808, Thomas Jefferson
being President of the United States, the importation of slaves
became unlawful and criminal. A subsequent act of Congress following
up the idea of Mr. Jefferson in his first draught of the Declaration
of Independence, qualified the crime as piratical, and delivered up
its pursuers to the sword of the law, and to the vengeance of the
world, as the enemies of the human race. Vessels of war cruising
on the coast of Africa, under our act of 1819, have been directed
to search our own vessels--to arrest the violators of the law,
and bring them in--the ships for confiscation, and the men for
punishment. This was doing enough--enough for a young country,
far remote in the New World, and whose policy is to avoid foreign
connections and entangling alliances. We did this voluntarily,
without instigation, and without supervision from abroad; and now
there can be no necessity for Great Britain to assume a superiority
over us in this particular, and bind us in treaty stipulations,
which destroy all the merit of a voluntary action. We have done
enough; and it is no part of our business to exalt still higher
the fanatical spirit of abolition, which is now become the
stalking-horse of nations and of political powers. Our country
contains many slaves, derived from Africa; and, while holding these,
it is neither politic nor decent to join the crusade of European
powers to put down the African slave-trade. From combinations of
powers against the present slave-takers, there is but a step to the
combination of the same powers against the present slaveholders;
and it is not for the United States to join in the first movement,
which leads to the second. "No entangling alliances" should be her
motto! And as for her part in preventing the foreign slave-trade,
it is sufficient that she prevents her own citizens, in her own
way, from engaging in it; and that she takes care to become neither
the instrument, nor the victim, of European combinations for its
suppression.
[4] He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating
its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a
distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them
into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in
their transportation thither. This piratical warfare--the opprobrium
of _infidel_ powers--is the warfare of the Christian king of Great
Britain, determined to keep open a market where _men_ should be
bought and sold. He has prostituted his negative for suppressing
every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable
commerce; and, that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact
of distinguished dye, he is now exciting the very people to rise
in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has
deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them;
thus paying off former crimes committed against the _liberties_
of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against
the _lives_ of another.--[_Original draught of the Declaration of
Independence, as drawn by Mr. Jefferson, and before it was altered
by the committee._]
The eighth and ninth articles of the treaty bind us to this naval
alliance with Great Britain. By these articles we stipulate to keep
a squadron of at least 80 guns on the coast of Africa for five
years for the suppression of this trade--with a further stipulation
to keep it up until one or the other party shall give notice of a
design to retire from it. This is the insidious way of getting an
onerous measure saddled upon the country. Short-sighted people are
fascinated with the idea of being able to get rid of the burden
when they please; but such burdens are always found to be the most
interminable. In this case Great Britain will never give the notice:
our government will not without a congressional recommendation, and
it will be found difficult to unite the two Houses in a request. The
stipulation may be considered permanent under the delusion of a five
years' limit, and an optional continuance.
The papers communicated do not show at whose instance these articles
were inserted; and the absence of all minutes of conferences leaves
us at a loss to trace their origin and progress in the hands of
the negotiators. The little that is seen would indicate its origin
to be wholly American; evidence _aliunde_ proves it to be wholly
British; and that our Secretary-negotiator was only doing the work
of the British minister in assuming the ostensible paternity of
the articles. In the papers communicated, there is not a syllable
upon the subject from Lord Ashburton. His finger is not seen in
the affair. Mr. Webster appears as sole mover and conductor of the
proposition. In his letter of the 30th of April to Captains Bell and
Paine of the United States navy, he first approaches the subject,
and opens it with a series of questions on the African slave-trade.
This draws forth the answers which I have already shown. This is
the commencement of the business. And here we are struck with the
curious fact, that this letter of inquiry, laying the foundation
for a novel and extraordinary article in the treaty, bears date
44 days before the first written communication from the British
to the American negotiator! and 47 days before the first written
communication from Mr. Webster to Lord Ashburton! It would seem that
much was done by word of mouth before pen was put to paper; and that
in this most essential part of the negotiations, pen was not put
to paper at all, from one negotiator to the other, throughout the
whole affair. Lord Ashburton's name is never found in connection
with the subject! Mr. Webster's only in the notes of inquiry to
the American naval officers. Even in these he does not mention the
treaty, nor allude to the negotiation, nor indicate the purpose
for which information was sought! So that this most extraordinary
article is without a clew to its history, and stands in the treaty
as if it had fallen from the clouds, and chanced to lodge there!
Even the President's message, which undertakes to account for the
article, and to justify it, is silent on the point, though laboring
through a mass of ambiguities and obscurities, evidently calculated
to raise the inference that it originated with us. From the papers
communicated, it is an American proposition, of which the British
negotiator knew nothing until he signed the treaty. That is the
first place where his name is seen in conjunction with it, or seen
in a place to authorize the belief that he knew of it. Yet, it is
certainly a British proposition; it is certainly a British article.
Since the year 1806 Great Britain has been endeavoring to get the
United States into some sort of arrangement for co-operation in the
suppression of the African slave-trade. It was slightly attempted in
Mr. Jefferson's time--again at Ghent; but the warning-voice of the
Father of his country--_no entangling alliances_--saved us on each
occasion. Now we are yoked--yoked in with the British on the coast
of Africa; and when we can get free from it, no mortal can foresee.
CHAPTER CVII.
EXPENSE OF THE NAVY: WASTE OF MONEY NECESSITY OF A NAVAL PEACE
ESTABLISHMENT, AND OF A NAVAL POLICY.
The naval policy of the United States was a question of party
division from the origin of parties in the early years of the
government--the federal party favoring a strong and splendid navy,
the republican a moderate establishment, adapted to the purposes of
defence more than of offence: and this line of division between the
parties (under whatsoever names they have since worn), continues
more or less perceptible to the present time. In this time (the
administration of Mr. Tyler) all the branches being of the same
political party, and retaining the early principles of the party
under the name of whig, the policy for a great navy developed itself
with great vigor. The new Secretary, Mr. Upshur, recommended a large
increase of ships, seamen, and officers, involving an additional
expense of about two millions and a half in the naval branch of the
service; and that at a time when a deficit of fourteen millions
was announced, and a resort to taxes, loans and treasury notes
recommended to make it up; and when no emergency required increase
in that branch of the public service. Such a recommendation brought
on a debate in which the policy of a great navy was discussed--the
necessity of a naval peace establishment was urged--the cost of
our establishment examined--and the waste of money in the naval
department severely exposed. Mr. Calhoun, always attentive to the
economical working of the government, opened the discussion on this
interesting point.
"The aggregate expense of the British navy in the year 1840
amounted to 4,980,353 pounds sterling, deducting the expense
of transport for troops and convicts, which does not properly
belong to the navy. That sum, at $4 80 to the pound sterling, is
equal to $23,905,694 46. The navy was composed of 392 vessels
of war of all descriptions, leaving out 36 steam vessels in the
packet service, and 23 sloops fitted for foreign packets. Of the
392, 98 were line of battle ships, of which 19 were building;
116 frigates, of which 14 were building; 68 sloops, of which 13
were building; 44 steam vessels, of which 16 were building; and
66 gun brigs, schooners, and cutters, of which 12 were building.
"The effective force of the year--that which was in actual
service, consisted of 3,400 officers, 3,998 petty officers,
12,846 seamen, and 9,000 marines, making an aggregate of 29,244.
The number of vessels in actual service were 175, of which 24
were line of battle ships, 31 frigates, 30 steam vessels, and 45
gun brigs, schooners, and cutters, not including the 30 steamers
and 24 sloops in the packet service, at an average expenditure
of $573 for each individual, including officers, petty officers,
seamen, and marines.
"Our navy is composed, at present, according to the report
of the Secretary accompanying the President's message, of 67
vessels--of which 11 are line of battle ships, 17 frigates,
18 sloops of war, 2 brigs, 4 schooners, 4 steamers, 3 store
ships, 3 receiving vessels, and 5 small schooners. The estimates
for the year are made on the assumption, that there will be
in service during the year, 2 ships of the line, 1 razee, 6
frigates, 20 sloops, 11 brigs and schooners, 3 steamers, 3 store
ships and 8 small vessels; making in the aggregate, 53 vessels.
The estimates for the year, for the navy and marine corps,
as has been stated, is $8,705,579 83, considerably exceeding
one-third of the entire expenditures of the British navy for
1840.
"Mr. C. contended there should be no difference in the expenses
of the two navies. We should build as cheap and employ men as
cheap, or we should not be able to compete with the British
navy. If our navy should prove vastly more expensive than the
British navy, we might as well give up, and he recommended this
matter to the consideration of the Senate.
"Among the objects of retrenchment, I place at the head the
great increase that is proposed to be made to the expenditures
of the navy, compared with that of last year. It is no less
than $2,508,032 13, taking the expenditures of last year from
the annual report of the Secretary. I see no sufficient reason,
at this time, and in the present embarrassed condition of the
Treasury, for this great increase. I have looked over the
report of the Secretary hastily, and find none assigned, except
general reasons, for an increased navy, which I am not disposed
to controvert. But I am decidedly of the opinion, that the
commencement ought to be postponed till some systematic plan is
matured, both as to the ratio of increase and the description
of force of which the addition should consist, and till the
department is properly organized, and in a condition to enforce
exact responsibility and economy in its disbursements. That the
department is not now properly organized, and in that condition,
we have the authority of the Secretary himself, in which I
concur. I am satisfied that its administration cannot be made
effective under the present organization, particularly as it
regards its expenditures."
"The expenses of this government were of three classes: the
civil list, the army and the navy; and all of these had been
increased enormously since 1823. The remedy now was to compare
the present with the past, mark the difference, and compel the
difference to be accounted for. He cited 1823, and intended to
make that the standard, because that was the standard for him,
the government being then economically administered. He selected
1823, also, because in 1824 we commenced a new system, and that
of protection, which had done so much evil. We had made two
tariffs since then, the origin of all evils. The civil list rose
in seventeen years from about $2,000,000 to $6,000,000--nearly a
threefold proportion compared with the increase of population.
In Congress the increase had been enormous. The increase of
contingent expenses had been fivefold, and compared with
population, sixfold. The aggregate expenses of the two Houses
now amounted to more than $250,000. The expense of collecting
revenue had also been enormously increased. From 1823 it had
gone up from $700,000 to $1,700,000--an increase of one million
of dollars. The expense on collection in 1823 was but one per
cent., now one per cent. and 5-100. Under the tariff these
increases were made from 1824 to 1828. Estimating the expenses
of collection at $800,000, about $1,000,000 would be saved. The
judiciary had increased in this proportion, and the light-house
department also. In the war department, in 1822 (the only year
for which he had estimates), the expenses per man were but $264;
now the increase had gone up to $400 for each individual. At one
time it had been as much as $480 for each individual--$1,400,000
could be saved here in the army proper, including the military
academy alone. It might be said that one was a cheap and the
other a dear year. Far otherwise; meat was never cheaper,
clothing never as cheap as now. All this resulted from the
expansive force of a surplus revenue. In 1822 he had reduced the
expenses of every man in the army.
"It had been proposed to increase the expenditures of the
navy two and a half millions of dollars over the past year,
and he was not ready for this. Deduct two millions from this
recommendation, and it would be two millions saved. These
appropriations, at least, might go over to the next session.
The expenses of the marine corps amounted to nearly six hundred
thousand dollars, nearly six hundred dollars a head--two hundred
dollars a head higher than the army, cadets and all. He hoped
the other expenses of the navy department were not in proportion
so high as this. Between the reductions which might be made in
the marine corps and the navy, two millions and a half might be
saved.
"The Secretary of the Treasury estimates for 32 millions of
dollars for the expenses of the current year. I am satisfied
that $17,000,000 were sufficient to meet the per annum expenses
of the government, and that this sum would have been according
to the ratio of population. This sum, by economy, could be
brought down to fifteen millions, and thus save nine millions
over the present estimates. This could be done in three or four
years--the Executive leading the way, and Congress co-operating
and following the Executive."
This was spoken in the year 1842. Mr. Calhoun was then confident
that the ordinary expenses of the government should not exceed 17
millions of dollars, and that, with good economy that sum might be
further reduced two millions, making the expenses but 15 millions
per annum. The navy was one of the great points to which he looked
for retrenchment and reduction; and on that point he required that
the annual appropriation for the navy should be decreased instead
of being augmented; and that the money appropriated should be
more judiciously and economically applied. The President should
lead the way in economy and retrenchment. Organization as well
as economy was wanted in the navy--a properly organized peace
establishment. The peace establishment of the British navy in 1840,
was 24 millions--there being 173 vessels in commission. Instead
of reduction, the expense of our navy, also in time of peace, is
gaining largely upon hers. It is nearly doubled since Mr. Calhoun
spoke--15 millions in 1855.
Mr. Woodbury, who had been Secretary of the Navy under President
Jackson, spoke decidedly against the proposed increase, and against
the large expenditure in the department, and its unfavorable
comparison with the expenses of the British navy in time of peace.
He said:
"There are twenty-nine or thirty post-captains now on leave or
waiting orders, and from thirty to forty commanders. Many of
them are impatient to be called into active service--hating a
life of indolence--an idle loafing life--and who are anxious
to be performing some public service for the pay they receive.
It was, generally, not their fault that they were not on duty;
but ours, in making them so numerous that they could not be
employed. He dwelt on the peace establishment of England--for
her navy averaged £18,000,000 in time of war, before the year
1820--but her peace establishment was now only £5,000,000 to
6,000,000. Gentlemen talk of 103 post-captains being necessary,
for employment in commission; while England has only 70
post-captains employed in vessels in commission. She had fewer
commanders so employed than our whole number of the same grade.
"The host of English navy officers was on retired and
half-pay--less in amount than ours by one-third when full, and
not one-half of full pay often, when retired; and her seamen
only half. Her vessels afloat, also, were mostly small ones--63
of them being steamers, with only one or two guns on an average.
"That the navy ought to be regulated by law, every gentleman
admits. Without any express law, was there not a manifest
propriety in any proviso which should prevent the number of
appointments from being carried half up, or quite up to the
standard of the British navy, on full pay? It would be a great
relief to the Executive, and the head of the Navy Department, to
fix some limitation on appointments, by which the importunities
with which they are beset shall not be the occasion of
overloading the Government with a greater number of officers in
any grade than the exigencies of the service actually demand. A
clerk in any public office, a lieutenant in the army, a judge
could not be appointed without authority of law; and why should
there not be a similar check with regard to officers in the navy?
"It was urged heretofore, in official communications by himself,
that it would be proper to limit Executive discretion in this;
and a benefit to the Executive and the departments would also
accrue by passing laws regulating the peace establishment. He
had submitted a resolution for that purpose, in December last,
which had not been acted on; though he hoped it yet would be
acted upon before our adjournment. It was better to bring this
matter forward in an appropriation bill, than that there should
be no check at all. It is the only way in which the House now
finds it practicable to effect any control on this question. It
could only be done in an appropriation bill, which gives that
House the power of control as to navy officers. There should
be no reflection on the House on this account; for there is no
reflection on the Executive or the Senate. It is their right and
duty in the present exigency. He considered the introduction
of it into this bill under all the circumstances, not only
highly excusable, but justifiable. He did not mean to say that
a separate law would not, in itself, if prepared early and
seasonably, be more desirable; but he contended this check was
better than none at all. When acting on this proviso the Senate
is acting on the whole bill. It was not put in without some
meaning. It was not merely to strip the Executive and the Senate
of the appointing power, now unlimited: its object was to reduce
the expenses of the navy, from the Secretary of the Navy's
estimate of eight and a half millions of dollars, to about
$6,293,000. That was the whole effect of the whole measure, and
of all the changes in the bill.
"The difference between both sides of the Senate on this
subject seemed to be, that one believed the navy ought to be
kept upon a _quasi_ war establishment; and the other, in peace
and not expecting war, believed it ought to be on a peace
establishment;--not cut down below that, but left liberally for
peace.
"During the administration of the younger Adams, there was a
peace establishment of the navy; and was it not then perfectly
efficient and prosperous for all peace purposes? Yet the average
expenditure then was only from three to four millions. It was so
under General Jackson. Under Mr. Adams, piracy was extirpated in
the West Indies. Under his successor, the Malays in the farthest
India were chastised; and a semi-banditti broken up at the
Falkland Islands. It was not till 1836 '37 that a large increase
commenced. But why? Because there was an overflowing treasury.
We were embarrassed with money, rather than for money. An
exploring expedition was then decided upon. But even with that
expedition--so noble and glorious in some respects--six millions
and a fraction were the whole expenses. But why should it now at
once be raised to eight and a half millions?"
The British have a peace as well as a war establishment for their
navy; and the former was usually about one-third of the latter. We
have no naval peace establishment. It is all on the war footing,
and is now (1855) nearly double the expense of what it was in the
war with Great Britain. A perpetual war establishment, when there
is no war. This is an anomaly which no other country presents, and
which no country can stand, and arises from the act of 1806, which
authorizes the President "_to keep in actual service, in time of
peace, so many of the frigates and other armed public vessels of the
United States as in his judgment the nature of the service might
require, and to cause the residue thereof to be laid up in ordinary
in convenient ports_." This is the discretion which the act of 1806
gives to the President--unlimited so far as that clause goes; but
limited by two subsequent clauses limiting the number of officers to
be employed to 94, and the whole number of seamen and boys to 925;
and placing the unemployed officers on half pay without rations--a
degree of reduction which made them anxious to be at sea instead of
remaining unemployed at home. Under Mr. Jefferson, then, the act
of 1806 made a naval peace establishment; but doing away all the
limitations of that act, and leaving nothing of it in force but the
presidential discretion to employ as many vessels as the service
might require, the whole navy is thrown into the hands of the
President: and the manner in which he might exercise that discretion
might depend entirely upon the view which he would take of the naval
policy which ought to be pursued--whether great fleets for offence,
or cruisers for defence. All the limitations of the act of 1806 have
been thrown down--even the limitation to half pay; and unemployed
pay has been placed so high as to make it an object with officers to
be unemployed. Mr. Reuel Williams, of Maine, exposed this solecism
in a few pertinent remarks. He said:
"Half of the navy officers are now ashore, and there can be no
necessity for such a number of officers as to admit of half
being at sea, and the other half on land. Such was not the case
heretofore. It was in 1835 that such increase of shore pay was
made, as caused it to be the interest of the officers to be off
duty. The only cure for this evil was, either to reduce the pay
when off duty, or to limit the time of relaxation, and to adjust
the number to the actual requirements of the service."
The vote was taken upon the increase proposed by the Secretary of
the Navy, and recommended by the President, and it was carried by
one vote--the yeas and nays being well defined by the party line.
"YEAS--Messrs. Archer, Barrow, Bates, Berrien, Choate, Clayton,
Conrad, Crittenden, Evans, Graham, Henderson, Huntington, Kerr,
Mangum, Merrick, Miller, Morehead, Porter, Preston, Rives,
Simmons, Tallmadge, and Woodbridge--23."
"NAYS--Messrs. Allen, Bagby, Benton, Buchanan, Crafts, Cuthbert,
Fulton, King, Linn, McRoberts, Sevier, Smith of Connecticut,
Smith of Indiana, Sturgeon, Tappan, Walker, White, Wilcox,
Williams, Woodbury, Wright and Young--22."
Mr. Benton spoke chiefly to the necessity of having a naval
policy--a policy which would determine what was to be relied on--a
great navy for offence, or a moderate one for defence; and a peace
establishment in time of peace, or a war establishment in peace as
well as war. Some extracts from his speech are given in the next
chapter.
CHAPTER CVIII.
EXPENSES OF THE NAVY: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH: EXTRACTS.
I propose to recall to the recollection of the Senate the attempt
which was made in 1822--being seven years after the war--to limit
and fix a naval peace establishment; and to fix it at about
one-fourth of what is now proposed, and that that establishment
was rejected because it was too large. Going upon the plan of Mr.
Jefferson's act of 1806, it took the number of men and officers
for the limitation, discouraged absence on shore by reducing the
pay one-half and withholding rations; collected timber for future
building of vessels; and directed all to remain in port which
the public service did not require to go abroad. It provided for
one rear-admiral; five commodores; twenty-five captains; thirty
masters commandant; one hundred and ninety lieutenants; four
hundred midshipmen; thirty-five surgeons; forty-five surgeon's
mates: six chaplains; forty pursers; and three thousand five
hundred men and boys--in all a little over four thousand men. Yet
Congress refused to adopt this number. This shows what Congress
then thought of the size of a naval peace establishment. Mr. B. was
contemporary with that bill--supported it--knows the reason why it
was rejected--and that was, because Congress would not sanction so
large an establishment. To this decision there was a close adherence
for many years. In the year 1833--eleven years after that time,
and when the present senator from New Hampshire [Mr. WOODBURY] was
Secretary of the Navy, the naval establishment was but little above
the bill of 1822. It was about five thousand men, and cost about
four millions of dollars, and was proposed by that Secretary to be
kept at about that size. Here Mr. B. read several extracts from
Mr. Woodbury's report of 1833--the last which he made as Secretary
of the Navy--which verified these statements. Mr. B. then looked
to the naval establishment on the 1st of January, 1841, and showed
that the establishment had largely increased since Mr. Woodbury's
report, and was far beyond my calculation in 1822. The total number
of men, of all grades, in the service in 1841, was a little over
eight thousand; the total cost about six millions of dollars--being
double the amount and cost of the proposed peace establishment of
the United States in the year 1822, and nearly double the actual
establishment of 1833. Mr. B. then showed the additions made by
executive authority in 1841, and that the number of men was carried
up to upwards of eleven thousand, and the expense for 1842 was to
exceed eight millions of dollars! This (he said) was considered an
excessive increase; and the design now was to correct it, and carry
things back to what they were a year before. This was the design;
and this, so far from being destructive to the navy, was doing far
more for it than its most ardent friends proposed or hoped for a few
years before.
Mr. B. here exhibited a table showing the actual state of the navy,
in point of numbers, at the commencement of the years 1841 and 1842;
and showed that the increase in one year was nearly as great as it
had been in the previous twenty years; and that its totality at
the latter of these periods was between eleven and twelve thousand
men, all told. This is what the present administration has done
in one year--the first year of its existence: and it is only the
commencement of their plan--the first step in a long succession of
long steps. The further increases, still contemplated were great,
and were officially made known to the Congress, and the estimates
increased accordingly. To say nothing of what was in the Senate in
its executive capacity, Mr. B. would read a clause from the report
of the Senate's Committee on Naval Affairs, which showed the number
of vessels which the Secretary of the Navy proposed to have in
commission, and the consequent vast increase of men and money which
would be required. (The following is the extract from Mr. Bayard's
report):
"The second section of the act of Congress of the 21st April,
1806, expressly authorizes the President 'to keep in actual
service, in time of peace, so many of the frigates and other
public armed vessels of the United States, as in his judgment
the nature of the service may require.' In the exercise of this
discretion, the committee are informed by the Secretary of the
Navy that he proposes to employ a squadron in the Mediterranean,
consisting of two ships of the line, four frigates, and four
sloops and brigs--in all, ten vessels; another squadron on the
Brazil station, consisting, also, of two ships-of-the-line, four
frigates, and four sloops and brigs; which two squadrons will be
made from time to time to exchange their stations, and thus to
traverse the intermediate portion of the Atlantic. He proposes,
further, to employ a squadron in the Pacific, consisting of one
ship-of-the-line, two frigates, and four sloops; and a similar
squadron of one ship of the line, two frigates, and four sloops
in the East Indies; which squadrons, in like manner, exchanging
from time to time their stations, will traverse the intermediate
portion of the Pacific, giving countenance and protection to the
whale fishery in that ocean. He proposes, further, to employ
a fifth squadron, to be called the home squadron, consisting
of one ship-of-the-line, three frigates, and three sloops,
which, besides the duties which its name indicates, will have
devolved upon it the duties of the West India squadron, whose
cruising ground extended to the mouth of the Amazon, and as far
as the 30th degree of west longitude from London. He proposes,
additionally, to employ on the African coast one frigate and
four sloops and brigs--in all, five vessels; four steamers in
the Gulf of Mexico, and four steamers on the lakes. There will
thus be in commission seven ships-of-the-line, sixteen frigates,
twenty-three sloops and brigs, and eight steamers--in all,
fifty-four vessels."
This is the report of the committee. This is what we are further
to expect. Five great squadrons, headed by ships of the line; and
one of them that famous home squadron hatched into existence at
the extra session one year ago, and which is the ridicule of all
except those who live at home upon it, enjoying the emoluments of
service without any service to perform. Look at it. Examine the
plan in its parts, and see the enormity of its proportions. Two
ships-of-the-line, four frigates, and four sloops and brigs for
the Mediterranean--a sea as free from danger to our commerce as
is the Chesapeake Bay. Why, sir, our Secretary is from the land
of Decatur, and must have heard of that commander, and how with
three little frigates, one sloop, and a few brigs and schooners,
he humbled Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis, and put an end to their
depredations on American ships and commerce. He must have heard
of Lord Exmouth, who, with less force than he proposes to send
to the Mediterranean, went there and crushed the fortifications
of Algiers, and took the bond of the pirates never to trouble a
Christian again. And he must have heard of the French, who, since
1830, are the owners of Algiers. Certainly the Mediterranean is
as free from danger to-day as is the Chesapeake Bay; and yet our
Secretary proposes to send two ships-of-the-line, four frigates,
and four sloops to that safe sea, to keep holiday there for three
years. Another squadron of the same magnitude is to go to Brazil,
where a frigate and a sloop would be the extent that any emergency
could require, and more than has ever been required yet. The same
of the Pacific Ocean, where Porter sailed in triumph during the
war with one little frigate; and a squadron to the East Indies,
where no power has any navy, and where our sloops and brigs would
dominate without impediment. In all fifty-four men-of-war! Seven
ships-of-the-line, sixteen frigates, twenty-three sloops and brigs,
and eight steamers. And all this under Jefferson's act of 1806, when
there was not a ship-of-the-line, nor a large frigate, nor twenty
vessels of all sorts, and part of them to remain in port--only the
number going forth that would require nine hundred and twenty-five
men to man them! just about the complement of one of these seven
ships-of-the-line. Does not presidential discretion want regulating
when such things as these can be done under the act of 1806? Has
any one calculated the amount of this increase, and counted up the
amount of men and money which it will cost? The report does not,
and, in that respect, is essentially deficient. It ought to be
counted, and Mr. B. would attempt it. He acknowledged the difficulty
of such an undertaking; how easy it was for a speaker--and
especially such a speaker as he was--to get into a fog when he got
into masses of millions, and so bewilder others as well as himself.
To avoid this, details must be avoided, and results made plain by
simplifying the elements of calculation. He would endeavor to do
so, by taking a few plain data, in this case--the data correct in
themselves, and the results, therefore, mathematically demonstrated.
He would take the guns and the men--show what we had now, and what
we proposed to have; and what was the cost of each gun afloat,
and the number of men to work it. The number of guns we now have
afloat is nine hundred and thirty-seven; the number of men between
eleven and twelve thousand; and the estimated cost for the whole,
a fraction over eight millions of dollars. This would give about
twelve men and about nine thousand dollars to each gun. [Mr. BAYARD
asked how could these nine thousand dollars a gun be made out?] Mr.
BENTON replied. By counting every thing that was necessary to give
you the use of the gun--every thing incident to its use--every thing
belonging to the whole naval establishment. The end, design, and
effect of the whole establishment, was to give you the use of the
gun. That was all that was wanted. But, to get it, an establishment
had to be kept up of vast extent and variety--of shops and yards on
land, as well as ships at sea--of salaries and pensions, as well as
powder and balls. Every expense is counted, and that gives the cost
per gun. Mr. B. said he would now analyze the gentleman's report,
and see what addition these five squadrons would make to the expense
of the naval establishment. The first point was, to find the number
of guns which they were to bear, and which was the element in the
calculation that would lead to the results sought for. Recurring
to the gentleman's report, and taking the number of each class of
vessels, and the number of guns which each would carry, and the
results would be:
7 ships-of-the-line, rating 74, but carrying
80 guns, 560
16 frigates, 44 guns each, 704
13 sloops, 20 guns each, 260
10 brigs, 10 guns each, 100
8 steamers, 10 guns each, 80
------
1,704
Here (said Mr. B.) is an aggregate of 1,704 guns, which, at $9,000
each gun, would give $15,336,000, as the sum which the Treasury
would have to pay for a naval establishment which would give us
the use of that number. Deduct the difference between the 937,
the present number of guns, and this 1,704, and you have 767 for
the increased number of guns, which, at $9,000 each, will give
$6,903,000 for the increased cost in money. This was the moneyed
result of the increase. Now take the personal increase--that is to
say, the increased number of men which the five squadrons would
require. Taking ten men and two officers to the gun--in all,
twelve--and the increased number of men and officers required for
767 guns would be 8,204. Add these to the 11,000 or 12,000 now in
service, and you have close upon 20,000 men for the naval peace
establishment of 1843, costing about fifteen millions and a half of
dollars.
But I am asked, and in a way to question my computation, how I
get at these nine thousand dollars cost for each gun afloat?
I answer--by a simple and obvious process. I take the whole
annual cost of the navy department, and then see how many guns
we have afloat. The object is to get guns afloat, and the whole
establishment is subordinate and incidental to that object. Not
only the gun itself, the ship which carries it, and the men who
work it, are to be taken into the account, but the docks and
navy-yards at home, the hospitals and pensions, the marines and
guards--every thing, in fact, which constituted the expense of
the naval establishment. The whole is employed, or incurred, to
produce the result--which is, so many guns at sea to be fired upon
the enemy. The whole is incurred for the sake of the guns, and
therefore all must be counted. Going by this rule (said Mr. B.),
it would be easily shown that his statement of yesterday was about
correct--rather under than over; and this could be seen by making
a brief and plain sum in arithmetic. We have the number of guns
afloat, and the estimated expense for the year: the guns 936; the
estimate for the year is $8,705,579. Now, divide this amount by the
number of guns, and the result is a little upwards of $9,200 to each
one. This proves the correctness of the statement made yesterday;
it proves it for the present year, which is the one in controversy.
The result will be about the same for several previous years. Mr. B.
said he had looked over the years 1841 and 1838, and found this to
be the result: in 1841, the guns were 747, and the expense of the
naval establishment $6,196,516. Divide the money by the guns, and
you have a little upwards of $8,300. In 1838, the guns were 670, and
the expense $5,980,971. This will give a little upwards of $8,900
to the gun. The average of the whole three years will be just about
$9,000.
Thus, the senator from New Hampshire [Mr. WOODBURY] and himself were
correct in their statement, and the figures proved it. At the same
time, the senator from Delaware [Mr. BAYARD] is undoubtedly correct
in taking a small number of guns, and saying they may be added
without incurring an expense of more than three or four thousand
dollars. Small additions may be made, without incurring any thing
but the expense of the gun itself, and the men who work it. But
that is not the question here. The question is to almost double the
number; it is to carry up 937 to 1,700. Here is an increase intended
by the Secretary of the Navy of near 800 guns--perhaps quite 800,
if the seventy-fours carry ninety guns, as intimated by the senator
[Mr. BAYARD] this day. These seven or eight hundred guns could not
be added without ships to carry them, and all the expense on land
which is incident to the construction of these ships. These seven or
eight hundred additional guns would require seven or eight thousand
men, and a great many officers. Ten men and two officers to the gun
is the estimate. The present establishment is near that rate, and
the increase must be in the same proportion. The present number
of men in the navy, exclusive of officers, is 9,784: which is a
fraction over ten to the gun. The number of officers now in service
(midshipmen, surgeons, &c., included) is near 1,300, besides the
list of nominations not yet confirmed. This is in the proportion
of nearly one and a half to a gun. Apply the whole to the intended
increase--the increase which the report of the committee discloses
to us--and you will have close upon 17,000 men and 2,000 officers
for the peace establishment of the navy--in all, near 20,000 men!
and this, independent of those employed on land, and the 2,000
mechanics and laborers who are usually at our navy-yards. Now, these
men and officers cost money: two hundred and twenty-six dollars
per annum per man, and eight hundred and fifty dollars per annum
per officer, was the average cost in 1833, as stated in the report
of the then Secretary of the Navy, the present senator from New
Hampshire [Mr. WOODBURY]. What it is now, Mr. B. did not know, but
knew it was greater for the officers now, than it was then. But one
thing he did know--and that was, that a naval peace establishment of
the magnitude disclosed in the committee's report (six squadrons, 54
vessels, 1,700 guns, 17,000 men, and 2,000 or 3,000 officers) would
break down the whole navy of the United States.
Mr. B. said we had just had a presidential election carried on a
_hue-and-cry_ against extravagance, and a _hurrah_ for a change,
and a promise to carry on the government for thirteen millions of
dollars; and here were fifteen and a half millions for one branch
of the service! and those who oppose it are to be stigmatized as
architects of ruin, and enemies of the navy; and a _hue-and-cry_
raised against them for the opposition. He said we had just voted
a set of resolutions [Mr. CLAY'S] to limit the expenses of the
government to twenty-two millions; and yet here are two-thirds of
that sum proposed for one branch of the service--a branch which,
under General Jackson's administration, cost about four millions,
and was intended to be limited to about that amount. This was the
economy--the retrenchment--the saving of the people's money, which
was promised before the election!
Mr. B. would not go into points so well stated by the senator from
New Hampshire [Mr. WOODBURY] on yesterday, that our present peace
naval establishment exceeds the cost of the war establishment during
the late war; that we pay far more money, and get much fewer guns
and men than the British do for the same money. He would omit the
tables which he had on hand to prove these important points, and
would go on to say that it was an obligation of imperious duty on
Congress to arrest the present state of things; to turn back the
establishment to what it was a year ago; and to go to work at the
next session of Congress to regulate the United States naval peace
establishment by law. When that bill came up, a great question
would have to be decided--the question of a navy for defence, or
for offence! When that question came on, he would give his opinion
upon it, and his reasons for that opinion. A navy of some degree,
and of some kind, all seemed to be agreed upon; but what it is to
be--whether to defend our homes, or carry war abroad--is a question
yet to be decided, and on which the wisdom and the patriotism of
the country would be called into requisition. He would only say,
at present, that coasts and cities could be defended without great
fleets at sea. The history of continental Europe was full of the
proofs. England, with her thousand ships, could do nothing after
Europe was ready for her, during the late wars of the French
revolution. He did not speak of attacks in time of peace, like
Copenhagen, but of Cadiz and Teneriffe in 1797, and Boulogne and
Flushing in 1804, where Nelson, with all his skill and personal
daring, and with vast fleets, was able to make no impression.
Mr. B. said the navy was popular, and had many friends and
champions; but there was such a thing as killing by kindness. He
had watched the progress of events for some time, and said to his
friends (for he made no speeches about it) that the navy was in
danger--that the expense of it was growing too fast--that there
would be reaction and revulsion. And he now said that, unless things
were checked, and moderate counsels prevailed, and law substituted
for executive discretion (or indiscretion, as the case might be),
the time might not be distant when this brilliant arm of our defence
should become as unpopular as it was in the time of the elder Mr.
Adams.
CHAPTER CIX.
MESSAGE OF THE PRESIDENT AT THE OPENING OF THE REGULAR SESSION
OF 1842-3.
The treaty with Great Britain, and its commendation, was the
prominent topic in the forepart of the message. The President
repeated, in a more condensed form, the encomiums which had been
passed upon it by its authors, but without altering the public
opinion of its character--which was that it was really a _British_
treaty, Great Britain getting every thing settled which she wished,
and all to her own satisfaction; while all the subjects of interest
to the United States were adjourned to an indefinite future time,
as well known then as now never to occur. One of these deferred
subjects was a matter of too much moment, and pregnant with too
grave consequences, to escape general reprobation in the United
States: it was that of the Columbia River, exclusively possessed by
the British under a joint-occupation treaty: and which possession
only required time to ripen it into a valid title. The indefinite
adjournment of that question was giving Great Britain the time
she wanted; and the danger of losing the country was turning the
attention of the Western people towards saving it by sending
emigrants to occupy it. Many emigrants had gone: more were going:
a tide was setting in that direction. In fact the condition of
this great American territory was becoming a topic of political
discussion, and entering into the contests of party; and the
President found it necessary to make further excuses for omitting to
settle it in the Ashburton treaty, and a necessity to attempt to do
something to soothe the public mind. He did so in this message:
"It would have furnished additional cause for congratulation, if
the treaty could have embraced all subjects calculated in future
to lead to a misunderstanding between the two governments. The
territory of the United States, commonly called the Oregon
Territory, lying on the Pacific Ocean, north of the forty-second
degree of latitude, to a portion of which Great Britain lays
claim, begins to attract the attention of our fellow-citizens;
and the tide of population, which has reclaimed what was so
lately an unbroken wilderness in more contiguous regions, is
preparing to flow over those vast districts which stretch
from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. In advance of
the acquirement of individual rights to these lands, sound
policy dictates that every effort should be resorted to by the
two governments to settle their respective claims. It became
manifest, at an early hour of the late negotiations, that
any attempt, for the time being, satisfactorily to determine
those rights, would lead to a protracted discussion which
might embrace, in its failure, other more pressing matters;
and the Executive did not regard it as proper to waive all the
advantages of an honorable adjustment of other difficulties of
great magnitude and importance, because this, not so immediately
pressing, stood in the way. Although the difficulty referred to
may not, for several years to come, involve the peace of the two
countries, yet I shall not delay to urge on Great Britain the
importance of its early settlement."
The excuse given for the omission of this subject in the Ashburton
negotiations is lame and insufficient. Protracted discussion is
incident to all negotiations, and as to losing other matters of
more pressing importance, all that were of importance to the United
States were given up any way, and without getting any equivalents
for them. The promise to urge an early settlement could promise
but little fruit after Great Britain had got all she wanted; and
the discouragement of settlement, by denying land titles to the
emigrants until an adjustment could be made, was the effectual way
to abandon the country to Great Britain. But this subject will
have an appropriate chapter in the history of the proceedings of
Congress to encourage that emigration which the President would
repress.
The termination of the Florida war was a subject of just
congratulation with the President, and was appropriately
communicated to Congress.
"The vexatious, harassing, and expensive war which so long
prevailed with the Indian tribes inhabiting the peninsula of
Florida, has happily been terminated; whereby our army has been
relieved from a service of the most disagreeable character, and
the Treasury from a large expenditure. Some casual outbreaks may
occur, such as are incident to the close proximity of border
settlers and the Indians; but these, as in all other cases,
may be left to the care of the local authorities, aided, when
occasion may require, by the forces of the United States."
The President does not tell by what treaty of peace this war was
terminated, nor by what great battle it was brought to a conclusion:
and there were none such to be told--either of treaty negotiated,
or of battle fought. The war had died out of itself under the
arrival of settlers attracted to its theatre by the Florida armed
occupation act. No sooner did the act pass, giving land to each
settler who should remain in the disturbed part of the territory
five years, than thousands repaired to the spot. They went with
their arms and ploughs--the weapons of war in one hand and the
implements of husbandry in the other--their families, flocks and
herds, established themselves in blockhouses, commenced cultivation,
and showed that they came to stay, and intended to stay. Bred to
the rifle and the frontier, they were an overmatch for the Indians
in their own mode of warfare; and, interested in the peace of the
country, they soon succeeded in obtaining it. The war died out under
their presence, and no person could tell when, nor how; for there
was no great treaty held, or great battle fought, to signalize its
conclusion. And this is the way to settle all Indian wars--the
cheap, effectual and speedy way to do it: land to the armed settler,
and rangers, when any additional force is wanted--rangers, not
regulars.
But a government bank, under the name of exchequer, was the
prominent and engrossing feature of the message. It was the
same paper-money machine, borrowed from the times of Sir Robert
Walpole, which had been recommended to Congress at the previous
session and had been so unanimously repulsed by all parties.
Like its predecessor it ignored a gold and silver currency, and
promised paper. The phrases "sound currency"--"sound circulating
medium"--"safe bills convertible at will into specie," figured
throughout the scheme; and to make this government paper a local
as well as a national currency, the denomination of its notes
was to be carried down at the start to the low figure of five
dollars--involving the necessity of reducing it to one dollar as
soon as the banishment of specie which it would create should raise
the usual demand for smaller paper. To do him justice, his condensed
argument in favor of this government paper, and against the gold and
silver currency of the constitution, is here given:
"There can be but three kinds of public currency: 1st. Gold
and silver; 2d. The paper of State institutions; or, 3d. A
representative of the precious metals, provided by the general
government, or under its authority. The sub-treasury system
rejected the last, in any form; and, as it was believed that no
reliance could be placed on the issues of local institutions,
for the purposes of general circulation, it necessarily and
unavoidably adopted specie as the exclusive currency for its
own use. And this must ever be the case, unless one of the
other kinds be used. The choice, in the present state of public
sentiment, lies between an exclusive specie currency on the one
hand, and government issues of some kind on the other. That
these issues cannot be made by a chartered institution, is
supposed to be conclusively settled. They must be made, then,
directly by government agents. For several years past, they have
been thus made in the form of treasury notes, and have answered
a valuable purpose. Their usefulness has been limited by their
being transient and temporary; their ceasing to bear interest
at given periods, necessarily causes their speedy return, and
thus restricts their range of circulation; and being used only
in the disbursements of government, they cannot reach those
points where they are most required. By rendering their use
permanent, to the moderate extent already mentioned, by offering
no inducement for their return, and by exchanging them for coin
and other values, they will constitute, to a certain extent, the
general currency so much needed to maintain the internal trade
of the country. And this is the exchequer plan, so far as it may
operate in furnishing a currency."
It would seem impossible to carry a passion for paper money, and of
the worst kind, that of government paper, farther than President
Tyler did; but he found it impossible to communicate his passion
to Congress, which repulsed all the exchequer schemes with the
promptitude which was due to an unconstitutional, pernicious,
and gratuitous novelty. The low state of the public credit, the
impossibility of making a loan, and the empty state of the Treasury,
were the next topics in the message.
"I cannot forego the occasion to urge its importance to the
credit of the government in a financial point of view. The
great necessity of resorting to every proper and becoming
expedient, in order to place the Treasury on a footing of the
highest respectability, is entirely obvious. The credit of the
government may be regarded as the very soul of the government
itself--a principle of vitality, without which all its movements
are languid, and all its operations embarrassed. In this
spirit the Executive felt itself bound, by the most imperative
sense of duty, to submit to Congress, at its last session,
the propriety of making a specific pledge of the land fund,
as the basis for the negotiation of the loans authorized to
be contracted. I then thought that such an application of the
public domain would, without doubt, have placed at the command
of the government ample funds to relieve the Treasury from
the temporary embarrassments under which it labored. American
credit had suffered a considerable shock in Europe, from the
large indebtedness of the States, and the temporary inability of
some of them to meet the interest on their debts. The utter and
disastrous prostration of the United States Bank of Pennsylvania
had contributed largely to increase the sentiment of distrust,
by reason of the loss and ruin sustained by the holders of its
stock--a large portion of whom were foreigners, and many of
whom were alike ignorant of our political organization, and of
our actual responsibilities. It was the anxious desire of the
Executive that, in the effort to negotiate the loan abroad, the
American negotiator might be able to point the money-lender
to the fund mortgaged for the redemption of the principal and
interest of any loan he might contract, and thereby vindicate
the government from all suspicion of bad faith, or inability
to meet its engagements. Congress differed from the Executive
in this view of the subject. It became, nevertheless, the duty
of the Executive to resort to every expedient in its power to
negotiate the authorized loan. After a failure to do so in
the American market, a citizen of high character and talent
was sent to Europe--with no better success; and thus the
mortifying spectacle has been presented, of the inability of
this government to obtain a loan so small as not in the whole to
amount to more than one-fourth of its ordinary annual income;
at a time when the governments of Europe, although involved in
debt, and with their subjects heavily burdened with taxation,
readily obtain loans of any amount at a greatly reduced rate of
interest. It would be unprofitable to look further into this
anomalous state of things; but I cannot conclude without adding,
that, for a government which has paid off its debts of two
wars with the largest maritime power of Europe, and now owing
a debt which is almost next to nothing, when compared with its
boundless resources--a government the strongest in the world,
because emanating from the popular will, and firmly rooted in
the affections of a great and free people--and whose fidelity to
its engagements has never been questioned--for such a government
to have tendered to the capitalists of other countries an
opportunity for a small investment of its stock, and yet to
have failed, implies either the most unfounded distrust in its
good faith, or a purpose, to obtain which, the course pursued
is the most fatal which could have been adopted. It has now
become obvious to all men that the government must look to its
own means for supplying its wants; and it is consoling to know
that these means are altogether adequate for the object. The
exchequer, if adopted, will greatly aid in bringing about this
result. Upon what I regard as a well-founded supposition, that
its bills would be readily sought for by the public creditors,
and that the issue would, in a short time, reach the maximum of
$15,000,000, it is obvious that $10,000,000 would thereby be
added to the available means of the treasury, without cost or
charge. Nor can I fail to urge the great and beneficial effects
which would be produced in aid of all the active pursuits
of life. Its effects upon the solvent State banks, while it
would force into liquidation those of an opposite character,
through its weekly settlements, would be highly beneficial;
and, with the advantages of a sound currency, the restoration
of confidence and credit would follow, with a numerous train of
blessings. My convictions are most strong that these benefits
would flow from the adoption of this measure; but, if the result
should be adverse, there is this security in connection with
it--that the law creating it may be repealed at the pleasure of
the legislature, without the slightest implication of its good
faith."
It is impossible to read this paragraph without a feeling of
profound mortification at seeing the low and miserable condition
to which the public credit had sunk, both at home and abroad; and
equally mortifying to see the wretched expedients which were relied
upon to restore it: a government bank, issuing paper founded on
its credit and revenues, and a hypothecation of the lands, their
proceeds to help to bolster up the slippery and frail edifice
of governmental paper: the United States unable to make a loan
to the amount of one-fourth of its revenues! unable to borrow
five millions of dollars! unable to borrow any thing, while the
overloaded governments of Europe could borrow as much as they
pleased. It was indeed a low point of depressed credit--the lowest
that the United States had ever seen since the declaration of
Independence. It was a state of humiliation and disgrace which could
not be named without offering some reason for its existence; and
that reason was given: it was the "disastrous prostration," as it
was called--the crimes and bankruptcy, as should have been called,
of the Pennsylvania Bank of the United States! that bank which, in
adding Pennsylvania to its name, did not change its identity, or its
nature; and which for ten long years had been the cherished idol of
the President, his Secretary of State, and his exchequer orator on
the floor of the House--for which General Jackson had been condemned
and vituperated--and on the continued existence of which the whole
prosperity of the government and the people, and their salvation
from poverty and misery, was made to depend. That bank was now given
as the cause of the woful plight into which the public credit was
fallen--and truly so given! for while its plunderings were enormous,
its crimes were still greater: and the two put together--an hundred
millions plundered, and a mass of crimes committed--the effect
upon the American name was such as to drive it with disgrace
from every exchange in Europe. And the former champions of the
bank, uninstructed by experience, unabashed by previous appalling
mistakes, now lavish the same encomiums on an exchequer bank which
they formerly did on a national bank; and challenge the same faith
for one which they had invoked for the other. The exchequer is now,
according to them, the sole hope of the country: the independent
treasury and hard money, its only danger. Yet the exchequer was
repulsed--the independent treasury and gold was established: and
the effect, that that same country which was unable to borrow five
millions of dollars, has since borrowed many ten millions, and
is now paying a premium of 20 per centum--actually paying twenty
dollars on the hundred--to purchase the privilege of paying loans
before they are due.
CHAPTER CX.
REPEAL OF THE BANKRUPT ACT: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH; EXTRACTS.
The spectacle was witnessed in relation to the repeal of this act
which has rarely been seen before--a repeal of a great act of
national legislation by the same Congress that passed it--by the
same members sitting in the same seats--and the repeal approved
by the same President who had approved the enactment. It was a
homage to the will of the people, and the result of the general
condemnation which the act received from the community. It had been
passed as a party measure: its condemnation was general without
regard to party: and the universality of the sentiment against it
was honorable to the virtue and intelligence of the people. In
the commencement of the session 1842-'43, motions were made in
both Houses to repeal the act; and in the Senate the practical
bad working of the act, and of the previous act, was shown as an
evidence of the unfruitfulness of the whole system, and of the
justice and wisdom of leaving the whole relation of debtor and
creditor in relation to insolvency, or bankruptcy, to the insolvent
laws of the States. In offering a petition in the Senate for the
repeal of the act from the State of Vermont, Mr. Benton said:
"He would take the opportunity which the presentation of this
petition offered, to declare that, holding the bankrupt act to
be unconstitutional at six different points (the extinction
of the debt without the consent of a given majority of the
creditors being at the head of these points), he would vote for
no repeal which would permit the act to continue in force for
the trial of depending cases, unless with provisions which would
bring the action of the law within the constitution. To say
nothing, at present, of other points of unconstitutionality, he
limited himself to the abolition of debts without the consent
of a given majority of the creditors. This, he held, no power
in our country can do. Congress can only go as far as the
bankrupt systems of England and other countries go; and that
is, to require the consent of a given majority of the creditors
(four-fifths in number and value in England and Scotland), and
that founded upon a judicial certificate of integrity by the
commissioners who examined the case, and approved afterwards by
the Lord Chancellor. Upon these principles only could Congress
act: upon these principles the Congress of 1800 acted, in making
a bankrupt act: and to these principles he would endeavor to
conform the action of the present act so long as it might run.
He held all the certificates granted by the courts to be null
and void; and that the question of the validity would be carried
before the courts, and before the tribunal of public opinion.
The federal judges decided the alien and sedition law to be
constitutional. The people reversed that decision, and put down
the men who held it. This bankrupt act was much more glaringly
unconstitutional--much more immoral--and called more loudly
upon the people to rise against it. If he was a United States
judge, he would decide the act to be unconstitutional. If he was
a State court, and one of these certificates of discharge from
debts should be pleaded in bar before him, on an action brought
for the recovery of the old debt, he would treat the certificate
as a nullity, and throw it out of court. If commanded by the
Supreme Court, he would resign first. The English law held all
bankrupts, whose certificates were not signed by the given
majority of the creditors, to be _uncertificated_; and, as
such, he held all these to be who had received certificates
under our law. They had no certificate of discharge from a
given majority of the creditors; and were, therefore, what the
English law called '_uncertificated bankrupts_.' He said the
bankrupt systems formed the creditors into a partnership for the
management of the debtor's estate, and his discharge from debt;
and, in this partnership, a given majority acted for the whole,
all having the same interest in what was lost or saved; and,
therefore, to be governed by a given majority, doing what was
best for the whole. But even to this there were limitations. The
four-fifths could not release the debt of the remaining fifth,
except upon a certificate of integrity from the commissioners
who tried the case, and a final approval by the Lord Chancellor.
The law made itself party to the discharge, as it does in a case
of divorce, and for the sake of good morals; and required the
judicial certificate of integrity, without which the release
of four-fifths of the creditors would not extinguish the debt
of the other fifth. It is only in this way that Congress can
act. It can only act according to the established principles of
the bankrupt systems. It had no inherent or supreme authority
over debts. It could not abolish debts as it pleased. It could
not confound bankruptcy and insolvency, and so get hold of
all debts, and sweep them off as it pleased. All this was
despotism, such as only could be looked for in a government
which had no limits, either on its moral or political powers.
The attempt to confound insolvency and bankruptcy, and to make
Congress supreme over both, was the most daring attack on the
constitution, on the State laws, on the rights of property,
and on public morals, which the history of Europe or America
exhibited. There was no parallel to it in Europe or America. It
was repudiation--universal repudiation of all debts--at the will
of the debtor. The law was subversive of civil society; and he
called upon Congress, the State legislatures, the federal and
State judiciaries--and, above all, the people--to brand it for
unconstitutionality and immorality, and put it down.
"Mr. B. said he had laid down the law, but he would refer to
the _forms_ which the wisdom of the law provided for executing
itself. These _forms_ were the highest evidences of the law.
They were framed by men learned in the law--approved by the
courts--and studied by the apprentices to the law. They should
also be studied by the journeymen--by the professors--and by
the ermined judges. In this case, especially, they should be so
studied. Bankruptcy was a branch of the law but little studied
in our country. The mass of the community were uninformed upon
it; and the latitudinarians, who could find no limits to the
power of our government were daringly presuming upon the general
ignorance, by undertaking to confound bankruptcy and insolvency,
and claiming for Congress a despotic power over both. This
daring attempt must be chastised. Congress must be driven back
within the pale of the constitution; and for that purpose, the
principles of the bankrupt systems must be made known to the
people. The _forms_ are one of the best modes of doing this:
and here are the _forms_ of a bankrupt's certificate in Great
Britain--the country from which our constitution borrowed the
system. [Mr. B. then read from Jacob's Law Dictionary, title
_Bankruptcy_, at the end of the title, the _three_ forms of
the certificates which were necessary to release a debtor from
his debts.] The first form was that of the commissioners who
examined the case, and who certified to the integrity of the
bankrupt, and that he had conformed in all particulars to the
act. The second form was that of the certificate of four-fifths
of his creditors, '_allowing him to be discharged from his
debts_.' The third was the certificate of the Lord Chancellor,
certifying that notice of these two certificates having been
published for twenty-one days in the London Gazette, and no
cause being shown to the contrary, the certificates granted
by the commissioners and by the creditors were '_confirmed_.'
Then, and not till then, could the debtor be discharged from
his debts; and with all this, the act of 1800 in the United
States perfectly agreed, only taking two-thirds instead of
four-fifths of the creditors. Congress could only absolve debts
in this way, and that among the proper subjects of a bankrupt
law: and the moral sense of the community must revolt against
any attempt to do it in any other form. The present act was
repudiation--criminal repudiation, as far as any one chose to
repudiate--and must be put down by the community."
On the question for the repeal of the act, Mr. Benton took occasion
to show it to be an invasion of the rights of the States, over the
ordinary relations of debtor and creditor within their own limits,
and a means of eating up estates to the loss of both debtor and
creditor, and the enrichment of assignees, who make the settlement
of the estate a life-long business, and often a legacy to his
children.
"A question cannot arise between two neighbors about a dozen of
eggs, without being liable to be taken from the custody of the
laws of the States, and brought up to the federal courts. And
now, when this doctrine that insolvency and bankruptcy are the
same, if a continuance of the law is to be contrived, it must be
done in conformity with such a fallacy. The law has proved to be
nothing but a great insolvent law, for the abolition of debts,
for the benefit of debtors; and would it be maintained that a
permanent system ought to be built up on such a foundation as
that?
"Some months ago, he read in a Philadelphia paper a notice to
creditors to come forward for a dividend of half a cent in
the dollar, in a case of bankruptcy pending under the old law
of 1800, since the year 1801. And, three or four days ago, he
read a notice in a London paper, calling on creditors to come
in for a dividend of five-sixths of a penny in the pound, in a
case of bankruptcy pending since the year 1793. Here has been
a case where the waste of property has been going on for fifty
years in England, and another case where it has been going on in
this country forty-one or forty-two years. He had been himself
twenty-three years in the Senate, and, during that time, various
efforts were made to revive the old law of 1800 in some shape or
other; but never, till last session, in the shape in which the
present law passed. And how could this law be expected to stand,
when even the law of 1800 (which was in reality a bankrupt law)
could not stand; but was, in the first year of its operation,
condemned by the whole country?"
The passage of the act had been a reproach to Congress: its repeal
should do them honor, and still more the people, under whose
manifest and determined will it was to be done. The repeal bill
readily passed the Senate, and then went to the House, where it was
quickly passed, and under pressure of the previous question, by a
vote 128 to 98. The history of the passage of these two measures
(bankrupt and distribution) each of which came to an untimely end,
is one of those legislative arcana which should be known, that such
legislation may receive the reprobation which it deserves. The
public only sees the outside proceeding, and imagines a wise and
patriotic motive for the enactment of important laws. Too often
there is neither wisdom nor patriotism in such enactment, but
bargain, and selfishness, and duresse of circumstances. So it was in
this case. The misconduct and misfortunes of the banks and the vices
inherent in paper money, which had so long been the currency of the
country, had filled the Union with pecuniary distress, and created
an immense body of insolvent debtors, estimated by some at five
hundred thousand: and all these were clamorous for a bankrupt act.
The State of Mississippi was one of those most sorely afflicted with
this state of things, and most earnest for the act. Her condition
governed the conduct of her senators, and their votes made the
bankrupt act, and passed the fiscal bank through the Senate. Such
are the mysteries of legislation.
A bankrupt act, though expressly authorized by the constitution,
had never been favored by the American people. It was tried fifty
years ago, and condemned upon a two years' experience. Persevering
efforts had since been made for a period of twenty years to obtain
another act, but in vain. It was the opinion of Mr. Lowndes,
expressed at the last session that he served, that no act framed
upon the principles of the British system would ever be suitable
to our country--that the complex and expensive machinery of the
system, so objectionable in England, where debtors and creditors
were comparatively near together, would be intolerable in the
United States, where they were so widely separated, and the courts
so sparsely scattered over the land, and so inconvenient to the
majority of parties and witnesses. He believed a simple system
might be adopted, reducing the process to a transaction between the
debtor and his creditors, in which courts would have but little to
do except to give effect to their agreement. The principle of his
plan was that there should be a meeting of the creditors, either
on the invitation of the failing debtor, or the summons of a given
number of creditors; and when together, and invested with power to
examine into the debtor's affairs, and to examine books and take
testimony, that they themselves, by a given majority of two-thirds
or three-fourths in value, should decide every question, make a
_pro rata_ division of the effects, and grant a certificate of
release: the release to be of right if the effects were taken.
This simple process would dispense with the vexatious question, of
what constitutes an act of bankruptcy? And substitute for it the
broad inquiry of failing circumstances--in the solution of which,
those most interested would be the judges. It would also save the
devouring expenses of costs and fees, and delays equally devouring,
and the commissioners that must be paid, and the assignees who
frequently become the beneficiaries of the debtor's effects--taking
what he collects for his own fees, and often making a life estate
of it. The estate of a bankrupt, in the hands of an assignee, Mr.
Randolph was accustomed to call, "a lump of butter in a dog's
mouth;" a designation which it might sometimes bear from the
rapidity with which it was swallowed; but more frequently it was
a bone to gnaw, and to be long gnawed before it was gnawed up. As
an evidence of this, Mr. Benton read a notice from a Philadelphia
paper, published while this debate was going on, inviting creditors
to come forward and receive from the assignee a dividend of half a
cent in the dollar, in a case of bankruptcy under the old act of
1800; also a notice in a London paper for the creditors to come in
and receive a dividend of five-sixths of a penny in the pound in a
case depending since 1793--the assignees respectively having been
administering, one of them forty-one years, and the other fifty-two
years, the estate of the debtor; and probably collecting each year
about as much as paid his own fees.
The system has become nearly intolerable in England. As far back
as the year 1817, the British Parliament, moved by the pervading
belief of the injustice and abuses under their bankrupt laws,
appointed a commissioner to examine into the subject, and to report
the result of their investigation. It was done; and such a mass of
iniquity revealed, as to induce the Lord Chancellor to say that the
system was a disgrace to the country--that the assignees had no
mercy either upon the debtor or his creditors--and that it would
be better to repeal every law on the subject. The system, however,
was too much interwoven with the business of the country to be
abandoned. The report of the commissioners only led to a revision
of the laws and attempted ameliorations; the whole of which were
disregarded by our Congress of 1841, as were the principles of all
previous bankrupt acts either in Great Britain, on the European
Continent, or in the United States. That Congress abandoned the
fundamental principle of all bankrupt systems--that of a proceeding
of the creditors for their own benefit, and made it practically an
insolvent law at the will of the debtor, for the abolition of his
debt at his own pleasure. Iniquitous in itself, vicious in its mode
of being passed, detested by the community, the life of the act was
short and ignominious. Mr. Buchanan said it would be repealed in
two years: and it was. Yet it was ardently contended for. Crowds
attended Congress to demand it. Hundreds of thousands sent up their
petitions. The whole number of bankrupts was stated by the most
moderate at one hundred thousand: and Mr. Walker declared in his
place that, if the act was not passed, thousands of unfortunate
debtors would have to wear the chains of slavery, or be exiled from
their native land.
CHAPTER CXI.
MILITARY ACADEMY AND ARMY EXPENSES.
The instincts of the people have been against this academy from
the time it took its present form under the act of 1812, and those
subsequent and subsidiary to it: many efforts have been made to
abolish or to modify it: and all unsuccessful--partly from the
intrinsic difficulty of correcting any abuse--partly from the great
number interested in the Academy as an eleemosynary institution
of which they have the benefit--and partly from the wrong way in
which the reformers go to work. They generally move to abolish the
whole system, and are instantly met by Washington's recommendation
in favor of it. In the mean time Washington never saw such an
institution as now shelters behind his name; and possibly would
never have been in the army, except as a private soldier, if it
had existed when he was a young man. He never recommended such an
academy as we have: he never dreamed of such a thing: he recommended
just the reverse of it, in recommending that cadets, serving in the
field with the companies to which they were attached, and receiving
the pay, clothing, and ration of a sergeant, should be sent--such
of them as showed a stomach for the hardships, as well as a taste
for the pleasures and honors of the service, and who also showed a
capacity for the two higher branches of the profession (engineering
and artillery)--to West Point, to take instruction from officers in
these two branches of the military art: and no more. At this session
one of the usual movements was made against it--an attack upon the
institution in its annual appropriation bill, by moving to strike
out the appropriation for its support, and substitute a bill for
its abolition. Mr. Hale made the motion, and was supported in it by
several members. Mr. McKay, chairman of the committee, which had the
appropriation bill in charge, felt himself bound to defend it, but
in doing so to exclude the conclusion that he was favorable to the
academy. Begging gentlemen, therefore, to withdraw their motion, he
went on to say:
"He was now, and always had been, in favor of a very material
alteration in the organization of this institution. He did not
think that the government should educate more young men than
were necessary to fill the annual vacancies in the army. It was
beyond dispute, that the number now educated was more than the
average annual vacancies in the army required; and hence the
number of supernumerary second lieutenants--which he believed
was now something like seventy; and would be probably thirty
more the next year. This, however, did not present the true
state of the question. In a single year, in consequence of an
order issued from the war department, that all the officers who
were in the civil service of the railroad and canal companies,
&c., should join their respective regiments, there were upwards
of one hundred resignations. Now, if these resignations had
not taken place, the army would have been overloaded with
supernumerary second lieutenants. He was for reducing the
number of cadets, but at the same time would make a provision
by which parents and guardians should have the privilege of
sending their sons and wards there to be educated, at their own
expense. This (Mr. M. said) was the system adopted in Great
Britain; and it appeared, by a document he had in his hand,
that there were three hundred and twenty gentlemen cadets, and
fifteen officers educated at the English Military Academy, at
a much less expense than it required to educate two hundred
and twenty cadets at West Point. He agreed with much of what
had been said by the gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Seymour,
that it would be an amelioration of our military service, to
open the door of promotion to meritorious non-commissioned
officers and privates. Under the present system, no man who
was a non-commissioned officer or private, however meritorious,
had the least chance of promotion. It was true that there were
instances of such men getting commissions, but they were very
rare; and the consequence was, that the ranks of the army were
filled with some of the worst men in the country, and desertions
had prevailed to an enormous extent. Mr. McK. here gave from the
documents, the number of annual desertions, from the year 1830
to 1836, showing an average of one thousand. He would not now,
however, enlarge on this subject, but would reserve his remarks
till the bill for reorganizing the academy, which he understood
was to be reported by the Military Committee, should come in."
Mr. McKay was not counted among the orators of the House: he made
no pretension to fine speaking: but he was one of those business,
sensible, upright men, who always spoke sense and reason, and to the
point, and generally gave more information to the House in a few
sentences than could often be found in one of the most pretentious
speeches. Of this character were the remarks which he made on this
occasion; and in the four statements that he made, _first_, that
upwards of one hundred West Point officers had resigned their
commissions in one year when ordered to quit civil service and
join their corps; _secondly_, that there was a surplus of seventy
graduates at that time for whom there was no place in the army;
_thirdly_, that at the English Military Academy, three hundred
and thirty-five cadets and officers were instructed at much less
expense than two hundred and twenty with us; _fourthly_, that the
annual desertions from the rank and file of the army had averaged
one thousand men per annum for six years together, these desertions
resulting from want of promotion and disgust at a service which was
purely necessary. Mr. McKay was followed by another speaker of the
same class with himself--Mr. Cave Johnson, of Tennessee; who stood
up and said:
"That there was no certainty that the bill to be reported by
the Military Committee, which the gentleman referred to, would
be reached this session; and he was therefore for effecting
a reform now that the subject was before them. He would,
therefore, suggest to the gentleman from New Hampshire to
withdraw his amendment, and submit another, to the following
effect: That no money appropriated in this bill, or hereafter to
be appropriated, shall be applied to the payment of any cadet
hereafter to be appointed; and the terms of service of those
who have warrants now in the academy shall be held to cease
from and after four years from the time of their respective
appointments. The limitation of this appropriation now, would
put an end to the academy, unless the House would act on the
propositions which would be hereafter made. He was satisfied
it ought to be abolished, and he would at once abolish it, but
for the remarks of his friend from North Carolina; he therefore
hoped his friend from New Hampshire would adopt the suggestions
which had been made."
Mr. Harralson, of Georgia, chairman of the Committee on Military
Affairs, felt himself called upon by his position to come to the
defence of the institution, which he did in a way to show that it
was indefensible. He
"Intimated that that committee would propose some reductions
in the number of cadets; and when that proposition came before
the House, these amendments could be appropriately offered. The
proposition would be made to reduce the number of the cadets
to the wants of the army. But this appropriation should now be
made; and if, by any reductions hereafter made, it should be
found more than adequate to the wants of the institution, the
balance would remain in the Treasury, and would not be lost
to the country. He explained the circumstances under which,
in 1836, some persons educated as cadets at West Point became
civil engineers, and accepted employment on projected lines of
railroad; and asserted that no class of our countrymen were more
ready to obey the call of their country, in any exigency which
might arise."
Mr. Orlando Ficklin, of Illinois, not satisfied with the
explanations made by the chairman on military affairs, returned to
the charge of the one hundred resignations in one year; and said:
"He had listened to the apology or excuse rendered by the
chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, for the cadets
who resigned in 1836. And what was that excuse? Why, forsooth,
though they had been educated at the government expense,
yet, because they could get better pay by embarking in other
pursuits, they deserted the service of the country which had
educated them, and prepared them for her service. He did not
intend to detain the committee at present, but he must be
permitted to say to those who were in favor of winding up
the concern, that they ought not to vote an appropriation of
a single dollar to that institution, unless the same bill
contained a provision, in language as emphatic as it could be
made, declaring that this odious, detestable, and aristocratic
institution, shall be brought to a close. If it did not cost
this government a single dollar, he would still be unwilling
that it should be kept up. He was not willing that the door
of promotion should be shut against the honest and deserving
soldier, and that a few dandies and band-box heroes, educated at
that institution, should enjoy the monopoly of all the offices.
Mr. F. adverted to the present condition of the army. It was
filled up, he said, by foreigners. Native Americans, to whom
they should naturally look as the defenders of the country,
were deterred from entering it. It would be well, he thought,
to have a committee of investigation, that the secrets of the
prison-house might be disclosed, and its abuses brought to
light."
Mr. Black, of Georgia, proposed an amendment, compelling the cadets
to serve ten years, and keeping up the number: upon which Mr. Hale
remarked:
"The amendment of the gentleman from Georgia would seem to
imply that there were not officers enough: whereas the truth
was there were more than enough. The difficulty was, there were
already too many. The Army Register showed a list already of
seventy supernumeraries; and more were being turned out upon us
every year. The gentleman from New York had made a most unhappy
illustration of the necessity for educating cadets for the army,
by comparing them with the midshipmen in the navy. What was the
service rendered by midshipmen on board our national vessels?
Absolutely none. They were of no sort of use; and precisely so
was it with these cadets. He denied that General Washington ever
recommended a military academy like the present institution;
and, if he had done so, he would, instead of proclaiming it,
have endeavored to shield his great name from such a reproach."
The movement ended as usual, in showing necessity for a reform, and
in failing to get it.
CHAPTER CXII.
EMIGRATION TO THE COLUMBIA RIVER, AND FOUNDATION OF ITS
SETTLEMENT BY AMERICAN CITIZENS: FREMONT'S FIRST EXPEDITION.
The great event of carrying the Anglo-Saxon race to the shore of
the Pacific Ocean, and planting that race firmly on that sea, took
place at this time, beginning in 1842, and largely increasing in
1843. It was not an act of the government, leading the people
and protecting them; but, like all the other great emigrations
and settlements of that race on our continent, it was the act of
the people, going forward without government aid or countenance,
establishing their possession, and compelling the government to
follow with its shield, and spread it over them. So far as the
action of the government was concerned, it operated to endanger
our title to the Columbia, to prevent emigration, and to incur
the loss of the country. The first great step in this unfortunate
direction was the treaty of joint occupation, as it was called, of
1818; by which the British, under the fallacious idea of mutuality,
where there was nothing mutual, were admitted to a delusive joint
occupation, with ourselves, intended to be equal--but which quickly
became exclusive on their part: and was obliged to become so, from
the power and organization of their Hudson Bay Company, already
flanking the country and ready to cross over and cover it. It is
due to the memory of President Monroe, under whose administration
this unfortunate treaty was made, to say that, since the publication
of the first volume of this View, the author has been informed by
General Jesup (who had the fact from Mr. Monroe himself at the
time), that his instructions had not authorized this arrangement
(which in fact the commissioners intimated in their correspondence),
and only after much hesitation prevailed on himself to send it to
the Senate. That treaty was for ten years, and the second false step
was in its indefinite extension by another of 1828, until one or the
other of the parties should give notice for its discontinuance--the
most insidious and pernicious of all agreements, being so easy to be
adopted, and so hard to be got rid of. The third great blunder was
in not settling the Oregon question in the Ashburton negotiation,
when we had a strong hold upon the British government in its earnest
desire to induce us to withdraw our northeastern boundary from the
neighborhood of Lower Canada, and to surrender a part of Maine for
the road from Halifax to Quebec. The fourth step in this series of
governmental blunders, was the recommendation of President Tyler
to discountenance emigration to Oregon, by withholding land from
the emigrants, until the two governments had settled the title--a
contingency too remote to be counted upon within any given period,
and which every year's delay would make more difficult. The title
to the country being thus endangered by the acts of the government,
the saving of it devolved upon the people--and they saved it. In
1842, incited by numerous newspaper publications, upwards of a
thousand American emigrants went to the country, making their long
pilgrimage overland from the frontiers of Missouri, with their
wives and children, their flocks and herds, their implements of
husbandry and weapons of defence--traversing the vast inclined
plane to the base of the Rocky Mountains, crossing that barrier
(deemed impassable by Europeans), and descending the wide slope
which declines from the mountains to the Pacific. Six months would
be consumed in this journey, filled with hardships, beset by dangers
from savage hostility, and only to be prosecuted in caravans of
strength and determination. The Burnets and Applegates from Missouri
were among the first leaders, and in 1843, some two thousand more
joined the first emigration. To check these bold adventurers was
the object of the government: to encourage them, was the object of
some Western members of Congress, on whom (in conjunction with the
people) the task of saving the Columbia evidently devolved. These
members were ready for their work, and promptly began. Early in the
session, Mr. Linn, a senator from Missouri, introduced a bill for
the purpose, of which these were the leading provisions:
"That the President of the United States is hereby authorized
and required to cause to be erected, at suitable places and
distances, a line of stockade and blockhouse forts, not
exceeding five in number, from some point on the Missouri and
Arkansas rivers into the best pass for entering the valley of
the Oregon; and, also, at or near the mouth of the Columbia
River.
"That provision hereafter shall be made by law to secure and
grant six hundred and forty acres, or one section of land, to
every white male inhabitant of the territory of Oregon, of
the age of eighteen years and upward, who shall cultivate and
use the same for five consecutive years; or to his heir or
heirs-at-law, if such there be, in case of his decease. And to
every such inhabitant or cultivator (being a married man) there
shall be granted, in addition, one hundred and sixty acres to
the wife of said husband, and the like quantity of one hundred
and sixty acres to the father for each child under the age of
eighteen years he may have, or which may be born within the five
years aforesaid.
"That no sale, alienation, or contract of any kind, shall be
valid, of such lands, before the patent is issued therefor; nor
shall the same be liable to be taken in execution, or bound by
any judgment, mortgage, or lien, of any kind, before the patent
is so issued; and all pretended alienations or contracts for
alienating such lands, made before the issuing of the patents,
shall be null and void against the settler himself, his wife, or
widow, or against his heirs-at-law, or against purchasers, after
the issuing of the patent.
"That the President is hereby authorized and required to appoint
two additional Indian agents, with a salary of two thousand
dollars each, whose duty it shall be (under his direction and
control) to superintend the interests of the United States with
any or every Indian tribe west of any agency now established by
law.
"That the sum of one hundred thousand dollars be appropriated,
out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to
carry into effect the provisions of this act.
"SEC. 2. _And be it further enacted_, That the civil and
criminal jurisdiction of the supreme court and district courts
of the territory of Iowa, be, and the same is hereby, extended
over that part of the Indian territories lying west of the
present limits of the said territory of Iowa, and south of the
forty-ninth degree of north latitude, and west of the Rocky
Mountains, and north of the boundary line between the United
States and the Republic of Texas, not included within the
limits of any State; and also, over the Indian territories
comprising the Rocky Mountains and the country between them
and the Pacific Ocean, south of fifty-four degrees and forty
minutes of north latitude, and north of the forty-second degree
of north latitude; and justices of the peace may be appointed
for the said territory, in the same manner and with the same
powers as now provided by law in relation to the territory of
Iowa: _Provided_, That any subject of the government of Great
Britain, who shall have been arrested under the provisions of
this act for any crime alleged to have been committed within
the territory westward of the Stony or Rocky Mountains, while
the same remains free and open to the vessels, citizens, and
subjects of the United States and of Great Britain, pursuant to
stipulations between the two powers, shall be delivered up, on
proof of his being such British subject, to the nearest or most
convenient authorities having cognizance of such offence by the
laws of Great Britain, for the purpose of being prosecuted and
tried according to such laws.
"SEC. 3. _And be it further enacted_, That one associate judge
of the supreme court of the territory of Iowa, in addition to
the number now authorized by law, may, in the discretion of
the President, be appointed, to hold his office by the same
tenure and for the same time, receive the same compensation,
and possess all the powers and authority conferred by law
upon the associate judges of the said territory; and one
judicial district shall be organized by the said supreme
court, in addition to the existing number, in reference to the
jurisdiction conferred by this act; and a district court shall
be held in the said district by the judge of the supreme court,
at such times and places as the said court shall direct; and the
said district court shall possess all the powers and authority
vested in the present district courts of the said territory, and
may, in like manner, appoint its own clerk.
"SEC. 4. _And be it further enacted_, That any justice of the
peace, appointed in and for the territories described in the
second section of this act, shall have power to cause all
offenders against the laws of the United States to be arrested
by such persons as they shall appoint for that purpose, and
to commit such offenders to safe custody for trial, in the
same cases and in the manner provided by law in relation to
the Territory of Iowa; and to cause the offenders so committed
to be conveyed to the place appointed for the holding of a
district court for the said Territory of Iowa, nearest and most
convenient to the place of such commitment, there to be detained
for trial, by such persons as shall be authorized for that
purpose by any judge of the supreme court, or any justice of the
peace of the said Territory; or where such offenders are British
subjects, to cause them to be delivered to the nearest and most
convenient British authorities, as hereinbefore provided; and
the expenses of such commitment, removal, and detention, shall
be paid in the same manner as provided by law in respect to the
fees of the marshal of the said territory."
These provisions are all just and necessary for the accomplishment
of their object, and carefully framed to promote emigration, and to
avoid collisions with the British, or hostilities with the Indians.
The land grants were the grand attractive feature to the emigrants:
the provision for leaving British offenders to British jurisdiction
was to avoid a clash of jurisdictions, and to be on an equality with
the British settlers over whom the British Parliament had already
extended the laws of Canada; and the boundaries within which our
settlers were to be protected, were precisely those agreed upon
three years later in a treaty between the two powers. The provisions
were all necessary for their object, and carefully framed to avoid
infraction of any part of the unfortunate treaty of 1818; but the
bill encountered a strenuous, and for a long time a nearly balanced,
opposition in the Senate--some opposed to the whole object of
settling the country at any time--some to its present settlement,
many to the fear of collision with the British subjects already
there, or infraction of the treaty of 1818. Mr. McDuffie took broad
ground against it.
"For whose benefit are we bound to pass this bill? Who are to go
there, along the line of military posts, and take possession of
the only part of the territory fit to occupy--that part lying
upon the sea-coast, a strip less than one hundred miles in
width; for, as I have already stated, the rest of the territory
consists of mountains almost inaccessible, and low lands which
are covered with stone and volcanic remains, where rain never
falls, except during the spring; and even on the coast no rain
falls, from April to October, and for the remainder of the year
there is nothing but rain. Why, sir, of what use will this be
for agricultural purposes? I would not for that purpose give a
pinch of snuff for the whole territory. I wish to God we did
not own it. I wish it was an impassable barrier to secure us
against the intrusion of others. This is the character of the
country. Who are we to send there? Do you think your honest
farmers in Pennsylvania, New York, or even Ohio or Missouri,
will abandon their farms to go upon any such enterprise as this?
God forbid! if any man who is to go to that country, under the
temptations of this bill, was my child--if he was an honest
industrious man, I would say to him, for God's sake do not go
there. You will not better your condition. You will exchange
the comforts of home, and the happiness of civilized life, for
the pains and perils of a precarious existence. But if I had a
son whose conduct was such as made him a fit subject for Botany
Bay, I would say in the name of God, go. This is my estimate of
the importance of the settlement. Now, what are we to gain by
making the settlement? In what shape are our expenditures there
to be returned? When are we to get any revenue from the citizens
of ours who go to that distant territory--3,300 miles from the
seat of government, as I have it from the senator from Missouri?
What return are they going to make us for protecting them with
military posts, at the expense at the outset of $200,000, and
swelling hereafter God knows how much--probably equalling the
annual expenses of the Florida war. What will they return us for
this enormous expense, after we have tempted them, by this bill,
to leave their pursuits of honest industry, to go upon this wild
and gambling adventure, in which their blood is to be staked?"
Besides repulsing the country as worthless, Mr. McDuffie argued that
there was danger in taking possession of it--that the provisions of
the bill conflicted with the stipulations of the treaty of 1818--and
that Great Britain, though desirous of peace with the United States,
would be forced into war in defence of her rights and honor. Mr.
Calhoun was equally opposed as his colleague to the passage of the
bill, but not for the same reasons. He deemed the country well worth
having, and presenting great commercial advantages in communicating
with China and Japan, which should not be lost.
"I do not agree with my eloquent and able colleague that the
country is worthless. He has underrated it, both as to soil
and climate. It contains a vast deal of land, it is true,
that is barren and worthless; but not a little that is highly
productive. To that may be added its commercial advantages,
which will, in time, prove to be great. We must not overlook
the important events to which I have alluded as having recently
occurred in the Eastern portion of Asia. As great as they are,
they are but the beginning of a series of a similar character,
which must follow at no distant day. What has taken place in
China, will, in a few years, be followed in Japan, and all
the eastern portions of that continent. Their ports, like the
Chinese, will be opened, and the whole of that large portion of
Asia, containing nearly half of the population and wealth of the
globe, will be thrown open to the commerce of the world, and be
placed within the pales of European and American intercourse
and civilization. A vast market will be created, and a mighty
impulse will be given to commerce. No small portion of the
share that would fall to us with this populous and industrious
portion of the globe, is destined to pass through the ports of
the Oregon Territory to the valley of the Mississippi, instead
of taking the circuitous and long voyage round Cape Horn; or the
still longer, round the Cape of Good Hope. It is mainly because
I place this high estimate on its prospective value, that I am
so solicitous to preserve it, and so adverse to this bill, or
any other precipitate measure which might terminate in its loss.
If I thought less of its value, or if I regarded our title less
clear, my opposition would be less decided."
Infraction of the treaty and danger of war--the difficulty and
expense of defending a possession so remote--the present empty
condition of the treasury--were further reasons urged by Mr. Calhoun
in favor of rejecting the bill; but having avowed himself in favor
of saving our title to the country, it became necessary to show his
mode of doing so, and fell upon the same plan to ripen and secure
our title, which others believed was wholly relied upon by Great
Britain to ripen and secure hers--Time! an element which only worked
in favor of the possessor; and that possessor was now Great Britain.
On this head he said:
"The question presents itself, how shall we preserve this
country? There is only one means by which it can be; but that,
fortunately, is the most powerful of all--_time_. _Time_ is
acting for us; and, if we shall have the wisdom to trust its
operation, it will assert and maintain our right with resistless
force, without costing a cent of money, or a drop of blood.
There is often in the affairs of government, more efficiency
and wisdom in non-action, than in action. All we want to effect
our object in this case, is 'a wise and masterly inactivity.'
Our population is rolling towards the shores of the Pacific,
with an impetus greater than what we realize. It is one of
those forward movements which leaves anticipation behind. In
the period of thirty-two years which have elapsed since I took
my seat in the other House, the Indian frontier has receded a
thousand miles to the West. At that time, our population was
much less than half what it is now. It was then increasing at
the rate of about a quarter of a million annually; it is now not
less than six hundred thousand; and still increasing at the rate
of something more than three per cent. compound annually. At
that rate, it will soon reach the yearly increase of a million.
If to this be added, that the region west of Arkansas and the
State of Missouri, and south of the Missouri River, is occupied
by half civilized tribes, who have their lands secured to them
by treaty (and which will prevent the spread of population
in that direction), and that this great and increasing tide
will be forced to take the comparatively narrow channel to
the north of that river and south of our northern boundary,
some conception may be formed of the strength with which the
current will run in that direction, and how soon it will reach
the eastern gorges of the Rocky Mountains. It will soon--far
sooner than anticipated--reach the Rocky Mountains, and be ready
to pour into the Oregon Territory, when it will come into our
possession without resistance or struggle--or, if there should
be resistance, it would be feeble and ineffectual. We would then
be as much stronger there, comparatively, than Great Britain, as
she is now stronger than we are; and it would then be as idle
in her to attempt to assert and maintain her exclusive claim to
the territory against us, as it would now be in us to attempt
it against her. Let us be wise, and abide our time, and it will
accomplish all that we desire, with far more certainty and with
infinitely less sacrifice, than we can without it."
Mr. Calhoun averred and very truly, that his opposition to the
bill did not grow out of any opposition to the growth of the
West--declared himself always friendly to the interests of that
great section of our country, and referred to his course when he was
Secretary at war to prove it.
"I go back to the time when I was at the head of the War
Department. At that early period I turned my attention
particularly to the interest of the West. I saw that it
required increased security to its long line of frontier,
and greater facility of carrying on intercourse with the
Indian tribes in that quarter, and to enable it to develope
its resources--especially that of its fur-trade. To give the
required security, I ordered a much larger portion of the
army to that frontier; and to afford facility and protection
for carrying on the fur-trade, the military posts were moved
much higher up the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Under the
increased security and facility which these measures afforded,
the fur-trade received a great impulse. It extended across
the continent in a short time, to the Pacific, and north and
south to the British and Mexican frontiers; yielding in a few
years, as stated by the Senator from Missouri [Mr. Linn], half
a million of dollars annually. But I stopped not there. I saw
that individual enterprise on our part, however great, could not
successfully compete with the powerful incorporated Canadian
and Hudson Bay Companies, and that additional measures were
necessary to secure permanently our fur-trade. For that purpose
I proposed to establish a post still higher up the Missouri,
at the mouth of the Yellow Stone River, and to give such unity
and efficiency to our intercourse and trade with the Indian
tribes between our Western frontier and the Pacific ocean, as
would enable our citizens engaged in the fur-trade to compete
successfully with the British traders. Had the measures proposed
been adopted, we would not now have to listen to the complaint,
so frequently uttered in this discussion, of the loss of that
trade."
The inconsistent argument of Mr. McDuffie, that the country was
worthless, and yet that Great Britain would go to war for it, was
thus answered by Mr. Linn:
"The senator from South Carolina somewhat inconsistently urges
that the country is bleak, barren, volcanic, rocky, a waste
always flooded when it is not parched; and insists that,
worthless as it is, Great Britain will go at once to war for
it. Strange that she should in 1818 have held so tenaciously to
what is so worthless! Stranger still, that she should have stuck
yet closer to it in 1827, when she had had still ampler time
to learn the bootlessness of the possession! And strangest of
all, that she should still cling to it with the grasp of death!
Sir, I cannot for my life help thinking that she and the senator
have formed a very different estimate of the territory, and that
she is (as she ought to be) a good deal the better informed.
She knows well its soil climate, and physical resources,
and perfectly comprehends its commercial and geographical
importance. And knowing all this, she was ready to sink all
sense of justice, stifle all respect for our clear title, and
hasten to root her interests in the soil, so as to secure the
strong, even when most wrongful, title of possession."
The danger of waiting for Great Britain to strengthen her claim was
illustrated by Mr. Linn, by what had happened in Maine. In 1814 she
proposed to purchase the part she wanted. She afterwards endeavored
to negotiate for a right of way across the State. Failing in that
attempted negotiation, as in the offer to purchase, she boldly set
up a claim to all she wanted--demanded it as matter of right--and
obtained it by the Ashburton treaty--the United States paying
Massachusetts and Maine for the dismembered part. Deprecating a like
result from temporizing measures with respect to Oregon, Mr. Linn
said:
"So little before 1813 or 1814 did Great Britain ever doubt your
claim to the lately contested territory in Maine, that in 1814
she proposed to _purchase_ that part of it which she desired.
She next treated for a right of way. It was refused; and she
then set up a claim to the soil. This method has sped no ill
with her; for she has got what she wanted, AND MADE YOU PAY FOR
IT. Her Oregon game is the same. She has set her heart upon a
strip of territory north of the Oregon, and seems determined
to pluck it from us, either by circumvention or force. Aware
of the political as well as legal advantages of possession,
she is strengthening hers in every way not too directly
responsible. She is selecting and occupying the best lands, the
most favorable sites. These she secures to the settlers under
contracts. For any counteraction of yours, she may take, and is
taking, possession of the whole territory. She has appropriated
sites for mills, manufactories, and farms. If one of these has
been abandoned for a better, she reverts to it, if a citizen of
yours occupies it, and ejects him. She tells her people she will
protect them in whatever they have laid, or may lay, their hands
upon. If she can legitimately do this, why may not we? Is this
a joint occupation of which she is to have the sole benefit?
Had you as many citizens there as she, you would be compelled
to protect them; and if you have not, why is it but because she
keeps them off, and you refuse to offer them the inducements
which she holds out? Give them a prospective grant of lands,
and insure them the shelter of your laws, and they will soon
congregate there in force enough to secure your rights and their
own."
The losses already sustained by our citizens from the ravages of
Indians, incited against them by the British Hudson Bay company,
were stated by Mr. Linn upon good authority, to be five hundred
men in lives taken in the first ten years of the joint occupation
treaty, and half a million of dollars in property robbed or
destroyed, besides getting exclusive possession of our soil, and
the command of our own Indians within our own limits: and he
then contrasted this backwardness to protect our own citizens on
their own soil with the readiness to expend untold amounts on the
protection of our citizens engaged in foreign commerce; and even in
going to the coast of Africa to guard the freedom of the negro race.
"Wherever your sails whiten the sea, in no matter what clime,
against no matter whom, the national arm stretches out its
protection. Every where but in this unhappy territory, the
persons and the pursuits of your citizens are watched over.
You count no cost when other interests are concerned, when
other rights are assailed; but you recoil here from a trifling
appropriation to an object of the highest national importance,
because it enlists no sectional influence. Contrast, for
instance, your supineness about the Oregon Territory, with
your alacrity to establish, for guarding the slave coast and
Liberia, a squadron costing $600,000 annually, and which you
have bound yourself by treaty to keep up for five years, with
great exposure of lives and vessels. By stipulation, eighty guns
(one-twelfth of your force afloat) is kept upon this service;
and, as your naval expenditure amounts to about seven millions
a year, this (its twelfth part) will make, in five years, three
millions bestowed in watching the coast of Africa, and guarding
the freedom of the negro race! For this you lavish millions; and
you grudge $100,000 to the great American and national object of
asserting your territorial rights and settling your soil. You
grant at once what furthers the slave policy of a rival power,
and deny the means of rescuing from its grasp your own property
and soil."
This African squadron has now been kept up more than twice five
years, and promises to be perpetual; for there was that delusive
clause in the article, so tempting to all temporizing spirits,
that after the lapse of the five years, the squadron was still to
be kept up until the United States should give notice to terminate
the article. This idea of notice to terminate a treaty, so easy
to put in it, and so difficult to be given when entanglement and
use combine to keep things as they are, was shown to be almost
impossible in this treaty of joint occupation of the Columbia.
Mr. Calhoun had demanded of Mr. Linn, why not give the notice to
terminate the treaty before proceeding to settle the country? to
which he answered:
"The senator from South Carolina [Mr. CALHOUN], has urged that
we should, first of all, give the twelve months' notice of our
renunciation of the treaty. He [Mr. LINN] could only answer
that he had repeatedly, by resolutions, urged that course in
former years; but always in vain. He had ever been met with the
answer: 'This is not the proper time--wait.' Meanwhile, the
adverse possession was going on, fortifying from year to year
the British claim and the British resources, to make it good.
Mr. Madison had encouraged the bold and well-arranged scheme
of Astor to fortify and colonize. He was dispossessed; and the
nucleus of empire which his establishments formed, passed into
the hands of the Hudson Bay Company, now the great instrument
of English aggrandizement in that quarter. The senator insists
that, by the treaty, there should be a joint possession. Be it
so, if you will. But where is our part of this joint possession?
In what does it consist, or has it consisted? We have no posts
there, no agent, no military power to protect traders. Nay,
indeed, no traders! For they have disappeared before foreign
competition; or fallen a sacrifice to the rifle, the tomahawk,
or the scalping knife of those savages whom the Hudson Bay
Company can always make the instruments of systematic massacre
of adventurous rivals."
Mr. Benton spoke at large in defence of the bill, and first of the
clause in it allotting land to the settlers, saying:
"The objections to this bill grew out of the clause granting
land to the settlers, not so much on account of the grants
themselves, as on account of the exclusive jurisdiction over
the country, which the grants would seem to imply. This was
the objection; for no one defended the title of the British
to one inch square of the valley of Oregon. The senator from
Arkansas [Mr. SEVIER], who has just spoken, had well said that
this was an objection to the whole bill; for the rest would be
worth nothing, without these grants to the settlers. Nobody
would go there without the inducement of land. The British
had planted a power there--the Hudson Bay Fur Company--in
which the old Northwest Company was merged; and this power was
to them in the New World what the East India company was to
them in the Old World: it was an arm of the government, and
did every thing for the government which policy, or treaties
prevented it from doing for itself. This company was settling
and colonizing the Columbia for the British government, and we
wish American citizens to settle and colonize it for us. The
British government gives inducement to this company. It gives
them trade, commerce, an exclusive charter, laws, and national
protection. We must give inducement also; and our inducement
must be land and protection. Grants of land will carry settlers
there; and the senator from Ohio [Mr. TAPPAN] was treading in
the tracks of Mr. Jefferson (perhaps without having read his
recommendation, although he has read much) when he proposed, in
his speech of yesterday, to plant 50,000 settlers, with their
50,000 rifles, on the banks of the Oregon. Mr. Jefferson had
proposed the same thing in regard to Louisiana. He proposed
that we should settle that vast domain when we acquired it;
and for that purpose, that donations of land should be made to
the first 30,000 settlers who should go there. This was the
right doctrine, and the old doctrine. The white race were a
land-loving people, and had a right to possess it, because they
used it according to the intentions of the Creator. The white
race went for land, and they will continue to go for it, and
will go where they can get it. Europe, Asia, and America, have
been settled by them in this way. All the States of this Union
have been so settled. The principle is founded in their nature
and in God's command; and it will continue to be obeyed. The
valley of the Columbia is a vast field open to the settler. It
is ours, and our people are beginning to go upon it. They go
under the expectation of getting land; and that expectation must
be confirmed to them. This bill proposes to confirm it; and if
it fails in this particular, it fails in all. There is nothing
left to induce emigration; and emigration is the only thing
which can save the country from the British, acting through
their powerful agent--the Hudson Bay Company."
Mr. Benton then showed from a report of Major Pilcher,
Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and who had visited the Columbia
River, that actual colonization was going on there, attended by
every circumstance that indicated ownership and the design of a
permanent settlement. Fort Vancouver, the principal of these British
establishments, for there are many of them within our boundaries, is
thus described by Major Pilcher:
"This fort is on the north side of the Columbia, nearly opposite
the mouth of the Multnomah, in the region of tide-water, and
near the head of ship navigation. It is a grand position,
both in a military and commercial point of view, and formed
to command the whole region watered by the Columbia and its
tributaries. The surrounding country, both in climate and soil,
is capable of sustaining a large population; and its resources
in timber give ample facilities for ship-building. This post
is fortified with cannon; and, having been selected as the
principal or master position, no pains have been spared to
strengthen or improve it. For this purpose, the old post near
the mouth of the river has been abandoned. About one hundred and
twenty acres of ground are in cultivation; and the product in
wheat, barley, oats, corn, potatoes, and other vegetables, is
equal to what is known in the best parts of the United States.
Domestic animals are numerous--the horned cattle having been
stated to me at three hundred; hogs, horses, sheep, and goats,
in proportion; also, the usual domestic fowls: every thing,
in fact, indicating a permanent establishment. Ship-building
has commenced at this place. One vessel has been built and
rigged, sent to sea, and employed in the trade of the Pacific
Ocean. I also met a gentleman, on my way to Lake Winnipec,
at the portage between the Columbia and Athabasca, who was
on his way from Hudson's Bay to Fort Colville, with a master
ship-carpenter, and who was destined for Fort Vancouver, for
the purpose of building a ship of considerable burden. Both
grist and saw-mills have been built at Fort Vancouver: with
the latter, they saw the timber which is needed for their own
use, and also for exportation to the Sandwich Islands; upon the
former, their wheat is manufactured into flour. And, from all
that I could learn, this important post is silently growing up
into a colony; and is, perhaps, intended as a future military
and naval station, which was not expected to be delivered up at
the expiration of the treaty which granted them a temporary and
joint possession."
Mr. Benton made a brief deduction of our title to the Columbia to
the 49th parallel under the treaty of Utrecht, and rapidly traced
the various British attempts to encroach upon that line, the whole
of which, though earnestly made and perseveringly continued, failed
to follow that great line from the Lake of the Woods to the shores
of the Pacific. He thus made this deduction of title:
"Louisiana was acquired in 1803. In the very instant of signing
the treaty which brought us that province, another treaty was
signed in London (without a knowledge of what was done in
Paris), fixing, among other things, the line from the Lake of
the Woods to the Mississippi. This treaty, signed by Mr. Rufus
King and Lord Hawkesbury, was rejected by Mr. Jefferson, without
reference to the Senate, on account of the fifth article (which
related to the line between the Lake of the Woods and the head
of the Mississippi), for fear it might compromise the northern
boundary of Louisiana and the line of 49 degrees. In this
negotiation of 1803, the British made no attempt on the line of
the 49th degree, because it was not then known to them that we
had acquired Louisiana; but Mr. Jefferson, having a knowledge of
this acquisition, was determined that nothing should be done to
compromise our rights, or to unsettle the boundaries established
under the treaty of Utrecht.
"Another treaty was negotiated with Great Britain in 1807,
between Messrs. Monroe and William Pinckney on one side,
and Lords Holland and Auckland on the other. The English
were now fully possessed of the fact that we had acquired
Louisiana, and become a party to the line of 49 degrees; and
they set themselves openly to work to destroy that line. The
correspondence of the ministers shows the pertinacity of these
attempts; and the instructions of Mr. Adams, in 1818 (when
Secretary of State, under Mr. Monroe), to Messrs. Rush and
Gallatin, then in London, charged with negotiating a convention
on points left unsettled at Ghent, condense the history of the
mutual propositions then made. Finally, an article was agreed
upon, in which the British succeeded in mutilating the line,
and stopping it at the Rocky Mountains. This treaty of 1807
shared the fate of that of 1803, but for a different reason. It
was rejected by Mr. Jefferson, without reference to the Senate,
because it did not contain an explicit renunciation of the
pretension of impressment!
"At Ghent the attempt was renewed: the arrest of the line at
the Rocky Mountains was agreed upon, but the British coupled
with their proposition a demand for the free navigation of the
Mississippi, and access to it through the territories of the
United States; and this demand occasioned the whole article to
be omitted. The Ghent treaty was signed without any stipulation
on the subject of the line along the 49th degree, and that
point became a principal object of the ministers charged with
completing at London, in 1818, the subjects unfinished at Ghent
in 1814. Thus the British were again foiled; but, true to their
design, they persevered and accomplished it in the convention
signed at London in 1818. That convention arrested the line at
the mountains, and opened the Columbia to the joint occupation
of the British; and, being ratified by the United States, it has
become binding and obligatory on the country. But it is a point
not to be overlooked, or undervalued, in this case, that it was
in the year 1818 that this arrestation of the line took place;
that up to that period it was in full force in all its extent,
and, consequently, in full force to the Pacific Ocean; and a
complete bar (leaving out all other barriers) to any British
acquisition, by discovery, south of 49 degrees in North America."
The President in his message had said that "informal conferences"
had taken place between Mr. Webster and Lord Ashburton on the
subject of the Columbia, but he had not communicated them. Mr.
Benton obtained a call of the Senate for them: the President
answered it was incompatible with the public interest to make
them public. That was a strange answer, seeing that all claims by
either party, and all negotiations on the subjects between them,
whether concluded or not, and whether successful or not should be
communicated.
"The President, in his message recommending the peace treaty,
informs us that the Columbia was the subject of "_informal
conferences_" between the negotiators of that treaty; but that
it could not then be included among the subjects of formal
negotiation. This was an ominous annunciation, and should
have opened the eyes of the President to a great danger. If
the peace mission, which came here to settle every thing, and
which had so much to gain in the Maine boundary and the African
alliance;--if this mission could not agree with us about the
Columbia, what mission ever can? To an inquiry from the Senate
to know the nature and extent of these "_informal conferences_"
between Mr. Webster and Lord Ashburton, and to learn the reason
why the Columbia question could not have been included among
the subjects of formal negotiation--to these inquiries, the
President answers, that it is incompatible with the public
interest to communicate these things. This is a strange
answer, and most unexpected. We have no political secrets in
our country, neither among ourselves nor with foreigners. On
this subject of the Columbia, especially, we have no secrets.
Every thing in relation to it has been published. All the
conferences heretofore have been made public. The protocols,
the minutes, the conversations, on both sides, have all been
published. The British have published their claim, such as it
is: we have published ours. The public documents are full of
them, and there can be nothing in the question itself to require
secrecy. The negotiator, and not the subject, may require
secrecy. Propositions may have been made, and listened to,
which no previous administration would tolerate, and which it
may be deemed prudent to conceal until it has taken the form
of a stipulation, and the cry of war can be raised to ravish
its ratification from us. All previous administrations, while
claiming the whole valley of the Columbia, have refused to admit
a particle of British claim _south_ of 49 degrees. Mr. Adams,
under Mr. Monroe, peremptorily refused to submit any such claim
even to arbitration. The Maine boundary, settled by the treaty
of 1783, had been submitted to arbitration; but this boundary
of 49 was refused. And now, if, after all this, any proposition
has been made by our government to give up the north bank of the
river, I, for one, shall not fail to brand such a proposition
with the name of treason."
This paragraph was not without point, and even inuendo. The north
bank of the Columbia with equal rights of navigation in the river,
and to the harbor at its mouth, had been the object of the British
from the time that the fur-trader, and explorer, Sir Alexander
McKenzie, had shown that there was no river and harbor suitable
to commerce and settlement north of that stream. They had openly
proposed it in negotiations: they had even gone so far as to tell
our commissioners of 1818, that no treaty of boundaries could be
made unless that river became the line, and its waters and the
harbor at the mouth made common to both nations--a declaration
which should have utterly forbid the idea of a joint occupation,
as such occupation was admitting an equality of title and laying
a foundation for a division of the territory. This cherished idea
of dividing by the river had pervaded every British negotiation
since 1818. It was no secret: the British begged it: we refused
it. Lord Ashburton, there is reason to know, brought out the same
proposition. In his first diplomatic note he stated that he came
prepared to settle all the questions of difference between the two
countries; and this affair of the Columbia was too large, and of
too long standing, and of too much previous negotiation to have
been overlooked. It was not overlooked. The President says that
there were conferences about it, qualified as informal: which is
evidence there would have been formal negotiation if the informal
had promised success. The informal did not so promise; and the
reason was, that the two senators from Missouri being sounded on the
subject of a conventional divisional line, repulsed the suggestion
with an earnestness which put an end to it; and this knowledge of a
proposition for a conventional line induced the indignant language
which those two senators used on the subject in all their speeches.
If they had yielded, the valley of the Columbia would have been
divided; for that is the way the whole Ashburton treaty was made.
Senators were sounded by the American negotiator, each on the point
which lay nearest to him; and whatever they agreed to was put into
the treaty. Thus the cases of the liberated slaves at Nassau and
Bermuda were given up--the leading southern senators agreeing to it
beforehand, and voting for the treaty afterwards. The writer of this
View had this fact from Mr. Bagby, who refused to go with them, and
voted against the ratification of the treaty.
"This pretension to the Columbia is an encroachment upon our
rights and possession. It is a continuation of the encroachments
which Great Britain systematically practises upon us. Diplomacy
and audacity carry her through, and gain her position after
position upon our borders. It is in vain that the treaty of 1783
gave us a safe military frontier. We have been losing it ever
since the late war, and are still losing it. The commission
under the treaty of Ghent took from us the islands of Grand
Menan, Campo Bello, and Indian Island, on the coast of Maine,
and which command the bays of Fundy and Passamaquoddy. Those
islands belonged to us by the treaty of peace, and by the laws
of God and nature; for they are on our coast, and within wading
distance of it. Can we not wade to these islands? [Looking at
senator WILLIAMS, who answered, 'We can wade to one of them.']
Yes, wade to it! And yet the British worked them out of us;
and now can wade to us, and command our land, as well as our
water. By these acquisitions, and those of the late treaty, the
Bay of Fundy will become a great naval station to overawe and
scourge our whole coast, from Maine to Florida. Under the same
commission of the Ghent treaty, she got from us the island of
Boisblanc, in the mouth of the Detroit River, and which commands
that river and the entrance into Lake Erie. It was ours under
the treaty of 1783; it was taken from us by diplomacy. And
now an American ship must pass between the mouths of two sets
of British batteries--one on Boisblanc; the other directly
opposite, at Malden; and the two batteries within three or four
hundred yards of each other. Am I right as to the distance?
[Looking at Senator WOODBRIDGE, who answered, 'The distance is
three hundred yards.'] Then comes the late treaty, which takes
from us (for I will say nothing of what the award gave up beyond
the St. John) the mountain frontier, 3,000 feet in height, 150
miles long, approaching Quebec and the St. Lawrence, and, in
the language of Mr. Featherstonhaugh, 'commanding all their
communications, and commanding and overawing Quebec itself.'
This we have given up; and, in doing so, have given up our
military advantages in that quarter, and placed them in the
hands of Great Britain, to be used against ourselves in future
wars. The boundary between the Lake Superior and the Lake of the
Woods has been altered by the late treaty, and subjected us to
another encroachment, and to the loss of a military advantage,
which Great Britain gains. To say nothing about Pigeon River
as being or not being the '_long lake_' of the treaty of 1783;
to say nothing of that, there are yet two routes commencing in
that stream--one bearing far to the south, and forming the large
island called 'Hunter's.' By the old boundary the line went the
northern route; by the new, it goes to the south; giving to the
British a large scope of our territory (which is of no great
value), but giving them, also, the exclusive possession of the
old route, the best route, and the one commanding the Indians,
which is of great importance. The encroachment now attempted
upon the Columbia, is but a continuation of this system of
encroachments which is kept up against us, and which, until
1818, labored even to get the navigation of the Mississippi, by
laboring to make the line from the Lake of the Woods reach its
head spring. If Great Britain had succeeded in getting this line
to touch the Mississippi, she was then to claim the navigation
of the river, under the law of nations, contrary to her doctrine
in the case of the people of Maine and the river St. John.
The line of the 49th parallel of north latitude is another
instance of her encroaching policy; it has been mutilated by the
persevering efforts of British diplomacy; and the breaking of
that line was immediately followed by the most daring of all her
encroachments--that of the Columbia River."
The strength of the bill was tested by a motion to strike out the
land-donation clause, which failed by a vote of 24 to 22. The bill
was then passed by the same vote--the yeas and nays being:
"YEAS.--Messrs. Allen, Benton, Buchanan, Clayton, Fulton,
Henderson, King, Linn, McRoberts, Mangum, Merrick, Phelps,
Sevier, Smith of Connecticut, Smith of Indiana, Sturgeon,
Tappan, Walker, White, Wilcox, Williams, Woodbury, Wright,
Young."
"NAYS.--Messrs. Archer, Bagby, Barrow, Bates, Bayard, Berrien,
Calhoun, Choate, Conrad, Crafts, Dayton, Evans, Graham,
Huntington, McDuffie, Miller, Porter, Rives, Simmons, Sprague,
Tallmadge, Woodbridge."
The bill went to the House, where it remained unacted upon during
the session; but the effect intended by it was fully produced. The
vote of the Senate was sufficient encouragement to the enterprising
people of the West. Emigration increased. An American settlement
grew up at the mouth of the Columbia. Conventional agreements among
themselves answered the purpose of laws. A colony was planted--had
planted itself--and did not intend to retire from its position--and
did not. It remained and grew; and that colony of self-impulsion,
without the aid of government, and in spite of all its blunders,
saved the Territory of Oregon to the United States: one of the many
events which show how little the wisdom of government has to do
with great events which fix the fate of countries.
Connected with this emigration, and auxiliary to it, was the first
expedition of Lieutenant Frémont to the Rocky Mountains, and
undertaken and completed in the summer of 1842--upon its outside
view the conception of the government, but in fact conceived
without its knowledge, and executed upon solicited orders, of which
the design was unknown. Lieutenant Frémont was a young officer,
appointed in the topographical corps from the class of citizens by
President Jackson upon the recommendation of Mr. Poinsett, Secretary
at War. He did not enter the army through the gate of West Point,
and was considered an intrusive officer by the graduates of that
institution. Having, before his appointment, assisted for two years
the learned astronomer, Mr. Nicollet, in his great survey of the
country between the Missouri and Mississippi, his mind was trained
to such labor; and instead of hunting comfortable berths about the
towns and villages, he solicited employment in the vast regions
beyond the Mississippi. Col. Abert, the chief of the corps, gave him
an order to go to the frontier beyond the Mississippi. That order
did not come up to his views. After receiving it he carried it back,
and got it altered, and the Rocky Mountains inserted as an object
of his exploration, and the South Pass in those mountains named as
a particular point to be examined, and its position fixed by him.
It was through this Pass that the Oregon emigration crossed the
mountains, and the exploration of Lieutenant Frémont had the double
effect of fixing an important point in the line of the emigrants'
travel, and giving them encouragement from the apparent interest
which the government took in their enterprise. At the same time the
government, that is, the executive administration, knew nothing
about it. The design was conceived by the young lieutenant: the
order for its execution was obtained, upon solicitation, from his
immediate chief--importing, of course, to be done by his order, but
an order which had its conception elsewhere.
CHAPTER CXIII.
LIEUTENANT FREMONT'S FIRST EXPEDITION: SPEECH, AND MOTION OF
SENATOR LINN.
A communication was received from the War Department, in answer
to a call heretofore made for the report of Lieutenant Frémont's
expedition to the Rocky Mountains. Mr. Linn moved that it be printed
for the use of the Senate; and also that one thousand extra copies
be printed.
"In support of his motion," Mr. L. said, "that in the course
of the last summer a very interesting expedition had been
undertaken to the Rocky Mountains, ordered by Col. Abert, chief
of the Topographical Bureau, with the sanction of the Secretary
at War, and executed by Lieutenant Frémont of the topographical
engineers. The object of the expedition was to examine and
report upon the rivers and country between the frontiers of
Missouri and the base of the Rocky Mountains; and especially to
examine the character, and ascertain the latitude and longitude
of the South Pass, the great crossing place to these mountains
on the way to the Oregon. All the objects of the expedition have
been accomplished, and in a way to be beneficial to science,
and instructive to the general reader, as well as useful to the
government.
"Supplied with the best astronomical and barometrical
instruments, well qualified to use them, and accompanied by
twenty-five _voyageurs_, enlisted for the purpose at St. Louis,
and trained to all the hardships and dangers of the prairies
and the mountains, Mr. Frémont left the mouth of the Kansas,
on the frontiers of Missouri, on the 10th of June; and, in the
almost incredibly short space of four months returned to the
same point, without an accident to a man, and with a vast mass
of useful observations, and many hundred specimens in botany and
geology.
"In executing his instructions, Mr. Frémont proceeded up the
Kansas River far enough to ascertain its character, and then
crossed over to the Great Platte, and pursued that river to its
source in the mountains, where the Sweet Water (a head branch
of the Platte) issues from the neighborhood of the South Pass.
He reached the Pass on the 8th of August, and describes it as a
wide and low depression of the mountains, where the ascent is
as easy as that of the hill on which this Capitol stands, and
where a plainly beaten wagon road leads to the Oregon through
the valley of Lewis's River, a fork of the Columbia. He went
through the Pass, and saw the head-waters of the Colorado, of
the Gulf of California; and, leaving the valleys to indulge a
laudable curiosity and to make some useful observations, and
attended by four of his men, he climbed the loftiest peak of the
Rocky Mountains, until then untrodden by any known human being;
and, on the 15th of August, looked down upon ice and snow some
thousand feet below, and traced in the distance the valleys of
the rivers which, taking their rise in the same elevated ridge,
flow in opposite directions to the Pacific Ocean and to the
Mississippi. From that ultimate point he returned by the valley
of the Great Platte, following the stream in its whole course,
and solving all questions in relation to its navigability, and
the character of the country through which it flows.
"Over the whole course of this extended route, barometrical
observations were made by Mr. Frémont, to ascertain elevations
both of the plains and of the mountains; astronomical
observations were taken, to ascertain latitudes and longitudes;
the face of the country was marked as arable or sterile; the
facility of travelling, and the practicability of routes, noted;
the grand features of nature described, and some presented in
drawings; military positions indicated; and a large contribution
to geology and botany was made in the varieties of plants,
flowers, shrubs, trees, and grasses, and rocks and earths,
which were enumerated. Drawings of some grand and striking
points, and a map of the whole route, illustrate the report, and
facilitate the understanding of its details. Eight carts, drawn
by two mules each, accompanied the expedition; a fact which
attests the facility of travelling in this vast region. Herds of
buffaloes furnished subsistence to the men; a short, nutritious
grass, sustained the horses and mules. Two boys (one of twelve
years of age, the other of eighteen), besides the enlisted
men, accompanied the expedition, and took their share of its
hardships; which proves that boys, as well as men, are able to
traverse the country to the Rocky Mountains.
"The result of all his observations Mr. Frémont had condensed
into a brief report--enough to make a document of ninety or
one hundred pages; and believing that this document would
be of general interest to the whole country, and beneficial
to science, as well as useful to the government, I move the
printing of the extra number which has been named.
"In making this motion, and in bringing this report to the
notice of the Senate, I take a great pleasure in noticing the
activity and importance of the Topographical Bureau. Under its
skilful and vigilant head [Colonel Abert], numerous valuable and
incessant surveys are made; and a mass of information collected
of the highest importance to the country generally, as well
as to the military branch of the public service. This report
proves conclusively that the country, for several hundred miles
from the frontier of Missouri, is exceedingly beautiful and
fertile; alternate woodland and prairie, and certain portions
well supplied with water. It also proves that the valley of the
river Platte has a very rich soil, affording great facilities
for emigrants to the west of the Rocky Mountains.
"The printing was ordered."
CHAPTER CXIV.
OREGON COLONIZATION ACT: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH.
MR. BENTON said: On one point there is unanimity on this floor;
and that is, as to the title to the country in question. All agree
that the title is in the United States. On another point there is
division; and that is, on the point of giving offence to England,
by granting the land to our settlers which the bill proposes. On
this point we divide. Some think it will offend her--some think it
will not. For my part, I think she will take offence, do what we may
in relation to this territory. She wants it herself, and means to
quarrel for it, if she does not fight for it. I think she will take
offence at our bill, and even at our discussion of it. The nation
that could revive the question of impressment in 1842--which could
direct a peace mission to revive that question--the nation that can
insist upon the right of search, and which was ready to go to war
with us for what gentlemen call a few acres of barren ground in a
frozen region--the nation that could do these things, and which has
set up a claim to our territory on the western coast of our own
continent, must be ripe and ready to take offence at any thing that
we may do. I grant that she will take offence; but that is not the
question with me. Has she a _right_ to take offence? That is my
question! and this being decided in the negative, I neither fear nor
calculate consequences. I take for my rule of action the maxim of
President Jackson in his controversy with France--ask nothing but
what is right, submit to nothing wrong and leave the consequences
to God and the country. That maxim brought us safely and honorably
out of our little difficulty with France, notwithstanding the fears
which so many then entertained; and it will do the same with Great
Britain, in spite of our present apprehensions. Courage will keep
her off, fear will bring her upon us. The assertion of our rights
will command her respect; the fear to assert them will bring us her
contempt. The question, then, with me, is the question of right,
and not of fear! Is it right for us to make these grants on the
Columbia? Has Great Britain just cause to be offended at it? These
are my questions; and these being answered to my satisfaction, I go
forward with the grants, and leave the consequences to follow at
their pleasure.
The fear of Great Britain is pressed upon us; at the same time her
pacific disposition is enforced and insisted upon. And here it
seems to me, that gentlemen fall into a grievous inconsistency.
While they dwell on the peaceable disposition of Great Britain,
they show her ready to go to war with us for nothing, or even for
our own! The northeastern boundary is called a dispute for a few
acres of barren land in a frozen region, worth nothing; yet we are
called upon to thank God Almighty and Daniel Webster for saving us
from a war about these few frozen and barren acres. Would Great
Britain have gone to war with us for these few acres? and is that a
sign of her pacific temper? The Columbia is admitted on all hands
to be ours; yet gentlemen fear war with Great Britain if we touch
it--worthless as it is in their eyes. Is this a sign of peace? Is
it a pacific disposition to go to war with us, for what is our own;
and which is besides, according to their opinion, not worth a straw?
Is this peaceful? If it is, I should like to know what is hostile.
The late special minister is said to have come here, bearing the
olive branch of peace in his hand. Granting that the olive branch
was in one hand, what was in the other? Was not the war question of
impressment in the other? also, the war question of search, on the
coast of Africa? also, the war question of the Columbia, which he
refused to include in the peace treaty? Were not these three war
questions in the other hand?--to say nothing of the Caroline; for
which he refused atonement; and the Creole, which he says would
have occasioned the rejection of the treaty, if named in it. All
these war questions were in the other hand; and the special mission,
having accomplished its peace object in getting possession of the
military frontiers of Maine, has adjourned all the war questions
to London, where we may follow them if we please. But there is one
of these subjects for which we need not go to London--the Creole,
and its kindred cases. The conference of Lord Ashburton with the
abolition committee of New York shows that that question need not
go to London--that England means to maintain all her grounds on
the subject of slaves, and that any treaty inconsistent with these
grounds would be rejected. This is what he says:
"Lord Ashburton said that, when the delegation came to read his
correspondence with Mr. Webster, they would see that he had
taken all possible care to prevent any injury being done to
the people of color; that, if he had been willing to introduce
an article including cases similar to that of the Creole, his
government would never have ratified it, as they will adhere to
the great principles they have so long avowed and maintained;
and that the friends of the slave in England would be very
watchful to see that no wrong practice took place under the
tenth article."
This is what his lordship said in New York, and which shows that it
was not want of instructions to act on the Creole case, as alleged
in Mr. Webster's correspondence, but want of inclination in the
British government to settle the case. The treaty would have been
rejected, if the Creole case had been named in it; and if we had
had a protocol showing that fact, I presume the important note of
Lord Ashburton would have stood for as little in the eyes of other
senators as it did in mine, and that the treaty would have found
but few supporters. The Creole case would not be admitted into
the treaty; and what was put in it, is to give the friends of the
slaves in England a right to watch us, and to correct our wrong
practices under the treaty! This is what the protocol after the
treaty informs us; and if we had had a protocol before it, it is
probable that there would have been no occasion for this conference
with the New York abolitionists. Be that as it may, the peace
mission, with its olive branch in one hand, brought a budget of war
questions in the other, and has carried them all back to London, to
become the subject of future negotiations. All these subjects are
pregnant with danger. One of them will force itself upon us in five
years--the search question--which we have purchased off for a time;
and when the purchase is out we must purchase again, or submit to be
searched, or resist with arms. I repeat it: the pacific England has
a budget of war questions now in reserve for us, and that we cannot
escape them by fearing war. Neither nations nor individuals ever
escaped danger by fearing it. They must face it, and defy it. An
abandonment of a right, for fear of bringing on an attack, instead
of keeping it off, will inevitably bring on the outrage that is
dreaded.
Other objections are urged to this bill, to which I cannot agree.
The distance is objected to it. It is said to be eighteen thousand
miles by water (around Cape Horn), and above three thousand miles
by land and water, through the continent. Granted. The very
distance, by Cape Horn, was urged by me, twenty years ago, as a
reason for occupying and fortifying the mouth of the Columbia.
My argument was, that we had merchant ships and ships of war in
the North Pacific Ocean; that these vessels were twenty thousand
miles from an Atlantic port; that a port on the western coast of
America was indispensable to their safety; and that it would be
suicidal in us to abandon the port we have there to any power,
and especially to the most formidable and domineering naval power
which the world ever saw. And I instanced the case of Commodore
Porter, his prizes lost, and his own ship eventually captured in
a neutral port, because we had no port of our own to receive and
shelter him. The twenty thousand miles distance, and dangerous and
tempestuous cape to be doubled, were with me arguments in favor of
a port on the western coast of America, and, as such, urged on this
floor near twenty years ago. The distance through the continent
is also objected to. It is said to exceed three thousand miles.
Granted. But it is further than that to Africa, where we propose to
build up a colony of negroes out of our recaptured Africans. Our
eighty-gun fleet is to carry her intercepted slaves to Liberia: so
says the correspondence of the naval captains (Bell and Paine) with
Mr. Webster. Hunting in couples with the British, at an expense
of money (to say nothing of the loss of lives and ships) of six
hundred thousand dollars per annum, to recapture kidnapped negroes,
we are to carry them to Liberia, and build up a black colony there,
four thousand miles from us, while the Columbia is too far off for
a white colony! The English are to carry their redeemed captives
to Jamaica, and make apprentices of them for life. We are to
carry ours to Liberia; and then we must go to Liberia to protect
and defend them. Liberia is four thousand miles distant, and not
objected to on account of the distance; the Columbia is not so far,
and distance becomes a formidable objection.
The expense is brought forward as another objection, and repeated,
notwithstanding the decisive answer it has received from my
colleague. He has shown that it is but a fraction of the expense of
the African squadron; that this squadron is the one-twelfth part of
our whole naval establishment, which is to cost us seven millions of
dollars per annum, and that the annual cost of the squadron must be
near six hundred thousand dollars, and its expense for five years
three millions. For the forts in the Oregon--forts which are only to
be stockades and block-houses, for security against the Indians--for
these forts, only one hundred thousand dollars is appropriated;
being the sixth part of the annual expense, and the thirtieth part
of the whole expense, of the African fleet. Thus the objection of
expense becomes futile and ridiculous. But why this everlasting
objection of expense to every thing western? Our dragoons
dismounted, because, they say, horses are too expensive. The western
rivers unimproved, on account of the expense. No western armory,
because of the expense. Yet hundreds of thousands, and millions, for
the African squadron!
Another great objection to the bill is the land clause--the grants
of land to the settler, his wife, and his children. Gentlemen say
they will vote for the bill if that clause is stricken out; and
I say, I will vote against it if that clause is stricken out. It
is, in fact, the whole strength and essence of the bill. Without
these grants, the bill will be worth nothing. Nobody will go three
thousand miles to settle a new country, unless he gets land by it.
The whole power of the bill is in this clause; and if it is stricken
out, the friends of the bill will give it up. They will give it up
now, and wait for the next Congress, when the full representation of
the people, under the new census, will be in power, and when a more
auspicious result might be expected.
Time is invoked, as the agent that is to help us. Gentlemen object
to the present time, refer us to the future, and beg us to wait,
and rely upon TIME and NEGOTIATIONS to accomplish all our wishes.
Alas! _time_ and _negotiation_ have been fatal agents to us, in all
our discussions with Great Britain. Time has been constantly working
for her, and against us. She now has the exclusive possession of the
Columbia; and all she wants is _time_, to ripen her possession into
title. For above twenty years--from the time of Dr. Floyd's bill, in
1820, down to the present moment--the present time, for vindicating
our rights on the Columbia, has been constantly objected to; and we
were bidden to wait. Well, we have waited: and what have we got by
it? Insult and defiance!--a declaration from the British ministers
that large British interests have grown up on the Columbia during
this time, which they will protect!--and a flat refusal from the
olive-branch minister to include this question among those which his
peaceful mission was to settle! No, sir; time and negotiation have
been bad agents for us, in our controversies with Great Britain.
They have just lost us the military frontiers of Maine, which we had
held for sixty years; and the trading frontier of the Northwest,
which we had held for the same time. Sixty years' possession, and
eight treaties, secured these ancient and valuable boundaries: one
negotiation, and a few days of time, have taken them from us! And
so it may be again. The Webster treaty of 1842 has obliterated the
great boundaries of 1783--placed the British, their fur company and
their Indians, within our ancient limits: and I, for one, want no
more treaties from the hand which is always seen on the side of the
British. I go now for vindicating our rights on the Columbia; and,
as the first step towards it, passing this bill, and making these
grants of land, which will soon place the thirty or forty thousand
rifles beyond the Rocky Mountains, which will be our effective
negotiators.
CHAPTER CXV.
NAVY PAY AND EXPENSES: PROPOSED REDUCTION: SPEECH OF MR.
MERIWETHER, OF GEORGIA: EXTRACTS.
Mr. Meriwether said "that it was from no hostility to the service
that he desired to reduce the pay of the navy. It had been increased
in 1835 to meet the increase of labor elsewhere, &c.; and a decline
having taken place there, he thought a corresponding decline should
take place in the price of labor in the navy. At the last session
of Congress, this House called on the Secretary of the Navy for a
statement of the pay allowed each officer previous to the act of
1835. From the answer to that resolution, Mr. M. derived the facts
which he should state to the House. He was desirous of getting
the exact amount received by each grade of officers, to show the
precise increase by the act of 1835. Aided by that report, the
Biennial Register of 1822, and the Report of the Secretary of the
Navy for 1822, furnishing the estimates for the 'full pay and full
rations' of each grade of officers, he was enabled to present the
entire facts accurately. Previous to that time, the classification
of officers was different from what it has been since; but, as far
as like services have been rendered under each classification, the
comparative pay is presented under each. Previous to 1835, the pay
of the 'commanding officer of the navy' was $100 per month, and
sixteen rations per day, valued at 25 cents each ration; which
amounted, 'full pay and full rations,' to $2,660 per annum. The same
officer as senior captain in service receives now $4,500; while
'on leave,' he receives $3,500 per annum. Before 1835, a 'captain
commanding a squadron' received the same pay as the commanding
officer of the navy, and the same rations; amounting, in all, to
$2,660; that same officer, exercising the same command, receives now
$4,000. Before 1835, a captain commanding a vessel of 32 guns and
upwards, received $100 per month and eight rations per day--being
a total of $1,930 per annum; a captain commanding a vessel of 20
and under 32 guns, received $75 per month and six rations per
day--amounting to $1,447 50 per annum. Since 1835, these same
captains, when performing these same duties, receive $3,500; and
when at home, by their firesides, 'waiting orders,' receive $2,500
per annum. Before 1835, a 'master commanding' received $60 per month
and five rations per day--amounting to $1,176 per annum. Since that
time, the same officer, in sea service, receives $2,500 per annum;
at other duty, $2,100 per annum; and 'waiting orders,' $1,800 per
annum. Before 1835, a 'lieutenant commanding' received $50 per
month and four rations per day; which amounted to $965 per annum.
Since that time, the same officer receives, for similar services,
$1,800 per annum. Before 1835, a lieutenant on other duty received
$40 per month, and three rations per day--amounting to $761 per
annum. Since that time, for the same services, that same officer
has received $1,500 per annum; and when 'waiting orders,' $1,200
per annum. Before 1835, a midshipman received $19 per month and one
ration per day--making $319 25 per annum. Since that time, a passed
midshipman on duty received $750 per annum; if 'waiting orders,'
$600; a midshipman received, in sea service, $400; on other duty,
$350; and 'waiting orders,' $300 per annum. Surgeons, before 1835,
received $50 per month and two rations per day--amounting to $787
50; they now receive from $1,000 to $2,700 per annum. Before 1835, a
'schoolmaster' received $25 per month and two rations per day; now,
under the name of a professor, he receives $1,200 per annum.
"Before 1835, a carpenter, boatswain, and gunner received $20 per
month and two rations per day--making $427 50 each per annum; they
now receive, if employed on a ship-of-the-line, $750, on a frigate
$600, on other duty $500, and 'waiting orders' $360 per annum. A
similar increase has been made in the pay of all other officers. The
pay of seamen has not been enlarged, and it is proposed to leave it
as it is. In several instances, an officer idle, 'waiting orders,'
receives more pay now than one of similar grade received during
the late war, when he exposed his life in battle in defence of his
country. At the navy-yards the pay of officers was greater than at
sea. Before 1835, a captain commandant received for pay, rations,
candles, and servants' hire, $3,013 per annum, besides fuel; the
same officer, for the same services, receives now $3,500 per annum.
A master commandant received $1,408 per annum, with fuel; the same
officer now receives $2,100 per annum. A lieutenant received $877,
with fuel; the same officer receives now $1,500. At naval stations,
before the act of 1835, a captain received $2,660 per annum; he now
receives $3,500 per annum. A lieutenant received $761 per annum, and
he now receives $1,500 per annum. Before and since the act of 1835,
quarters were furnished the officers at navy yards and stations.
Before that time, the pay and emoluments were estimated for in
dollars and cents, and appropriated for as pay; and the foregoing
statements are taken from the actual 'estimates' of the navy
department, and, as such, show the whole pay and emoluments received
by each officer.
"The effect of this increase of pay has been realized prejudicially
in more ways than one. In the year 1824, there were afloat in the
navy, 404 guns; in 1843, 946 guns. The cost of the item of pay alone
for each gun, then, was $2,360; now the cost is $3,500.
"The naval service has become, to a great extent, one of ease and
of idleness. The high pay has rendered its offices mostly sinecures;
hence the great effort to increase the number of officers. Every
argument has been used, every entreaty resorted to, to augment that
corps. We have seen the effect of this, that in one year (1841)
there were added 13 captains, 41 commanders, 42 lieutenants, and 163
midshipmen, without any possibly conceivable cause for the increase;
and when, at the same time, these appointments were made, there
were 20 captains 'waiting orders,' and 6 'on leave;' 26 commanders
'waiting orders,' and 3 'on leave;' 103 lieutenants 'on leave and
waiting orders,' and 16 midshipmen 'on leave and waiting orders.'
The pay of officers 'waiting orders' amounted, during the year 1841,
to $261,000; and now the amount required for the pay of that same
idle corps, increased by a useless and unnecessary increase of the
navy, is $395,000! It is a fact worthy of notice that, under the
old pay in 1824, there were 28 captains, 4 of whom were 'waiting
orders,' of 30 commanders, only 7 were 'waiting orders.' Under the
new pay, in 1843, there are 68 captains, of whom 38 are 'waiting
orders;' 97 commanders, of whom 57 are 'waiting orders and on
leave.' The item of pay, in 1841, amounted to $2,335,000, and we
are asked to appropriate for the next twelve months $3,333,139. To
give employment to as many officers as possible, it is proposed to
extend greatly our naval force; increasing the number of our vessels
in commission largely, and upon every station, notwithstanding our
commerce is reduced, and we are at peace with all the world, and
have actually purchased our peace from the only nation from which we
apprehended difficulty.
"It was stated somewhere, in some of the reports, that the
appropriation necessary to defray the expenses of courts-martial
in the navy would be, this year $50,000. This was a very large
amount, when contrasted with the service. The disorderly conduct
of the navy was notorious--no one could defend it. The country
was losing confidence in it daily, and becoming more unwilling to
bear the burdens of taxation to foster or sustain it. A few years
since, its expenditures did not exceed four millions and a half:
they are now up to near eight millions of dollars. Its expense is
greater now than during the late war with England. Notwithstanding
the unequivocal declarations of Congress, at the last session,
against the increase of the navy, and in favor of its reduction,
the Secretary passes all unheeded, and moves on in his bold career
of folly and extravagance, without abiding for a moment any will
but his own. Nothing more can be hoped for, so long as the navy has
such a host of backers, urging its increase and extravagance--from
motives of personal interest too often. The axe should be laid at
once to the root of the evil: cut down the pay, and it will not then
be sought after so much as a convenient resort for idlers, who seek
the offices for pay, expecting and intending that but little service
shall be rendered in return, because but very little is needed. The
salaries are far beyond any compensation paid to any other officer
of government, either State or Federal, for corresponding services.
A lieutenant receives higher pay than a very large majority of the
judges of the highest judicatories known to the States; a commander
far surpasses them, and equals the salaries of a majority of the
Governors of the States. Remove the temptation which high pay and
no labor present, and you will obviate the evil. Put down the
salaries to where they were before the year 1835, and you will have
no greater effort after its offices than you had before. So long as
the salaries are higher than similar talents can command in civil
life, so long will applicants flock to the navy for admission, and
the constant tendency will be to increase its expenses. The policy
of our government is to keep a very small army and navy during time
of peace, and to insure light taxes, and to induce the preponderance
of the civil over the military authorities. In time of peace we
shall meet with no difficulty in sustaining an efficient navy, as
we always have done. In time of war, patriotism will call forth our
people to the service. Those who would not heed this call are not
wanted; for those who fight for pay will, under all circumstances,
fight for those who will pay the best. The navy cannot complain of
this proposed reduction; for its pay was increased in view of the
increasing value of labor and property throughout the whole country.
No other pay was increased; and why should not this be reduced?--not
the whole amount actually increased, but only a small portion of the
increase? It is due to the country; and no one should object. We are
now supporting the government on borrowed money. The revenues will
not be sufficient to support it hereafter; and reduction has to take
place sooner or later, and upon some one or all of the departments.
Upon which ought it to fall more properly than on that which has
been defended against the prejudices resulting from the high prices
which have recently fallen upon every department of labor and
property?
"By the adoption of the amendment proposed, there will be a
permanent and annual saving of about $400,000 in the single item of
pay. And from the embarrassed condition of the treasury, so large
a sum of money might, with the greatest propriety, be saved; more
especially since by the late British treaty concluded at this place,
an annual increase is to be made to the navy expenditures of some
$600,000, as it is stated, to keep a useless squadron on the coast
of Africa. The estimates for pay for the present year greatly exceed
those of the last year. We appropriated for the last year's service
for pay, &c., $2,335,000. The sum asked for the same service this
year is $2,953,139. Besides, there is the sum of $380,000 asked for
clothing--a new appropriation, never asked for before. The clothing
for seamen being paid for by themselves, so much of the item of pay
as was necessary had hitherto been expended in clothing for them,
which was received by them in lieu of money. Now a separate fund
is asked, which is to be used as pay, and will increase that item
so much, making a sum-total of $3,333,139; which is an excess of
$998,139 over and above that appropriated for the like purpose last
session.
"The Secretary of the Navy says that his plan of keeping the ships
sailing over the ocean (where possibly no vessel can or will see
them, and where the people with whom we trade can never learn any
thing of our greatness, on account of the absence of our ships from
their ports, being kept constantly sailing from station to station)
will 'require larger squadrons than we have heretofore employed.'
He then states that his estimates are prepared for squadrons upon
this large and expensive scale. 'This,' he says, 'it is my duty
to do, submitting to Congress to determine whether, under the
circumstances, so large a force can properly be put in commission or
not. If the condition of the treasury will warrant it (of which they
are the judges), I have no hesitation in recommending the largest
force estimated for.' It is well known that the condition of the
treasury will not warrant this force. We must fall back upon the
force of last year, as the _ultimatum_ that can be sustained. Our
appropriations for pay last year were $1,000,000 less than those now
asked for. This can be cut off without prejudice to the service; and
with the reduction proposed in the salaries, $1,400,000 can be saved
from waste, and applied to sustain a depleted treasury. Increase is
now unreasonable and impracticable.
"A portion of the home squadron, authorized in September, 1841, has
not yet gone to sea for the want of seamen. While our commerce is
failing, and our sailors are idle, they will not enter the service.
The flag-ship of that squadron is yet in port without her complement
of men. Why then only increase officers and build ships, when you
cannot get men to man them?
"From 1829 to 1841, the sums paid to officers 'waiting orders,'
were, 1829, $197,684; in 1830, $156,025; in 1831, $231,378; in 1832,
$204,290; in 1833, $205,233; in 1834, $202,914; in 1835, $219,036;
in 1836, $212,362; in 1837, $250,930; in 1838, $297,000; in 1839,
$265,043; in 1840, $265,000; in 1841, $252,856.
"The honorable member also showed from the report of the chief of
the medical department, that, out of the appropriation for medicine
there had been purchased in one year 31 blue cloth frock coats with
navy buttons and a silver star on them, 31 pairs of blue cassimere
pantaloons, and 31 blue cassimere vests with navy buttons--all for
pensioners. He also shows that under the head of medicine there
had been purchased out of the same fund, whiskey, coal, clothing,
spirits, harness, stationery, hay, corn, oats, stoves, beef, mutton,
fish, bread, charcoal, &c., to the amount of some $4,000; and, in
general, that purchases of all articles were generally made from
particular persons, and double prices paid. Many examples of this
were given, among them the purchase of certain surgical instruments
in Philadelphia from the favored sellers for the sum of $1,224 and
54 cents, which it was proved had been purchased by them from the
maker, in the same city, for $669 and 81 cents: and in the same
proportion in the purchases generally."
CHAPTER CXVI.
EULOGY ON SENATOR LINN: SPEECHES OF MR. BENTON AND MR.
CRITTENDEN.
IN SENATE: _Tuesday, December 12, 1843_.--
The death of Senator LINN.
The journal having been read, Mr. Benton rose and said:
"Mr. PRESIDENT:--I rise to make to the Senate the formal
communication of an event which has occurred during the
recess, and has been heard by all with the deepest regret. My
colleague and friend, the late Senator Linn, departed this life
on Tuesday, the 3d day of October last, at the early age of
forty-eight years, and without the warnings or the sufferings
which usually precede our departure from this world. He had laid
him down to sleep, and awoke no more. It was to him the sleep
of death! and the only drop of consolation in this sudden and
calamitous visitation was, that it took place in his own house,
and that his unconscious remains were immediately surrounded by
his family and friends, and received all the care and aid which
love and skill could give.
"I discharge a mournful duty, Mr. President, in bringing this
deplorable event to the formal notice of the Senate; in offering
the feeble tribute of my applause to the many virtues of my
deceased colleague, and in asking for his memory the last honors
which the respect and affection of the Senate bestow upon the
name of a deceased brother.
"LEWIS FIELD LINN, the subject of this annunciation, was born
in the State of Kentucky, in the year 1795, in the immediate
vicinity of Louisville. His grandfather was Colonel William
Linn, one of the favorite officers of General George Rodgers
Clark, and well known for his courage and enterprise in the
early settlement of the Great West. At the age of eleven he
had fought in the ranks of men, in the defence of a station in
western Pennsylvania, and was seen to deliver a deliberate and
effective fire. He was one of the first to navigate the Ohio and
Mississippi from Pittsburg to New Orleans, and back again--a
daring achievement, which himself and some others accomplished
for the public service, and amidst every species of danger, in
the year 1776. He was killed by the Indians at an early period;
leaving a family of young children, of whom the worthy Colonel
William Pope (father of Governor Pope, and head of the numerous
and respectable family of that name in the West) became the
guardian. The father of Senator LINN was among these children;
and, at an early age, skating upon the ice near Louisville, with
three other boys, he was taken prisoner by the Shawanee Indians,
carried off, and detained captive for three years, when all four
made their escape and returned home, by killing their guard,
traversing some hundred miles of wilderness, and swimming the
Ohio River. The mother of Senator LINN was a Pennsylvanian by
birth; her maiden name Hunter; born at Carlisle; and also had
heroic blood in her veins. Tradition, if not history, preserves
the recollection of her courage and conduct at Fort Jefferson,
at the Iron Banks, in 1781, when the Indians attacked and were
repulsed from that post. Women and boys were men in those days.
"The father of Senator LINN died young, leaving this son
but eleven years of age. The cares of an elder brother[5]
supplied (as far as such a loss could be supplied) the loss of
a father; and under his auspices the education of the orphan
was conducted. He was intended for the medical profession, and
received his education, scholastic and professional, in the
State of his nativity. At an early age he was qualified for the
practice of medicine, and commenced it in the then territory,
now State, of Missouri; and was immediately amongst the foremost
of his profession. Intuitive sagacity supplied in him the place
of long experience; and boundless benevolence conciliated
universal esteem. To all his patients he was the same; flying
with alacrity to every call, attending upon the poor and humble
as zealously as on the rich and powerful, on the stranger as
readily as on the neighbor, discharging to all the duties of
nurse and friend as well as of physician, and wholly regardless
of his own interest, or even of his own health, in his zeal to
serve and to save others.
[5] General now Senator Henry Dodge.
"The highest professional honors and rewards were before him.
Though commencing on a provincial theatre, there was not a
capital in Europe or America in which he would not have attained
the front rank in physic or surgery. But his fellow-citizens
perceived in his varied abilities, capacity and aptitude for
service in a different walk. He was called into the political
field by an election to the Senate of his adopted State.
Thence he was called to the performance of judicial duties,
by a federal appointment to investigate land titles. Thence he
was called to the high station of senator in the Congress of
the United States--first by an executive appointment, then by
three successive almost unanimous elections. The last of those
elections he received but one year ago, and had not commenced
his duties under it--had not sworn in under the certificate
which attested it--when a sudden and premature death put an end
to his earthly career. He entered this body in the year 1833;
death dissolved his connection with it in 1843. For ten years he
was a beloved and distinguished member of this body; and surely
a nobler or a finer character never adorned the chamber of the
American Senate.
"He was my friend; but I speak not the language of friendship
when I speak his praise. A debt of justice is all that I can
attempt to discharge: an imperfect copy of the _true man_ is all
that I can attempt to paint.
"A sagacious head, and a feeling heart, were the great
characteristics of Dr. LINN. He had a judgment which penetrated
both men and things, and gave him near and clear views of far
distant events. He saw at once the bearing--the remote bearing
of great measures, either for good or for evil; and brought
instantly to their support, or opposition, the logic of a prompt
and natural eloquence, more beautiful in its delivery, and more
effective in its application, than any that art can bestow.
He had great fertility of mind, and was himself the author
and mover of many great measures--some for the benefit of the
whole Union--some for the benefit of the Great West--some for
the benefit of his own State--many for the benefit of private
individuals. The pages of our legislative history will bear the
evidences of these meritorious labors to a remote and grateful
posterity.
"Brilliant as were the qualities of his head, the qualities of
his heart still eclipse them. It is to the heart we look for
the character of the man; and what a heart had LEWIS LINN! The
kindest, the gentlest, the most feeling, and the most generous
that ever beat in the bosom of bearded man! And yet, when the
occasion required it, the bravest and the most daring also.
He never beheld a case of human woe without melting before
it; he never encountered an apparition of earthly danger
without giving it defiance. Where is the friend, or even the
stranger, in danger, or distress, to whose succor he did not
fly, and whose sorrowful or perilous case he did not make his
own? When--where--was he ever called upon for a service, or a
sacrifice, and rendered not, upon the instant, the one or the
other, as the occasion required?
"The senatorial service of this rare man fell upon trying
times--high party times--when the collisions of party too often
embittered the ardent feelings of generous natures; but who ever
knew bitterness, or party animosities in him? He was, indeed,
a party man--as true to his party as to his friend and his
country; but beyond the line of duty and of principle--beyond
the debate and the vote--he knew no party, and saw no opponent.
Who among us all, even after the fiercest debate, ever met him
without meeting the benignant smile and the kind salutation? Who
of us all ever needed a friend without finding one in him? Who
of us all was ever stretched upon the bed of sickness without
finding him at its side? Who of us all ever knew of a personal
difficulty of which he was not, as far as possible, the kind
composer?
"Such was Senator Linn, in high party times, here among us. And
what he was here, among us, he was every where, and with every
body. At home among his friends and neighbors; on the high road
among casual acquaintances; in foreign lands among strangers; in
all, and in every of these situations, he was the same thing. He
had kindness and sympathy for every human being; and the whole
voyage of his life was one continued and benign circumnavigation
of all the virtues which adorn and exalt the character of man.
Piety, charity, benevolence, generosity, courage, patriotism,
fidelity, all shone conspicuously in him, and might extort from
the beholder the impressive interrogatory, '_For what place
was this man made?_' Was it for the Senate, or the camp? For
public or for private life? For the bar or the bench? For the
art which heals the diseases of the body, or that which cures
the infirmities of the State? For which of all these was he
born? And the answer is, 'For all!' He was born to fill the
largest and most varied circle of human excellence; and to crown
all these advantages, Nature had given him what the great Lord
Bacon calls a perpetual letter of recommendation--a countenance,
not only good, but sweet and winning--radiant with the virtues
of his soul--captivating universal confidence; and such as no
stranger could behold--no traveller, even in the desert, could
meet, without stopping to reverence, and saying 'Here is a man
in whose hands I could deposit life, liberty, fortune, honor!'
Alas! that so much excellence should have perished so soon! that
such a man should have been snatched away at the early age of
forty-eight, and while all his faculties were still ripening and
developing!
"In the life and character of such a man, so exuberant in all
that is grand and beautiful in human nature, it is difficult to
particularize excellences or to pick out any one quality, or
circumstance, which could claim pre-eminence over all others.
If I should attempt it, I should point, among his measures for
the benefit of the whole Union, to the Oregon Bill; among his
measures for the benefit of his own State, to the acquisition
of the Platte Country; among his private virtues, to the love
and affection which he bore to that brother--the half-brother
only--who, only thirteen years older than himself had been to
him the tenderest of fathers. For twenty-nine years I had known
the depth of that affection, and never saw it burn more brightly
than in our last interview, only three weeks before his death.
He had just travelled a thousand miles out of his way to see
that brother; and his name was still the dearest theme of his
conversation--a conversation, strange to tell! which turned, not
upon the empty and fleeting subjects of the day, but upon things
solid and eternal--upon friendship, and upon death, and upon
the duties of the living to the dead. He spoke of two friends
whom it was natural to believe that he should survive, and to
whose memories he intended to pay the debt of friendship. Vain
calculation! Vain impulsion of generosity and friendship! One of
these two friends now discharges that mournful debt to him: the
other[6] has written me a letter, expressing his '_deep sorrow
for the untimely death of our friend_, Dr. LINN.'"
[6] General Jackson.
Mr. BENTON then offered the following resolutions:
"_Resolved unanimously_, That the members of the Senate, from
sincere desire of showing every mark of respect due to the
memory of the Hon. LEWIS F. LINN, deceased, late a member
thereof, will go into mourning, by wearing crape on the left arm
for thirty days.
"_Resolved unanimously_, That, as an additional mark of respect
for the memory of the Hon. LEWIS F. LINN, the Senate do now
adjourn."
"Mr. CRITTENDEN said: I rise, Mr. President, to second the
motion of the honorable senator from Missouri, and to express my
cordial concurrence in the resolutions he has offered.
"The highest tribute of our respect is justly due to the
honored name and memory of Senator Linn, and there is not a
heart here that does not pay it freely and plenteously. These
resolutions are but responsive to the general feeling that
prevails throughout the land, and will afford to his widow and
his orphans the consolatory evidence that their _country_ shares
their grief, and mourns for their bereavement.
"I am very sensible, Mr. President, that the very appropriate,
interesting, and eloquent remarks of the senator from Missouri
[Mr. BENTON] have made it difficult to add any thing that will
not impair the effect of what he has said; but I must beg the
indulgence of the Senate for a few moments. Senator Linn was
by birth a Kentuckian, and my countryman. I do not dispute the
claims of Missouri, his adopted State; but I wish it to be
remembered, that I claim for Kentucky the honor of his nativity;
and by the great law that regulates such precious inheritances,
a portion, at least, of his fame must descend to his native
land. It is the just ambition and right of Kentucky to gather
together the bright names of her children, no matter in what
lands their bodies may be buried, and to preserve them as her
jewels and her crown. The name of Linn is one of her jewels; and
its pure and unsullied lustre shall long remain as one of her
richest ornaments.
"The death of such a man is a national calamity. Long a
distinguished member of this body, he was continually rewarded
with the increasing confidence of the great State he so
honorably represented; and his reputation and usefulness
increased at every step of his progress.
"In the Senate his death is most sensibly felt. We have lost a
colleague and friend, whose noble and amiable qualities bound
us to him as with 'hooks of steel.' Who of us that knew him can
forget his open, frank, and manly bearing--that smile, that
seemed to be the pure, warm sunshine of the heart, and the
thousand courtesies and kindnesses that gave a 'daily beauty to
his life?'
"He possessed a high order of intellect; was resolute,
courageous, and ardent in all his pursuits. A decided party
man, he participated largely and conspicuously in the business
of the Senate and the conflicts of its debates; but there was a
kindliness and benignity about him, that, like polished armor,
turned aside all feelings of ill-will or animosity. He had
political opponents in the Senate, but not one enemy.
"The good and generous qualities of our nature were blended in
his character;
'---- and the elements
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world--_This was a man_.'"
The resolutions were then adopted, and the Senate adjourned.
CHAPTER CXVII.
THE COAST SURVEY: ATTEMPT TO DIMINISH ITS EXPENSE, AND TO
EXPEDITE ITS COMPLETION, BY RESTORING THE WORK TO NAVAL AND
MILITARY OFFICERS.
Under the British government, not remarkable for its economy, the
survey of the coasts is exclusively made by naval officers, and the
whole service presided by an admiral, of some degree--usually among
the lowest; and these officers survey not only the British coasts
throughout all their maritime possessions, but the coasts of other
countries where they trade, when it has not been done by the local
authority. The survey of the United States began in the same way,
being confined to army and navy officers; and costing but little:
now it is a civil establishment, and the office which conducts it
has almost grown up into a department, under a civil head, and civil
assistance costing a great annual sum. From time to time efforts
have been made to restore the naval superintendence of this work, as
it was when it was commenced under Mr. Jefferson: and as it now is,
and always has been, in Great Britain. At the session 1842-'3, this
effort was renewed; but with the usual fate of all attempts to put
an end to any unnecessary establishment, or expenditure. A committee
of the House had been sitting on the subject for two sessions, and
not being able to agree upon any plan, proposed an amendment to the
civil and diplomatic appropriation bill, by which the legislation,
which they could not agree upon, was to be referred to a board of
officers; and their report, when accepted by the President, was to
become law, and to be carried into effect by him. Their proposition
was in these words:
"That the sum of one hundred thousand dollars be appropriated,
out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated,
for continuing the survey of the coast of the United States:
_Provided_, That this, and all other appropriations hereafter
to be made for this work, shall, until otherwise provided by
law, be expended in accordance with a plan of re-organizing the
mode of executing the survey, to be submitted to the President
of the United States by a board of officers which shall be
organized by him, to consist of the present superintendent, his
two principal assistants, and the two naval officers now in
charge of the hydrographical parties, and four from among the
principal officers of the corps of topographical engineers; none
of whom shall receive any additional compensation whatever for
this service, and who shall sit as soon as organized. And the
President of the United States shall adopt and carry into effect
the plan of said board, as agreed upon by a majority of its
members; and the plan of said board shall cause to be employed
as many officers of the army and navy of the United States as
will be compatible with the successful prosecution of the work;
the officers of the navy to be employed on the hydrographical
parts, and the officers of the army on the topographical parts
of the work. And no officer of the army or navy shall hereafter
receive any extra pay, out of this or any future appropriations,
for surveys."
In support of this proposition, Mr. Mallory, the mover of it, under
the direction of the committee, said:
"It would be perceived by the House, that this amendment
proposed a total re-organization of the work; and if it should
be carried out in the spirit of that amendment, it would correct
many of the abuses which some of them believed to exist and
would effect a saving of some $20,000 or $30,000, by dispensing
with the services of numerous civil officers, believed not
to be necessary, and substituting for them officers of the
topographical corps and officers of the navy. The committee
had left the plan of the survey to be decided on by a board of
officers, and submitted to the President for his approval, as
they had not been able to agree among themselves on any detailed
plan. He had, to be sure, his own views as to how the work
should be carried on; but as they did not meet the concurrence
of a majority of the committee, he could not bring them before
the House in the form of a report."
This was the explanation of the proposition. Not being able to
agree to any act of legislation themselves, they refer it to the
President, and a board, to do what they could not, but with an
expectation that abuses in the work would be corrected, expense
diminished, and naval and military officers substituted, as far
as compatible with the successful prosecution of the work. This
was a lame way of getting a reform accomplished. To say nothing
of the right to delegate legislative authority to a board and the
President, that mode of proceeding was the most objectionable
that could have been devised. It is a proverb that these boards
are a machine in the hands of the President, in which he and they
equally escape responsibility--they sheltering themselves under his
approval--he, under their recommendation and, to make sure of his
approval, it is usually obtained before the recommendation is made.
This proposed method of effecting a reform was not satisfactory to
those who wished to see this branch of the service subjected to an
economical administration, and brought to a conclusion within some
reasonable time. With that view, Mr. Charles Brown, of Pennsylvania,
moved a reduction of the appropriation of more than one half, and a
transference of the work from the Treasury department (where it then
was) to the navy department where it properly belonged; and proposed
the work to be done by army and naval officers. In support of his
proposal, he said:
"The amendment offered under the instructions of the committee,
did not look to the practical reform which the House expected
when this subject was last under discussion. He believed, that
there was a decided disposition manifested in the House to get
clear of the present head of the survey; yet the amendment of
the gentleman brought him forward as the most prominent member
of it. He thought the House decided, when the subject was up
before, that the survey should be carried on by the officers
of the general government; and he wished it to be carried on
in that way now. He did not wish to pay some hundred thousand
dollars as extra pay for officers taken from private life, when
there were so many in the navy and army perfectly competent to
perform this service. This work had cost nearly a million of
dollars ($720,000) by the employment of Mr. Hassler and his
civil assistants alone, without taking into consideration the
pay of the officers of the navy and army who were engaged in it."
The work had then been in hand for thirty years, and the average
expense of each year would be $22,000; but it was now increased
to a hundred thousand; and Mr. Brown wished it carried back more
than half--a saving to be effected by transferring the work to
the Navy Department, where there were so many officers without
employment--receiving pay, and nothing to do. In support of his
proposal, Mr. Brown went into an examination of the laws on the
subject, to show that this work was begun under a law to have it
done as he proposed; and he agreed that the army and navy officers
(so many of whom were without commands), were competent to it; and
that it was absurd to put it under the Treasury Department.
"The law of February 10, 1807, created the coast survey, put it
in the hands of the President, and authorized him to use army
and navy officers, navy vessels, astronomers, and other persons.
In August, 1816 Mr. Hassler was appointed superintendent.
His agreement was to "make the principal triangulation and
consequent calculations himself; to instruct the engineer and
naval officers employed under him; and he wanted two officers
of engineers, topographical or others, and some cadets of said
corps, in number according to circumstances. April 14, 1818,
that part of the law of 1807 was repealed which authorized the
employment of other persons than those belonging to the army and
navy. Up to this time over $55,000 were expended in beginning
the work and buying instruments, for which purpose Mr. Hassler
was in England from August 1811, to 1815.
"June 10, 1832, the law of 1807 was revived, and Mr. Hassler
was again appointed superintendent. The work has been going on
ever since. The coast has been triangulated from Point Judith
to Cape Henlopen (say about 300 miles); but only a part of the
off-shore soundings have been taken. There are about 3,000 miles
of seaboard to the United States. $720,000 have been expended
already. It is stated, in Captain Swift's pamphlet, that the
survey of the coast was under the Treasury Department, because
Mr. Hassler was already engaged under that department, making
weights and measures. These are all made now. When the coast
survey was begun, the topographical corps existed but in name.
In 1838, it was organized and enlarged, and is now an able and
useful corps. Last year Congress established a hydrographical
bureau in the Navy Department. There are numbers of naval
officers capable of doing hydrographical duties under this
bureau. The coast survey is the most important topographical and
hydrographical work in the country. We have a topographical and
a hydrographical bureau, yet neither of them has any connection
with this great national work. Mr. Hassler has just published
from the opinion of the Marquis de La Place (Chamber of Peers,
session of 1816-'17), upon the French survey, this valuable
suggestion, viz: 'Perhaps even the great number of geographical
engineers which our present state of peace allows to employ in
this work, to which it is painful to see them strangers, would
render an execution more prompt, and less expensive.'
"The Florida war is now over; many works of internal improvement
are suspended; there must be topographical officers enough for
the coast survey. The Russian government has employed an able
American engineer to perform an important scientific work; but
that wise government requires that all the assistants shall come
from its corps of engineers, which is composed of army and navy
officers. If the coast survey is to be a useful public work,
let the officers conduct it under their bureaus. The officers
would then take a pride in this duty, and do it well, and do it
cheap. The supervision of the bureaus would occasion _system_,
fidelity, and entire responsibility. More than $30,000 are now
paid annually to citizens, for salary out of the coast survey
appropriation. This could be saved by employing officers.
Make exclusive use of them, and half the present annual
appropriation would suffice. Can the treasury department manage
the survey understandingly? The Secretary of the Treasury has
already enough to do in the line of his duty; and, as far as
the survey is concerned, a clerk in the Treasury Department
is the secretary. Can a citizen superintendent, of closet and
scientific habits; or can a clerk in the Treasury Department,
manage, with efficiency and economy, so many land and water
parties, officers, men, vessels, and boats? The Navy Department
pays out of the navy appropriation the officers and men now
lent to the Treasury for the survey. The Secretary of the Navy
appears to have no control over the expenditures of this part of
the naval appropriation. He does not even select the officers
detailed for this duty, though he knows his own material best,
and those who are most suitable. This navy duty has become
treasury patronage, with commands, extra pay, &c.
"The Treasury Department has charge of the vessels; they
are bought by the coast-survey appropriation; the off-shore
soundings are only in part taken. There are not vessels enough,
and of the right sort, to take these soundings, and in the
right way. Steamers are wanted. The survey appropriation cannot
bear the expense, but if the Navy Department had charge of
the hydrography, it could put suitable vessels on the coast
squadron, and employ them on the coast survey, agreeably to the
law of 1807. Last year the vessels did no soundings until about
the 1st of June, although the spring opened early. The Treasury
had not the means to equip the vessels until the appropriation
bill passed Congress. But if the navy had charge of vessels, the
few naval stores they wanted might have been furnished from the
navy stores, or given from second-hand articles not on charge
at the yards. Had good arrangements been made, the Delaware Bay
might readily have been finished last fall, and the chart of
it got out at once. Now, the topographical corps makes surveys
for defences; the navy officers make charts along the coast;
and the coast survey goes over the same place a third time. If
the officers did this work, the army might get the military
information, and the navy the hydrographical knowledge, which
the interest of the country requires that each of these branches
of the public defence should have; and this, at the expense of
but one survey; for, at places where defences might be required,
the survey could be done with the utmost minuteness. The
officers of the army and navy need not clash. The topographical
corps (aided by junior navy officers willing to serve under that
bureau--and the recent Florida war and the present coast survey
system, show that navy officers are willing to serve, for the
public good, under other departments than their own) would do
the topography and furnish the shore line. The hydrographical
officers would receive the shore line, take the soundings, and
make the chart. The same principle is now at work, and works
well. The navy officers now get the shore line from the citizens
in the shore parties. The President could direct the War and
Navy Secretaries to make such rules, through the bureaus, as
would obviate every difficulty. Employing officers would secure
for the public, system, economy, and despatch. The information
obtained would be got by the right persons and kept in the right
hands. Government would have complete command of the persons
employed; and should the work ever be suspended, might, at
pleasure, set them to work again on the same duty. The survey
he wished to be prosecuted without delay; and all he wanted was
to have it under the most efficient management. If it was found
that the officers of the navy and army were not competent, it
could be remedied hereafter; but it was due to them to give
them a fair trial, before they were condemned. Certainly they
ought not to be disgraced and condemned in advance. It was an
insult to them to suppose that Mr. Hassler was the only man in
the country capable of superintending this work; and that they
could not carry on the survey of our coast by triangulation.
They had been for some time, and were now, surveying the lakes;
and he believed their surveys would be equally correct with
Mr. Hassler's. We had a bureau of hydrography of the navy,
and a corps of topographical engineers, which were expressly
created to perform this kind of service; while there was the
military academy at West Point, which qualified the officers to
perform it. The people would hardly believe that these officers
(educated at the expense of the government) were not capable of
performing the services for which they were educated; and if
they thought so, they would be for abolishing that institution.
They would say that these officers should be dismissed, and
others appointed in their places, who were qualified.
"He never could acknowledge that there was no other man but Mr.
Hassler in the country capable of carrying on the work. This
might have been the case when he was first appointed, thirty
years ago; but since that time they had a number of officers
educated at the military academy, while many others in the
civil walks of life had qualified themselves for scientific
employments. He was sure that the officers of the army and navy
were competent to perform this work. There was but little now
for the topographical engineers to do; and he had no doubt that
many of them, as well as officers of the navy, would be glad
to be employed on the coast survey. Indeed, several officers
of the navy had told him that they would like such employment,
rather than be idle, as they then were. From the rate the coast
survey had thus far proceeded, it would take more than a hundred
years to complete it. Certainly this was too slow. He hoped,
therefore, a change would be made. In the language of the report
of Mr. Aycrigg: 'We should then have the survey conducted on a
system of practical utility, and moving _right_ end foremost.'"
These were wise suggestions, and unanswerable; but although they
could not be answered they could be prevented from becoming law.
Instead of reform of abuses, reduction of expense, and speedy
termination of the work, all the evils intended to be reformed went
on and became greater than ever, and all are still kept up upon
the same arguments that sustained the former. It is worthy of note
to hear the same reason now given for continuing the civilian,
Mr. Bache, at the head of this work, which was given for thirty
years for retaining Mr. Hassler in the same place, namely, that
there is no other man in the country that can conduct the work.
But that is a tribute which servility and interest will pay to any
man who is at the head of a great establishment; and is always
paid more punctually where the establishment ought to be abolished
than where it ought to be preserved; and for the obvious reason,
that the better one can stand on its own merits, while the worse
needs the support of incessant adulation. Mr. Brown's proposal was
rejected--the other adopted; and the coast survey now costs above
five hundred thousand dollars a year in direct appropriations,
besides an immense amount indirectly in the employment of government
vessels and officers: and no prospect of its termination. But the
friends of this great reform did not abandon their cause with the
defeat of Mr. Brown's proposition. Another was offered by Mr.
Aycrigg of New Jersey, who moved to discontinue the survey until
a report could be made upon it at the next session; and for this
motion there were 75 yeas--a respectable proportion of the House,
but not a majority. The yeas were:
"Messrs. Landaff W. Andrews, Sherlock J. Andrews, Thomas D.
Arnold, John B. Aycrigg, Alfred Babcock, Henry W. Beeson,
Benjamin A. Bidlack, David Bronson, Aaron V. Brown, Milton
Brown, Edmund Burke, William B. Campbell, Thomas J. Campbell,
Robert L. Caruthers, Zadok Casey, Reuben Chapman, Thomas C.
Chittenden, James Cooper, Mark A. Cooper, Benjamin S. Cowen,
James H. Cravens, John R. J. Daniel, Garrett Davis, Ezra Dean,
Edmund Deberry, Andrew W. Doig, John Edwards, John C. Edwards,
Joseph Egbert, William P. Fessenden, Roger L. Gamble, Thomas
W. Gilmer, Willis Green, William Halsted, Jacob Houck, jr.,
Francis James, Cave Johnson, Nathaniel S. Littlefield, Abraham
McClellan, James J. McKay, Alfred Marshall, John Mattocks, John
P. B. Maxwell, John Maynard, William Medill, Christopher Morgan,
William M. Oliver, Bryan Y. Owsley, William W. Payne, Nathaniel
G. Pendleton, Francis W. Pickens, John Pope, Joseph F. Randolph,
Kenneth Rayner, Abraham Rencher, John Reynolds, Romulus M.
Saunders, Tristram Shaw, Augustine H. Shepperd, Benjamin G.
Shields, William Slade, Samuel Stokely, Charles C. Stratton,
John T. Stuart, John B. Thompson, Philip Triplett. Hopkins L.
Turney, David Wallace, Aaron Ward, Edward D. White, Joseph L.
White, Joseph L. Williams, Thomas Jones Yorke, John Young."
The friends of economy in Congress, when once more strong enough
to form a party, will have a sacred duty to perform to the
country--that of diminishing, by nearly one-half, the present mad
expenditures of the government: and the abolition of the present
coast-survey establishment should be among the primary objects
of retrenchment. It is a reproach to our naval and military
officers, and besides untrue in point of fact, to assume them to
be incapable of conducting and of performing this work: it is a
reproach to Congress to vote annually an immense sum on the civil
superintendence and conduct of this work, when there are more idle
officers on the pay-roll than could be employed upon it.
CHAPTER CXVIII.
DEATH OF COMMODORE PORTER, AND NOTICE OF HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER.
The naval career of Commodore Porter illustrates in the highest
degree that which almost the whole of our naval officers, each
according to his opportunity, illustrated more or less--the benefits
of the cruising system in our naval warfare. It was the system
followed in the war of the Revolution, in the _quasi_ war with
France, and in the war of 1812--imposed upon us by necessity in
each case, not adopted through choice. In neither of these wars did
we possess ships-of-the-line and fleets to fight battles for the
dominion of the seas; fortunately, we had not the means to engage
in that expensive and fatal folly; but we had smaller vessels
(frigates the largest) to penetrate every sea, attack every thing
not too much over size, to capture merchantmen, and take shelter
when pressed where ships-of-the-line and fleets could not follow. We
had the enterprising officers which a system of separate commands so
favorably developes, and the ardent seamen who looked to the honors
of the service for their greatest reward. Wages were low; but reward
was high when the man before the mast, or the boy in the cabin,
could look upon his officer, and see in his past condition what he
himself was, and in his present rank what he himself might be. Merit
had raised one and might raise the other.
The ardor for the service was then great; the service itself heroic.
A crew for a frigate has been raised in three hours. Instant sailing
followed the reception of the order. Distant and dangerous ground
was sought, fierce and desperate combat engaged; and woe to the
enemy that was not too much over size! Five, ten, twenty minutes
would make her a wreck and a prize. Almost every officer that
obtained a command showed himself an able commander. Every crew
was heroic; every cruise daring: every combat a victory, where
proximate equality rendered it possible. Never did any service,
in any age or country, exhibit so large a proportion of skilful,
daring, victorious commanders, mainly developed by the system
of warfare which gave so many a chance to show what they were.
Necessity imposed that system; judgment should continue it. Economy,
efficiency, utility, the impossibility of building a navy to cope
with the navies of the great maritime Powers, and the insanity of
doing it if we could, all combine to recommend to the United States
the system of naval warfare which does the most damage to the enemy
with the least expense to ourselves, which avoids the expensive
establishments which oppress the finances of other nations, and
which renders useless, for want of an antagonist, the great fleets
which they support at so much cost.
Universally illustrated as the advantages of this system were by
almost all our officers in the wars of the Revolution, of '98, and
1812, it was the fortune of Commodore Porter, in the late war with
Great Britain, to carry that illustration to its highest point, and
to show, in the most brilliant manner, what an American cruiser
could do. Of course we speak of his cruise in the Pacific Ocean,
prefaced by a little preliminary run to the Grand Banks, which may
be considered as part of it--a cruise which the boy at school would
read for its romance, the mature man for its history, the statesman
for the lesson which it teaches.
The Essex, a small frigate of thirty-two guns, chiefly carronades,
and but little superior to a first-class sloop-of-war of the present
day, with a crew of some three hundred men, had the honor to make
this illustrious cruise. Leaving New York in June, soon after
the declaration of war, and making some small captures, she ran
up towards the Grand Banks, and in the night discovered a fleet
steering north, all under easy sail and in open order, wide spaces
being between the ships. From their numbers and the course they
steered Captain Porter judged them to be enemies, and wished to know
more about them.
Approaching the sternmost vessel and entering into conversation with
her, he learnt that the fleet was under the convoy of a frigate, the
Minerva, thirty-six guns, and a bomb-vessel, both then ahead; and
that the vessels of the fleet transported one thousand soldiers. He
could have cut off this vessel easily, but the information he had
received opened a more brilliant prospect. He determined to pass
along through the fleet, the Essex being a good sailer, speaking the
different vessels as he quietly passed them, get alongside of the
frigate, and carry her by an energetic attack. In execution of this
plan he passed on without exciting the least suspicion, and came up
with the next vessel; but this second one was more cautious than the
first, and, on the Essex's ranging up alongside of her, she took
alarm and announced her intention to give the signal of a stranger
having joined the fleet. This put an end to disguise and brought on
prompt action. The vessel, under penalty of being fired into, was
instantly ordered to surrender and haul out of the convoy. This was
so quietly done as to be unnoticed by the other ships. On taking
possession of her she was found to be filled with soldiers, one
hundred and fifty of them, and all made prisoners of war.
A few days afterwards the Essex fell in with the man-of-war Alert,
of twenty guns and a full crew. The Alert began the action. In
eight minutes it was finished, and the British ship only saved
from sinking by the help of her captors. It was the first British
man-of-war taken in this contest, and so easily, that not the
slightest injury was done to the Essex, either to the vessel or her
crew. Crowded now with prisoners (for the crew of the Alert had to
be taken on board, in addition to the one hundred and fifty soldiers
and the previous captures), all chafing in their bondage, and ready
to embrace the opportunity of the first action to rise, Captain
Porter agreed with the commander of the Alert to convert her into a
cartel, and send her into port at St. John's, with the prisoners,
to await their exchange. Continuing her cruise, the Essex twice fell
in with the enemy's frigates having other vessels of war in company,
so that a fair engagement was impossible. The Essex then returned
to the Delaware to replenish her stores, and, sailing thence in
October, 1812, she fairly commenced her great cruise.
Captain Porter was under orders to proceed to the coast of Brazil,
and join Commodore Bainbridge at a given rendezvous, cruising
as he went. It was not until after he had run the greater part
of the distance, crossing the equator, that he got sight of the
first British vessel, a small man-of-war brig, discovered in the
afternoon, chased, and come up with in the night, having previously
boldly shown her national colors. The two vessels were then within
musket shot. Not willing to hurt a foe too weak to fight him,
Captain Porter hailed and required the brig to surrender. Instead of
complying, the arrogant little man-of-war turned upon its pursuer,
attempting to cross the stern of the Essex, with the probable
design to give her a raking fire and escape in the dark. Still the
captain would not open his guns upon so diminutive a foe until he
had tried the effect of musketry upon her. A volley was fired into
her, killing one man, when she struck. It was the British government
packet Nocton, ten guns, thirty-one men, and having fifty-five
thousand silver dollars on board.
Pursuing his cruise south to the point of rendezvous, an English
merchant vessel was captured, one of a convoy of six which had
left Rio the evening before in charge of a man-of-war schooner.
The rest of the convoy was out of sight, but, taking its track,
a long and fruitless chase was given; and the Essex repaired to
the point of rendezvous, without meeting with further incident.
Commodore Bainbridge had been there, and had left; and, being now
under discretionary orders, Captain Porter determined to use the
discretion with which he was invested, and took the bold resolution
to double Cape Horn, enter the Pacific Ocean, put twenty thousand
miles between his vessel and an American port, and try his fortune
among British whalers, merchantmen, and ships-of-war in that vast
and remote sea.
It was a bold enterprise, such as few governments would have
ordered, which many would have forbid, and which the undaunted
resolution of a bold commander alone could take. He had every thing
against him: no depots, no means of repairing or refitting; only
one chart; the Spanish American States subservient to the British,
and unreliable for the impartiality of neutrals, much less for
the sympathy of neighbors. He was deficient both in provisions
and naval stores, but expected to furnish himself from the enemy,
whose vessels in that capacious and distant sea, were always well
supplied; and the silver taken from the British government packet
would be a means towards paying wages.
In the middle of January, after a most tempestuous passage, he had
doubled the Cape, entered the Pacific, his characteristic motto,
FREE TRADE AND SAILORS' RIGHTS, at the mast-head, and ran for
Valparaiso--the great point of maritime resort in the South Pacific.
He had expected to find it a Spanish town, as it was when he left
the United States: he found it Chilian, for Chili, in the mean time,
had declared her independence: and this change he had a right to
deem favorable, as, in addition to the advantages of conventional
neutrality, it was fair to count upon the good feeling of a young
and neighboring republic. In this he was not disappointed, being
well received, meeting good treatment, obtaining supplies, and
acquiring valuable information. He learnt that the American whalers
were in great danger, most of them ignorant of the war, cruisers
in pursuit of them, and one already taken. He learnt also that the
Viceroy of Peru had sent out corsairs against American shipping--a
piece of information of the highest moment, as it showed him an
enemy where he expected a neutral, and enabled him to know how to
deal with Peruvian ships when he should meet them. This criminality
on the part of the viceroy was the result of a conclusion of his
own, that as Spain and Great Britain were allies against France, so
they would soon be allies against the United States, and that he, as
a good Spanish viceroy should begin without waiting for the orders.
This let Captain Porter see that he had two enemies instead of one
to contend with in the Pacific; and this information, as it showed
increase of danger to American interests, increased his ardor to go
to their protection; which he promptly did.
Barely taking time to hurry on board the supplies, which six months
already at sea rendered indispensable, he was again in pursuit of
the enemy, and soon had the good fortune to fall in with an American
whale-ship, which gave the important intelligence that a Peruvian
corsair had just captured two American whalers off Coquimbo and was
making for that place, with a British vessel in company. This was
exciting information, and presented a three-fold enterprise to the
chivalrous spirit of Porter--to rescue the American, punish the
Peruvian, and capture the Englishman. Instantly all sail was set for
Coquimbo, the American whaler which had given the information in
company, and all hearts beating high with expectation, and with the
prospect of performing some generous and gallant deed.
In a few hours a strange sail was descried in the distance, with a
smaller vessel in company; and soon the sail was suspected to be a
cruiser, disguised as a whaler. Then some pretty play took place,
allowable in maritime war, although entirely a game of deception.
The stranger showed Spanish colors; the Essex showed English, and
then fired a gun to leeward. The whaler in company with the Essex
hoisted the American flag _beneath_ the English jack. All these
false indications are allowable to gain advantages before fighting,
but not to fight under, when true colors must be shown by the
attacking ship under the penalty of piracy.
Gun signals were then resorted to. The stranger fired a shot ahead
of the Essex, as much as to say _stop and talk_; the Essex fired
a shot over him, signifying _come nearer_. She came, for the
implication was that the next shot would be into her. When nearer,
the stranger sent an armed boat to board the Essex; but the boat
was directed to return with an order to the stranger to pass under
the frigate's lee (_i. e._ under her guns), and to send an officer
on board to apologise for the shots he had fired at an _English_
man-of-war. The order was promptly complied with. The stranger came
under the lee of the Essex and sent her lieutenant on board, who,
not suspecting where he was, readily told him that his ship was
the Nereyda, Peruvian privateer, of fifteen guns and a full crew;
that they were cruising for Americans, and had already taken two
(the same mentioned by the whaler); and that the smaller vessel in
company was one of these.
After giving this information he made the apology for the shot,
which was that, having put one of their American prizes in charge
of a small crew, the English letter-of-marque Nimrod had fallen in
with it and taken it from the crew, and that they were cruising for
this Nimrod with a view to obtain redress, and had mistaken this
frigate for her, and hence the shot ahead of her; and hoped the
explanation would constitute a sufficient apology. It did so; Capt.
Porter was perfectly satisfied with it, and still more so, with
the information which accompanied it. It placed the accomplishment
of one of his three objects immediately in his hands, and the one
perhaps dearest to his heart--that of catching the Peruvian corsair
which was preying upon American commerce. So, civilly dismissing the
lieutenant, he waited until he had got aboard of the Nereyda, then
run up the American flag, fired a shot over the corsair, and stood
ready to fire into her. The caution was sufficient: the Peruvian
surrendered immediately, with her prize. Thus was the piratical
capture of two American whalers promptly chastised, and one of them
released, and the Peruvian informed that he and his countrymen were
cruising against Americans in mistake, and would be treated as
pirates if they continued the practice. This admonition put an end
to Peruvian seizure of American vessels.
Believing that the other American whaler captured by the Nereyda,
and taken from her prize-crew by the Nimrod would be carried to
Lima, Captain Porter immediately bore away for its port (Callao),
approached it, hauled off to watch, saw three vessels standing in,
prepared to cut them off, and especially the foremost, which he
judged to be an American. She was so, and was cut off--the very
whaler he was in search of. It was the Barclay; and the master,
crew and all, so rejoiced at their release that they immediately
joined their deliverer. The Barclay became the consort of the
Essex; her crew enlisted under Porter; the master became (what
he greatly needed) a pilot for him in the vast and unknown sea
he was traversing. There was now a good opportunity to look into
this most frequented of Peruvian ports, which Captain Porter did,
showing English colors; and, seeing nothing within that he would
have a right to catch when it came out, nor gaining any special
information, and finding that nothing had occurred there to make
known his arrival in the Pacific, he immediately sailed again, to
make the most of his time before the fact of his presence should be
known and the alarm spread.
He stood across the main towards Chatham Island and Charles Island,
approaching which three sail were discovered in the same moment--two
in company, the other apart and in a different direction. The one
apart was attended to first, pursued, summoned, captured, and proved
to be the fine British whaler Montezuma, with fourteen hundred
barrels of oil on board. A crew was put on board of her, and chase
given to the other two. They had taken the alarm, seeing what was
happening to the Montezuma, and were doing their best to escape.
The Essex gained upon them; but when within eight miles it fell
calm, dead still--one of those atmospheric stagnations frequent in
the South Sea. Sailing ceased; boats were hoisted out; the first
lieutenant, Downes, worthy second to Porter, was put in command.
Approached within a quarter of a mile, the two ships showed English
colors and fired several guns. Economizing powder and time, the
boats only replied with their oars, pulling hard to board quick;
seeing which the two ships struck, each in succession, as the
boarders were closing. They proved to be the Georgiana and the
Policy, both whalers, the former built for the East India service,
pierced for eighteen guns, and having six mounted when taken. Having
the reputation of a fast vessel, the captain determined to equip
her as a cruiser, which was done with her own guns and those of the
Policy--this latter, like the Georgiana, pierced for eighteen guns,
but mounting ten.
A very proper compliment was paid to Lieut. Downes in giving him
the command of this British ship, thus added to the American navy
with his good exertions. An armament of 16 guns, and a crew of
41 men, and her approved commander, it was believed would make
her an over-match for any English letters of marque, supposed to
be cruising among these islands, and justify occasional separate
expeditions.
By these three captures Capt. Porter was enabled to consummate the
second part of his plan--that of living upon the enemy. He got out
of them ample supplies of beef, bread, pork, water, and Gallipagos
tortoises. Besides food for the men, many articles were obtained for
repairing his own ship: and accordingly the rigging was overhauled
and tarred down, many new spars were fitted, new cordage supplied,
the Essex repainted--all in the middle of the Pacific, and at the
expense of a Power boasting great fleets, formidable against other
fleets, but useless against a daring little cruiser.
Getting into his field of operation in the month of April, Capt.
Porter had already five vessels under his command--the Montezuma,
the Georgiana, the Barclay, and the Policy, in addition to the
Essex. All cruising together towards the middle of that month, and
near sunset in the evening, a sail was perceived in the distant
horizon. A night-chase might permit her to escape; a judicious
distribution of his little squadron, without alarming, might keep
her in view till morning. It was distributed accordingly. At
daylight the sail was still in sight, and, being chased, she was
soon overtaken and captured. It was the British whaler Atlantic,
355 tons, 24 men, pierced for 20 guns, and carrying 8 18-pounder
carronades. While engaged in this chase another sail was discovered,
pursued, and taken. It was the Greenwich, of 338 tons, 18 guns, and
25 men; and like the other was an English letter of marque.
In the meanwhile the now little man-of-war the Georgiana, under
Lieut. Downes, made a brief excursion of her own among the islands,
apart from the Essex, and with brilliant success. He took, without
resistance, the British whale ships Catherine, of 270 tons, 8 guns,
and 29 men, and Rose, of 220 tons, 8 guns and 21 men; and, after a
sharp combat, a third whaler, the Hector, 270 tons, 25 men, pierced
for 20 guns and 11 mounted. In this action the lieutenant, after
having manned his two prizes, had but 21 men and boys left to manage
his ship, fight the Hector, and keep down fifty prisoners. After
manning the Hector and taking her crew on board his own vessel, he
had but ten men to perform the double duty of working the vessel and
guarding seventy-three prisoners; yet he brought all safe to his
captain, who then had a little fleet of nine sail under his command,
all of his own creation, and created out of the enemy.
The class of some of his prizes enabled the captain to increase
the efficiency of his force by some judicious changes. The
Atlantic, being nearly one hundred tons larger than the Georgiana,
a faster ship, and every way a better cruiser, was converted into
a sloop-of-war, armed with twenty guns, manned by sixty men, named
the Essex Junior; and the intrepid Downes put in command of her. The
Greenwich, also armed with guns, but only a crew to work her (for so
many prizes to man left their cruisers with their lowest number,)
was converted into a store-ship, and received all the spare stores
of the other ships. A few days afterwards the Sir Andrew Hammond was
captured, believed to be about the last of the British whalers in
those parts, and among the finest. She was a ship of three hundred
and ten tons, twelve guns, and thirty-one men; and had a large
supply of beef, pork, bread, wood, and water--adding sensibly to the
supplies of the little fleet.
The fourth of July arrived, and was gaily kept, and with the triumph
of victorious feelings, firing salutes with British guns, charged
with British powder. It was a proud celebration, and must have
looked like an illusion of the senses to the British prisoners,
accustomed to extol their country as the mistress of the seas,
and to consider American ships as the impressment ground of the
British navy. The celebration over, the little fleet divided; Essex
Junior bound to Valparaiso, with the Hector, Catherine, Policy,
and Montezuma, prizes, and the Barclay, re-captured ship, under
convoy. The Essex, with the Greenwich and Georgiana, steered for
the Gallipagos Islands, and fell in with three sail at once, the
whole of which were eventually captured: one, the English whaler
Charlton, of 274 tons, ten guns, and 21 men; another, the largest of
the three, the Seringapatam, of 357 tons, 14 guns, and 40 men; the
smallest of the three, the New Zealander, 260 tons, 8 guns, and 23
men. Here were 900 tons of shipping, 32 guns, and 75 men all taken
at once, and, as it were, at a single glance at the sea.
The Seringapatam had been built for a cruiser, and, of all the
ships in the Pacific, was the most dangerous to American commerce.
It had just come out, and had already made a prize. Finding that
the master had no commission, and that he had commenced cruising in
anticipation of one, and thereby subjected himself to be treated
as a pirate, Captain Porter had him put in irons, and sent to the
United States to be tried for his life. While finding himself
encumbered with prisoners, and his active strength impaired by the
guards they required, he released a number on parole, and gave
them up one of the captured ships (the Charlton) to proceed to Rio
Janeiro. The Georgiana and the New Zealander were despatched to
the United States, each laden with the oil taken from the British
whalers. Encumbered with prizes, as well as with prisoners, and no
American port in which to place them (for the mouth of the Columbia,
though claimed by the United States since 1804, and settled under
Mr. John Jacob Astor since 1811, had not then been nationally
occupied), Captain Porter undertook to provide a place of his own.
Repairing to the wild and retired island of Nooaheevah, he selected
a sequestered inlet, built a little fort upon it, warped three of
his prizes under its guns, left a little garrison of twenty-one men
under Lieutenant Gamble to man it, and then went upon another cruise.
The story of the remainder of his cruise is briefly told. He had
learnt that the British government, thoroughly aroused by his
operations in the Pacific, had sent out a superior force to capture
him. Taking the Essex Junior with him, he sailed for Valparaiso,
entered the harbor, and soon a superior British frigate and a sloop
of war entered also. Captain Hillyar, for that was the British
captain's name, saluted the American frigate courteously, inquiring
for the health of Captain Porter; but the British frigate (the
Phoebe) came so near that a collision seemed inevitable, and
looked as if intended, her men being at quarters and ready for
action. In a moment Captain Porter was equally ready, and that
either for boarding or raking, for the vessels had got so close that
the Phoebe, in hauling off, passed her jib-boom (that spar which
runs out from the bowsprit) over the deck of the Essex, and lay with
her bow to the broadside of the American. It was a fatal position,
and would have subjected her to immediate capture or destruction,
justifiable by the undue intimacy of an enemy. Captain Porter might
have fired into her; but, reluctant to attack in a neutral port,
he listened to the protestations of the British captain, accepted
his declaration of innocent intentions and accidental contact,
and permitted him to haul off from a situation in which he could
have been destroyed in a few minutes. Could he have foreseen what
was to happen to himself soon after in the same port, he could not
have been so forbearing to the foe nor so respectful to the Chilian
authorities.
For six weeks the hostile vessels watched each other, the British
vessel sometimes lying off and on outside of the harbor, and when so
at sea the Essex going out and offering to fight her single handed;
for the Essex Junior was too light to be of any service in a frigate
fight. Other British ships of war being expected at Valparaiso, and
no combat to be had with the Phoebe without her attendant sloop,
Captain Porter determined to take his opportunity to escape from the
harbor--which the superior sailing of the Essex would enable him
to do when the British ships were a few miles off, as they often
were--Essex Junior escaping at the same time by parting company, as
it was certain that both the British ships would follow the American
frigate.
March 28th, 1813, was a favorable day for the attempt--the wind
right, the enemy far enough out, and the Essex in perfect order
for fighting or sailing. The attempt was made, and with success,
until, doubling a headland which formed part of the harbor, a
squall carried away the maintopmast, crippling the ship and greatly
disabling her. Capt. Porter put back for the harbor, and though
getting within it, and within pistol shot of the shore, and within
half a mile from a detached battery, could not reach the usual
anchoring ground before the approach of the enemy compelled him to
clear for action. A desperate but most unequal combat raged for
near three hours--an inferior crippled frigate contending with a
frigate and a sloop in perfect order. The crippled mast of the Essex
allowed the enemy to choose his distance, which he always did with
good regard to his own safety, using his long eighteens at long
distances--keeping out of the reach of Porter's carronades, out of
the reach of boarding, and only within range of six long twelves
which played with such effect that at the end of half an hour both
British ships hauled off to repair damages. Having repaired, both
returned, and got such a position that not a gun of the crippled
Essex could bear upon them. An attempt was made to close upon them
and get near enough to cripple the sloop and drive her out of the
fight for the remainder of the action; but the frigate edged away,
choosing her distance, and using her long guns with terrible effect
upon the Essex, which could not send back a single shot.
The brave and faithful Downes pulled through the fire of the enemy
in an open boat to take the orders of his captain; but his light
guns could be of no service, and he was directed to look to his own
ship. Twice more the Essex endeavored to close upon the British
frigate, but she edged away each time, keeping the distance which
was safe to himself and destructive to the Essex. By this time half
the whole crew were killed or wounded, and the ship on fire. Capt.
Porter then attempted to run her on shore; but the wind failed
when within musket shot of the land. Leave was then given to the
crew to save themselves by swimming, which but few would do. At
last the surrender became imperative. The Essex struck, and her
heroic commander and surviving men and officers became prisoners of
war. Thousands of persons--all Valparaiso--witnessed the combat.
The American consul, Mr. Poinsett, witnessed it and claimed the
protection of the fort, only to receive evasive answers, as the
authorities were now favorable to the British. It was a clear
case of violated neutrality, tried by any rule. First, the Essex
was within the harbor, though not at the usual anchoring place,
which she could not reach; secondly, she was under the guns of the
detached fort, only half a mile distant; thirdly, she was within the
territorial jurisdiction of Chili, whether measured by the league or
by the range of cannon, and no dispute about either, as the shore
was at hand, and the British balls which missed the Essex hit the
land.
After the surrender some arrangements were made with Capt. Hillyar.
Some prisoners were exchanged upon the spot, part of those made by
Capt. Porter being available for an equal number of his own people.
Essex Junior became a cartel to carry home himself and officers
and others of his men on parole; but this man of daring deeds was
not allowed to reach home without another proof of his determined
spirit. When within thirty miles of New York, Essex Junior was
brought to by the British razee Saturn, Capt. Nash, who denied the
right of Capt. Hillyar to allow the cartel, and ordered her to lie
by him during the night. Capt. Porter put off in a whale-boat, and,
though long chased, saved himself by the chance of a fog coming to
the aid of hard rowing.
And thus ended this unparalleled cruise--ending with a disaster. But
the end could not efface the past; could not undo the captures which
had been made; could not obscure the glory which had been acquired;
cannot impair the lesson which its results impress on the minds of
statesmen. It had lasted eighteen months, and during that time the
little frigate had done every thing for itself and the country.
It had lived and flourished upon the enemy. Not a dollar had been
drawn from the public Treasury, either for pay or supplies; all came
from the foe. Money, provisions, munitions, additional arms, spars,
cordage, rigging, and vessels to constitute a little fleet, all came
from the British. Far more than enough for all purposes was taken
and much destroyed; for damage as well as protection was an object
of the expedition--damage to the British, protection to Americans;
and nobly were both objects accomplished. Surpluses, as far as
possible, were sent home; and, though in part recaptured, these
accidents did not diminish the merit of the original capture. The
great whale trade of the British in the Pacific was broken up, the
supply of oil was stopped, the London lamps were in the condition of
those of the "foolish virgins," and a member of Parliament declared
in his place that the city had burnt dark for a year.
The personal history of Commodore Porter, for such he became, was
full of incident and adventure, all in keeping with his generous and
heroic character. Twice while a lad and serving in merchant vessels
in the West Indies, he was impressed by the British, and, by his
courage and conduct made his escape, each time. A third attempt at
impressment was repulsed by the bloody defeat of the press-gang. The
same attempt, renewed with increased numbers, was again repulsed
with loss to the British party--young Porter, only sixteen, among
the most courageous defenders of the vessel. He was upwards of a
year a prisoner at Tripoli, being first lieutenant on board the
Philadelphia when she grounded before that city and was captured.
He was midshipman with the then Lieutenant Rodgers, when the two
young officers and eleven men performed that marvel of endurance,
firmness, steadiness, and seamanship, in working for three days and
nights, without sleep or rest, on the French frigate Insurgent,
guarding all the time their 173 prisoners, and conducting the prize
safe into port--as related in the notice of Commodore Rodgers.
After his return from the Pacific, he was employed in suppressing
piracy in the West Indies, which he speedily accomplished; but for
punishing an insult to the flag in the island of Porto Rico, he
incurred the displeasure of his government, and the censure of a
court martial. His proud spirit would not brook a censure which
he deemed undeserved; and he resigned his commission in the navy,
of which he was so brilliant an ornament. The writer of this View
was a close observer of that trial, and believed the Commodore to
have been hardly dealt by, and considered the result a confirmation
of his general view of courts martial where the government
interferes--an interference (when it happens) generally for a
purpose, either to convict or acquit; and rarely failing of its
object in either case, as the court is appointed by the government,
dependent upon it for future honor and favor, acts in secret, and
subject to the approval of the Executive.
Stung to the quick by such requital of his services, the brave
officer resigned his commission, and left the country which he had
served so faithfully, and loved so well, and took service in the
Republic of Mexico, then lately become independent and desirous to
create a navy. But he was not allowed to live and mourn an exile in
a foreign land. President Jackson proposed to restore him to his
place in the navy, but he refused the restoration upon the same
ground that he had resigned upon--would not remain in a service
under an unreversed sentence of unjust censure. President Jackson
then gave him the place of Consul General at Algiers; and, upon the
reduction of that place by the French, appointed him the United
States Charge d'Affaires to the Sublime Porte--a mission afterwards
raised to Minister Resident by act of Congress for his special
benefit. The Sultan Mahmoud--he who suppressed the Janissaries,
introduced European reforms, and so greatly favored Christians and
strangers--was then on the throne, and greatly attached to the
Commodore, whose conversation and opinions he often sought. He died
in this post, and was brought home to be buried in the country which
gave him birth, and which no personal wrong could make him cease
to love. A national ship of war, the Truxton, brought him home--a
delicate compliment in the selection of the vessel bearing the name
of the commander under whom he first served.
Humanity was a ruling feature in his character, and of this he gave
constant proof--humane to the enemy as well as to his own people.
Of his numerous captures he never made one by bloodshed when milder
means could prevail; always preferring, by his superior seamanship,
to place them in predicaments which coerced surrender. Patriotism
was a part of his soul. He was modest and unpretentious; never
seeming to know that he had done things of which the world talked,
and of which posterity would hear. He was a "lion" nowhere but on
the quarter-deck, and in battle with the enemies of his country. He
was affectionate to his friends and family, just and kind to his men
and officers, attaching all to him for life and for death. His crew
remaining with him when their terms were expiring in the Pacific,
and refusing to quit their commander when authorized to do so at
Valparaiso, were proofs of their devotion and affection.
Detailed history is not the object of this notice, but character and
instruction--the deeds which show character, and the actions which
instruct posterity; and in this view his career is a lesson for
statesmen to study--to study in its humble commencement as well as
in its dazzling and splendid culmination. Schools do not form such
commanders; and, if they did, the wisdom of government would not
detect the future illustrious captain in the man before the mast,
or in the boy in the cabin. Born in Boston, the young Porter came
to man's estate in Baltimore, and went to sea at sixteen in the
merchant ship commanded by his father--the worthy father of such
a son--making many voyages to the West Indies. There he _earned_
his midshipman's warrant, and there he learned the seamanship
which made him the worthy second of Rodgers in that marvellous
management of the Insurgent, which faithful history will love to
commemorate. Self-made in the beginning, he was self-acting through
life, and will continue to act upon posterity, if amenable to the
lesson taught by his life: the merchant service, the naval school,
cruisers, the naval force, separate commands for young men. With
a little 32 gun frigate, all carronades except a half-dozen stern
chasers, and they only twelve-pounders, he dominated for a year in
the vast Pacific Ocean; with a 44 and her attendant sloop-of-war,
brig, and schooner, he would have dominated there to the end of the
war. He was the Paul Jones of the "second war of Independence," with
a more capacious and better regulated mind, and had the felicity to
transmit as well as to inherit the qualities of a commander. The
name of Porter is yet borne with honorable promise on the roll of
the American navy.
CHAPTER CXIX.
REFUNDING OF GENERAL JACKSON'S FINE.
During his defence of New Orleans in the winter of 1814-'15,
General Jackson was adjudged to have committed a contempt of court,
in not producing the body of a citizen in obedience to a writ of
_habeas corpus_, whom he had arrested under martial law which he
had proclaimed and enforced for the defence of the city. He was
fined for the contempt, and paid it himself, refusing to permit
his friends, and even the ladies of New Orleans who presented the
money ($1,000), to pay it for him. He submitted to the judgment of
the court, paying the amount before he left the court room, but
protesting against it as an illegal exaction, and as involving the
imputation of illegality on his conduct. This conveyed a reproach
under which he was always sensitive, but to relieve himself from
which he would countenance no proceeding while he was still on the
theatre of public action, and especially while he was President. His
retirement to private life removed the obstacle to the action of
his friends and soon thereafter Mr. Linn, a senator from the State
of Missouri, brought in a bill for refunding the fine. This was a
quarter of a century after it had been imposed. On getting notice of
this proceeding General Jackson wrote a letter to Senator Linn, of
which the leading paragraphs are here given.
"Having observed in the newspapers that you had given notice
of your intention to introduce a bill to refund to me the
fine (principal and interest) imposed by Judge Hall, for
the declaration of martial law at New Orleans, it was my
determination to address you on the subject; but the feeble
state of my health has heretofore prevented it. I felt that it
was my duty to thank you for this disinterested and voluntary
act of justice to my character, and to assure you that it places
me under obligations which I shall always acknowledge with
gratitude.
"It is not the amount of the fine that is important to me: but
it is the fact that it was imposed for reasons which were not
well founded; and for the exercise of an authority which was
necessary to the successful defence of New Orleans; and without
which, it must be now obvious to all the world, the British
would have been in possession, at the close of the war, of that
great emporium of the West. In this point of view it seems to
me that the country is interested in the passage of the bill;
for exigencies like those which existed at New Orleans may again
arise; and a commanding-general ought not to be deterred from
taking the necessary responsibility by the reflection that it
is in the power of a vindictive judge to impair his private
fortune, and place a stain upon his character which cannot be
removed. I would be the last man on earth to do any act which
would invalidate the principle that the military should always
be subjected to the civil power; but I contend, that at New
Orleans no measure was taken by me which was at war with this
principle, or which, if properly understood, was not necessary
to preserve it.
"When I declared martial law, Judge Hall was in the city; and
he visited me often, when the propriety of its declaration was
discussed, and was recommended by the leading and patriotic
citizens. Judging from his actions, he appeared to approve it.
The morning the order was issued he was in my office; and when
it was read, he was heard to exclaim: '_Now the country may
be saved: without it, it was lost._' How he came afterwards
to unite with the treacherous and disaffected, and, by the
exercise of his power, endeavored to paralyze my exertions,
it is not necessary here to explain. It was enough for me to
know, that if I was excusable in the declaration of martial
law in order to defend the city when the enemy were besieging
it, it was right to continue it until all danger was over. For
full information on this part of the subject, I refer you to my
defence under Judge Hall's rule for me to appear and show cause
why an attachment should not issue for a contempt of court. This
defence is in the appendix to 'Eaton's Life of Jackson.'
"There is no truth in the rumor which you notice, that the
fine he imposed was paid by others. Every cent of it was paid
by myself. When the sentence was pronounced, Mr. Abner L.
Duncan (who had been one of my aides-de-camp, and was one of my
counsel), hearing me request Major Reed to repair to my quarters
and bring the sum--not intending to leave the room until the
fine was paid--asked the clerk if he would take his check. The
clerk replied in the affirmative, and Mr. Duncan gave the check.
I then directed my aide to proceed forthwith, get the money,
and meet Mr. Duncan's check at the bank and take it up; which
was done. These are the facts; and Major Davezac, now in the
Assembly of New York, can verify them.
"It is true, as I was informed, that the ladies did raise the
amount to pay the fine and costs; but when I heard of it, I
advised them to apply it to the relief of the widows and orphans
that had been made so by those who had fallen in the defence
of the country. It was so applied, as I had every reason to
believe; but Major Davezac can tell you more particularly what
was done with it."
The refunding of the fine in the sense of a pecuniary retribution,
was altogether refused and repulsed both by General Jackson and
his friends. He would only have it upon the ground of an illegal
exaction--as a wrongful exercise of authority--and as operating a
declaration that, in declaring martial law, and imprisoning the
citizen under it, and in refusing to produce his body upon a writ of
_habeas corpus_, and sending the judge himself out of the city, he
was justified by the laws of the land in all that he did. Congress
was quite ready, by a general vote, to refund the fine in a way that
would not commit members on the point of legality. It was a thing
constantly done in the case of officers sued for official acts,
and without strict inquiry into the legality of the act where the
officer was acting in good faith for the public service. In all
such cases Congress readily assumed the pecuniary consequences of
the act, either paying the fine, or damages awarded, or restoring
it after it had been paid. General Jackson might have had his fine
refunded in the same way without opposition; but it was not the
money, but release from the imputation of illegal conduct that he
desired; and with a view to imply that release the bill was drawn:
and that made it the subject of an earnestly contested debate in
both Houses. In the Senate, where the bill originated, Mr. Tappan
of Ohio, vindicated the recourse to martial law, and as being
necessary for the safety of the city.
"I ask you to consider the position in which he was placed; the
city of New Orleans was, from the necessity of the case, his
camp; the British, in superior force, had landed, and were eight
or nine miles below the city; within three hours' march; in his
camp were many over whom he had no control, whom he could not
prevent (or punish by any process of civil law) from conveying
intelligence to the enemy of his numbers, means of defence or
offence, as well as of his intended or probable movements;
was not the entire command of his own camp necessary to any
efficient action? It seems to me that this cannot be doubted.
In time of war, when the enemy's force is near, and a battle is
impending, if your general is obliged, by the necessities of his
position, and the propriety of his operations, to occupy a city
as his camp, he must have the entire command of such city, for
the plain reason that it is impossible, without such command,
to conduct his operations with that secrecy which is necessary
to his success. The neglect, therefore, to take such command,
would be to neglect the duty which his country had imposed upon
him. I perceive but two ways in which General Jackson could have
obtained the command of his own camp; one was by driving all the
inhabitants out of the city, the other by declaring martial law.
He wisely and humanely chose the latter, and by so doing, saved
the city from being sacked and plundered, and its inhabitants
from being outraged or destroyed by the enemy."
But this arrest of a citizen, and refusal to obey a writ of habeas
corpus, was after the British had been repulsed, and after a rumor
of peace had arrived at the city, but a rumor coming through a
British commander, and therefore not to be trusted by the American
general. He thought the peace a probable, but by no means a certain
event: and he could not upon a probability relax the measures which
a sense of danger had dictated. The reasons for this were given by
the General himself in his answer to show cause why the rule which
had been granted should not be made absolute.
"The enemy had retired from their position, it is true; but
they were still on the coast, and within a few hours' sail
of the city. They had been defeated, and with loss; but that
loss was to be repaired by expected reinforcements. Their
numbers much more than quadrupled all the regular forces which
the respondent could command; and the term of service of his
most efficient militia force was about to expire. Defeat,
to a powerful and active enemy, was more likely to operate
as an incentive to renewed and increased exertion, than to
inspire them with despondency, or to paralyze their efforts.
A treaty, it is true, had been probably signed, but yet it
might not be ratified. Its contents even had not transpired;
so that no reasonable conjecture could be formed whether it
would be acceptable; and the influence which the account of the
signature had on the army was deleterious in the extreme, and
showed a necessity for increased energy, instead of relaxation
of discipline. Men who had shown themselves zealous in the
preceding part of the campaign, became lukewarm in the service.
Wicked and weak men, who, from their situation in life, ought
to have furnished a better example, secretly encouraged the
spirit of insubordination. They affected to pity the hardships
of those who were kept in the field; they fomented discontent,
by insinuating that the merits of those to whom they addressed
themselves, had not been sufficiently noticed or applauded; and
disorder rose to such an alarming height, that at one period
only fifteen men and one officer were found out of a whole
regiment, stationed to guard the very avenue through which the
enemy had penetrated into the country. At another point, equally
important, a whole corps, on which the greatest reliance had
been placed, operated upon by the acts of a foreign agent,
suddenly deserted their post. If, trusting to an uncertain
peace, the respondent had revoked his proclamation, or ceased
to act under it, the fatal security by which they were lulled,
would have destroyed all discipline, dissolved all his force,
and left him without any means of defending the country against
an enemy instructed by the traitors within our bosom, of the
time and place at which he might safely make his attack. In such
an event, his life, which would certainly have been offered up,
would have been but a feeble expiation for the disgrace and
misery into which his criminal negligence would have plunged the
country."
A newspaper in the city published an inflammatory article, assuming
the peace to be certain, though not communicated by our government,
inveighed against the conduct of the General in keeping up martial
law as illegal and tyrannical, incited people to disregard it, and
plead the right of volunteers to disband who had engaged to serve
during the war. Louallier, a member of the General Assembly, was
given up as the author of the article: the General had him arrested
and confined. Judge Hall issued a writ of habeas corpus to release
his body: General Jackson ordered the Judge out of the city, and
sent a guard to conduct him out. All this took place on the 10th and
11th of March: on the 13th authentic news of the peace arrived, and
the martial law ceased to exist. Judge Hall returned to the city,
and Mr. Tappan thus relates what took place:
"Instead of uniting with the whole population, headed by their
venerable bishop, in joy and thankfulness for a deliverance
almost miraculous, achieved by the wisdom and energy of the
General and the gallantry of his army, he was brooding over his
own imaginary wrongs, and planning some method to repair his
wounded dignity. On this day, twenty-seven years ago, he caused
a rule of the district court to be served on General Jackson,
to appear before him and show cause why an attachment should
not issue against him for:--1st. Refusing to obey a writ issued
by Judge Hall. 2d. Detaining an original paper belonging to
the court. And 3d, for imprisoning the Judge. The first cause
was for the General refusing to obey a writ of _habeas corpus_
in the case of Louallier; the second for detaining the writ.
The whole of these three causes assigned are founded on the
hypothesis, that instead of General Jackson having command of
his camp, he exercised a limited authority under the control of
the civil magistracy. I trust I have satisfied you that martial
law did in fact exist, and of necessary consequence, that Judge
Hall's authority was suspended. If he was injured by it, surely
he was not the proper person to try General Jackson for that
injury. The principal complaint against General Jackson was for
imprisoning the Judge. The imprisonment consisted in sending
an officer to escort him out of camp; and for this, instead of
taking the regular legal remedy, by an action for assault and
false imprisonment, in the State court, which was open to him
as well as every other citizen, he called the General to answer
before himself. He went before the Judge and proffered to show
cause; the Judge would not permit him to do this, nor would he
allow him to assign his reasons in writing for his conduct, but,
without trial, without a hearing of his defence, he fined him
one thousand dollars. You all know the conduct of the General on
that occasion; he saved the Judge from the rising indignation of
the people and paid his fine to the United States marshal. These
proceedings of Judge Hall were not only exceedingly outrageous,
but they were wholly illegal and void; for, as says an eminent
English jurist, 'even an act of parliament cannot make a man a
judge in his own cause.' This was truly and wholly the cause
of the Judge himself. If a law of Congress had existed which
authorized him to sit in judgment upon any man for an injury
inflicted upon himself, such a law would have been a mere dead
letter, and the Judge would have been bound to disregard it.
It was the violation of this principle of jurisprudence which
aroused the indignation of the people and endangered the life
of his contemptible judge. I am aware of the law of contempt;
it is the power of self-preservation given to the courts; it
results from necessity alone, and extends no further than
necessity strictly requires; it has no power to avenge the
wrongs and injuries done to the judge, unless those wrongs
obstruct the regular course of justice. I am aware also of the
manner in which the law of contempt has been administered in our
courts where no statute law regulated it, and it was left to
the discretion of the judges to determine what was or was not a
contempt. In one case a man was fined for contempt for reviewing
the opinion of a judge in a newspaper. This judge was impeached
before this body and acquitted, because not quite two-thirds of
the Senate voted him guilty. Some senators, thinking probably
that as Congress had neglected to pass a law on the subject of
contempt, the judge had nothing to govern his discretion in
the matter, and therefore ought not to be convicted. Congress
immediately passed such a law, and no contempts have occurred
since in the United States courts."
The speech of Judge Tappan covered the facts of the case, upon
which, and other speeches delivered, the Senate made up its mind,
and the bill was passed, though upon a good division, and a visible
development of party lines. The yeas were:
"Messrs. Allen, Bagby, Benton, Buchanan, Calhoun, Cuthbert,
Fulton, Graham, Henderson, King, Linn, McDuffie, McRoberts,
Mangum, Rives, Sevier, Smith of Connecticut, Smith of Indiana,
Sprague, Sturgeon, Tallmadge, Tappan, Walker, Wilcox, Williams,
Woodbury, Wright, Young--28."
The nays were:
"Messrs. Archer, Barrow, Bates, Bayard, Berrien, Choate,
Clayton, Conrad, Crafts, Crittenden, Dayton, Evans, Huntington,
Kerr, Merrick, Miller, Morehead, Phelps, White, Woodbridge--20."
In the House it was well supported by Mr. Charles Jared Ingersoll,
and others, and passed at the ensuing session by a large
majority--158 to 28. This gratifying result took place before
the death of General Jackson, so that he had the consolation of
seeing the only two acts which impugned the legality of any part
of his conduct--the senatorial condemnation for the removal of the
deposits, and the proceedings in New Orleans under martial law--both
condemned by the national representation, and the judicial record as
well as the Senate journal, left free from imputation upon him.
CHAPTER CXX.
REPEAL OF THE BANKRUPT ACT: ATTACK OF MR. CUSHING ON MR. CLAY:
ITS REBUKE.
This measure was immediately commenced in the House of
Representatives, and pressed with vigor to its conclusion. Mr.
Everett, of Vermont, brought in the repeal bill on leave, and
after a strenuous contest from a tenacious minority, it was passed
by the unexpected vote of two to one--to be precise--140 to 72.
In the Senate it had the same success, and greater, being passed
by nearly three to one--34 to 13: and the repealing act being
carried to Mr. Tyler, he signed it as promptly as he had signed
the bankrupt act itself. This was a splendid victory for the
minority who had resisted the passage of the bill, and for the
people who had condemned it. The same members, sitting in the same
chairs, who a year and a half before, passed the act, now repealed
it. The same President who had recommended it in a message, and
signed the act as soon as it passed, now signed the act which put
an end to its existence. A vicious and criminal law, corruptly
passed, and made the means of passing two other odious measures,
was itself now brought to judgment, condemned, and struck from the
statute-book; and this great result was the work of the people.
All the authorities--legislative, executive, and judicial--had
sustained the act. Only one judge in the whole United States (R. W.
Wells, Esq., United States district judge for Missouri), condemned
it as unconstitutional. All the rest sustained it, and he was
overruled. But the intuitive sense of honor and justice in the
people revolted at it. They rose against it in masses, and condemned
it in every form--in public meetings, in legislative resolves, in
the press, in memorials to Congress, and in elections. The tables
of the two Houses were loaded with petitions and remonstrances,
demanding the repeal, and the members were simply the organs of the
people in pronouncing it. Never had the popular voice been more
effective--never more meritoriously raised. The odious act was not
only repealed, but its authors rebuked, and compelled to pronounce
the rebuke upon themselves. It was a proud and triumphant instance
of the innate, upright sentiment of the people, rising above all
the learning and wisdom of the constituted authorities. Nor was
it the only instance. The bankrupt act of forty years before,
though strictly a bankrupt act as known to the legislation of all
commercial countries, was repealed within two years after its
passage--and that by the democratic administration of Mr. Jefferson:
this of 1841, a bankrupt act only in name--an act for the abolition
of debts at the will of the debtor in reality--had a still shorter
course, and a still more ignominious death. Two such condemnations
of acts for getting rid of debts, are honorable to the people,
and bespeak a high degree of reverence for the sacred obligations
between debtor and creditor; and while credit is due to many of the
party discriminated as federal in 1800, and as whig in 1840 (but
always the same), for their assistance in condemning these acts,
yet as party measures, the honor of resisting their passage and
conducting their repeal, in both instances, belongs to the democracy.
The repeal of this act, though carried by such large majorities, and
so fully in accordance with the will of the people, was a bitter
mortification to the administration. It was their measure, and one
of their measures of "relief" to the country. Mr. Webster had drawn
the bill, and made the main speech for it in the Senate, before he
went into the cabinet. Mr. Tyler had recommended it in a special
message, and promptly gave it his approving signature. To have to
sign a repeal bill, so soon, condemning what he had recommended and
approved, was most unpalatable: to see a measure intended for the
"relief" of the people repulsed by those it was intended to relieve,
was a most unwelcome vision. From the beginning the repeal was
resisted, and by a species of argument, not addressed to the merits
of the measure, but to the state of parties, the conduct of men, and
the means of getting the government carried on. Mr. Caleb Cushing
was the organ of the President, and of the Secretary of State in the
House; and, identifying himself with these two in his attacks and
defences, he presented a sort of triumvirate in which he became the
spokesman of the others. In this character he spoke often, and with
a zeal which outran discretion, and brought him into much collision
with the House, and kept him much occupied in defending himself,
and the two eminent personages who were not in a position to speak
for themselves. A few passages from these speeches, from both sides,
will be given to show the state of men and parties at that time,
and how much personal considerations had to do with transacting the
business of Congress. Thus:
"Mr. Cushing, who was entitled to the floor, addressed the House
at length, in reply to the remarks made by various gentlemen,
during the last three weeks, in relation to the present
administration. He commenced by remarking that the President
of the United States was accused of obstructing the passage
of whig measures of relief, and was charged with uncertainty
and vacillation of purpose. As these charges had been made
against the President, he felt it to be his duty to ask the
country who was chargeable with vacillation and uncertainty of
purpose, and the destruction of measures of relief? Who were
they who, with sacrilegious hands, were seeking to expunge
the last measure of the 'ill-starred' extra session from the
statute-books? Forty-seven whigs, he answered, associated with
the democratic party in the House, and formed a coalition to
blot out that measure. He repeated it: forty-seven whigs formed
a coalition with the democrats to expunge all the remains of the
extra session which existed. For three weeks past, there had
been constantly poured forth the most eloquent denunciations
of the President, of the Secretary of State, and of himself.
He might imagine, as was said by Warren Hastings when such
torrents of denunciation were poured out upon him, that there
was some foundation for the imputation of the orators. He should
inquire into the merits of the political questions, and into the
accusations made against him. He was told that he had thrown a
firebrand into the House--that he had brought a tomahawk here.
He denied it. He had done no such thing. It was not true that he
commenced the debate which was carried on; and when gentlemen
said that he had volunteered remarks out of the regular order,
in reply to the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. ARNOLD], he
told them that they were not judges. His mode of defence was
counter-attack, and it was for him to judge of the argument. If
he carried the war into the enemy's camp, the responsibility was
with those who commenced the attack."
Mr. Clay, though retiring from Congress, and not a member of the
House of Representatives, was brought into the debate, and accused
of setting up a dictatorship, and baffling or controlling the
constitutional administration:
"The position of the two great parties, and those few who
stood here to defend the acts of the administration, was
peculiar. Our government was now undergoing a test in a new
particular. This was the first time that the administration of
the government had ever devolved upon the Vice-President. Now,
he had called upon the people and the House to adapt themselves
to that contingency, and support the constitution; for with the
'constitutional fact' was associated the party fact; and whilst
the President was not a party chief, there was a party chief of
the party in power. The question was, whether there could be
two administrations--one, a constitutional administration, by
the President; and the other a party administration, exercised
by a party chief in the capitol? With this issue before
him--whether the President, or the party leader--the chief in
the White House, or the chief in the capitol--should carry on
the administration--he felt it to be a duty which he owed to the
government of his country to give his aid to the constitutional
chief. That was the real question which had pervaded all our
contests thus far."
Such an unparliamentary reference to Mr. Clay, a member of a
different House, could not pass without reply in a place where he
could not speak for himself, but where his friends were abundant.
Mr. Garret Davis, of Kentucky, performed that office, and found in
the fifteen years' support of Mr. Clay by Mr. Cushing (previous to
his sudden adhesion to Mr. Tyler at the extra session), matter of
personal recrimination:
"Mr. Garret Davis replied to the portion of the speech of the
gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. CUSHING] relating to the
alleged dictation of the ex-senator from Kentucky [Mr. CLAY].
The gentleman from Massachusetts declared that there were but
two alternatives--one, a constitutional administration, under
the lead of the President; and the other, a faction, under the
lead of the senator from Kentucky. Such remarks were no more
nor less than calumnies on that distinguished man; and he would
ask the gentleman what principle Mr. Clay had changed, by which
he had obtained the ill-will of the gentleman, after having had
his support for fifteen years previous to the extra session?
He asked, Did the senator from Kentucky bring forward any new
measure at the extra session? Did he enter upon any untrodden
path, in order to embarrass the path of John Tyler? No, was the
answer."
Reverting to the attacks on the administration, Mr. Cushing
considered them as the impotent blows of a faction, beating its
brains out against the immovable rock of the Tyler government:
"It was now nearly two years since, in accordance with a vote
of the people, a change took place in the administration
of the government. Since that time, an internecine war had
arisen in the dominant party. The war had now been pursued
for about one year and a half; but, in the midst of it, the
federal government, with its fixed constitution, had stood,
like the god Terminus, defying the progress of those who were
rushing against it. The country had seen one party throw itself
against the immovable rock of the constitution. What had been
the consequence? The party thus hurling itself against the
constitutional rock was dashed to atoms."
Mr. Cushing did not confine his attempts to gain adherents to
Mr. Tyler, to the terrors of denunciations and anathemas: he
superadded the seductive arguments of persuasion and enticement, and
carried his overtures so far as to be charged with putting up the
administration favor to auction, and soliciting bidders. He had said:
"Now he would suppose a man called to be President of the United
States. It mattered not whether he was elected, or whether
the office devolved upon him by contingencies contemplated in
the constitution. He was President. What, then, was his first
duty? To consider how to discharge his functions. He (Mr. C.)
thought the President was bound to look around at the facts,
and see by what circumstances he was supported. Gentlemen might
talk of treason; much had been said on that subject; but the
question for the individual who might happen to be President to
consider was, How is the government to be carried out? By whose
aid? He (Mr. Cushing) would say to that party now having the
majority (and whom, on account of that circumstance, it was more
important he should address), that if they gave him no aid, it
was his duty to seek aid from their adversaries. If the whigs
continue to blockade the wheels of the government, he trusted
that the democrats would be patriotic enough to carry it on."
Up to this point Mr. Cushing had addressed himself to the whigs to
come to the support of Mr. Tyler: despairing of success there he now
turned to the democracy. This open attempt to turn from one party
to the other, and to take whichever he could get, turned upon him a
storm of ridicule and reproach. Mr. Thompson, of Indiana, said:
"The gentleman seemed to have assumed the character of
auctioneer for this bankrupt administration, and he took it that
the gentleman would be entitled to a good part of its effects.
This was the first time in the history of any civilized country
that a government had, through the person of its acknowledged
leader--a man doing most of its speaking, and much of its
thinking--stalked into a representative assembly, and openly
put up the administration in the common market to the highest
bidder."
But Mr. Cushing did not limit himself to seductive appliances in
turning to the democracy for support to Mr. Tyler: he dealt out
denunciation to them also, and menaced them with the fate of the
shattered whig party if they did not come to the rescue. On this Mr.
Thompson remarked:
"The gentleman also told the minority that they would be dashed
to pieces, like their predecessors, unless they came into the
measures of the President; but it yet remained to be seen
whether he would get a bid. Judging from the expression of
opinion by the leading organ of the democratic party, he (Mr.
T.) was inclined to think that no bid would be offered by a
portion of that party. He thought, from givings-out, in various
quarters, that the President would ultimately have to resort to
this 'constitutional fact,' to defend himself against a large
portion even of that party. Indeed, it was doubtful whether
there would be bidders from either side."
Mr. Cushing had said that there were persons connected with the
administration who would yet be heard of for the Presidency, and
seemed to present that contingency also as a reason why support
should be given it. To this intimation Mr. Thompson made an
indignant reply:
"He recollected well--though he was very young at the time, and
not prepared to take part in the political discussions of the
day--that, during the administration of the distinguished and
venerable gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. ADAMS] there arose
in this country a party, who, upon the bare supposition (which
was dispelled on an examination of the facts)--upon the bare
suspicion that there was what was called a bargain, intrigue,
and management between the then head of the administration,
and another distinguished citizen who was a member of his
cabinet, made it a subject of the most bitter and vindictive
denunciation. Yet, notwithstanding that this part of our
history was still fresh in the recollection of the gentleman
from Massachusetts--when we see, in this age of republican
liberty, a gentleman descended from a line of illustrious
Revolutionary ancestry--coming, too, almost from the very Cradle
of Liberty, and acting as the organ of the administration on
this floor--boldly, shamelessly, and unblushingly offering
the spoils of office as a consideration for party support,
we may well have cause for alarm. How many clerkships were
there in Philadelphia to be disposed of in this manner? From
the collector down to the lowest tide-waiter, the power of
appointment was to be directed for the purpose of operating on
the coming presidential contest. Who, now, would charge the whig
party with shaping their measures with a view to the elevation
of a particular individual, after hearing the bold and open
avowal from the gentleman that the present administration would
shape their measures for the purpose of operating on the coming
contest? But (said Mr. T.) there was something exceedingly
ridiculous in the idea of the administration party--and such a
party, too!--coming into the Representative hall, and telling
its members that it had the power to dispose of the various
candidates for the Presidency at its pleasure, and controlling
the votes of nearly three millions of freemen by means of its
veto power, and the power of appointment and removal."
Mr. Cushing had belonged to the federal party, since called whig,
up to the time that he joined Mr. Tyler, and had been all that time
a fierce assailant of the democratic party: the energy with which
he now attacked that party, and the warmth with which he wooed the
other, brought on him many reproaches, some rough and cutting--some
tender and deprecatory; as this from Mr. Thompson:
"The gentleman exulted in the fate of the whig party, and told
them with much satisfaction that their party was destroyed. Now,
let him ask the gentleman, in the utmost sincerity of his heart,
whether he did not feel some little mortification and regret
when he saw the banner under which he had so often rallied
trailing in the dust, and trampled under the feet of those
against whom he had fought for so many years?"
Foremost of the whigs in zeal and activity, Mr. Cushing, as one
of the most prominent men of the party, was appointed when the
presidential vote of 1840 was counted in the House, as one of the
committee of two to wait upon General Harrison and formally make
known to him his election. In two months afterwards General Harrison
died--Mr. Tyler became President and quit the whigs: Mr. Cushing
quit at the same time; and not content with quitting, threw all the
obloquy upon them which, for fifteen years, he had lavished upon
the democracy; and in quitting the whigs he reversed his conduct
in all the measures of his life, and without giving a reason for
the change in a single instance. Mr. Garret Davis summed up these
changes in a scathing peroration, from which some extracts are here
given:
"The gentleman occupies a strange position and puts forth
extraordinary notions, considering the measures and principles
which he always, until the commencement of this administration,
advocated with so much zeal and ability I had read many of
his speeches before I knew him. I admired his talents and
attainments; I approved of the soundness of his views, and
was instructed and fortified in my own. But he is wonderfully
metamorphosed; and I think if he will examine the matter
deliberately, he will find it to be quite as true, that he has
broken his neck politically in jumping his somersets, as that
'the whig party has knocked out its brains against the fixed
fact.' He tells us that party is nothing but an association of
men struggling for power; and that he contemns measures--that
measures are not principles. The gentleman must have been
reading the celebrated treatise, 'The Prince,' for such dicta
are of the school of Machiavelli; and his sudden and total
abandonment of all the principles as well as measures, to which
he was as strongly pledged as any whig, good and true, proves
that he had studied his lesson to some purpose. At the extra
session of 1837, he opposed the sub-treasury in a very elaborate
speech, in which we find these passages: 'We are to have a
government paper currency, recognizable by the government of
the United States, and employed in its dealings; but it is to
be irredeemable government paper? 'If the scheme were not too
laughingly absurd to spend time in arguing about it seriously;
if the mischiefs of a government paper currency had not had an
out-and-out trial both in Europe and America, I might discuss it
as a question of political economy. But I will not occupy the
committee in this way. I am astounded at the fatuity of any set
of men who can think of any such project.' This is what he said
of the sub-treasury. Now, he is the unscrupulous advocate of
the exchequer, a measure embodying both the sub-treasury and a
great organized government bank, and fraught with more frightful
dangers than his own excited imagination had pictured in the
whole three years.
"He was one of the stanchest supporters of a United States bank.
He characterized 'the refusal of the late President (Jackson) to
sign the bill re-chartering the bank, like the removal of the
deposits, to be in defiance and violation of the popular will,'
and characterized as felicitous the periods of time when we
possessed a national bank, and as calamitous the periods that we
were without them, saying--'Twice for long periods of time, have
we tried a national bank, and in each period it has fulfilled
its appointed purpose of supplying a safe and equal currency,
and of regulating and controlling the issues of the State
banks. Twice have we tried for a few years to drag on without a
national bank, and each of these experiments has been a season
of disaster and confusion.' And yet, sir, he has denied that he
was ever the supporter of a bank of the United States, and is
now one of the most rabid revilers of such an institution.
"He was for Mr. Clay's land bill; and he has abandoned, and
now contemns it. No man has been more frequent and unsparing
in his denunciations of General Jackson; and now he is the
sycophantic eulogist of the old hero. He was the unflinching
defender of the constitutional rights and powers of Congress.
This administration has not only resorted to the most flagitious
abuse of the veto power, but has renewed every other assault,
open or insidious, of Presidents Jackson and Van Buren upon
Congress, which he, at the time, so indignantly rebuked; and he
now justifies them all. He has gone far ahead of the extremest
parasites of executive power. John Tyler vetoed four acts of
Congress which the gentleman had voted for, and strange, by
his subtle sophistry, he defended each of the vetoes; and most
strange, when the House, in conformity to the provisions of
the constitution, voted again upon the measures, his vote was
recorded in their favor, and to overrule the very vetoes of
which he had just been the venal advocate."
This versatility of Mr. Cushing, in the support of vetoes, was
one of the striking qualities developed in his present change of
parties. He had condemned the exercise of that power in General
Jackson in the case of the Bank of the United States, and dealt
out upon him unmeasured denunciation for that act: now he became
the supporter of all the vetoes of Mr. Tyler, even when those
vetoes condemned his own votes, and when they condemned the fiscal
bank charter which Mr. Tyler himself had devised and arranged for
Congress. He became the champion, unrivalled, of Mr. Webster and Mr.
Clay, defending them in all things; but now in attacking Mr. Clay
whom he had so long, and until so recently, so closely, followed and
loudly applauded, he became obnoxious to the severe denunciations of
that gentleman's friends.
CHAPTER CXXI.
NAVAL EXPENDITURES, AND ADMINISTRATION ATTEMPTS AT REFORM: ABORTIVE.
The annual appropriation for this branch of the service being under
consideration, Mr. Parmenter, the chairman of the naval committee,
proposed to limit the whole number of petty officers, seamen,
ordinary seamen, landsmen and boys in the service to 7,500; and Mr.
Slidell moved an amendment to get rid of some 50 or 60 masters'
mates who had been illegally appointed by Mr. Secretary Henshaw,
during his brief administration of the naval department in the
interval between his nomination by Mr. Tyler and his rejection by
the Senate. These motions brought on a debate of much interest
on the condition of the navy itself, the necessity of a peace
establishment, and the reformation of abuses. Mr. Cave Johnson, of
Tennessee--
"Expressed himself gratified to see the limitation proposed by
the chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs; that he had
long believed that we should have a peace establishment for the
navy, as well as the army; and that the number of officers and
men in each should be limited to the necessities of the public
service. Heretofore the navy had been left to the discretion
of the Secretary, only limited by the appropriation bills. He
urged upon the chairman of the Naval Committee the propriety
of reducing still further. If he did not misunderstand the
amendment, it proposed to man the number of vessels required
for the next year in the same way that we would do in time
of war, as we have heretofore done. He thought there should
be a difference in the complement of men required for each
ship in war and in peace. He read a table, showing that in
the British service, first class men-of-war of 120 guns, in
time of peace had on board (officers, men, and marines) 886
men, whilst the same class in our service had on board 1,200,
officers, men, and marines--near one-third more officers
and men in the American service than were employed in the
British. The table showed about the same difference in vessels
of inferior size. He thought the number of men and officers
should be regulated for a peace, and not a war establishment.
He expressed the hope that the chairman of the Naval Committee
would so shape his amendment as to fix the number of officers
and men for a peace establishment. He was desirous of having a
peace establishment, and the expenditures properly regulated.
This branch of the service, together with the army, were the
great sources of expenditure. He read a table, showing the
expenditures of these branches of the public service from 1821
to 1842, as follows: ($235,000,000.) He said the country would
be astonished to see the immense sums expended on the army and
navy; and, as he thought, without any adequate return to the
country. He could see no advantage to the country from this
immense expenditure--no adequate return. He was aware of the
excuse made for it--the protection of our commerce. This was a
mere pretext--an excuse for throwing upon the public treasury
an immense number of men, who might be much more profitably to
the country employed in other occupations. He alluded to the
Mediterranean squadron and the expenditures for the protection
of our commerce on that sea; and expressed the opinion that our
expenditures at that station equalled the whole of the commerce
east of the Straits of Gibraltar--that it would be better for
the country to pay for the commerce than protect it; that there
was no more need to protect our commerce in the Mediterranean
than there was in the Chesapeake Bay. Such a thing as pirates in
that sea had been scarcely heard of in the last twenty years.
He expressed his determination to vote for the amendment, but
hoped the chairman would so shape it as to make a regular peace
establishment."
The member from Tennessee was entirely right in his desire for
a naval peace establishment, but the principle on which such an
establishment should be formed, was nowhere developed. It was
generally treated as a naval question, dependent upon the number
of naval marine--others a commercial question, dependent upon our
amount of commerce; while, in fact, it is a political question,
dependent upon the state of the world. Protection of commerce is the
reason always alleged: that reason, pursued into its constituent
parts, would always involve two inquiries, and both of them to be
answered in reference to the amount of commerce, and its dangers
in any sea. To measure the amount of a naval peace establishment,
and its distribution in different seas, the amount of danger must
be considered: and that is constantly varying with the changing
state of the world. The great seat of danger was formerly in the
Mediterranean Sea; and squadrons proportioned to the amount of that
danger were sent there: since the extirpation of the piratical
powers on the coast of the sea, there is no danger to commerce
there, and no need for any protection; yet larger squadrons are sent
there than ever. Formerly there was piracy in the West Indies,
and protection was needed there: now there is no piracy, and no
protection needed, and yet a home squadron must watch those islands.
So of other places. There is no danger in many places now in which
there was much formerly; and where we have most commerce there is
no danger at all. This protection, the object of a naval peace
establishment, is only required against lawless or barbarian powers:
such powers require the presence of some ships of war to restrain
their piratical disposition. The great powers which recognize the
laws of nations, need no such negotiators as men-of-war. They do not
commit depredations to be redressed by a broadside into a town: if
they do injury to commerce it is either accidental, or in pursuance
to some supposed right: and in either case friendly ministers are
to negotiate, and the political power to resolve, before cannon are
fired. Here then is the measure of a peace establishment: it is
in the number and power of the barbarian or half-barbarian powers
which are not amenable to the laws of nations, and whose lawless
propensities can only be restrained by the fear of immediate
punishment. There are but few of these powers at present--much fewer
than there were fifty years ago, and can only be found by going to
the extremities of the globe--and are of no force when found, and
can be kept in perfect order by cruisers. As for the squadrons kept
up in the Mediterranean, the Pacific coast, Brazil, and East Indies,
they are there without a reason, and against all reason--have
nothing to do but stay abroad three years, and then come home--to
be replaced by another for another three years: and so on, until
there shall be reform. Better far, if all these squadrons are to be
kept up, that they should remain at home, spending their money at
home instead of abroad, and just as serviceable to commerce. As for
the home squadron, that was established by law, without reason, and
should be suppressed without delay: and as for the African squadron,
that was established by treaty to please Great Britain, and ought,
in the first place, not to have been established at all; and in the
second place, should have been suppressed as soon as the five years'
obligation to keep it up had expired.
Mr. Hamlin, of Maine, spoke to the body of the case, and with
knowledge of the subject, and a friendly feeling to the navy--but
not such feeling as could wink at its abuses. He said:
"He trusted he was the very last person who would detract from
the well-merited fame of the navy; but he had another rule
of action: he would endeavor so to vote in relation to this
subject, as to check, if possible, what he believed the gross
and extravagant expenditure of public money: and he referred
gentlemen, in corroboration of this assertion that there was
extravagance in the expenditures, to the report of the Committee
on Naval Affairs. The facts which stared them in the face
from every quarter justified him in the assertion that there
was gross extravagance. Mr. H. referred to various items of
expenditure, in proof of the existence of extravagance."
'Mr. Hamlin pointed to the enormous increase in the number of
officers in the navy, constantly augmenting in a time of peace,
instead of being diminished as the public good required:
"He produced tables, taken from official returns, to show
that the greater number of these officers were necessarily
unemployed, and were spending their time at home in idleness.
He had nothing to urge against any officer of the navy; they
could not be blamed for receiving the allowance which the law
gave them, whether employed or not;--but he asked gentlemen
to examine the great disparity between the number of naval
officers, as regulated by statute, and the number now in
existence."
This was said before the naval school was created: since the
establishment of that school, enough are legally appointed to
officer a great navy. Two hundred and fifty midshipmen constantly
there, coming off by annual deliveries, and demanding more ships
and commissions than the public service and the public Treasury can
bear. Illegal appointments have ceased, but the evil of excessive
appointments is greater than ever.
Mr. Hamlin produced some items of extravagance, one of which he
summed up, showing as the result that $2,142 97 was expended at one
hospital in liquors for the "sick," and $10,288 53 for provisions:
and then went on to say:
"The amount expended within a period of one year on the coast
of Florida by the commander of this little squadron, was five
hundred and four thousand five hundred and eighty dollars; and
yet the gentleman from South Carolina found in this nothing to
induce the House to restrict the appropriations. Mr. H. said
he would go for the amendment. He would go for any thing to
stop the drafts these leeches were making on the Treasury.
His principal object, however, in rising, was to call on the
members to redeem the pledges of economy that they made at the
beginning of the session, and he trusted that now that they had
the opportunity they would redeem them. He was from a commercial
State, and would be the last man to do any act that would be
injurious to commerce; but he did not understand how commerce
could be benefited or protected by suffering this enormous and
profligate waste of public money to be continued. By introducing
a proper system of economy and accountability, the navy would be
more efficient, and the government would be able to employ more
ships and more guns to protect commerce than they now did."
Mr. Hale replied to several members, and went on to speak of abuses
in the navy expenditures, and the irresponsibility of officers:
"There was an old maxim in the navy, that there was no law for
a post-captain, and really the adage seemed now to be verified.
The navy (said Mr. H.) is utterly without law, and the document
just read by the gentleman from Maine [Mr. HAMLIN] showing the
expenditures of the Florida squadron, proved it. Such conduct
as was described in that document ought to make every American
blush; but what was the result of it? Why, the officer came
forward and demanded of the Secretary of the Navy (Mr. Henshaw)
extra compensation as commander of a foreign squadron, and the
Secretary paid him from five to seven thousand dollars more. It
was to correct a thousand such abuses as this, that had crept
into the navy, that he would offer the amendment which had been
read for the information of the committee. Mr. H. went on to
comment on the large amount of money unnecessarily expended for
the navy. We have, said he, twice as many officers as there is
any use for, and they receive higher pay than the officers of
any navy in the world."
Mr. Hale believed we had too many navy-yards, and mentioned the
condition of the one nearest his own home, as an exemplification of
his opinion, Portsmouth, New Hampshire--
"Where were stationed twenty-six officers, at an expense of
$30,000 a year, and all to command six seamen and twelve
ordinary seamen. This yard was commanded by a post-captain;
and what duties had he to perform? Why, just nothing. What had
the commander to do? Why, to help the captain; and as for the
lieutenants, they had nothing to do but to give orders to the
midshipmen."
The movement ended without results, and so of all desultory efforts
at reform at any time. Abuses in the expenditure of public money
are not of a nature to surrender at the first summons, nor to yield
to any thing but persevering and powerful efforts. A solitary
member, or a few members, can rarely accomplish any thing. The ready
and efficient remedy lies with the administration, but for that
purpose a Jefferson is wanted at the head of the government--a man
not merely of the right principles, but of administrative talent, to
know how to apply his economical doctrines. Such a President would
now find a great field for economy and retrenchment in reducing
our present expenditures about the one-half--from seventy odd
millions to thirty odd. Next after an administration should come
some high-spirited and persevering young men, who would lay hold,
each of some great abuse, and pursue it without truce or mercy--year
in, and year out--until it was extirpated. Some such may arise--one
to take hold of the navy, one of the army, one of the civil and
diplomatic--and gain honor for themselves and good for their country
at the same time.
CHAPTER CXXII.
CHINESE MISSION: MR. CUSHING'S APPOINTMENT AND NEGOTIATION.
Ten days before the end of the session 1842-'3, there was taken up
in the House of Representatives a bill reported from the Committee
of Foreign Relations, to provide the means of opening future
intercourse between the United States and China. The bill was
unusually worded, and gave rise to criticism and objection. It ran
thus:
"That the sum of forty thousand dollars be, and the same is
hereby, appropriated and placed at the disposal of the President
of the United States, to enable him to establish the future
commercial relations between the United States and the Chinese
Empire on terms of national equal reciprocity; the said sum to
be accounted for by the President, under the restrictions and in
the manner prescribed by the act of first of July, one thousand
seven hundred and ninety, entitled 'An act providing the means
of intercourse between the United States and foreign nations.'"
This bill was unusual, and objectionable in all its features. It
appropriated a gross sum to be disposed of for its object as the
President pleased, being the first instance in a public act of
a departure from the rule of specific appropriations which Mr.
Jefferson introduced as one of the great reforms of the republican
or democratic party. It withdrew the settlement of the expenditure
of this money from the Treasury officers, governed by law, to
the President himself, governed by his discretion. It was copied
from the act of July 1st, 1790, but under circumstances wholly
dissimilar, and in violation of the rule which condemned gross,
and required specific, appropriations. That act was made in the
infancy of our government, and when preliminary, informal, and
private steps were necessary to be taken before public negotiations
could be ventured. It was under that act that Mr. Gouverneur Morris
was privately authorized by President Washington to have the
unofficial interviews with the British ministry which opened the
way for the public mission which ended in the commercial treaty
of 1794. Private advances were necessary with several powers, in
order to avoid rebuff in a public refusal to treat with us. Great
latitude of discretion was, therefore, entrusted to the President;
and that President was Washington. A gross sum was put into his
hands, to be disposed of as he should deem proper for its object,
that of intercourse between the United States and foreign nations,
and to account for such part of the expenditure of the sum as,
in his judgment, might be made public, and he was limited in the
sums he might allow to $9,000 outfit, and $9,000 salary to a full
minister--to $4,500 per annum to a chargé de affaires--and to $1,350
to a secretary of legation. This bill for the Chinese mission was
framed upon that early act of 1790, and even adopted its mode of
accounting for the money by leaving it to the President to suppress
the items of the expenditure, when he should judge it proper. The
bill was loose and latitudinous enough to shock the democratic
side of the House; but not enough so to satisfy its friends; and
accordingly the first movement was to enlarge the President's
discretion, by striking from the bill the word "restrictions" which
applied to his application of the money. Mr. Adams made the motion,
and as he informed the House in the course of the discussion, at the
instance and according to the wish of the Secretary of State (Mr.
Webster). This motion gave rise to much objection. Mr. Meriwether,
a member of the committee which had reported the bill, spoke first;
and said:
"He opposed the amendment. If he understood its effect, it would
be to leave the mission without any restriction. The bill, as it
came from the Committee on Foreign Affairs, placed this mission
on the same footing as other missions. The Secretary of State,
however, wished the whole sum placed at his own disposal and
control--wished it left to him to pay as much as he pleased. He
(Mr. M.) did not consider this mission to China as a matter of
so much importance as had been claimed for it. He thought it
would be difficult to persuade the people of that country to
change their polity, give up their aversion to foreigners, and
enter into commercial intercourse with other nations. He wished,
at any rate, to have this mission placed on the same footing as
other missions. He knew not how the whole of this sum of $40,000
was to be expended, although he was a member of the Committee
on Foreign Affairs. Our ministers generally receive $9,000 a
year salary, and $9,000 outfit. Now, if the amendment of the
gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. ADAMS] should be adopted, it
would be in the power of the President to pay the minister who
might be sent to China $20,000 outfit, and $20,000 more salary.
The minister would be subject to no expense, would go out in
a national vessel, and would not be compelled to land until
it suited his pleasure. Why make a difference in the case of
China? Was that mission of greater importance than the French?
Look at Turkey--a semi-barbarous country--where our minister
received $6,000 a year. He thought if $6,000 was enough for the
services of Commodore Porter at Constantinople, that sum would
be sufficient for any minister that might be sent out to China.
When the amendment now before the committee should have been
disposed of, he should move to place the mission to China upon
the same footing with that to Turkey."
In these remarks Mr. Meriwether shows it was the sense of the
committee to make the appropriation in the usual specific form,
leaving the accountability to the usual Treasury settlement; but
that the bill was changed to its present shape at the instance of
the Secretary of State. Some members placed their objections on the
ground of no confidence in the administration that was to expend the
money: thus, Mr. J. C. Clark, of New York:
"In the British Parliament, it is a legitimate ground of
objection to a supply bill, that the objector has no confidence
in the ministry. This bill proposes to vest in the President
and Secretary of State a large discretion in the expenditure
of forty thousand dollars; and I agree with my friend from
Georgia [Mr. MERIWETHER], that there is good reason to doubt
the propriety of giving to these men the disbursement of any
money not imperiously called for by the exigencies of the public
service. I place my opposition to this bill solely on the ground
of an utter want of confidence in the political integrity of the
President and some of his official advisers."
Mr. Adams replied to these objections:
"He did not think it necessary to waste the time of the House in
arguing the propriety of a mission to China. The message of the
President was sufficient on that point.
"He then replied to the objections urged against the bill,
on the ground that it placed too much confidence in the
President, and that the appropriation was to be made without
restriction. The motion which he had submitted, to strike
out the restrictions of law, which were applicable to other
diplomatic appropriations, was made after a consultation with
the Secretary of State, who thought that to impose restrictions
might embarrass the progress of the negotiations."
Mr. McKeon, of New York, opposed the whole scheme of the mission to
China, believing it to be unnecessary, and to be conducted with too
much pomp and expense, and to lay the foundation for a permanent
mission. He said:
"There was nothing so very peculiar in the case of China, that
Congress should depart from the usual restrictions of law, which
applied to diplomatic appropriations generally. He thought it
would be better to take the matter quietly, and go about it in
a quiet business manner. Should the bill pass as reported by
the committee, it would authorize a minister at a salary of
$9,000 and $9,000 outfit. Pass it according to the amendment
of the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. ADAMS], and $40,000
would thereby be placed at the disposal of the Executive--more
than he (Mr. McK.) was willing to see placed in the hands of
any President. He should be as liberal as any man in fixing the
salaries of the minister and secretary. But the appropriation
was only a beginning. The largest ship in this country (the
Pennsylvania) would no doubt be selected to carry out whomsoever
should be selected as minister, in order to give as much _eclat_
as possible to our country. Then other vessels would have to be
sent to accompany this ship, and to sail where her size would
not allow her to go. These, and other paraphernalia, would have
to be provided for the minister; and this $40,000 would be but a
beginning of the expense. He concluded by expressing the hope
that the motion to strike out the restrictions contained in the
bill, and thereby place the whole appropriation at the disposal
of the President, would not prevail."
Mr. Bronson, of Maine, expressed it as his conviction, that we
should possess more information before such a measure as that of
sending a minister plenipotentiary to China should be adopted.
He should prefer having a commercial agent for the present. The
question was then taken on Mr. Adams's proposed amendment, and
resulted in its adoption--80 votes for it; 55 against it. The
previous question being called, the bill was then passed without
further debate or amendment--yeas 96: nays 59. The nays were:
"Messrs.--Thomas D. Arnold, Archibald H. Arrington, Charles G.
Atherton, Benjamin A. Bidlack, John M. Botts, David Bronson,
Milton Brown, Charles Brown, Edmund Burke, William O. Butler,
Patrick C. Caldwell, William B. Campbell, Zadock Casey, John C.
Clark, Nathan Clifford, Walter Coles, Benjamin S. Cowen, James
H. Cravens, George W. Crawford, Garrett Davis, Andrew W. Doig,
William P. Fessenden, Charles A. Floyd, A. Lawrence Foster,
Roger L. Gamble, James Gerry, William L. Goggin, William O.
Goode, Willis Green, William A. Harris, John Hastings, Samuel
L. Hays, Jacob Houck, jr., Robert M. T. Hunter, John W. Jones,
George M. Keim, Nathaniel S. Littlefield, Abraham McClellan,
James J. McKay, John McKeon, Albert G. Marchand, Alfred
Marshall, John Maynard, James A. Meriwether, John Moore, Bryan
Y. Owsley, Kenneth Rayner, John R. Reding, John Reynolds, R.
Barnwell Rhett, James Rogers, William Smith, John Snyder, James
C. Sprigg, Edward Stanley, Lewis Steenrod, Charles C. Stratton,
John T. Stuart, Samuel W. Trotti."
It was observed that Mr. Cushing, though a member of the committee
which reported the bill, and a close friend to the administration,
took no part in the proceedings upon this bill--neither speaking
nor voting for or against it: a circumstance which strengthened the
belief that he was to be the beneficiary of it.
It was midnight on the last day of the session when the bill was
called up in the Senate. Mr. Wright of New York, desired to know the
reason for so large an appropriation in this case. He was answered
by Mr. Archer, the senatorial reporter of the bill, who said it was
not intended that the salary of the minister, or agent, together
with his outfit, should exceed $18,000 per annum--the amount
usually appropriated for such missions. Supposing the mission to
occupy two years, and the sum is not too much, and the remoteness of
the country to be negotiated with, justifies the full appropriation
in advance. Mr. Wright replied that the explanation was not at all
satisfactory to him: the compensation to an agent in China could be
voted annually, and applied annually, as conveniently as any other.
Mr. Benton objected to any mission at all, and especially to such a
one as the bill provided for. He argued that--
"There was no necessity for a treaty with China, was proved by
the fact that our trade with that country had been going on
well without one for a century or two, and was now growing and
increasing constantly. It was a trade conducted on the simple
and elementary principle of '_here is one_,' and '_there is the
other_'--all ready-money, and hard money, or good products--no
credit system, no paper money. For a long time this trade took
nothing but silver dollars. At present it is taking some other
articles, and especially a goodly quantity of Missouri lead.
This has taken place without a treaty, and without an agent at
$40,000 expense. All things are going on well between us and the
Chinese. Our relations are purely commercial, conducted on the
simplest principles of trade, and unconnected with political
views. China has no political connection with us. She is not
within the system, or circle, of American policy. She can have
no designs upon us, or views in relation to us; and we have no
need of a minister to watch and observe her conduct. Politically
and commercially the mission is useless. By the Constitution,
all the ministers are to be appointed by the Senate; but this
minister to China is to be called an agent, and sent out by
the President without the consent of the Senate; and thus, by
imposing a false name upon the minister, defraud the Senate of
their control over the appointment. The enormity of the sum
shows that the mission is to be more expensive than any one ever
sent from the United States; and that it is to be one of the
first grade, or of a higher grade than any known in our country.
Nine thousand dollars per annum, and the same for an outfit, is
the highest compensation known to our service; yet this $40,000
mission may double that amount, and still the minister be only
called an agent, for the purpose of cheating the Senate out of
its control over the appointment. The bill is fraudulent in
relation to the compensation to be given to this ambassadorial
agent. No sum is fixed, but he is to take what he pleases for
himself and his suite. He and they are to help themselves; and,
from the amount allowed, they may help themselves liberally. In
all other cases, salaries and compensations are fixed by law,
and graduated by time; here there is no limit of either money or
time. This mission goes by the job--$40,000 for the job--without
regard to time or cost. A summer's work, or a year's work, it
is all the same thing: it is a job, and is evidently intended
to enable a gentleman, who loves to travel in Europe and Asia,
to extend his travels to the Celestial Empire at the expense of
the United States, and to write a book. The settlement of the
accounts is a fraud upon the Treasury. In all cases of foreign
missions, except where secret services are to be performed,
and spies and informers to be dealt with, the accounts are
settled at the Treasury Department, by the proper accounting
officers; when secret services are to be covered, the fund out
of which they are paid is then called the contingent foreign
intercourse fund; and are settled at the State Department, upon
a simple certificate from the President, that the money has been
applied according to its intention. It was in this way that the
notorious John Henry obtained his $50,000 during the late war;
and that various other sums have been paid out to secret agents
at different times. To this I do not object. Every government,
in its foreign intercourse, must have recourse to agents, and
have the benefit of some services, which would be defeated if
made public; and which must, therefore, be veiled in secrecy,
and paid for privately. This must happen in all governments; but
not so in this case of the Chinese mission. Here, secrecy is
intended for what our own minister, his secretary, and his whole
suite, are to receive. Not only what they may give in bribes
to Chinese, but what they may take in pay to themselves, is to
be a secret. All is secret and irresponsible! And it will not
do to assimilate this mission to the oldest government in the
world, to the anomalous and anonymous missions to revolutionary
countries. Such an analogy has been attempted in defence of
this mission, and South American examples cited; but the cases
are not analogous. Informal agencies, with secret objects, are
proper to revolutionary governments; but here is to be a public
mission, and an imposing one--the grandest ever sent out from
the United States.--To attempt to assimilate such a mission to
a John Henry case, or to a South American agency, is absurd and
impudent; and is a fraud upon the system of accountability to
which all our missions are subjected.
"The sum proposed is the same that is in the act of 1790, upon
which the bill is framed. That act appropriated $40,000: but
for what? For one mission? one man? one agent? one by himself,
one? No. Not at all. That appropriation of 1790 was for all
the missions of the year--all of every kind--public as well as
secret: the forty thousand dollars in this bill is for one man.
The whole diplomatic appropriation in the time of Washington is
now to be given to one man: and it is known pretty well who it
is to be. Forty thousand dollars to enable one of our citizens
to get to Peking, and to bump his head nineteen times on the
ground, to get the privilege of standing up in the presence of
his majesty of the celestial empire. And this is our work in the
last night of this Congress. It is now midnight: and, like the
midnight which preceded the departure of the elder Adams from
the government, the whole time is spent in making and filling
offices. Providing for favorites, and feeding out of the public
crib, is the only work of those whose brief reign is drawing to
a close, and who have been already compelled by public sentiment
to undo a part of their work. The bankrupt act is repealed by
the Congress that made it; the distribution act has shared the
same fate; and if they had another session to sit, the mandamus
act against the States, the habeas corpus against the States,
this Chinese mission, and all the other acts, would be undone.
It would be the true realization of the story of the queen
who unravelled at night the web that she wove during the day.
As it is, enough has been done, and undone, to characterize
this Congress--to entitle it to the name of Ulysses' wife--not
because (like the virtuous Penelope) it resisted seduction--but
because, like her, its own hands unravelled its own work."
Mr. Archer replied that the ignominious prostrations heretofore
required of foreign ministers in the Imperial Chinese presence, were
all abolished by the treaty with Great Britain, and that the Chinese
government had expressed a desire to extend to the United States
all the benefits of that treaty, and this mission was to conclude
the treaty which she wished to make. Mr. Benton replied, so much
the less reason for sending this expensive mission. We now have the
benefits of the British treaty, and we have traded for generations
with China without a treaty, and without a quarrel, and can continue
to do so. She extends to us and to all nations the benefits of the
British treaty: the consul at Canton, Dr. Parker, or any respectable
merchant there, can have that treaty copied, and sign it for the
United States; and deem himself well paid to receive the fortieth
part of this appropriation. Mr. Woodbury wished to see a limitation
placed upon the amount of the annual compensation, and moved an
amendment, that not more than nine thousand dollars, exclusive of
outfit, be allowed to any one person for his annual compensation.
Mr. Archer concurred in the limitation, and it was adopted. Mr.
Benton then returned to one of his original objections--the
design of the bill to cheat the Senate out of its constitutional
control over the appointment. He said the language of the bill was
studiously ambiguous. Whether the person was to be a minister, a
chargé, or an agent, was not expressed. He now desired to know
whether it was to be understood that the person intended for this
mission was to be appointed by the President alone, without asking
the advice and consent of the Senate? Mr. Archer replied that he
had no information on the subject. Mr. Conrad of Louisiana, said
that he would move an amendment that might obviate the difficulty;
he would move that no agent be appointed without the consent of the
Senate. This amendment was proposed, and adopted--31 yeas; 9 nays.
These amendments were agreed to by the House; and, thus limited and
qualified, the bill became a law.
The expected name did not come. The Senate adjourned, and no
appointment could be made until the next session. It was not a
vacancy happening in the recess which the President could fill by a
temporary appointment, to continue to the end of the next session.
It was an original office created during the session, and must be
filled at the session, or wait until the next one. The President
did neither. There were two constitutional ways open to him--and he
took neither. There was one unconstitutional way--and he took it.
In brief, he made the appointment in the recess; and not only so
made it, but sent off the appointee (Mr. Caleb Cushing) also in the
recess. Scarcely had the Senate adjourned when it was known that Mr.
Cushing was to go upon this mission as soon as the ships could be
got ready to convey him: and in the month of May he departed. This
was palpably to avoid the action of the Senate, where the nomination
of Mr. Cushing would have been certain of rejection. He had already
been three times rejected in one day upon a nomination for Secretary
of the Treasury--receiving but two votes on the last trial. All the
objections which applied to him for the Treasury appointment, were
equally in force for the Chinese mission; and others besides. It
was an original vacancy, and could not be filled during the recess
by a temporary appointment. It was not a vacancy "happening" in the
recess of the Senate, and therefore to be temporarily filled without
the Senate's previous consent, lest the public interest in the
meanwhile should suffer. It was an office created, and the emolument
fixed, during the time that Mr. Cushing was a member of Congress:
consequently he was constitutionally interdicted from receiving it
during the continuance of that term. His term expired on the third
of March: he was constitutionally ineligible up to the end of that
day: and this upon the words of the constitution. Upon the reasons
and motives of the constitution, he was ineligible for ever. The
reason was, to prevent corrupt and subservient legislation--to
prevent members of Congress from conniving or assisting at the
enactment of laws for their own benefit, and to prevent Presidents
from rewarding legislative subservience. Tested upon these reasons
Mr. Cushing was ineligible after, as well as before, the expiration
of his congressional term: and such had been the practice of all
the previous Presidents. Even in the most innocent cases, and where
no connivance could possibly be supposed of the member, would any
previous President appoint a member to a place after his term
expired, which he could not receive before it: as shown in Chapter
XXX of the first volume of this View. In the case of Mr. Cushing
all the reasons, founded in the motives of the constitutional
prohibition, existed to forbid his appointment. He had deserted his
party to join Mr. Tyler. He worked for him in and out of the House,
and even deserted himself to support him--as in the two tariff bills
of the current session; for both of which he voted, and then voted
against them when vetoed: for which he was taunted by Mr. Granger,
of New York.[7] There was besides a special provision in the law
under which he was appointed to prevent the appointment from being
made without the concurrence of the Senate. (The notice of the
proceedings in the Senate when the bill which ripened into that
law, have shown the terms of that provision, and the reasons of its
adoption.) It is no answer to that pregnant amendment to say that
the nomination would be sent in at the next session. That session
would not come until six months after Mr. Cushing had sailed! not
until he had arrived at his post! not until he had placed the entire
diameter of the terraqueous globe between himself and the Senate!
and a still greater distance between the Treasury and the $40,000
which he had drawn out of it!
[7] "Mr. Granger observed that he had a few words to say to the
gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. CUSHING]. When he reflected that
that gentleman had voted for every bill that the President had
vetoed, and had then defended every veto which the President had
sent them, he had been not a little puzzled to know how to defend
his position. The gentleman was like a man he saw a short time since
in the circus, who came forward ready dressed and equipped to ride
any horse that might be brought out for him. First the gentleman
from Massachusetts rode the bank pony; and that having run to death,
he mounted the veto charger. The second bank roadster, then the
tariff palfrey, and lastly, the stout-limbed tariff hunter, were
mounted in their turn; and the veto animals were as complacently
mounted, and were seated with as much self-satisfaction. The
gentleman had voted for every bill, and then had justified every
veto, and every act of executive encroachment on this House."
Two squadrons of ships-of-war were put in requisition to attend
this minister. The Pacific squadron, then on the coast of South
America, was directed to proceed to China, to meet him: a squadron
was collected at Norfolk to convey him. This squadron consisted
of the new steam frigate, Missouri--the frigate Brandywine,
the sloop-of-war Saint Louis, and the brig Perry--carrying
altogether near two hundred guns; a formidable accompaniment for
a peace mission, seeking a commercial treaty. Mr. Cushing had a
craving to embark at Washington, under a national salute, and
the administration gratified him: the magnificent steam frigate,
Missouri, was ordered up to receive him. Threading the narrow
and crooked channel of the Potomac River, the noble ship ran on
an oyster bank, and fifteen of her crew, with a promising young
officer, were drowned in getting her off. The minister had a
desire to sail down the Mediterranean, seeing its coasts, and
landing in the ancient kingdom of the Pharaohs: the administration
deferred to his wishes. The Missouri was ordered to proceed to
the Mediterranean, which the ill-fated vessel was destined never
to enter; for, arriving at Gibraltar, she took fire and burned
up--baptizing the anomalous mission in fire and blood, as well as
in enormous expense. The minister proceeded in a British steamer to
Egypt, and then by British conveyance to Bombay, where the Norfolk
squadron had been ordered to meet him. The Brandywine alone was
there, but the minister entered her, and proceeded to the nearest
port to Canton, where, reporting his arrival and object, a series
of diplomatic contentions immediately commenced between himself
and "Ching, of the celestial dynasty, Governor-general of that
part of the Central Flowery Kingdom." Mr. Cushing informed this
governor that he was on his way to Peking, to deliver a letter from
the President of the United States to the Emperor, and to negotiate
a treaty of commerce; and, in the mean time, to take the earliest
opportunity to inquire after the health of the august Emperor. To
this inquiry Ching answered readily that, "At the present moment
the great Emperor is in the enjoyment of happy old age and quiet
health, and is at peace with all, both far and near:" but with
respect to the intended progress to Peking, he demurs, and informs
the minister that the imperial permission must first be obtained. "I
have examined," he says, "and find that every nation's envoy which
has come to the Central Flowery Kingdom with a view of proceeding
to Peking, there to be presented to the august Emperor, has ever
been required to wait outside of the nearest port on the frontier
till the chief magistrate of the province clearly memorialize
the Emperor, and request the imperial will, pointing out whether
the interview may be permitted." With respect to the treaty of
friendship and commerce, the governor declares there is no necessity
for it--that China and America have traded together two hundred
years in peace and friendship without a treaty--that all nations
now had the benefit of the treaty made with Great Britain, which
treaty was necessary to establish relations after a war; and that
the United States, having had no war with China, had no need for
a treaty. He supposes that, having heard of the British treaty,
the United States began to want one also, and admits the idea is
excellent, but unnecessary, and urges against it:
"As to what is stated, of publicly deliberating upon the
particulars of perpetual peace, inasmuch as it relates to
discoursing of good faith, peace, and harmony, the idea is
excellent; and it may seem right, because he has heard that
England has settled all the particulars of a treaty with China,
he may desire to do and manage in the same manner. But the
circumstances of the two nations are not the same, for England
had taken up arms against China for several years, and, in
beginning to deliberate upon a treaty, these two nations could
not avoid suspicion; therefore, they settled the details of
a treaty, in order to confirm their good faith; but since
your honorable nation, from the commencement of commercial
intercourse with China, during a period of two hundred years,
all the merchants who have come to Canton, on the one hand, have
observed the laws of China without any disagreement, and on the
other, there has been no failure of treating them with courtesy,
so that there has not been the slightest room for discord;
and, since the two nations are at peace, what is the necessity
of negotiating a treaty? In the commencement, England was not
at peace with China; and when afterwards these two nations
began to revert to a state of peace, it was indispensable to
establish and settle details of a treaty, in order to oppose
a barrier to future difficulties. I have now discussed this
subject, and desire the honorable plenipotentiary maturely to
consider it. Your honorable nation, with France and England,
are the three great foreign nations that come to the south of
China to trade. But the trade of America and England with China
is very great. Now, the law regulating the tariff has changed
the old established duties, many of which have been essentially
diminished, and the customary expenditures (exactions?) have
been abolished. Your honorable nation is treated in the same
manner as England; and, from the time of this change in the
tariff, all kinds of merchandise have flowed through the
channels of free trade, among the people, and already has
your nation been bedewed with its advantages. The honorable
plenipotentiary ought certainly to look at and consider that
the Great Emperor, in his leniency to men from afar, has issued
edicts commanding the merchants and people peaceably to trade,
which cannot but be beneficial to the nations. It is useless,
with lofty, polished, and empty words, to alter these unlimited
advantages."
In all this alleged extension of the benefits of the British treaty
to all nations, Ching was right in what he said. The Emperor had
already done it, and the British government had so determined it
from the beginning. It was a treaty for the commercial world as
well as for themselves, and had been so declared by the young Queen
Victoria in her speech communicating the treaty to Parliament.
"Throughout the whole course of my negotiations with the government
of China, I have uniformly disclaimed the wish for any exclusive
advantages. It has been my desire that equal favor should be shown
to the industry and commercial enterprise of all nations." There was
really no necessity for a treaty, which as often begets dissensions
as prevents them; and if one was desirable, it might have been had
through Dr. Parker, long a resident of China, and now commissioner
there, and who was Secretary of Legation and interpreter in Mr.
Cushing's mission, and the medium of his communications with the
Chinese; and actually the man of business who did the business in
conducting the negotiations. But Mr. Cushing perseveres in his
design to go to Peking, alleging that, "He deems himself bound by
the instructions of his government to do so." Ching replies that he
has received the imperial order "to stop and soothe him." Ching also
informs him that the treaty with Great Britain was negotiated, not
at Peking but at Canton, and also its duplicate with Portugal, and
that a copy of it was in the hands of the American consul at Canton,
for the information and benefit of American merchants. In his
anxiety to prevent a foreign ship-of-war from approaching Peking,
the Chinese governor intimated that, if a treaty was indispensable,
a commissioner might come to Canton for that purpose; and on inquiry
from Mr. Cushing how long it would take to send to Peking and get a
return, Ching answered, three months--the distance being so great.
Mr. Cushing objects to that delay--declares he cannot wait so long,
as the season for favorable navigation to approach Peking may
elapse; and announces his determination to proceed at once in the
Brandywine, without waiting for any permission; and declares that a
refusal to receive him would be a national insult, and a just cause
of war. Here is the extract from his letter:
"Under these circumstances, inasmuch as your Excellency does not
propose to open to me the inland road to Peking, in the event
of my waiting here until the favorable monsoon for proceeding
to the north by sea shall have passed away, and as I cannot,
without disregard of the commands of my government, permit the
season to elapse without pursuing the objects of my mission,
I shall immediately leave Macao in the Brandywine. I feel the
less hesitation in pursuing this course, in consideration of
the tenor of the several communications which I have received
from your Excellency. It is obvious, that if the court had
entertained any very particular desire that I should remain
here, it would have caused an imperial commissioner to be on
the spot, ready to receive me on my arrival, or, at any rate,
instructions would have been forwarded to your Excellency for
the reception of the legation; since, in order that no proper
act of courtesy towards the Chinese government should be left
unobserved, notice was duly given last autumn, by the consul of
the United States, that my government had appointed a minister
to China. The omission of the court to take either of these
steps seems to indicate expectation, on its part, that I should
probably land at some port in the north."
That is to say, at some port in the Yellow Sea, or its river nearest
to Peking. This must have been a mode of reasoning new to Governor
Ching, that an omission to provide for Mr. Cushing at the port where
foreigners were received, should imply a license for him to land
where they were not, except on express, imperial permission. Much as
Ching must have been astonished at this American logic, he must have
been still more so at the penalty announced for disregarding it!
nothing less than "national insult," and "just cause of war." For
the letter continues:
"Besides which, your Excellency is well aware, that it is
neither the custom in China, nor consistent with the high
character of its Sovereign, to decline to receive the embassies
of friendly states. To do so, indeed, would among Western States
be considered an act of national insult, and a just cause of
war."
This sentence, as all that relates to Mr. Cushing's Chinese mission,
is copied from his own official despatches; so that, what would be
incredible on the relation of others, becomes undeniable on his own.
National insult and just cause of war, for not allowing him to go to
Peking!
Mr. Cushing justifies his refusal to negotiate at Canton as the
British envoy had done, and not being governed by the ceremony
observed in his case, on the ground that the circumstances were not
analogous--that Great Britain had chastised the Chinese, and taken
possession of one of their islands--and that it would be necessary
for the United States to do the same to bring him within the rules
which were observed with Sir Henry Pottinger, the British minister.
This intimation, as impertinent as unfeeling, and as offensive as
unfounded, was thus expressed:
"In regard to the mode and place of deliberating upon all things
relative to the perpetual peace and friendship of China and the
United States, your Excellency refers to the precedent of the
late negotiations with the plenipotentiary of Great Britain.
The rules of politeness and ceremony observed by Sir Henry
Pottinger, were doubtless just and proper in the particular
circumstances of the case. But, to render them fully applicable
to the United States, it would be necessary for my government,
in the first instance, to subject the people of China to all
the calamities of war, and especially to take possession of
some island on the coast of China as a place of residence for
its minister. I cannot suppose that the imperial government
wishes the United States to do this. Certainly no such wish is
entertained at present by the United States, which, animated
with the most amicable sentiments towards China, feels assured
of being met with corresponding deportment on the part of China."
The Brandywine during this time was still at Macao, the port outside
of the harbor, where foreign men-of-war are only allowed to come;
but Mr. Cushing, following up the course he had marked out for
himself, directed that vessel to enter the inner port, and sail up
to Whampoa; and also to require a salute of twenty-one guns to be
fired. Against this entrance the Chinese government remonstrated, as
being against the laws and customs of the empire, contrary to what
the British had done when they negotiated their treaty, and contrary
to an article in that treaty which only permitted that entrance
to a small vessel with few men and one petty officer: and if the
Brandywine had not entered, he forbids her to come; and if she had,
requires her to depart: and as for the salute, he declares he has
no means of firing it; and, besides, it was against their laws.
The governor expressed himself with animation and feeling on this
subject, at the indignity of violating their laws, and under the
pretext of paying him a compliment--for that was the only alleged
cause of the intrusive entrance of the Brandywine. He wrote:
"But it is highly necessary that I should also remark,
concerning the man-of-war Brandywine coming up to Whampoa. The
Bogue makes an outer portal of Kwang Tung, where an admiral is
stationed to control and guard. Heretofore, the men-of-war of
foreign nations have only been allowed to cast anchor in the
seas without the mouth of the river, and have not been permitted
to enter within. This is a settled law of the land, made a long
time past. Whampoa is the place where merchant ships collect
together, not one where men-of-war can anchor. Now, since the
whole design of merchantmen is to trade, and men-of-war are
prepared to fight, if they enter the river, fright and suspicion
will easily arise among the populace, thus causing an obstacle
in the way of trade. Furthermore, the two countries are just
about deliberating upon peace and good will, and suddenly to
have a man-of-war enter the river, while we are speaking of good
faith and cultivating good feeling, has not a little the aspect
of distrust. Among the articles of the commercial regulations
it is provided, that an English government vessel shall be
allowed to remain at anchor at Whampoa, and that a deputy shall
be appointed to control the seamen. The design of this, it was
evident, was to put an end to strife, and quell disputes. But
this vessel is a small one, containing but few troops, and
moreover brings a petty officer, so that it is a matter of
but little consequence, one way or another. If your country's
man-of-war Brandywine contains five hundred and more troops,
she has also a proportionately large number of guns in her, and
brings a commodore in her; she is in truth far different from
the government vessel of the British, and it is inexpedient for
her to enter the river; and there are, in the aspect of the
affair, many things not agreeable."
Nevertheless Mr. Cushing required the ship to enter the inner port,
to demand a return-salute of twenty-one guns, and permission to
the American commodore to make his compliments in person to the
Chinese governor. This governor then addressed a remonstrance to the
American commodore, which runs thus:
"When your Excellency first arrived in the Central Flowery Land,
you were unacquainted with her laws and prohibitions--that
it was against the laws for men-of-war to enter the river.
Having previously received the public officer's (Cushing's)
communication, I, the acting governor, have fully and clearly
stated to him that the ship should be detained outside. Your
Excellency's present coming up to Blenheim reach is therefore,
no doubt, because the despatch sent previously to his Excellency
Cushing had not been made known to you--whence the mistake.
Respecting the salute of twenty-one guns, as it is a salute
among western nations, it does [not] tally with the customs
of China. Your Excellency being now in China, and, moreover,
entered the river, it is not the same as if you were in your own
country; and, consequently, it will be inexpedient to have the
salute performed here; also, China has no such salute as firing
twenty-one guns; and how can we imitate your country's custom
in the number, and make a corresponding ceremony in return?
It will, indeed, not be easy to act according to it. When the
English admirals Parker and Saltoun came up to Canton, they were
both in a passage vessel, not in a man-of-war, when they entered
the river; nor was there any salute. This is evidence plain on
this matter.
"Concerning what is said regarding a personal visit to this
officer to pay respects, it is certainly indicative of good
intention; but the laws of the land direct that whenever
officers from other countries arrive upon the frontier, the
governor and other high officers, not having received his
Majesty's commands, cannot hold any private intercourse with
them; nor can a deputy, not having received a special commission
from the superior officers, have any private intercourse with
foreign functionaries. It will consequently be inexpedient that
your Excellency (whose sentiments are so polite and cordial)
and I, the acting governor, should have an interview; for it is
against the settled laws of the land."
Having thus violated the laws and customs of China in sending
the Brandywine, Mr. Cushing follows it up with threats and
menaces--assumes the attitude of an injured and insulted minister of
peace--and, for the sake of China, regrets what may happen. In this
vein he writes:
"It is customary, among all the nations of the West, for the
ships of war of one country to visit the ports of another in
time of peace, and, in doing so, for the commodore to exchange
salutes with the local authorities, and to pay his compliments
in person to the principal public functionary. To omit these
testimonies of good will is considered as evidence of a hostile,
or at least of an unfriendly feeling. But your Excellency says
the provincial government has no authority to exchange salutes
with Commodore Parker, or to receive a visit of ceremony from
him. And I deeply regret, for the sake of China, that such
is the fact. China will find it very difficult to remain in
peace with any of the great States of the West, so long as her
provincial governors are prohibited either to give or to receive
manifestations of that peace, in the exchange of the ordinary
courtesies of national intercourse. And I cannot forbear to
express my surprise, that, in the great and powerful province
of Kwang Tung, the presence of a single ship of war should be
cause of apprehension to the local government. Least of all,
should such apprehension be entertained in reference to any
ships of war belonging to the United States, which now feels,
and (unless ill-treatment of our public agents should produce a
change of sentiments) will continue to feel, the most hearty and
sincere good will towards China. Coming here, in behalf of my
government, to tender to China the friendship of the greatest of
the Powers of America, it is my duty, in the outset, not to omit
any of the tokens of respect customary among western nations. If
these demonstrations are not met in a correspondent manner, it
will be the misfortune of China, but it will not be the fault of
the United States."
In these sentences China is threatened with a war with the United
States on account of her ill-treatment of the United States'
public agents, meaning himself--the ill-treatment consisting in
not permitting him to trample, without restraint, upon the laws
and customs of the country. In this sense, Ching the governor,
understood it, and answered:
"Regarding what is said of the settled usages of western
nations--that not to receive a high commissioner from another
state is an insult to that state--this certainly, with men,
has a warlike bearing. But during the two hundred years of
commercial intercourse between China and your country, there
has not been the least animosity nor the slightest insult. It
is for harmony and good will your Excellency has come; and your
request to proceed to the capital, and to have an audience with
the Emperor, is wholly of the same good mind. If, then, in the
outset, such pressing language is used, it will destroy the
admirable relations."
To this Mr. Cushing rejoins, following up the menace of war for
the "_ill-treatment_" he was receiving--justifying it if it
comes--reminds China of the five years' hostilities of Great Britain
upon her--points to her antiquated customs as having already brought
disasters upon her; and suggests a dismemberment of her empire as a
consequence of war with the United States, provoked by ill-treatment
of her public agents. Thus:
"I can only assure your Excellency, that this is not the way
for China to cultivate good will and maintain peace. The late
war with England was caused by the conduct of the authorities
at Canton, in disregarding the rights of public officers who
represented the English government. If, in the face of the
experience of the last five years, the Chinese government now
reverts to antiquated customs, which have already brought such
disasters upon her, it can be regarded in no other light than as
evidence that she invites and desires [war with] the other great
western Powers. The United States would sincerely regret such a
result. We have no desire whatever to dismember the territory of
the empire. Our citizens have at all times deported themselves
here in a just and respectful manner. The position and policy
of the United States enable us to be the most disinterested and
the most valuable of the friends of China. I have flattered
myself, therefore, and cannot yet abandon the hope, that the
imperial government will see the wisdom of promptly welcoming
and of cordially responding to the amicable assurances of the
government of the United States."
Quickly following this despatch was another, in which Mr.
Cushing rises still higher in his complaints of molestation and
ill-treatment--refers to the dissatisfaction which the American
people will experience--thought they would have done better,
having just been whipped by the British--confesses that his exalted
opinion of China is undergoing a decline--hopes they will do
better--postpones for a while his measures of redress--suspends his
resentment--and by this forbearance will feel himself the better
justified for what he may do if forced to act. But let his own words
speak:
"I must not conceal from your Excellency the extreme
dissatisfaction and disappointment which the people of America
will experience when they learn that their Envoy, instead of
being promptly and cordially welcomed by the Chinese government,
is thus molested and delayed, on the very threshold of the
province of Yuh. The people of America have been accustomed to
consider China the most refined and the most enlightened of the
nations of the East; and they will demand, how it is possible,
if China be thus refined, she should allow herself to be wanting
in courtesy to their Envoy; and, if China be thus enlightened,
how it is possible that, having just emerged from a war with
England, and being in the daily expectation of the arrival of
the Envoy of the French, she should suffer herself to slight
and repel the good will of the United States. And the people of
America will be disposed indignantly to draw back the proffered
hand of friendship, when they learn how imperfectly the favor
is appreciated by the Chinese government. In consenting,
therefore, to postpone, for a short time longer, my departure
for the North (Peking), and in omitting, for however brief a
period, to consider the action of the Chinese government as
one of open disrespect to the United States, and to take due
measures of redress, I incur the hazard of the disapprobation
and censure of my government; for the American government is
peculiarly sensitive to any act of foreign governments injurious
to the honor of the United States. It is the custom of American
citizens to demean themselves respectfully towards the people
and authorities of any foreign nation in which they may, for
the time being, happen to reside. Your Excellency has frankly
and truly borne witness to the just and respectful deportment
which both scholars and merchants of the United States have
at all times manifested in China. But I left America as a
messenger of peace. I came into China full of sentiments of
respect and friendship towards its sovereign and its people.
And notwithstanding what has occurred, since my arrival here,
to chill the warmth of my previous good will towards China, and
to bring down the high conceptions I had previously been led
to form in regard to the courtesy of its government, I am loth
to give these up entirely, and in so doing put an end perhaps
to the existing harmonious relations between the United States
and China. I have therefore to say to your Excellency, that
I accept, for the present, your assurances of the sincerity
and friendship of the Chinese government. I suspend all the
resentment which I have just cause to feel on account of the
obstructions thrown in the way of the progress of the legation,
and other particulars of the action of the Imperial and
Provincial governments, in the hope that suitable reparation
will be made for these acts in due time. I commit myself, in
all this, to the integrity and honor of the Chinese government;
and if, in the sequel, I shall prove to have done this in vain,
I shall then consider myself the more amply justified, in the
sight of all men, for any determination which, out of regard for
the honor of the United States, it may be my duty to adopt under
such circumstances."
It was now the middle of May, 1844: the correspondence with Ching
had commenced the last of February: the three months had nearly
elapsed, within which a return answer was to be had from Peking:
and by extraordinary speed the answer arrived. It contained the
Emperor's positive refusal to suffer Mr. Cushing to come to
Peking--enjoined him to remain where he was--cautioned him not to
"agitate disorder"--and informing him that an Imperial commissioner
would proceed immediately to Canton, travelling with the greatest
celerity, and under orders to make one hundred and thirty-three
miles a day, there to draw up the treaty with him. This information
took away the excuse for the intrusive journey, or voyage, to
Peking, and also showed that a commercial treaty might be had
with China, without inflicting upon her the calamities of war, or
breeding national dissensions out of diplomatic contentions. It made
a further suspension of his resentment, and postponement of the
measures which the honor of the United States required him to take
for the molestations and ill treatment which the federal government
had received in his person. These formidable measures, well known
to be belligerent, were postponed, not abandoned; and the visit to
Peking, forestalled by the arrival of an imperial commissioner to
sign a treaty, was also postponed, not given up--its pretext now
diminished, and reduced to the errand of delivering Mr. Tyler's
letter to the Emperor. He consents to treat at Canton, but makes
an excuse for it in the want of a steamer, and the non-arrival of
the other ships of the squadron, which would have enabled him to
approach Canton, intimidate the government, and obtain from their
fears the concessions which their manners and customs forbid. All
this he wrote himself to his government, and he is entitled to the
benefit of his own words:
"So far as regards the objects of adjusting in a proper manner
the commercial relations of the United States and China, nothing
could be more advantageous than to negotiate with Tsiyeng at
Canton, instead of running the risk of compromising this great
object by having it mixed up at Tien Tsin, or elsewhere at the
north, with questions of reception at Court. Add to which the
fact that, with the Brandywine alone, without any steamer, and
without even the St. Louis and the Perry, it would be idle to
repair to the neighborhood of the Pih-ho, in any expectation
of acting upon the Chinese by intimidation, and obtaining from
their fears concessions contrary to the feeling and settled
wishes of the Imperial government. To remain here, therefore,
and meet Tsiyeng, if not the most desirable thing, is at present
the only possible thing. It is understood that Tsiyeng will
reach Canton from the 5th to the 10th of June."
This commissioner, Tsiyeng, arrived at the time appointed, and
fortunately for the peace and honor of the country, as the St. Louis
sloop-of-war, and the man-of-war brig Perry, arrived two days after,
and put Mr. Cushing in possession of the force necessary to carry
out his designs upon China. In the joy of receiving this accession
to his force, he thus writes home to his government:
"It is with great pleasure I inform you that the St. Louis
arrived here on the 6th instant, under the command of Lieutenant
Keith, Captain Cocke (for what cause I know not, and cannot
conceive), after detaining the ship at the Cape of Good Hope
three months, having at length relinquished the command to Mr.
Keith. And on the same day arrived also the Perry, commanded by
Lieutenant Tilton. The arrival of these vessels relieves me from
a load of solicitude in regard to the public business; for if
matters do not go smoothly with Tsiyeng, the legation has now
the means of proceeding to and acting at the North."
"If matters do not go smoothly with Tsiyeng!" and the very first
step of Mr. Cushing was an attempt to ruffle that smoothness.
The Chinese commissioner announced his arrival at Canton, and
made known his readiness to draw up the treaty instantly. In this
communication, the name of the United States, as according to
Chinese custom with all foreign nations, was written in a lower
column than that of the Chinese government--in the language of
Mr. Cushing, "the name of the Chinese government stood higher in
column by one character than that of the United States." At this
collocation of the name of his country, Mr. Cushing took fire, and
instantly returned the communication to the Imperial commissioner,
"even at the hazard (as he informed his government) of at once
cutting off all negotiation." Fortunately Tsiyeng was a man of
sense, and of elevation of character, and immediately directed his
clerk to elevate the name of the United States to the level of the
column which contained that of China. By this condescension on the
part of the Chinese commissioner, the negotiation was saved for
the time, and the cannon and ammunition of our three ships of war
prevented from being substituted for goose-quills and ink. The
commissioner showed the greatest readiness, amounting to impatience,
to draw up and execute the treaty; which was done in as little
time as the forms could be gone through: and the next day the
commissioner, taking his formal leave of the American legation,
departed for Peking--a hint that, the business being finished, Mr.
Cushing might depart also for his home. But he was not in such a
hurry to return. "His pride and his feelings (to use his own words)
had been mortified" at not being permitted to go to Peking--at
being in fact stopped at a little island off the coast, where he
had to transact all his business; and his mind still reverted to
the cherished idea of going to Peking, though his business would
be now limited to the errand of carrying Mr. Tyler's letter to the
Emperor. In his despatch, immediately after the conclusion of this
treaty, he justifies himself for not having gone before the Chinese
commissioner arrived, placing the blame on the slow arrival of the
St. Louis and the Perry, the non-arrival at all of the Pacific
squadron, and the want of a steamer.
"With these reflections present to my mind, it only needed to
consider further whether I should endeavor to force my way to
Peking, or at least, by demonstration of force at the mouth of
the Pih-ho, attempt to intimidate the Imperial government into
conceding to me free access to the Court. In regard to this it
is to be observed, that owing to the extraordinary delays of the
St. Louis on her way here, I had no means of making any serious
demonstration of force at the north, prior to the time when
Tsiyeng arrived at Canton, on his way to Macao, there to meet
me and negotiate a treaty. And with an Imperial commissioner
near at hand, ready and willing to treat, would it have been
expedient, or even justifiable, to enter upon acts of hostility
with China, in order, if possible, to make Peking the place of
negotiation?"
The correspondence does not show what was the opinion of the then
administration upon this problem of commencing hostilities upon
China after the commissioner had arrived to make the treaty; and
especially to commit these hostilities to force a negotiation at
Peking, where no treaty with any power had ever been negotiated,
and where he expected serious difficulties in his presentation at
court, as Mr. Cushing was determined not to make the prostrations
(i. e. bumping his head nineteen times against the floor), which the
Chinese ceremonial required.
"I have never disguised from myself the serious difficulties
which I might have to encounter in forcing my way to Peking;
and, if voluntarily admitted there, the difficulties almost
equally serious connected with the question of presentation at
court; for I had firmly resolved not to perform the acts of
prostration to the Emperor. I struggled with the objections
until intelligence was officially communicated to me of the
appointment of Tsiyeng as imperial commissioner, and of his
being actually on his way to Canton. To have left Macao after
receiving this intelligence would have subjected me to the
imputation of fleeing from, and, as it were, evading a meeting
with Tsiyeng; and such an imputation would have constituted a
serious difficulty (if not an insuperable one) in the way of
successful negotiation at the North."
The despatch continues:
"On the other hand, I did not well see how the United States
could make war on China to change the ceremonial of the court.
And for this reason, it had always been with me an object of
great solicitude to dispose of all the commercial questions by
treaty, before venturing on Peking."
"Did not well see how the United States could make war on China to
change the ceremonial of the court." This is very cool language,
and implies that Mr. Cushing was ready to make the war--(assuming
himself to be the United States, and invested with the war
power)--but could not well discover any pretext on which to found
it. He then excuses himself for not having done better, and gone
on to Peking without stopping at the outer port of Canton, and so
giving the Chinese time to send down a negotiator there, and so
cutting off the best pretext for forcing the way to China: and this
excuse resolves itself into the one so often given--the want of a
sufficient squadron to force the way. Thus:
"If it should be suggested that it would have been better for
me to have proceeded at once to the North (Peking), without
stopping at Macao, I reply, that this was impracticable at
the time of my arrival, with the Brandywine alone, before the
southerly monsoon had set in, and without any steamer; that if
at any time I had gone to the North in the view of negotiating
there, I should have been wholly dependent on the Chinese for
the means of lodging and subsisting on shore, and even for the
means of landing at the mouth of the Pih-ho; that only at Macao
could I treat independently, and that here, of necessity, must
all the pecuniary and other arrangements of the mission be
made, and the supplies obtained for the squadron. Such are the
considerations and the circumstances which induced me to consent
to forego proceeding to Peking."
So that, after all, it was only the fear of being whipt and starved
that prevented Mr. Cushing from fighting his way to the foot-stool
of power in the Tartar half of the Chinese Empire. The delay of
the two smaller vessels, the non-arrival of the Pacific squadron,
and the want of a steamer, were fortunate accidents for the peace
and honor of the United States; and even the conflagration of the
magnificent steam frigate, Missouri, with all her equipments, was
a blessing, compared to the use to which she would have been put
if Mr. Cushing's desire to see the coasts of the Mediterranean and
the banks of the Nile had not induced him to take her to Gibraltar,
instead of doubling the Cape of Good Hope in company with the
Brandywine. Finally, he gives the reason for all this craving desire
to get to Peking, which was nothing more nor less (and less it could
not be) than the gratification of his own feelings of pride and
curiosity. Hear him:
"And in regard to Peking itself, I have obtained the means of
direct correspondence between the two governments immediately,
and an express engagement, that if hereafter a minister of the
French, or any other power, should be admitted to the court, the
same privilege shall be accorded to the United States. If the
conclusion of the whole matter be one less agreeable to my own
feelings of pride or curiosity, it is, at any rate, the most
important and useful to my country, and will therefore, I trust,
prove satisfactory to the President."
It does not appear from any published instructions of the
administration (then consisting of Mr. Tyler and his new cabinet
after the resignation of all the whig members except Mr. Webster),
how far Mr. Cushing was warranted in his belligerent designs upon
China; but the great naval force which was assigned to him, the
frankness with which he communicated all his bellicose intentions,
the excuses which he made for not having proceeded to hostilities
and the dismemberment of the Empire, and the encomiums with
which his treaty was communicated to the Senate--all bespeak a
consciousness of approbation on the part of the administration,
and the existence of an expectation which might experience
disappointment in his failing to make war upon the Chinese. In
justice to Mr. Webster, it must be told that, although still in the
cabinet when Mr. Cushing went to China, yet his day of influence was
over: he was then in the process of being forced to resign: and Mr.
Upshur, then Secretary of the Navy, was then virtually, as he was
afterwards actually, Secretary of State, when the negotiations were
carried on.
The publication of Mr. Cushing's correspondence, which was ordered
by the Senate, excited astonishment, and attracted the general
reprobation of the country. Their contents were revolting, and would
have been incredible except for his own revelations. Narrated by
himself they coerced belief, and bespoke an organization void of the
moral sense, and without the knowledge that any body else possessed
it. The conduct of the negotiator was condemned, his treaty was
ratified, and the proceedings on his nomination remain a senatorial
secret--the injunction of secrecy having never been removed from
them.
CHAPTER CXXIII.
THE ALLEGED MUTINY, AND THE EXECUTIONS (AS THEY WERE CALLED) ON
BOARD THE UNITED STATES MAN-OF-WAR, SOMERS.
In the beginning of this year the public mind was suddenly astounded
and horrified, at the news of a mutiny on board a national
ship-of-war, with a view to convert it into a pirate, and at the
same time excited to admiration and gratitude at the terrible energy
with which the commander of the ship had suppressed it--hanging
three of the ringleaders on the spot without trial, bringing home
twelve others in irons--and restraining the rest by the undaunted
front which the officers assumed, and the complete readiness in
which they held themselves to face a revolt. It was a season of
profound peace, and the astounding news was like claps of thunder in
a clear sky. It was an unprecedented event in our navy, where it had
been the pride and glory of the seamen to stand by their captain and
their ship to the last man, and to die exultingly to save either.
Unlike almost all mutinies, it was not a revolt against oppression,
real or imagined, and limited to the seizure of the ship and the
death or expulsion of the officers, but a vast scheme of maritime
depredation, in which the man-of-war, converted into a piratical
cruiser, was to roam the seas in quest of blood and plunder, preying
upon the commerce of all nations--robbing property, slaughtering
men, and violating women. A son of a cabinet minister, and himself
an officer, was at the head of the appalling design; and his name
and rank lent it a new aspect of danger. Every aggravation seemed
to attend it, and the horrifying intelligence came out in a way to
magnify its terrors, and to startle the imagination as well as to
overpower the judgment. The vessel was the bearer of her own news,
and arriving on the coast, took a reserve and mystery which lent
a terrific force to what leaked out. She stopped off the harbor
of New York, and remained outside two days, severely interdicting
all communication with the shore. A simple notice of her return
was all that was made public. An officer from the vessel, related
to the commander, proceeded to Washington city--giving out fearful
intimations as he went along--and bearing a sealed report to the
Secretary of the Navy. The contents of that report went direct into
the government official paper, and thence flew resounding through
the land. It was the official and authentic report of the fearful
mutiny. The news being spread from the official source, and the
public mind prepared for his reception, the commander brought his
vessel into port--landed: and landed in such a way as to increase
the awe and terror inspired by his narrative. He went direct, in
solemn procession, at the head of his crew to the nearest church,
and returned thanks to God for a great deliverance. Taken by
surprise, the public mind delivered itself up to joy and gratitude
for a marvellous escape, applauding the energy which had saved
a national ship from mutiny, and the commerce of nations from
piratical depredation. The current was all on one side. Nothing
appeared to weaken its force, or stop its course. The dead who had
been hanged, and sent to the bottom of the sea, could send up no
voice: the twelve ironed prisoners on the deck of the vessel, were
silent as the dead: the officers and men at large actors in what had
taken place, could only confirm the commander's official report.
That report, not one word of which would be heard in a court of
justice, was received as full evidence at the great tribunal of
public opinion. The reported confessions which it contained (though
the weakest of all testimony in the eye of the law, and utterly
repulsed when obtained by force, terror or seduction), were received
by the masses as incontestable evidence of guilt.
The vessel on which all this took place was the United States
man-of-war, Somers--her commander Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, Esq.,
with a crew of 120 all told, 96 of which were apprentice boys under
age. She had gone out on one of those holiday excursions which are
now the resource of schools to make seamen. She had crossed the
Atlantic and was returning to the United States by way of the West
Indies, when this fearful mutiny was discovered. It was communicated
by the purser's steward to the purser--by him to the first
lieutenant--by him to the commander: and the incredulous manner in
which he received it is established by two competent witnesses--the
lieutenant who gave it to him, and the commander himself: and it is
due to each to give the account of this reception in his own words:
and first the lieutenant shall speak:
"I reported the thing (the intended mutiny) to the commander
immediately. He took it very coolly, said the vessel was in a
good state of discipline, and expressed his doubts as to the
truth of the report."
This is the testimony of the lieutenant before the court-martial
which afterwards sat upon the case, and two points are to be
noted in it--_first_, that the commander did not believe it; and,
_secondly_, that he declared the vessel to be in a good state of
discipline: which was equivalent to saying, there was no danger,
even if the information was true. Now for the commander's account of
the same scene, taken from his official report:
"Such was the purport of the information laid before me by
Lieut. Gansevoort, and although he was evidently impressed with
the reality of the project, yet it seemed to me so monstrous, so
improbable, that I could not forbear treating it with ridicule.
I was under the impression that Mr. Spencer had been reading
piratical stories, and had amused himself with Mr. Wales"--(the
informer).
Ridicule was the only answer which the commander deemed due to the
information, and in that he was justified by the nature of the
information itself. A purser's steward (his name Wales) had told the
lieutenant that midshipman Spencer had called him into a safe place
the night before, and asked him right off--"Do you fear death? do
you fear a dead man? are you afraid to kill a man?"--and getting
satisfactory answers to these questions, he immediately unfolded to
him his plan of capturing the ship, with a list of four certain and
ten doubtful associates, and eighteen _nolens volens_ assistants to
be forced into the business; and then roaming the sea with her as a
pirate, first calling at the Isle of Pines (Cuba) for confederates.
It was a ridiculous scheme, both as to the force which was to take
the ship, and her employment as a buccaneer--the state of the ocean
and of navigation being such at that time as to leave a sea-rover,
pursued as he would be by the fleets of all nations, without a sea
to sail in, without a coast to land on, without a rock or corner
to hide in. The whole conception was an impossibility, and the
abruptness of its communication to Wales was evidence of the design
to joke him. As such it appeared to the commander at the time. It
was at 10 o'clock in the morning of the 26th of November, 1842,
approaching the West Indies from the coast of Africa, that this
information was given by the lieutenant to the commander. Both agree
in their account of the ridicule with which it was received; but
the commander, after the deaths of the implicated, and when making
out his official report to the Secretary of the Navy, forgot to add
what he said to the lieutenant--that the vessel was in a good state
of discipline--equivalent to saying it could not be taken. Further,
he not only forgot to add what he said, but remembered to say the
contrary: and on his trial undertook to prove that the state of the
ship was bad, and had been so for weeks; and even since they left
the coast of Africa. In this omission to report to the Secretary
a fact so material, as he had remarked it to his lieutenant, and
afterwards proving the contrary on his trial, there is room for a
pregnant reflection which will suggest itself to every thinking
mind--still more when the silence of the log-book upon this "bad"
state of the crew, corresponds with the commander's account that it
was good. But, take the two accounts in what they agree, and it is
seen that at 10 o'clock in the morning Lieutenant Gansevoort's whole
report of the conspiracy and mutiny, as derived from the purser's
steward (Wales) was received with ridicule--as the romance of a boy
who had been reading piratical stories, and was amusing himself with
the steward--a landsman, of whom the commander gives a bad account
as having bought a double quantity of brandy--twice as much as his
orders justified, before leaving New York;--and afterwards stealing
it on the voyage. By five o'clock in the evening of the same day,
and without hearing any thing additional, the commander became fully
impressed with the truth of the whole story, awfully impressed
with the danger of the vessel, and fully resolved upon a course of
terrible energy to prevent the success of the impending mutiny. Of
this great and sudden change in his convictions it becomes the right
of the commander to give his own account of its inducing causes: and
here they are, taken from his official report:
"In the course of the day, Lieut. Gansevoort informed me that
Mr. Spencer had been in the wardroom examining a chart of the
West Indies, and had asked the assistant surgeon some questions
about the Isle of Pines, and the latter had informed him that it
was a place much frequented by pirates, and drily asked if he
had any acquaintances there.--He passed the day rather sullenly
in one corner of the steerage, as was his usual custom, engaged
in examining a small piece of paper, and writing upon it with
his pencil, and occasionally finding relaxation in working with
a penknife at the tail of a devilfish, one of which he had
formed into a sliding ring for his cravat. Lieut. Gansevoort
also made an excuse of duty to follow him to the foretop, where
he found him engaged in having some love device tattooed on
his arm by Benjamin F. Green, ordinary seaman, and apprentice.
Lieut. Gansevoort also learned that he had been endeavoring for
some days to ascertain the rate of the chronometer, by applying
to Mid. Rodgers, to whom it was unknown, and who referred him to
the master. He had been seen in secret and nightly conferences
with the boatswain's mate, S. Cromwell, and seaman Elisha
Small. I also heard that he had given money to several of the
crew; to Elisha Small on the twelfth of September, the day
before our departure from New York; the same day on which, in
reply to Commodore Perry's injunctions to reformation, he had
made the most solemn promises of amendment; to Samuel Cromwell
on the passage to Madeira; that he had been in the habit of
distributing tobacco extensively among the apprentices, in
defiance of the orders of the navy department, and of my own
often reiterated; that he had corrupted the ward-room steward,
caused him to steal brandy from the ward-room mess, which he,
Mr. Spencer, had drunk himself, occasionally getting drunk when
removed from observation, and had also administered to several
of the crew; that, finally, he was in the habit of amusing
the crew by making music with his jaw. He had the faculty of
throwing his jaw out of joint, and by contact of the bones,
playing with accuracy and elegance a variety of airs. Servile
in his intercourse with me, when among the crew he loaded me
with blasphemous vituperation, and proclaimed that it would be
a pleasing task to roll me overboard off the round-house. He
had some time before drawn a brig with a black flag, and asked
one of the midshipmen what he thought of it; he had repeatedly
asserted in the early part of the cruise, that the brig might
easily be taken; he had quite recently examined the hand of
midshipman Rodgers, told his fortune, and predicted for him a
speedy and violent death."
Surely the historian, as well as the poet may say: To the jealous
mind, trifles light as air are confirmations strong as proofs
from holy writ. Here are fourteen causes of suspected mutiny
enumerated, part of which causes are eminently meritorious in a
young naval officer, as those of studying the chart of the West
Indies (whither the vessel was going), and that of learning the
rate of the chronometer; another part of which is insignificant, as
giving tobacco to the apprentice boys, and giving money to two of
the seamen; others again would show a different passion from that
of piracy, as having love devices tattooed on his arm; others again
would bespeak the lassitude of idleness, as whittling at the tail
of a devilfish, and making a ring for his cravat, and drawing a
brig with a black flag; others again would indicate playfulness and
humor, as examining the palm of young Rodgers' hand, and telling his
fortune, which fortune, of course, was to be startling, as a sudden
and violent death, albeit this young Rodgers was his favorite, and
the only one he asked to see when he was about to be hung up--(a
favor which was denied him); others again are contradicted by
previous statements, as, that Spencer corrupted the purser's steward
and made him steal brandy, the commander having before reported that
steward for the offence of purchasing a double quantity of brandy
before he left New York--a circumstance which implied a sufficient
inclination to use the extra supply he had laid in (of which he
had the custody), without being corrupted by Spencer to steal
it; others of these causes again were natural, and incidental to
Spencer's social condition in the vessel, as that of talking with
the seamen, he being objected to by his four roommates (who were the
commander's relations and connections), and considered one too many
in their room, and as such attempted to be removed to another ship
by the commander himself; another, that occasionally he got drunk
when removed from observation, a fault rather too common (even when
in the presence of observation) to stand for evidence of a design
to commit mutiny on board a man-of-war; another, that blasphemous
vituperation of the commander which, although it might be abusive,
could neither be blasphemous (which only applies to the abuse of
God), nor a sign of a design upon the vessel, but only of contempt
for the commander; finally, as in that marvellous fine music with
the jaw out of joint, playing with skill and accuracy a variety of
elegant airs by the contaction of the luxated ends of the bones.
Taken as true, and this musical habit might indicate an innocency
of disposition. But it is ridiculously false, and impossible, and
as such ridiculous impossibility it was spared the mention even
of contempt during the whole court-martial proceedings. Still it
was one of the facts gravely communicated to the Secretary of the
Navy as one of the means used by Spencer to seduce the crew. While
ridicule, contempt and scorn are the only proper replies to such
absurd presumptions of guilt, there were two of them presented in
such a way as to admit of an inquiry into their truth, namely, the
fortune-telling and the chronometer: Midshipman Rodgers testified
before the court that this fortune-telling was a steerage amusement,
and that he was to die, not only suddenly and violently, but also
a gambler; and that as for the examination of the chronometer, it
was with a view to a bet between himself and Rodgers as to the time
that the vessel would get to St. Thomas--the bet on Spencer's
side, being on eight days. Yet, the diseased mind of the commander
could see nothing in those little incidents, but proof of a design
to kill Rodgers (with the rest) before the ship got to St. Thomas,
and afterwards to run to the Isle of Pines. Preposterous as these
fourteen reasons were, they were conclusive with the commander, who
forthwith acted upon them, and made the arrest of Spencer.
"At evening quarters I ordered through my clerk, O. H. Perry,
doing the duty also of midshipman and aid, all the officers to
lay aft on the quarter deck, excepting the midshipman stationed
on the forecastle. The master was ordered to take the wheel,
and those of the crew stationed abaft sent to the mainmast.
I approached Mr. Spencer, and said to him, 'I learn, Mr.
Spencer, that you aspire to the command of the Somers.' With
a deferential, but unmoved and gently smiling expression, he
replied, 'Oh no, sir.' 'Did you not tell Mr. Wales, sir, that
you had a project to kill the commander, the officers, and a
considerable portion of the crew of this vessel, and to convert
her into a pirate?' 'I may have told him so, sir, but it was in
a joke.' 'You admit then that you told him so?' 'Yes, sir, but
in joke!' 'This, sir, is joking on a forbidden subject--this
joke may cost you your life!'"
This was the answer of innocence: guilt would have denied every
thing. Here all the words are admitted, with a promptitude and
frankness that shows they were felt to be what they purported--the
mere admission of a joke. The captain's reply shows that the life
of the young man was already determined upon. It was certainly
a punishable joke--a joke upon a forbidden subject: but how
punishable? certainly among the minor offences in the navy, offences
prejudicial to discipline; and to be expiated by arrest, trial,
condemnation for breach of discipline, and sentence to reprimand,
suspension; or some such punishment for inconsiderate offences. But,
no. The commander replies upon the spot, '_this joke may cost you
your life_:' and in that he was prophetic, being the fulfiller of
his own prophecy. The informer Wales had reported a criminal paper
to be in the neckcloth of the young man: the next movement of the
commander was to get possession of that paper: and of that attempt
he gives this account:
"'Be pleased to remove your neckhandkerchief.' It was removed
and opened, but nothing was found in it. I asked him what he had
done with a paper containing an account of his project which
he had told Mr. Wales was in the back of his neckhandkerchief.
'It is a paper containing my day's work; and I have destroyed
it.' 'It is a singular place to keep day's work in.' 'It is
a convenient one,' he replied, with an air of deference and
blandness."
Balked in finding this confirmation of guilt, the commander yet
proceeded with his design, and thus describes the arrest:
"I said to him, 'You must have been aware that you could
only have compassed your designs by passing over my dead
body, and after that the bodies of all the officers. You had
given yourself a great deal to do. It will be necessary for
me to confine you.' I turned to Lieutenant Gansevoort and
said, 'Arrest Mr. Spencer, and put him in double irons.' Mr.
Gansevoort stepped forward, and took his sword; he was ordered
to sit down in the stern port, double ironed, and as an
additional security handcuffed. I directed Lieut. Gansevoort
to watch over his security, to order him to be put to instant
death if he was detected speaking to, or holding intelligence
in any way, with any of the crew. He was himself made aware of
the nature of these orders. I also directed Lieut. Gansevoort to
see that he had every comfort which his safe keeping would admit
of. In confiding this task to Lieut. Gansevoort, his kindness
and humanity gave me the assurance that it would be zealously
attended to; and throughout the period of Mr. Spencer's
confinement, Lieut. Gansevoort, whilst watching his person with
an eagle eye, and ready at any moment to take his life should he
forfeit that condition of silence on which his safety depended,
attended to all his wants, covered him with his own grego when
squalls of rain were passing over, and ministered in every way
to his comfort with the tenderness of a woman."
Double-ironed--handcuffed--bagged (for he was also tied up in
a bag), lying under the sun in a tropical clime, and drenched
with squalls of rain--silent--instant death for a word or a
sign--Lieutenant Gansevoort, armed to the teeth, standing over
him, and watching, with "eagle eye," for the sound or motion which
was to be the forfeit of life: for six days and nights, his irons
examined every half hour to see that all were tight and safe, was
this boy (of less than nineteen) thus confined; only to be roused
from it in a way that will be told. But the lieutenant could not
stand to his arduous watch during the whole of that time. His eagle
eye could not resist winking and shutting during all that time. He
needed relief--and had it--and in the person of one who showed
that he had a stomach for the business--Wales, the informer: who,
finding himself elevated from the care of pea-jackets, molasses,
and tobacco, to the rank of sentinel over a United States officer,
improved upon the lessons which his superiors had taught him, and
stood ready, a cocked revolver in hand, to shoot, not only the
prisoners (for by this time there were three), for a thoughtless
word or motion, but also to shoot any of the crew that should make a
suspicious sign:--such as putting the hand to the chin, or touching
a handspike within forty feet of the said Mr. Wales. Hear him, as he
swears before the court-martial:
"I was officer in charge of the prisoners: we were holy-stoning
the decks. I noticed those men who missed their muster kept
congregating round the stern of the launch, and kept talking in
a secret manner. I noticed them making signs to the prisoners
by putting their hands up to their chins: Cromwell was lying on
the starboard arm-chest: he rose up in his bed. I told him if
I saw any more _signs_ passing between them _I should put him
to death: my orders were to that effect_. He laid down in his
bed. I then went to the stern of the launch, found Wilson, and a
number of small holy-stones collected there, and was endeavoring
to pull a gun handspike from the stern of the launch: _what his
intentions were I don't know_. I cocked a pistol, and ordered
him to the lee-gangway to draw water. I told him if I saw him
pulling at the handspike I should blow his brains out."
This comes from Mr. Wales himself, not from the commander's report,
where this handspike-incident is made to play a great part; thus:
"Several times during the night there were symptoms of an
intention to strike some blow. Mr. Wales detected Charles A.
Wilson attempting to draw out a handspike from under the launch,
with an evident purpose of felling him; and when Mr. Wales
cocked his pistol and approached, he could only offer some lame
excuse for his presence there. I felt more anxious than I had
yet done, and remained continually on deck."
Here is a discrepancy. Wales swears before the court that he did not
know what Wilson's intentions were in pulling at the handspike: the
captain, who did not see the pulling, reports to the Secretary of
the Navy that it was done with the evident intent of felling Wales!
while Wales himself, before the court-martial, not only testified
to his ignorance of any motive for that act, but admitted upon
cross-examination, that the handspike was not drawn at all--only
attempted! and that he himself was forty feet from Wilson at the
time! (but, more of this handspike hereafter.) Still the impression
upon the commander's mind was awful. He felt more anxious than ever:
he could not rest: he kept continually on deck. Armed to the teeth
he watched, listened, interrogated, and patrolled incessantly.
Surely the man's crazy terrors would excite compassion were it not
for the deeds he committed under their influence.--But the paper
that was to have been found in Spencer's cravat, and was not found
there: it was found elsewhere, and the commander in his report gives
this account of it:
"On searching the locker of Mr. Spencer, a small razor-case was
found, which he had recently drawn, with a razor in it, from the
purser. Instead of the razor, the case was found to contain a
small paper, rolled in another; on the inner one were strange
characters, which proved to be Greek, with which Mr. Spencer
was familiar. It fortunately happened that there was another
midshipman on board the Somers who knew Greek--one whose Greek,
and every thing else that he possessed, was wholly devoted to
his country. The Greek characters, converted by midshipman Henry
Rodgers into our own, exhibited well known names among the crew.
The certain--the doubtful--those who were to be kept whether
they would or not--arranged in separate rows; those who were to
do the work of murder in the various apartments, to take the
wheel, to open the arm-chests."
The paper had about thirty names upon it: four under the head of
"certain:" ten under that of doubtful, and the remainder under
the head of _nolens volens_--which was construed by the Latinists
on board to signify men who were to be made to join in the mutiny
whether they would or not: and these _nolens volens_ who were to
be forced were more numerous than those who were to force them.
Eighteen unwilling men to be forced into mutiny and piracy by four
willing and ten uncertain; and of the four willing, one of them the
informer himself! and another not in the ship! and a third Spencer!
leaving but one under Spencer to do the work. The names of all were
spelt with the Greek alphabet. Of course these _nolens volens_ men
could not have been counted in any way among the mutineers; yet
they were always counted to make up the thirty, as, of less than
that number it would not have been seemly for a man-of-war to have
been afraid; yet some of these were brought home in irons. The ten
marked doubtful should not have been held to be guilty upon any
principle of human justice--the humanity of the law always giving
the benefit of the doubt to the suspected criminal. This brings the
inquiry to the four "certain:" and of these four, it turned out that
one of them (Andrews) was a personage not in the vessel! Another
was the veritable Mr. Wales himself! who was the informer, and the
most determined opposer of the mutiny--leaving but two (Spencer and
McKinley) to do the work of murder in the various departments: and
of this McKinley it will eventually be seen with what justice his
name was there. The names of Small and Cromwell, both of whom were
hung with Spencer, were neither of them in this certain list--nor
that of Cromwell in any: in fact, there was nothing against him,
and Small was only included in Wales's information. So that the
"certain" mutineers were reduced to two, both of whom were in irons,
and bagged, and five others out of the doubtful and _nolens volens_
classes. There was no evidence to show that this was Spencer's
razor-case: it was new, and like the rest obtained from the purser.
There was no evidence how it got into Spencer's locker: Wales and
Gansevoort were the finders. There was no evidence that a single
man whose name was in the list, knew it to be there. Justice would
have required these points to have been proven; but with respect to
the writing upon this paper it was readily avowed by Spencer to be
his--an avowal accompanied by a declaration of its joking character,
which the law would require to go with it always, but which was
disregarded.
Small and Cromwell were not arrested with Spencer, but afterwards,
and not upon accusations, but upon their looks and attitudes, and
accident to the sky-sail-mast, which will be noted at the proper
time. The first point is to show the arrestation upon looks and
motions; and of that the commander gave this account in the official
report:
"The following day being Sunday, the crew were inspected
at quarters, ten o'clock. I took my station abaft with the
intention of particularly observing Cromwell and Small. The
third, or master's division, to which they both belonged, always
mustered at morning quarters upon the after part of the quarter
deck, in continuation of the line formed by the crews of the
guns. The persons of both were faultlessly clean. They were
determined that their appearance in this respect should provoke
no reproof. Cromwell stood up to his full stature, his muscles
braced, his battle-axe grasped resolutely, his cheek pale, but
his eye fixed as if indifferently at the other side. He had
a determined and dangerous air. Small made a very different
figure. His appearance was ghastly; he shifted his weight from
side to side, and his battle-axe passed from one hand to the
other; his eye wandered irresolutely, but never towards mine. I
attributed his conduct to fear; I have since been led to believe
that the business upon which he had entered was repugnant to his
nature, though the love of money and of rum had been too strong
for his fidelity."
Here were two men adjudged guilty of mutiny and piracy upon their
looks, and attitude, and these diametrically opposed in each case.
One had a dangerous air--the other a ghastly air. One looked
resolute--the other irresolute. One held his battle-axe firmly
griped--the other shifted his from hand to hand. One stood up
steadily on both legs--the other shifted his weight uneasily from
leg to leg. In one point only did they agree--in that of faultless
cleanliness: a coincidence which the commander's judgment converted
into evidence of guilt, as being proof of a determination that, so
far as clean clothes went, there should be no cause for judging them
pirates: a conclusion to the benefit of which the whole crew would
be entitled, as they were proved on the court-martial to be all
"faultlessly clean" at this Sunday inspection--as they always were
at such inspection--as the regulations required them to be--and for
a fault in which any one of them would have been punished. Yet upon
these looks, and attitudes, suspicions were excited, which, added
to the incident of a mast broken by the blundering order of the
commander's nephew, caused the arrest and death of two citizens.
After the crew had been inspected, divine service was performed, the
crew attending before the time, and behaving well; and the commander
again availed himself of the occasion to examine the countenances
of the men; and, happily, without finding any thing to give him
distrust. He thus describes the scene:
"After quarters the church was rigged. The crew mustered up with
their prayer-books, and took their seats without waiting for
all hands to be called, and considerably before five bells,
or half-past ten--the usual time of divine service. The first
lieutenant reported all ready, and asked me if he should call
all hands to muster. I told him to wait for the accustomed
hour. Five bells were at length struck, and all hands called to
muster. The crew were unusually attentive, and the responses
more than commonly audible. The muster succeeded, and I examined
very carefully the countenances of the crew, without discovering
any thing that gave me distrust."
This Sunday then (Nov. 27th) being the first Sunday, and the first
day after the arrest of Spencer, had passed half by without any
thing discoverable to excite distrust, except the cleanliness,
the looks, and the attitudes of Small and Cromwell at the morning
inspection. At the second ordeal, that of the church service, the
whole crew came out well, and all seemed to be safe and right up to
this time--being twenty-four hours after the arrest of Spencer--the
event which was expected to rouse his accomplices to some outbreak
for his rescue. But that critical day was not destined to pass
away without an event which confirmed all the suspicions of the
commander, and even indicated the particular criminals. Before the
sun had gone down, this event occurred; and as it became the turning
point in the case, and the point of departure in the subsequent
tragic work, the commander shall have the benefit of telling it
himself:
"In the afternoon, the wind having moderated, skysails and
royal studding-sails were set. In going large I had always been
very particular to have no strain upon the light braces leading
forward, as the tendency of such a strain was to carry away the
light yards and masts. Whilst Ward M. Gagely, one of the best
and most skilful of our apprentices, was yet on the main royal
yard, after setting the main skysail, a sudden jerk of the
weather main royal brace given by Small and another, whose name
I have not discovered, carried the topgallant-mast away in the
sheeve hole, sending forward the royal mast with royal skysail,
royal studding sail, main-topgallant staysail, and the head
of the gaff topsail. Gagely was on the royal yard. I scarcely
dared to look on the booms or in the larboard gangways where he
should have fallen. For a minute I was in intense agony: in the
next I saw the shadow of the boy through the topgallant sail,
rising rapidly towards the topgallant yard, which still remained
at the mast head. Presently he rose to view, descended on the
after side to the topgallant-mast cap, and began to examine with
coolness to see what was first to be done to clear the wreck.
I did not dream at the time that the carrying away of this mast
was the work of treachery--but I knew that it was an occasion
of this sort, the loss of a boy overboard, or an accident to
a spar, creating confusion and interrupting the regularity
of duty, which was likely to be taken advantage of by the
conspirators were they still bent on the prosecution of their
enterprise."
The commander did not dream at the time of treachery: did not
dream of it when he saw the mast fall: and well he might not,
for he had given the order himself to set the skysails, the ship
running "large" at the time, _i. e._ with a favorable wind, and
when a slight press of sail might carry away the elevated, light,
and unsupported mast which carried the skysail. He did not dream
of treachery when he saw it fall under an order which himself had
given: but quickly he had that dream, and he must tell himself how
it came to him; thus:
"To my astonishment, all those who were most conspicuously
named in the programme of Mr. Spencer, no matter in what
part of the vessel they might be stationed, mustered at the
main-top masthead--whether animated by some new-born zeal in the
service of their country, or collected there for the purpose of
conspiring, it was not easy to decide. The coincidence confirmed
the existence of a dangerous conspiracy, suspended, yet perhaps
not abandoned."
This is the way the dream began, in astonishment at seeing all those
most conspicuously nominated in the razor-case paper, rush to the
scene of the disaster. Now, for the misfortune of this paragraph, it
came to be proved before the court-martial, and after the men were
dead, that the majority of those who ran forward were not named in
the paper at all! and especially that one of the two was not upon
it who were presently seized as guilty, and whose haste to perform
a duty was the passport to death. The crew ran to the place. This
would seem to be the most natural conduct imaginable. They ran to
the place where the mast and boy were expected to fall. They flew
to the place at which the commander, in his intense agony, did not
dare to look. This haste to such a place was proof of guilt, take
it either way, either as animated by some new-born zeal to hide
past defection, or to collect for a conspiracy. The commander finds
it hard to decide between these two purposes; but take which he
might, it was confirmation of a dangerous conspiracy, and of its
suspension, not abandonment. The sudden running to the place was the
proof of the conspiracy: the jerk which Small, and another whose
name has never yet been discovered, gave to the weather main royal
brace, pointed out the two eminently guilty. What put the seal upon
the confirmation of all this guilt was the strange and stealthy
glances which Spencer, in his irons, and his head then out of the
bag (for the heads were left out in the day time) cast at it. Hear
him:
"The eye of Mr. Spencer travelled perpetually to the masthead,
and cast thither many of those strange and stealthy glances
which I had before noticed."
The commander nowhere tells when and how he had previously seen
these sinister glances--certainly not before the revelations of
Wales, as, up to that time, he was anxious before the court-martial
to show that Spencer was kindly regarded by him. But the glances.
What more natural than for Spencer to look at such a startling
scene! a boy falling in the wreck of a broken mast, and tumbling
shrouds, from fifty feet high: and look he did--a fair and
honest look, his eyes steadfastly fixed upon it, as proved by
the commander's own witnesses on the court-martial--especially
midshipman Hays--who testified to the fixed and steady look; and
this in answer to a question from the commander tending to get a
confirmation of his own report. Nor did any one whatever see those
strange and furtive glances which the commander beheld. Now to the
breaking of the mast. This incident was reviewed at the time by two
competent judges--Mr. Fenimore Cooper, the naval historian, and
himself an ex-naval officer, and Captain William Sturgis of Boston,
one of the best navigators that Boston ever bred (and she has bred
as good as the world ever saw). They deemed the breaking of that
slender, elevated, unbraced mast the natural result of the order
which the commander gave to set the skysail, going as the vessel
then was. She was in the trade-winds, running into West Indies from
the coast of Africa, and running "large," as the mariners express
it; that is to say, with the wind so crossing her course as to come
strong upon her beam or quarter, and send her well before it. With
such a wind, these experienced seamen say that the order which
the commander gave might well break that mast. It would increase
the press of sail on that delicate and exposed mast, able to bear
but little at the best, and often breaking without a perceptible
increase of pressure upon it. But the order which he gave was not
the one given to the men. He gave his order to his relation, Mr. O.
H. Perry, to have a small pull on one brace; instead of that the
order given to the men was, to haul, that is, pull hard, on another;
which was directly contrary to the order he had received--one
slacking, the other increasing the press of sail. Under that order
the men with alacrity threw their whole weight on the wrong brace;
and the mast cracked, reeled, and fell immediately. The commander
himself saw all this--saw the fault his nephew had committed--sent
for him--reproved him in the face of the crew--told him it was
his fault--the effect of his inattention. All this was fully
proved before the court-martial. Perry's own testimony admitted
it. Thus--questioned by the judge advocate: "After the mast was
carried away were you sent for by the commander?" Answer: "Yes,
sir." "Who came for you?" A. "I don't recollect the person." "Was
it not McKee?" A. "I don't recollect." "What then occurred between
you and the commander?" A. "He asked me why I did not attend to my
duties better? and said I must do it better in future." "What was
the commander alluding to?" A. "To my not attending to the brace at
the time they were hauling on it." "Did he say to you, '_this is all
your fault, sir?_' or words to that effect?" A. "I don't recollect."
"What reply did you make the commander?" A. "I did not make any. I
said, I think, that I understood the order to haul on the brace."
There was also something else proved there, which, like the other,
was not reported in the commander's account of that portentous
event, which was the immediate cause of a new and terrible line of
conduct. First, there is no mention on the log-book of this rush of
the men aft: secondly, there is no mention in it of any suspected
design to carry away this topgallant mast. The commander was seeing
when he wrote his report what the keeper of the log-book did not
see at the time it should have happened. And this point is here
dismissed with the remark that, in this case (the men coming fast to
the work) was the sign of guilt: in other cases, coming slow was
the same sign: so that, fast or slow, from the time Wales made his
revelation, to the time of hanging, all motions, however opposite
to each other, were equally signs of the same guilt. The account of
this incident being given, the report proceeds:
"The wreck being cleared, supper was piped down before sending
up the new mast. After supper the same persons mustered again
at the mast head, and the topgallant mast was fidded, the light
yards crossed, and the sails set. By this time it was dark, and
quarters had been unavoidably dispensed with: still I thought,
under all the circumstances, that it was scarcely safe to leave
Cromwell at large during the night. The night was the season of
danger. After consulting Lieutenant Gansevoort, I determined to
arrest Cromwell. The moment he reached the deck, an officer was
sent to leeward to guard the lee-rigging; and the main stays
were also thought of, though not watched. As his voice was heard
in the top, descending the rigging, I met him at the foot of
Jacob's ladder, surrounded by the officers, guided him aft to
the quarter-deck, and caused him to sit down. On questioning
him as to the secret conversation he had held the night before
with Mr. Spencer, he denied its being he. He said; 'It was not
me, sir, it was Small!' Cromwell was the tallest man on board,
and Small the shortest. Cromwell was immediately ironed; and
Small, then pointed out by an associate to increased suspicion,
was also sent for, interrogated, and ironed. Increased vigilance
was now enjoined upon all the officers; henceforward, all were
perpetually armed. Either myself, or the first lieutenant was
always on deck; and, generally, both of us were."
Two more were now arrested, and in giving an account of these
arrests, as of all others (fifteen in the whole), the commander
forgets to tell that the arrested persons were bagged, as well as
double-ironed and handcuffed, and their irons ordered to be examined
every half hour day and night--a ceremony which much interfered with
sleep and rest. And now for the circumstances which occasioned these
arrests: and first of Cromwell. There are but two points mentioned;
first, "under all the circumstances." These have been mentioned, and
comprise his looks and attitudes at the morning inspection, and his
haste in getting to the scene of the wreck when the mast fell. The
next was his answer to the question upon his secret conversation
with Spencer the night before. This "night before," seems to be a
sad blunder in point of time. Spencer was in irons on the larboard
arm-chest at that time, a guard over him, and holding his life from
minute to minute by the tenure of silence, the absence of signs,
and the absence of understanding looks with any person. It does
not seem possible that he could have held a conversation, secret
or public, with any person during that night, or after his arrest
until his death; nor is any such any where else averred: and it is
a stupid contradiction in itself. If it was secret, it could not
be known: if it was open, both the parties would have been shot
instantly. Upon its stupid contradiction, as well as upon time, the
story is falsified. Besides this blunder and extreme improbability,
there is other evidence from the commander himself, to make it quite
sure that nobody could have talked with Spencer that night. The men
were in the hammocks, and the ship doubly guarded, and the officers
patrolling the deck with pistols and cutlasses. Of this, the
report says: "That night the officers of the watch were armed with
cutlasses and pistols, and the rounds of both decks made frequently,
to see that the crew were in their hammocks, and that there were no
suspicious collections of individuals about the deck." Under these
circumstances, it would seem impossible that the previous night's
conversation could have been held by any person with Mr. Spencer.
Next, supposing there was a secret conversation. It might have
been innocent or idle; for its subject is not intimated; and its
secret nature precludes all knowledge of it. So much for Cromwell:
now for Small. His case stands thus: "Pointed out by an associate
to increased suspicion." Here association in guilt is assumed; a
mode of getting at the facts he wanted, almost invariable with the
commander, Mackenzie. Well, the answer of Cromwell, "It was not
me, it was Small!" would prove no guilt if it was true; but it is
impossible to have been true. But this was only cause of "increased"
suspicion: so that there was suspicion before; and all the causes of
this had been detailed in the official report. First, there were the
causes arising at inspection that morning--faultless cleanliness,
shifting his battle-axe from one hand to the other, resting
alternately on the legs, and a ghastly look--to wit: a ghostly look.
He was interrogated: the report does not say about what: nor does
it intimate the character of the answers. But there were persons
present who heard the questions and the answers, and who told both
to the court-martial. The questions were as to the conversation
with Spencer, which Wales reported; and the answers were, yes--that
he had foolish conversations with Spencer, but no mutiny. Still
there was a stumbling block in the way of arresting Small. His name
was nowhere made out as certain by Spencer. This was a balk: but
there was the name of a man in the list who was not in the vessel:
and this circumstance of a man too few, suggested an idea that there
should be a transaction between these names; and the man on the list
who had no place in the ship, should give place to him who had a
place in the ship, and no place on the list: so Small was assumed to
be Andrews; and by that he was arrested, though proved to be Small
by all testimony--that of his mother inclusive.
The three prisoners were bagged, and how that process was performed
upon them, they did not live to tell: but others who had undergone
the same investment, did: and from them the operation will be
learnt. With the arrest of these two, the business of Sunday closed;
and Monday opened with much flogging of boys, and a speech from the
commander, of which he gives an abstract, and also displays its
capital effects:
"The effect of this (speech of the 28th) upon the crew was
various: it filled many with horror at the idea of what they had
escaped from: it inspired others with terror at dangers awaiting
them from their connection with the conspiracy. The thoughts of
returning to that home, and those friends from whom it had been
intended to cut them off for ever, caused many of them to weep.
I now considered the crew tranquillized and the vessel safe."
Now, whether this description of the emotions excited by the
captain's oratory, be reality or fancy, it is still good for one
thing: it is good for evidence against himself! good evidence, at
the bar of all courts, and at the high tribunal of public opinion.
It shows that the captain, only two days before the hanging, was
perfect master of his ship--that the crew was tranquillized,
and the vessel safe! and all by the effect of his oratory: and
consequently, that he had a power within himself by which he
could control the men, and mould them into the emotions which he
pleased. The 28th day came. The commander had much flogging done,
and again made a speech, but not of such potency as the other. He
stopped Spencer's tobacco, and reports that, "the day after it was
stopped, his spirits gave way entirely. He remained the whole day
with his face buried in the gregoe and when it was raised, it was
bathed in tears." So passed the 28th. "On the 29th (continues the
report) all hands were again called to witness punishment," and the
commander made another speech. But the whole crew was far from being
tranquillized. During the night seditious cries were heard. Signs of
disaffection multiplied. The commander felt more uneasy than he had
ever done before. The most seriously implicated collected in knots.
They conferred together in low tones, hushing up, or changing the
subject when an officer approached. Some of the petty officers had
been sounded by the first lieutenant, and found to be true to their
colors: they were under the impression that the vessel was yet far
from being safe--that there were many still at liberty that ought to
be confined--that an outbreak, having for its object the rescue of
the prisoners, was seriously contemplated. Several times during the
night there were symptoms of an intention to strike some blow. Such
are a specimen of the circumstances grouped together under vague and
intangible generalities with which the day of the 29th is ushered
in, all tending to one point, the danger of a rescue, and the
necessity for more arrests. Of these generalities, only one was of
a character to be got hold of before the court-martial, and it will
take a face, under the process of judicial examination of witnesses,
very different from that which it wore in the report. After these
generalities, applying to the mass of the crew, come special
accusations against four seamen--Wilson, Green, McKee, McKinley: and
of these special accusations, a few were got hold of by the judge
advocate on the court-martial. Thus:
1. _The handspike sign._--"Mr. Wales detected Charles A. Wilson
attempting to draw out a handspike from under the launch, with
an evident purpose of felling him; and when Wales cocked his
pistol, and approached, he could only offer some lame excuse for
his presence there."
This is the amount of the handspike portent, as reported to the
Secretary of the Navy among the signs which indicated the immediate
danger of the rising and the rescue. This Wales, of course, was a
witness for the commander, and on being put on the stand, delivered
his testimony in a continued narrative, covering the whole case. In
that narrative, he thus introduces the handspike incident:
"I then went to the stern of the launch, found Wilson had a
number of small holystones collected there, and was endeavoring
to pull a gun handspike from the stern of the launch: what his
intentions were I don't know. I cocked a pistol, and ordered him
in the gangway to draw water. I told him if I saw him pulling on
the handspike, I should blow his brains out."
"I then went to the stern," &c. This period of time of going to the
stern of the launch, was immediately after this Wales had detected
persons making signs to the prisoners by putting their hands to
their chins, and when he told Cromwell if he saw any more signs
between them he should put him to death. It was instantly after this
detection and threat, and of course at a time when this purser's
steward was in a good mood to see signs and kill, that he had this
vision of the handspike: but he happens to swear that he does not
know with what intent the attempt to pull it out was made. Far from
seeing, as the commander did when he wrote the report, that the
design to fell him was evident, he does not know what the design was
at all; but he gives us a glimpse at the inside of his own heart,
when he swears that he would blow out the brains of Wilson if he saw
him again attempting to pull out the handspike, when he did not know
what it was for. Here is a murderous design attributed to Wilson
on an incident with Wales, in which Wales himself saw no design
of any kind; and thus, upon his direct examination, and in the
narrative of his testimony, he convicts the commander of a cruel and
groundless misstatement. But proceed to the cross-examination: the
judge advocate required him to tell the distance between himself and
Wilson when the handspike was being pulled by Wilson? He answered
forty feet, more or less! and so this witness who had gone to the
stern of the launch, was forty feet from that stern when he got
there.
2. _Missing their muster._--"McKinley, Green, and others, missed
their musters. Others of the implicated also missed their
musters. I could not contemplate this growth of disaffection
without serious uneasiness. Where was this thing to end?
Each new arrest of prisoners seemed to bring a fresh set of
conspirators forward to occupy the first place."
The point of this is the missing the musters; and of these the men
themselves give this account, in reply to questions from the judge
advocate:
"It was after the arrest (of Spencer), me and McKee (it is
McKinley speaks) turned in and out with one another when the
watch was called: we made a bargain in the first of the cruise
to wake one another up when the watches were called. I came up
on deck, awaked by the noise of relieving guards, 15 minutes too
late, and asked McKee why he did not call me? He told me that
the officer would not let him stir: that they were ordered to
lie down on the deck, and when he lay down he fell asleep, and
did not wake up: that was why I missed my muster, being used to
be waked up by one another."
Such is the natural account, veracious upon its face, which McKinley
gives for missing, by 15 minutes, his midnight muster, and which
the commander characterized as a lame excuse, followed by immediate
punishment, and a confirmed suspicion of mutiny and piracy. All the
others who missed musters had their excuses, true on their face,
good in their nature, and only varying as arising from the different
conditions of the men at the time.
3. _The African knife sign._--"In his sail-bag (Wilson's) was
found an African knife of an extraordinary shape--short, and
gradually expanding in breadth, sharp on both sides. It was of
no use for any honest purpose. It was only fit to kill. It had
been secretly sharpened, by his own confession, the day before
with a file to a perfect edge."
The history of this knife, as brought out before the court-martial
was this (McKinley, the witness):
"I was ashore on the coast of Africa--I believe it was at
Monrovia that I went ashore, I having no knife at the time. I
went ashore there, and saw one of the natives with a knife. I
spoke to Mr. Heiskill (the purser) about buying it for me. He
sent me aboard the brig (Somers) with some things in the second
cutter. When I came back Warner had bought the knife I looked
at, and Mr. Heiskill bought an African dirk instead of that, and
gave it to me. I came on board with the knife, and wore it for
two or three days. Wilson saw it, and said he wanted to buy it
as a curiosity to take to New York. I would not let him have it
then. I went up on the topgallant yard, and it nearly threw me
off. It caught in some of the rigging. When I came down, I told
Wilson he might have it for one dollar. He promised to give a
dollar out of the first grog money, or the first dollar he could
get."
So much for this secret and formidable weapon in the history of its
introduction to the ship--coming through the purser Heiskill, one
of the supporters of Commander Mackenzie in all the affairs of these
hangings--given as a present to McKinley, a cot-boy, _i. e._ who
made up the cots for the officers, who had been a waiter at Howard's
Hotel (N. Y.), and who was a favorite in the ship's crew. As for the
uses to which it could only be put--no honest use, and only fit to
kill--it was proved to be in current use as a knife, cutting holes
in hammocks, shifting their numbers, &c.
4. _The battle-axe alarm._--"He had begun also to sharpen his
battle-axe with the same assistant (the file): one part of it he
had brought to an edge."
The proof was the knife and the battle-axe were publicly sharpened
as often as needed, and that battle-axes, like all other arms, were
required to be kept in perfect order; and that, sharp and shining
was their desired condition. Every specified sign of guilt was
cleared up before the court-martial--one only excepted; and the
mention of that was equally eschewed by each party. It was the sign
of music from the luxated jaw! Both parties refrained from alluding
to that sign on the trial--one side from shame, the other from pity.
Yet it was gravely reported to the Secretary of the Navy as fact,
and as a means of seducing the crew. Returning to generalities, the
informer Wales, presents himself prominently on this day--this 29th
of November, memorable for its resolves; and groups a picture which
was to justify all that was to be done in two days more, and of
which the initiation and preliminary steps were then taken.
"The crew still continued very much dissatisfied, grumbling
the whole time. The master-at-arms was sick at the time, and I
attended to his duties, and had charge of the berth deck. Their
manner was so insulting that I had to bring three or four up for
punishment (with the cat-and-nine-tails.) The dissatisfaction
continued to increase (this was the 30th I think), and continued
till the execution took place, when I noticed a marked change in
their manner: those who were the most unruly and insolent were
the first to run and obey an order: they seemed to anticipate
an order."--"Before that, an order had to be given two or three
times before it was executed, and when they did execute it, they
would go growling along, as though they did not care whether it
was done or not. They went slow."
This swearing of Wales tallies with the report of the commander
in bringing the mutiny up to the bursting point on the 29th of
November. That was a point necessary to be reached, as it will be
seen hereafter, and to be reached on that day. There was one other
point necessary to be made out, and that was, the mutiny was to
break forth before they arrived at the island of St. Thomas, as at
that place the mutineers could be landed, or transhipped, and so
the whole thing evaporate. They were now within less than four days
of that island. Spencer had bet just before they would be there in
eight days--a bet which seemed to say that he had no thought of
preventing her from arriving there. But it was now necessary to have
the mutiny to take place before they got to that island: and this
essential point was established by Wales, by an addition to his
previous testimony fixing that point. This addition to his testimony
caused an inquiry to be put to him by the judge advocate before the
court: "When did you first swear that Mr. Spencer told you that the
mutiny would break out shortly before your arrival at St. Thomas?"
Answer: "At the examination of officers, and of men by the officers.
I forget what day, but I think it was on the 30th of November." This
was corroborated in the view of the commander by the fortune-telling
of the young Rodgers' fate--to die suddenly, i.e. in the mutiny
before they got to St. Thomas, without adding the remainder of the
prediction, that he was to die a gambler; and without adding the
essential fact, that Spencer had a bet that she would arrive there
by a given day.
On the 30th day of November, at nine o'clock in the morning, a
letter was delivered by the commander to Lieutenant Gansevoort,
Surgeon Leecock and Purser Heiskill, and four midshipmen, stating
the dangers of the ship, and calling upon them to enlighten the
commander with their opinion as to what should be done with Spencer,
Small and Cromwell. The letter was not addressed to any of the
acting midshipmen, the reason why being thus stated: "Though they
had done men's duty in the late transaction, they were still boys:
their opinion could add but little force to that of the other
officers: it would have been hard, at their early age, to call
upon them to say whether three of their fellow-creatures should
live or die." So reasoned the commander with respect to the acting
midshipmen. It would seem that the same reasoning should have
excused the four midshipmen on whom this hard task was imposed. The
letter was delivered at 9 o'clock in the morning: the nominated
officers met in (what was called) a council: and proceeded
immediately to take, what they called testimony, to be able to give
the required opinion. Thirteen seamen were examined, under oath--an
extra-judicial oath of no validity in law, and themselves punishable
at common law for administering it: and this testimony written down
in pencil on loose and separate slips of paper--the three persons
whose lives were to be passed upon, having no knowledge of what was
going on. Purser Heiskill being asked on the court-martial, why, on
so important occasion pen and ink was not used, answered, he did
not know--"that there were no lawyers there:" as if lawyers were
necessary to have pen and ink used. The whole thirteen, headed by
Wales, swore to a pattern: and such swearing was certainly never
heard before, not even in the smallest magistrate's court, and
where the value of a cow and calf was at stake: hearsays, beliefs,
opinions; preposterous conclusions from innocent or frivolous
actions: gratuitous assumptions of any fact wanted: and total
disregard of every maxim which would govern the admissibility of
evidence. Thus:
HENRY KING: "Believed the vessel was in danger of being taken
by them: thinks Cromwell the head man: thinks they have been
engaged in it ever since they left New York: thinks if they
could get adrift, there would be danger of the vessel being
taken: thinks Spencer, Small, Cromwell and Wilson were the
leaders: thinks if Golderman and Sullivan could get a party
among the crew now that they would release the prisoners and
take the vessel, and that they are not to be trusted."--CHARLES
STEWART: "Have seen Cromwell and Spencer talking together
often--talking low: don't think the vessel safe with these
prisoners on board: this is my deliberate opinion from what I've
heard King, the gunner's mate, say (that is) that he had heard
the boys say that there were spies about: I think the prisoners
have friends on board who would release them if they got a
chance. I can't give my opinion as to Cromwell's character: I
have seen him at the galley getting a cup of coffee now and
then."--CHARLES ROGERS: "I believe Spencer gave Cromwell 15
dollars on the passage to Madeira--Cromwell showed it to me and
said Spencer had given it to him. If we get into hard weather
I think it will be hard to look out for all the prisoners: I
believe if there are any concerned in the plot, it would not
be safe to go on our coast in cold or bad weather with the
prisoners: I think they would rise and take the vessel: I think
if Cromwell, Small, and Spencer were disposed of, our lives
would be much safer. Cromwell and Small understand navigation:
these two are the only ones among the prisoners capable of
taking charge of the vessel."--ANDREW ANDERSON: "Have seen
Spencer and Cromwell often speaking together on the forecastle,
in a private way: never took much notice: I think it's plain
proof they were plotting to take this vessel out of the hands
of her officers: from the first night Spencer was confined, and
from what I heard from my shipmates, I suspected that they were
plotting to take the vessel: I think they are safe from here to
Saint Thomas (West Indies), but from thence home I think there
is great danger on account of the kind of weather on the coast,
and squalls."--OLIVER B. BROWNING: "I would not like to be on
board the brig if he (Cromwell) was at large: I do not bear him
any ill will: I do not know that he bears me any ill will: I do
not think it safe to have Cromwell, Spencer and Small on board:
I believe that if the men were at their stations taking care of
the vessel in bad weather, or any other time when they could
get a chance, they would try and capture the vessel if they
could get a chance: to tell you God Almighty's truth, I believe
some of the cooks about the galley, I think they are the main
backers."--H. M. GARTY: "Believes Spencer, Small and Cromwell
were determined on taking the brig: he supposes to turn pirates
or retake slavers: on or about the 11th of October heard Spencer
say the brig could be taken with six men: I think there are some
persons at large who would voluntarily assist the prisoners if
they had an opportunity: thinks if the prisoners were at large
the brig would certainly be in great danger: thinks there are
persons adrift yet who would, if any opportunity offered, rescue
the prisoners: thinks the vessel would be safer if Cromwell,
Spencer, and Small were put to death."--GEORGE W. WARNER: "Have
seen Cromwell and Spencer sitting together frequently: have
heard Spencer ask Cromwell what sort of a slaver this vessel
would make? he replied, he thought she would make a nice slaver:
have no doubt he had joined Spencer in the project of taking
this vessel: thinks Cromwell would have taken the vessel to the
north west coast: Cromwell was in a slaver and taken a year
since at Cuba: has seen Spencer give Cromwell cigars: thinks
Cromwell deserves to be hung: thinks he is the most dangerous
man in the ship: if I had my way I would hang him."--VAN VELSON:
"A good while since Spencer said he would like to have a ship
to go to the north-west coast: Cromwell and him was thick:
should think Cromwell meant to join Spencer to take this vessel:
Spencer thought he could raise money to get a ship. My reason
for thinking that Cromwell meant to join Spencer in taking
this vessel, is because I have frequently seen them in close
conversation."
The drift of all this swearing was to show that the men ought not
only to be put to death, but immediately, to prevent a rescue,
and before they got to St. Thomas, and to make an excuse for not
bringing them to the United States, pleading the difficulty to guard
them in bad weather on the coast of the United States. (Among the
persons examined, and one of those who "thinks the vessel would be
safer if Cromwell, Spencer, and Small were put to death," was one
Garty--Sergeant Michael H. Garty--who will be especially noticed
hereafter.) The examination of these persons, though commenced
immediately on receiving the commander's letter, was not finished
until nine o'clock of the next morning, December the first; and then
upon the pressing application of Gansevoort (who was absent much of
the time), and telling the council that the commander was waiting
for it. The answer was soon prepared, and delivered, declaring
Spencer, Cromwell, and Small to be guilty of mutiny according to
the evidence which had come to their knowledge, and that they were
leagued with others still at large; and then goes on to say--"We
are convinced that it would be impossible to carry them to the
United States, and that the safety of the public property, the lives
of ourselves, and of those committed to our charge, require that
(giving them sufficient time to prepare) they should be put to death
in a manner best calculated to make a beneficial impression upon the
disaffected." And this recommendation was signed by the whole seven
to whom the commander's letter had been addressed--among them two
names illustrious in the annals of our navy. The heart grieves over
that view, but draws a veil over the names, and absolves the boys
from the guilt of the transaction. We know the power of the quarter
deck. The midshipman must be born a Cato, or a Macon (and such men
are only born once in ages) to be able to stand up against the
irresistible will of that deck. History refuses to see these boys
as agents in the transaction. Mackenzie, Gansevoort, Leecock and
Heiskill, are the persons with whom she deals.
The narrative, thus far following the commander's report, is here
suspended for the purpose of bringing in some circumstances not
related in that report, and which came out before the court-martial;
and the relation of which is due to the truth of history. 1. That
the three persons whose lives were thus passed upon were, during
this whole time, lying on the deck in their multiplied irons,
and tied up in strong tarpaulin bags, wholly unconscious of any
proceeding against them, and free from fear of death, as they had
been made to understand by the commander that they were to be
brought home to the United States for trial; and who reported that
to have been his first intention. 2. While this examination was
going on, and during the first day of it, Gansevoort (the head of
the council) went to Spencer (telling him nothing of his object),
for the purpose of getting proofs of his guilt, to be used against
him whereof he got none; and thus tells his errand in answer to a
question before the court-martial: "I am under the impression it
was the 30th (of November), for the purpose of his proving more
clearly his guilt. I took him the paper (razor-case paper), that
he might translate it so I could understand it. My object was to
obtain from him an acknowledgment of his guilt." 3. That it had
been agreed among the upper officers two days before that, if any
more prisoners were made, the three first taken should suffer
immediate death on account of the impossibility of guarding more
than they had. This dire conclusion came out upon question and
answer, from one of the midshipmen who was in the council. "Had you
any discussion on the 28th of November, as to putting the three
prisoners to death?" Answer: "I don't recollect what day Gansevoort
asked me my opinion, if it became necessary to make more prisoners,
if we should be able to guard them? I told him no." "Did you _then_
give it as your opinion that Cromwell, Small, and Spencer should
be put to death?" Answer: "Yes, sir." Four more officers of the
council were ascertained to have been similarly consulted at the
same time, and to have answered in the same way: so that the deaths
of the three men were resolved upon two days before the council was
established to examine witnesses, and enlighten the commander with
their opinions. 4. That it had been resolved that, if more prisoners
were taken, the three already in the bags must be put to death;
and, accordingly, while the council was sitting, and in the evening
of their session, and before they had reported an opinion, four
more arrests were made: so that the condition became absolute upon
which the three were to die before the council had finished their
examination.
This is, perhaps, the first instance in the annals of military or
naval courts, in which the commander fixed a condition on which
prisoners were to be put to death--which condition was to be an act
of his own, unknown to the prisoners, but known to the court, and
agreed to be acted upon before it was done: and which was done and
acted upon!
These are four essential circumstances, overlooked by the commander
in his report, but brought out upon interrogatories before the
court. The new arrests are duly reported by the commander. They
were: Wilson, Green, McKinley, McKee. The commander tells how the
arrests were made. "These individuals were made to sit down as they
were taken, and when they were ironed, I walked deliberately round
the battery, followed by the first lieutenant; and we made together
a very careful inspection of the crew. Those who (though known to be
very guilty) were considered to be the least dangerous, were called
out and interrogated: care was taken not to awaken the suspicions of
such as from courage and energy were really formidable, unless it
were intended to arrest them. Our prisoners now amounted to seven,
filling up the quarter deck, and rendering it very difficult to keep
them from communicating with each other, interfering essentially
with the management of the vessel." This is the commander's account
of the new arrests, but he omits to add that he bagged them as fast
as taken and ironed; and as that bagging was an investment which
all the prisoners underwent, and an unusual and picturesque (though
ugly) feature in the transaction, an account will be given of it
in the person of one of the four, which will stand for all. It is
McKinley who gives it, and who was bagged quite home to New York,
and became qualified, to give his experience of these tarpaulin
sacks, both in the hot region of the tropics and the cold blasts
of the New York latitude in the dead of winter. Question by the
judge advocate: "When were you put in the bags?" Answer: "After the
examination and before we got to St. Thomas." "How were the bags
put on you?" Answer: "They were laid on deck, and we got into them
as well as we could, feet foremost." "Was your bag ever put over
your head?" Answer: "Yes, sir. The first night it was tied over my
head." "Who was the person who superintended, and did it?" Answer;
"_Sergeant Garty was always there when we were put into the bags._ I
could not see. I could not say who tied it over my head. He (Garty)
was there then." "Did you complain of it?" Answer: "After a while
the bag got very hot. Whoever was the officer I don't know. I told
him I was smothering. I could not breathe. He came back with the
order that I could not have it untied. I turned myself round as well
as I could, and got my mouth to the opening of the bag, and staid so
till morning." Question by a member of the court: "Did you find the
bag comfortable when not tied over your head?" Answer: "No, sir. It
was warm weather: it was uncomfortable. On the coast (of the United
States in December) they would get full of rain water, nearly up
to my knees." Catching at this idea of comfort in irons and a bag,
Commander Mackenzie undertook to prove them so; and put a leading
question, to get an affirmative answer to his own assertion that
this bagging was done for the "comfort" of the prisoners--a new
conception, for which he seemed to be entirely indebted to this hint
from one of the court. The mode of McKinley's arrest, also gives an
insight into the manner in which that act was performed on board a
United States man-of-war; and is thus described by McKinley himself.
To the question, when he was arrested, and how, he answers: "On the
30th of November, at morning quarters I was arrested. The commander
put Wilson into irons. When he was put in irons the commander cried,
'Send McKinley aft.' I went aft. The commander and Gansevoort held
pistols at my head, and told me to sit down. Mr. Gansevoort told
King, the gunner, to stand by to knock out their brains if they
should make a false motion. I was put in irons then. He ordered
Green and McKee aft: he put them in irons also. Mr. Gansevoort
ordered me to get on all fours, and creep round to the larboard
side, as I could not walk." And that is the way it was done!
The three men were thus doomed to death, without trial, without
hearing, without knowledge of what was going on against them;
and without a hint of what had been done. One of the officiating
officers who had sat in the council, being asked before the court
if any suggestion, or motion, was made to apprise the prisoners of
what was going on, and give them a hearing, answered that there was
not. When Governor Wall was on trial at the Old Bailey for causing
the death of a soldier twenty years before at Goree, in Africa, for
imputed mutiny, he plead the sentence of a drum-head court-martial
for his justification. The evidence proved that the men so tried
(and there were just three of them) were not before that court, and
had no knowledge of its proceedings, though on the ground some forty
feet distant--about as far off as were the three prisoners on board
the Somers, with the difference that the British soldiers could see
the court (which was only a little council of officers); while the
American prisoners could not see their judges. This sort of a court
which tried people without hearing them, struck the British judges;
and when the witness (a foot soldier) told how he saw the Governor
speaking to the officers, and saw them speaking to one another for a
minute or two, and then turning to the Governor, who ordered the man
to be called out of the ranks to be tied on a cannon for punishment:
when the witness told that, the Lord Chief Baron McDonald called
out--"Repeat that." The witness repeated it. Then the Chief Baron
inquired into the constitution of these drum-head courts, and to
know if it was their course to try soldiers without hearing them:
and put a question to that effect to the witness. Surprised at the
question, the soldier, instead of answering it direct, yes or no,
looked up at the judge, and said: "My Lord, I thought an Englishman
had that privilege every where." And so thought the judge, who
charged the jury, accordingly, and that even if there was a mutiny;
and so thought the jury, who immediately brought in a verdict for
murder; and so thought the King (George III.), who refused to pardon
the Governor, or to respite him for longer than eight days, or to
remit the anatomization of his dead body. There was law then in
England against the oppressors of the humble, and judges to execute
it, and a king to back them.
The narrative will now be resumed at the point at which it was
suspended, and Commander Mackenzie's official report will still be
followed for the order of the incidents, and his account of them.
It was nine o'clock on the morning of the first of December, that
Gansevoort went into the ward-room to hurry the completion of the
letter which the council of officers was drawing up, and which,
under the stimulating remark that the commander was waiting for it,
was soon ready. Purser Heiskill, who had been the pencil scribe of
the proceedings, carried the letter, and read it to the commander.
In what manner he received it, himself will tell:
"I at once concurred in the justice of their opinion, and in the
necessity of carrying its recommendation into immediate effect.
There were two others of the conspirators almost as guilty, so
far as the intention was concerned, as the three ringleaders who
had been first confined, and to whose cases the attention of the
officers had been invited. But they could be kept in confinement
without extreme danger to the ultimate safety of the vessel.
The three chief conspirators alone were capable of navigating
and sailing her. By their removal the motive to a rescue, a
capture, and a carrying out of their original design of piracy
was at once taken away. Their lives were justly forfeited to
the country which they had betrayed; and the interests of that
country and the honor and security of its flag required that the
sacrifice, however painful, should be made. In the necessities
of my position I found my law, and in them also I must trust to
find my justification."
The promptitude of this concurrence precludes the possibility of
deliberation, for which there was no necessity, as the deaths
had been resolved upon two days before the council met, and as
Gansevoort communicated with the commander the whole time. There was
no need for deliberation, and there was none; and the rapidity of
the advancing events proves there was no time for it. And in this
haste one of the true reasons for hanging Small and Cromwell broke
forth. They were the only two of all the accused (Spencer excepted)
who could sail or navigate a vessel! and a mutiny to take a ship,
and run her as a roving pirate, without any one but the chief to
sail and navigate her, would have been a solecism too gross even
for the silliest apprehension. Mr. M. C. Perry admitted upon his
cross-examination that this knowledge was "one of the small reasons"
for hanging them--meaning among the lesser reasons. Besides, three
at least, may have been deemed necessary to make a mutiny. Governor
Wall took that number; and riots, routs, and unlawful assemblies
require it: so that in having three for a mutiny, the commander
was taking the lowest number which parity of cases, though of
infinitely lower degree, would allow. The report goes on to show the
commander's preparations for the sacrifice; which preparations, from
his own showing, took place before the assembling of the council,
and in which he showed his skill and acumen.
"I had for a day or two been disposed to arm the petty
officers. On this subject alone the first lieutenant differed
from me in opinion, influenced in some degree by the opinions of
some of the petty officers themselves, who thought that in the
peculiar state of the vessel the commander and officers could
not tell whom to trust, and therefore had better trust no one. I
had made up my own mind, reasoning more from the probabilities
of the case than from my knowledge of their characters, which
was necessarily less intimate than that of the first lieutenant,
that they could be trusted, and determined to arm them. I
directed the first lieutenant to muster them on the quarter
deck, to issue to each a cutlass, pistol and cartridge-box, and
to report to me when they were armed. I then addressed them as
follows: 'My lads! you are to look to me--to obey my orders, and
to see my orders obeyed! Go forward!'"
This paragraph shows that the arming of the petty officers for the
crisis of the hangings had been meditated for a day or two--that it
had been the subject of consultation with the lieutenant, and also
of him with some of the petty officers; and it was doubtless on
this occasion that he took the opinions of the officers (as proved
on the court-martial trial) on the subject of hanging the three
prisoners immediately if any more arrests were made. The commander
and his lieutenant differed on the question of arming these petty
officers--the only instance of a difference of opinion between them:
but the commander's calculation of probabilities led him to overrule
the lieutenant--to make up his own mind in favor of arming: and to
have it done. The command at the conclusion is eminently concise,
and precise, and entirely military; and the ending words remind us
of the French infantry charging command: "En avant, mes enfans!" in
English--"Forward, my children."
The reception of the council recommendation, and the order for
carrying it into effect, were simultaneous: and carried into effect
it was with horrible rapidity, and to the utmost letter--all
except in one particular--which forms a dreadful exception. The
council had given the recommendation with the Christian reservation
of allowing the doomed and helpless victims "sufficient time to
prepare"--meaning, of course, preparation for appearance at the
throne of God. That reservation was disregarded. Immediate execution
was the word! and the annunciation of the death decree, and the
order for putting it in force, were both made known to the prisoners
in the same moment, and in the midst of the awful preparations for
death.
"I gave orders to make immediate preparation for hanging the
three principal criminals at the mainyard arms. All hands
were now called to witness the punishment. The afterguard and
idlers of both watches were mustered on the quarterdeck at the
whip (the halter) intended for Mr. Spencer: forecastle-men and
foretop-men at that of Cromwell, to whose corruption they had
been chiefly exposed. The maintop of both watches, at that
intended for Small who, for a month, had filled the situation of
captain of the maintop. The officers were stationed about the
decks, _according to the watch bill I had made out the night
before_, and the petty officers were similarly distributed, with
orders to cut down whoever should let go the whip (the rope)
with even one hand; or fail to haul on (pull at the rope) when
ordered."
Here it is unwittingly told that the guard stations at the hangings
were all made out the night before.
For the information of the unlearned in nautical language, it may be
told that what is called the whip at sea, is not an instrument of
flagellation, but of elevation--a small tackle with a single rope,
used to hoist light bodies; and so called from one of the meanings
of the word whip, used as a verb, then signifying to snatch up
suddenly. It is to be hoped that the sailors appointed to haul on
this tackle had been made acquainted (though the commander's report
does not say so) with the penalty which awaited them if they failed
to pull at the word, or let go, even with one hand. The considerate
arrangement for hanging each one at the spot of his imputed worst
conduct, and under an appropriate watch, shows there had been
deliberation on that part of the subject--deliberation which
requires time--and for which there was no time after the reception
of the council's answer; and which the report itself, so far as the
watch is concerned, shows was made out the night before. The report
continues:
"The ensign and pennant being bent on, and ready for hoisting,
I now put on my full uniform, and proceeded to execute the
most painful duty that has ever devolved on an American
commander--_that of announcing to the criminals their fate_."
It has been before seen that these victims had no knowledge of the
proceedings against them, while the seven officers were examining,
in a room below, the thirteen seamen whose answers to questions
(or rather, whose thoughts) were to justify the fate which was
now to be announced to them. They had no knowledge of it at the
time, nor afterwards, until standing in the midst of the completed
arrangements for their immediate death. They were brought into the
presence of death before they knew that any proceedings had been
had against them, and while under the belief, authorized by the
commander himself, that they were to be brought home for trial.
Their fate was staring them in the face before they knew it had
been doomed. The full uniform of a commander in the American navy
had been put on for the occasion, with what view is not expressed;
and, in this imposing costume,--feathers and chapeau, gold lace
and embroidery, sword and epaulettes--the commander proceeded to
announce their fate to men in irons--double irons on the legs, and
iron cuffs on the hands--and surrounded by guards to cut them down
on the least attempt to avoid the gallows which stood before them.
In what terms this annunciation, or rather, these annunciations
(for there was a separate address to each victim, and each address
adapted to its subject) were made, the captain himself will tell.
"I informed Mr. Spencer that when he had been about to take my
life, and to dishonor me as an officer when in the execution
of my rightful duty, without cause of offence to him, on
speculation, it had been his intention to remove me suddenly
from the world, in the darkness of the night, without a moment
to utter one murmur of affection to my wife and children--one
prayer for their welfare. His life was now forfeited to his
country; and the necessities of the case growing out of his
corruption of the crew, compelled me to take it. I would not,
however, imitate his intended example. If there yet remained
one feeling true to nature, it should be gratified. _If he had
any word to send to his parents, it should be recorded, and
faithfully delivered._ Ten minutes should be granted him for
this purpose; and Midshipman Egbert Thompson was called to note
the time, and inform me when the ten minutes had elapsed."
Subsequent events require this appeal to Spencer, and promise to
him, to be noted. He is invoked, in the name of Nature, to speak to
his parents, and his words promised delivery. History will have to
deal with that invocation, and promise.
This is the autographic account of the annunciation to Spencer; and
if there is a parallel to it in Christendom, this writer has yet to
learn the instance. The vilest malefactors, convicts of the greatest
crimes, are allowed an interval for themselves when standing
between time and eternity; and during that time they are left,
undisturbed, to their own thoughts. Even pirates allow that much to
vanquished and subdued men. The ship had religious exercises upon
it, and had multiplied their performance since the mutiny had been
discovered. The commander was a devout attendant at these exercises,
and harangued the crew morally and piously daily, and in this crisis
twice or thrice a day. He might have been of some consolation to the
desolate youth in this supreme moment. He might have spoken to him
some words of pity and of hope: he might at least have refrained
from reproaches: he might have omitted the comparison in which he
assumed to himself such a superiority over Spencer in the manner of
taking life. It was the Pharisee that thanked God he was not like
other men, nor like that Publican. But the Pharisee did not take the
Publican's life, nor charge him with crimes. Besides, the comparison
was not true, admitting that Spencer intended to kill him in his
sleep. There is no difference of time between one minute and ten
minutes in the business of killing; and the most sudden death--a
bullet through the heart in sleep--would be mercy compared to the
ten minutes' reprieve allowed Spencer: and that time taken up (as
the event proved) in harassing the mind, enraging the feelings, and
in destroying the character of the young man before he destroyed
his body. It is to be hoped that the greater part of what the
commander says he said to Spencer, was not said: it would be less
discreditable to make a false report in such cases than to have said
what was alleged; and there were so many errors in the commander's
report that disbelief of it becomes easy, and even obligatory. It is
often variant or improbable in itself, and sometimes impossible; and
almost entirely contradicted by the testimony. In the vital--really
vital--case of holding the watch, he is contradicted. He says
Midshipman Thompson was called to note the time, and to report its
expiration. Mr. O. H. Perry swore in the court that the order was
given to him--that he reported it--and that the commander said,
"very well." This was clear and positive: but Mr. Thompson was
examined to the same point, and testified thus: That he heard him
(the commander) say something about ten minutes--that he told Mr.
Perry, he thinks, to note the time--that Perry and himself both
noted it--thinks he reported it--don't recollect what the commander
said--is under an impression he said "very good." So that Mr. Perry
was called to note the time, and did it, and reported it, and did
not know that Thompson had done it. To the question, "What did Mr.
Thompson say when he came back from reporting the time?" the answer
is: "I did not know that he reported it." At best, Mr. Thompson was
a volunteer in the business, and too indifferent to it to know what
he did. Mr. O. H. Perry is the one that had the order, and did the
duty. Now it is quite immaterial which had the order: but it is
very material that the commander should remember the true man.--The
manner in which the young man received this dreadful intelligence,
is thus reported:
"This intimation quite overpowered him. He fell upon his knees,
and said he was not fit to die."
"Was not fit to die!" that is to say, was not in a condition to
appear before his God. The quick perishing of the body was not the
thought that came to his mind, but the perishing of his soul, and
his sudden appearance before his Maker, unpurged of the sins of this
life. Virtue was not dead in the heart which could forget itself and
the world in that dread moment, and only think of his fitness to
appear at the throne of Heaven. Deeply affecting as this expression
was--am not fit to die--it was still more so as actually spoken, and
truly stated by competent witnesses before the court. "When he told
him he was to die in ten minutes, Spencer told him he was not fit
to die--that he wished to live longer to get ready. The commander
said, I know you are not, but I cannot help it."--A remark which was
wicked in telling him he knew he was not fit to die, and false, in
saying he could not help it. So far from not being able to help it,
he was the only man that could prevent the preparation for fitness.
The answer then was, an exclamation of unfitness to die, and a wish
to live longer to get ready. But what can be thought of the heart
which was dead to such an appeal? and which, in return, could occupy
itself with reproaches to the desolate sinner; and could deliver
exhortations to the trembling fleeting shadow that was before
him, to study looks and attitudes, and set an example of decorous
dying to his two companions in death? for that was the conduct of
Mackenzie: and here is his account of it:
"I repeated to him his own catechism, and begged him at least to
let the _officer_ set to the men he had corrupted and seduced,
the example of dying with decorum."
"The men whom he had corrupted and seduced,"--outrageous words,
and which the commander says, "immediately restored him to entire
self-possession." But they did not turn away his heart from the only
thing that occupied his mind--that of fitting himself, as well as
he could, to appear before his God. He commenced praying with great
fervor, and begging from Heaven that mercy for his soul which was
denied on earth to his body.
The commander then went off to make the same annunciation to the
other two victims, and returning when the ten minutes was about
half out--when the boy had but five minutes to live, as he was made
to believe--he soon made apparent the true reason which all this
sudden announcement of death in ten minutes was in reality intended
for. It was to get confessions! it was to make up a record against
him! to excite him against Small and Cromwell! to take advantage of
terror and resentment to get something from him for justification in
taking his life! and in that work he spent near two hours, making up
a record against himself of revolting atrocity, aggravated and made
still worse by the evidence before the court. The first movement was
to make him believe that Cromwell and Small had informed upon him,
and thus induce him to break out upon them, or to confess, or to
throw the blame upon the others. He says:
"I returned to Mr. Spencer. I explained to him how Cromwell had
made use of him. I told him that remarks had been made about the
two, and not very flattering to him, and which he might not care
to hear; and which showed the relative share ascribed to each of
them in the contemplated transaction. He expressed great anxiety
to hear what was said."
It is to be borne in mind that Spencer was in prayer, with but five
minutes to go upon, when Mackenzie interrupts him with an intimation
of what Small and Cromwell had said of him, and piques his curiosity
to learn it by adding, "which he might not care to hear"--artfully
exciting his curiosity to know what it was. The desire thus excited,
he goes on to tell him that one had called him a damn fool, and the
other had considered him Cromwell's tool: thus:
"One had told the first lieutenant: 'In my opinion, sir, you
have the damned fool on the larboard arm-chest, and the damned
villain on the starboard.' And another had remarked, that after
the vessel should have been captured by Spencer, Cromwell might
allow him to live, provided he made himself useful; he would
probably make him his secretary."
Spencer was on the larboard arm-chest; Cromwell on the starboard: so
that Small was the speaker, and the damned fool applied to Spencer,
and the damned villain to Cromwell: and Spencer, who had all along
been the chief, was now to be treated as an instrument, only
escaping with his life if successful in taking the vessel, and, that
upon condition of making himself useful; and then to have no higher
post on the pirate than that of Cromwell's secretary. This was a
hint to Spencer to turn States' evidence against Cromwell, and throw
the whole blame on him. The commander continues, still addressing
himself to Spencer--
"_I think this would not have suited your temper._"
This remark, inquisitively made, and evidently to draw out something
against Cromwell, failed of its object. It drew no remark from
Spencer; it merely acted upon his looks and spirit, according to the
commander--who proceeds in this strain:
"This effectually aroused him, and his countenance assumed a
demoniacal expression. He said no more of the innocence of
Cromwell. Subsequent circumstances too surely confirmed his
admission of his guilt. He might perhaps have wished to save
him, in fulfilment of some mutual oath."
This passage requires some explanation. Spencer had always declared
his total ignorance of Cromwell, and of his visionary schemes: he
repeated it earnestly as Mackenzie turned off to go and announce his
fate to him. Having enraged him against the man, he says he now said
no more about Cromwell's innocence; and catching up that silence as
an admission of his guilt, he quotes it as such; but remembering
how often Spencer had absolved him from all knowledge even of his
foolish joking, he supposes he wished to save him--in fulfilment of
some mutual oath. This imagined cause for saving him is shamefully
gratuitous, unwarranted by a word from any delator, not inferrible
from any premises, and atrociously wicked. In fact this whole story
after the commander returned from Small and Cromwell, is without
warrant from any thing tangible. Mackenzie got it from Gansevoort;
and Gansevoort got one half from one, and the other half from
another, without telling which, or when--and it was provably not
then; and considering the atrocity of such a communication to
Spencer at such time, it is certainly less infamous to the captain
and lieutenant to consider it a falsehood of their own invention,
to accomplish their own design. Mackenzie's telling it, however,
was infernal. The commander then goes on with a batch of gratuitous
assumptions, which shows he had no limit in such assumptions but in
his capacity at invention. Hear them!
"He (Spencer) more probably hoped that he might yet get
possession of the vessel, and carry out the scheme of murder
and outrage matured between them. It was in Cromwell that he
had apparently trusted, in fulfilment of some agreement for a
rescue; and he eloquently plead to Lieutenant Gansevoort when
Cromwell was ironed, for his release, as altogether ignorant of
his designs, and innocent. He had endeavored to make of Elisha
Andrews appearing on the list of the "certain," an _alias_ for
Small, though his name as Small appeared also in the list of
those to effect the murder in the cabin, by falsely asserting
that Small was a feigned name, when he had evidence in a letter
addressed by Small's mother to him that Small was her name as
well as his."
Assumptions without foundations, inferences without premises,
beliefs without knowledge, thoughts without knowing why, suspicions
without reasons--are all a species of _inventions_ but little
removed from direct falsehood, and leaves the person who indulges in
them without credit for any thing he may say. This was pre-eminently
the case with the commander Slidell Mackenzie, and with all his
informers; and here is a fine specimen of it in himself. First:
the presumed probability that Spencer yet hoped to get possession
of the vessel, and carry out the scheme of murder and piracy which
he had matured. What a presumption in such a case! the case of
men, ironed, bagged and helpless,--standing under the gallows
in the midst of armed men to shoot and stab for a motion or a
sign--and a presumption, not only without a shadow to rest upon,
but contradicted by the entire current of all that was sworn--even
by Garty and Wales. "Fulfilment of secret agreement for rescue."
Secret! Yes! very secret indeed! There was not a man on board the
vessel that ever heard such a word as rescue pronounced until after
the arrests! The crazy misgivings of a terrified imagination could
alone have invented such a scheme of rescue. The name of Small was a
sad stumbling block in the road to his sacrifice, as that of Andrews
to the truth of the razor case paper. One was not in the list, and
the other was not in the ship: and all these forced assumptions were
to reconcile these contradictions; and so the idea of an _alias
dictus_ was fallen upon, though no one had ever heard Small called
Edward Andrews, and his mother, in her letter, gave her own name
as her son's, as Small. Having now succeeded in getting Spencer
enraged against his two companions in death, the commander takes
himself to his real work--that of getting confessions--or getting up
something which could be recorded as confessions, under the pretext
of writing to his father and mother: and to obtain which all this
refined aggravation of the terrors of death had been contrived.
But here recourse must be had to the testimony before the court to
supply details on which the report is silent, or erroneous, and in
which what was omitted must be brought forward to be able to get
at the truth. McKinley swears that he was six or eight feet from
Spencer when the commander asked him if he wished to write. Spencer
answered that he did. An apprentice named Dunn was then ordered
to fetch paper and campstool out of the cabin. Spencer took the
pen in his hand, and said--"I cannot write." "The commander spoke
to him in a low tone. I do not know what he then said. I saw the
commander writing. Whether Mr. Spencer asked him to write for him or
not, I can't say."--Mr. Oliver H. Perry swears: "Saw the commander
order Dunn to bring him paper and ink: saw the commander write:
was four or five feet from him while writing: heard no part of the
conversation between the commander and Spencer: was writing ten or
fifteen minutes."--Other witnesses guess at the time as high as
half an hour. The essential parts of this testimony, are--_first_,
That Spencer's hands were ironed, and that he could not write:
_secondly_, that the commander, instead of releasing his hands,
took the pen and wrote himself: _thirdly_, that he carried on all
his conversation with Spencer in so low a voice that those within
four or five feet of him (and in the deathlike stillness which then
prevailed, and the breathless anxiety of every one) _heard not a
word of what passed between them!_ neither what Mackenzie said to
Spencer, nor Spencer said to him. Now the report of the commander
is silent upon this lowness of tone which could not be heard four
or five feet--silent upon the handcuffs of Spencer--silent upon
the answer of Spencer that he could not write; and for which he
substituted on the court-martial the answer that he "declined to
write"--a substitution which gave rise to a conversation between the
judge advocate and Mackenzie, which the judge advocate reported to
the court in writing; and which all felt to be a false substitution
both upon the testimony, and the facts of the case. A man in iron
handcuffs cannot write! but it was necessary to show him "declining"
in order to give him a recording secretary! And it is silent upon
the great fact that he sat on the arm-chest with Spencer, and
whispering so low that not a human being could hear what passed:
and, consequently, that Mackenzie chose that he himself should be
the recording secretary on that occasion, and that no one could know
whether the record was true or false. The declaration in the report
that Spencer read what was written down, and agreed to it, will be
attended to hereafter. The point at present is the secrecy, and
the fact that the man the most interested in the world in getting
confessions from Spencer, was the recorder of these confessions,
without a witness! without even Wales, Gansevoort, Garty; or any
one of his familiars. For the rest, it becomes a fair question,
which every person can solve for themselves, whether it is possible
for two persons to talk so low to one another for, from a quarter
to half an hour, in such profound stillness, and amidst so much
excited expectation, and no one in arm's length able to hear one
word. If this is deemed impossible, it may be a reasonable belief
that nothing material was said between them--that Mackenzie wrote
without dictation from Spencer; and wrote what the necessity of his
condition required--confessions to supply the place of total want
of proof--admissions of guilt--acknowledgments that he deserved to
die--begging forgiveness. And so large a part of what he reported
was proved to be false, that this reasonable belief of a fabricated
dialogue becomes almost a certainty.
The commander, now become sole witness of Spencer's last
words--words spoken if at all--after his time on earth was
out--after the announcement in his presence that the ten minutes
were out--and hearing the commander's response to the notification,
"Very well:" this commander thus proceeds with his report: "I
asked him if he had no message to send to his friends? He answered
none that they would wish to receive. When urged still further to
send some words of consolation in so great an affliction, he said,
'Tell them I die wishing them every blessing and happiness. I
deserve death for this and many other crimes--there are few crimes
I have not committed. I feel sincerely penitent, and my only fear
of death is that my repentance may come too late.'"--This is what
the commander reports to the Secretary of the Navy, and which no
human witness could gainsay, because no human being was allowed
to witness what was said at the time; but there is another kind
of testimony, independent of human eyes and ears, and furnished
by the evil-doer himself, often in the very effort to conceal his
guilt, and more convincing than the oath of any witness, and which
fate, or accident, often brings to light for the relief of the
innocent and the confusion of the guilty. And so it was in this
case with Commander Alexander Slidell Mackenzie. That original
record made out upon inaudible whispers on the camp-stool! It still
existed--and was produced in court--and here is the part which
corresponds (should correspond) with this quoted part of the report;
and constituting the first part of the confession: "When asked if
he had any message to send: none that they would wish to receive.
Afterwards, that you die wishing them every blessing and happiness;
deserved death for this and other sins; that you felt sincerely
penitent, and only fear of death was that your repentance might
_be too late_."--Compared together, and it is seen that the words
"other sins," in the third sentence, is changed into "_many other
crimes_,"--words of revoltingly different import--going beyond what
the occasion required--and evidently substituted as an introduction
to the further gratuitous confession: "_There are few crimes
which I have not committed._" Great consolation in this for those
parents for whom the record was made, and who never saw it except
as promulgated through the public press. In any court of justice
the entire report would be discredited upon this view of flagrant
and wicked falsifications. For the rest, there is proof that the
first sentence is a fabrication. It is to be recollected that this
inquiry as to Spencer's wishes to communicate with his parents was
made publicly, and before the pen, ink and paper was sent for,
and that the answer was the inducement to send for those writing
materials. That public answer was heard by those around, and was
thus proved before the court-martial--McKinley the witness: "_The
commander asked him if he wished to write?_ Mr. Spencer said he did.
The commander ordered Dunn to fetch paper and campstool out of the
cabin. Spencer took the pen in his hand--he said, 'I cannot write.'
The commander spoke to him in a low tone: I do not know what he then
said. I saw the commander writing." This testimony contradicts the
made-up report, in showing that Spencer was asked to write himself,
instead of sending a message: that the declaration, "_nothing that
they would wish to hear_," is a fabricated addition to what he did
say--and that he was prevented from writing, not from disinclination
and declining, as the commander attempted to make out, but because
upon trial--after taking the pen in his hand--he could not with his
handcuffs on. Certainly this was understood beforehand. Men do not
write in iron handcuffs. They were left on to permit the commander
to become his secretary, and to send a message for him: which
message he never sent! the promise to do so being a mere contrivance
to get a chance of writing for the Secretary of the Navy, and the
public.
The official report continues: "I asked him if there was any one he
had injured, to whom he could yet make reparation--any one suffering
obloquy for crimes which he had committed. He made no answer; but
soon after continued: 'I have wronged many persons, but chiefly my
parents.' He said 'this will kill my poor mother.' I was not before
aware that he had a mother." The corresponding sentences in the
original, run thus: "Many that he had wronged, but did not know how
reparation could be made to them. Your parents most wronged ...
himself by saying he had entertained same idea in John Adams and
Potomac, but had not ripened into.... Do you not think that such
a mania should ... certainly. Objected to manner of death." The
dots in place of words indicate the places where the writing was
illegible. The remarkable variations between the report and the
original in these sentences is, that the original leaves out all
those crimes which he had committed, and which were bringing obloquy
upon others, and to which he made no answer, but shows that he did
make answer as to having wronged persons, and that answer was, that
he did not know how reparation could be made. There is no mention
of mother in this part of the original--it comes in long after.
Then the John Adams and the Potomac, which are here mentioned in
the twelfth line of the original, only appear in the fifty-sixth
in the report--and the long gap filled up with things not in the
original--and the word "idea," as attributed to Spencer, substituted
by "mania."
The report continues (and here it is told once for all, that the
quotations both from the report and the original, of which it
should be a copy, follow each in its place in consecutive order,
leaving no gap between each quoted part and what preceded it):
"_when recovered from the pain of this announcement (the effect
upon his mother)_, I asked him if it would not have been still more
dreadful had he succeeded in his attempt, murdered the officers and
the greater part of the crew of the vessel, and run that career
of crime which, with so much satisfaction he had marked out for
himself: he replied after a pause; 'I do not know what would have
become of me if I had succeeded.' I told him Cromwell would soon
have made way with him, and McKinley would probably have cleared
the whole of them from his path." The corresponding part of the
original runs thus: "Objected to manner of death: requested to be
shot. Could not make any distinction between him and those he had
seduced. Justifiable desire at first to.... The last words he had to
say, and hoped they would be believed, that Cromwell was innocent
... Cromwell. Admitted it was just that no distinction should be
made."--This is the consecutive part in the original, beginning in
utter variance with what should be its counterpart--hardly touching
the same points--leaving out all the cruel reproaches which the
official report heaps upon Spencer--ending with the introduction of
Cromwell, but without the innocence which the original contains,
with the substitution of Cromwell's destruction of him, and with
the addition of McKinley's destruction of them all, and ultimate
attainment of the chief place in that long career of piracy which
was to be ran--and ran in that state of the world in which no pirate
could live at all. What was actually said about Cromwell's innocence
by Spencer and by McKinley as coming from Cromwell "to stir up the
devil between them," as the historian Cooper remarked, was said
before this writing commenced! said when Mackenzie returned from
announcing the ten minutes lease of life to him and Small! which
Mackenzie himself had reported in a previous part of his report,
before the writing materials were sent for: and now, strange enough,
introduced again in an after place, but with such alterations and
additions as barely to leave their identity discoverable.
The official report proceeds: "'I fear,' said he, 'this may injure
my father.' I told him it was too late to think of that--that
had he succeeded in his wishes it would have injured his father
much more--that had it been possible to have taken him home as I
intended to do, it was not in nature that his father should not have
interfered to save him--_that for those who have friends or money
in America there was no punishment for the worst of crimes_--that
though this had nothing to do with my determination, which had
been forced upon me in spite of every effort I had made to avert
it, I, on this account the less regretted the dilemma in which I
was placed: it would injure his father a great deal more if he
got home alive, should he be condemned and yet escape. The best
and only service which he could do his father was to die."--Now
from the original, beginning at the end of the last quotation:
"Asked that his face might be covered. Granted. When he found
that his repentance might not be in season, I referred him to the
story of the penitent thief. Tried to find it. Could not. Read the
Bible, the prayer-book. Did not know what would have become of
him if he had succeeded. Makes no objection to death, but objects
to time. Reasons--God would understand of him offences ... many
crimes. Dies, praying God to bless and preserve.... I am afraid
this will injure my father."--The quotation from the report opens
with apprehended fear of injury to his father: it concludes with
commending him to die, as the only service he could render that
parent: and the whole is taken up with that topic, and crowned
with the assertion that, for those who have friends or money in
America there is no punishment for the worst of crimes--a sweeping
reproach upon the American judiciary; and, however unfounded in his
broad denunciation, may he not himself have counted on the benefit
of the laxity of justice which he denounced? and--more--did he not
receive it? The rest of the paragraph is only remarkable for the
declaration of the intention to have brought his prisoners home, and
of the change, of which intention they had no notice until placed
in the presence of the completed preparations for death, and told
they had but ten minutes, by the watch, to live.--Turning to the
original of this paragraph, and it will be seen that it opens with
preparations for death--goes on in the same spirit--barely mentions
his father--and ends with his death--"_dies praying God to bless
and preserve_".... This is evidently the termination of the whole
scene. It carries him through the last preparations, and ends his
life--sees him die praying to God. Now does the report give any
of these circumstances? None. Does the report stop there? It does
not. Does it go on? Yes: two hundred and thirty lines further. And
the original record go on further? Yes: sixty lines further--which
was just double the distance it had come. Here was a puzzle. The
man to be talking double as much after his death as before it.
This solecism required a solution--and received it before the
court-martial: and the solution was that this double quantity was
written after hanging--how long, not stated--but after it. Before
the court Mackenzie delivered in a written and sworn statement,
that his record embracing what was taken down from the lips of
Spencer finished at the sentence--"_I am afraid this will injure my
father_:" and that the remainder was written shortly afterwards. Now
the part written before the death was thirty-three lines: the part
written shortly after it, is above fifty. This solecism explained,
another difficulty immediately arises. The commander reported that,
"he (Spencer) _read over what he (Mackenzie) had written down_,"
and agreed to it all, with one exception--which was corrected. Now
he could not have read the fifty odd lines which were written after
his death. (All the lines here mentioned are the short ones in the
double column pages of the published, "Official Proceedings of the
Naval Court Martial.)" These fifty odd lines could not have been
read by Spencer. That is certain. The previous thirty-three it is
morally certain he never read. They are in some places illegible--in
others unintelligible; and are printed in the official report with
blanks because there were parts which could not be read. No witness
says they were read by Spencer.
The additional fifty odd lines, expanded by additions and variations
into about two hundred in the official report, requires but a brief
notice, parts of it being amplifications and aggravations of what
had been previously noted, and additional insults to Spencer; with
an accumulation of acknowledgments of guilt, of willingness to die,
of obligations to the commander, and entreaties for his forgiveness.
One part of the reported scene was even more than usually inhuman.
Spencer said to him: "But are you not going too far? are you
not too fast? does the law entirely justify you?" To this the
commander represents himself as replying: "That he (Spencer) had not
consulted him in his arrangements--that his opinion could not be an
unprejudiced one--that I had consulted all his brother officers,
his messmates included, except the boys; and I placed before him
their opinion. He stated that it was just--that he deserved death,"
For the honor of human nature it is to be hoped that Mackenzie
reports himself falsely here--which is probable, both on its face,
and because it is not in the original record. The commander says
that he begged for one hour to prepare himself for death, saying
the time is so short, asking if there was time for repentance, and
if he could be changed so soon (from sin to grace). To the request
for the hour, the commander says no answer was given: to the other
parts he reminded him of the _thief_ on the cross, who was pardoned
by our Saviour, and that for the rest, God would understand the
difficulties of his situation and be merciful. The commander also
represents himself as recapitulating to Spencer the arts he had used
to seduce the crew. The commander says upwards of an hour elapsed
before the hanging: he might have said two hours: for the doom of
the prisoners was announced at about eleven, and they were hung at
one. But no part of this delay was for their benefit, as he would
make believe, but for his own, to get confessions under the agonies
of terror. No part of it--not even the whole ten minutes--was
allowed to Spencer to make his peace with God; but continually
interrupted, questioned, outraged, inflamed against his companions
in death, he had his devotions broken in upon, and himself deprived
of one peaceful moment to commune with God.
The report of the confessions is false upon its face: it is also
invalidated by other matter within itself, showing that Mackenzie
had two opposite ways of speaking of the same person, and of the
same incident, before and after the design upon Spencer's life. I
speak of the attempt, and of the reasons given for it, to get the
young man transferred to another vessel before sailing from New
York. According to the account given first of these reasons, and
at the time, the desire to get him out of the Somers was entirely
occasioned by the crowded state of the midshipmen's room--seven,
where only five could be accommodated. Thus:
"When we were on the eve of sailing, two midshipmen who had been
with me before, and in whom I had confidence, joined the vessel.
This carried to seven, the number to occupy a space capable
of accommodating only five. I had heard that Mr. Spencer had
expressed a willingness to be transferred from the Somers to the
Grampus. I directed Lieut. Gansevoort to say to him that if he
would apply to Commodore Perry to detach him (there was no time
to communicate with the Navy Department), I would second the
application. He made the application; I seconded it, earnestly
urging that it should be granted on the score of the comfort
of the young officers. The commodore declined detaching Mr.
Spencer, but offered to detach midshipman Henry Rodgers, who had
been last ordered. I could not consent to part with Midshipman
Rodgers, whom I knew to be a seaman, an officer, a gentleman; a
young man of high attainments within his profession and beyond
it. The Somers sailed with seven in her steerage. They could not
all sit together round the table. The two oldest and most useful
had no lockers to put their clothes in, and have slept during
the cruise on the steerage deck, the camp-stools, the booms, in
the tops, or in the quarter boats."
Nothing can be clearer than this statement. It was to relieve the
steerage room where the young midshipmen congregated, that the
transfer of Spencer was requested; and this was after Captain
Mackenzie had been informed that the young man had been dismissed
from the Brazilian squadron, for drunkenness. "And this fact," he
said, "made me very desirous of his removal from the vessel, chiefly
on account of the young men who were to mess and be associated with
him, the rather that two of them were connected with me by blood and
two by marriage; and all four intrusted to my especial care." After
the deaths he wrote of the same incident in these words:
"The circumstance of Mr. Spencer's being the son of a high
officer of the government, by enhancing his baseness in my
estimation, made me more desirous to be rid of him. On this
point I beg that I may not be misunderstood. I revere authority.
I recognize, in the exercise of its higher functions in this
free country, the evidences of genius, intelligence, and virtue;
but I have no respect for the base son of an honored father;
on the contrary, I consider that he who, by misconduct sullies
the lustre of an honorable name, is more culpable than the
unfriended individual whose disgrace falls only on himself. I
wish, however, to have nothing to do with baseness in any shape;
the navy is not the place for it. On these accounts I readily
sought the first opportunity of getting rid of Mr. Spencer."
Here the word base, as applicable to the young Spencer, occurs
three times in a brief paragraph, and this baseness is given as the
reason for wishing to get the young man, not out of the ship, but
out of the navy! And this sentiment was so strong, that reverence
for Spencer's father could not control it. He could have nothing to
do with baseness. The navy is not the place for it. Now all this
was written after the young man was dead, and when it was necessary
to make out a case of justification for putting him, not out of the
ship, nor even out of the navy, but out of the world. This was an
altered state of the case, and the captain's report accommodated
itself to this alteration. The reasons now given go to the baseness
of the young man: those which existed at the time, went to the
comfort of the four midshipmen, connected by blood and alliance
with the captain, and committed to his special care:--as if all in
the ship were not committed to his special care, and that by the
laws of the land--and without preference to relations. The captain
even goes into an account of his own high moral feelings at the
time, and disregard of persons high in power, in showing that he
then acted upon a sense of Spencer's baseness, maugre the reverence
he had for his father and his cabinet position. Every body sees
that these are contradictions--that all this talk about baseness
is after-talk--that all these fine sentiments are of subsequent
conception: in fact, that the first reasons were those of the time,
before he expected to put the young man to death, and the next
after he had done it! and when the deed exacted a justification,
and that at any cost of invention and fabrication. The two accounts
are sufficient to establish one of those errors of fact which the
law considers as discrediting a witness in all that he says. But
it is not all the proof of erroneous statement which the double
relation of this incident affords: there is another, equally
flagrant. The captain, in his after account, repulses association
with baseness, that is with Spencer, in any shape: his elaborate
report superabounds with expressions of the regard with which he had
treated him during the voyage, and even exacts acknowledgment of
his kindness while endeavoring to torture out of him confessions of
guilt.
The case of Spencer was now over: the cases of Small and Cromwell
were briefly despatched. The commander contrived to make the three
victims meet in a narrow way going to the sacrifice, all manacled
and hobbling along, helped along, for they could not walk, by
persons appointed to that duty. Gansevoort helped Spencer--a place
to which he had entitled himself by the zeal with which he had
pursued him. The object of the meeting was seen in the use that was
made of it. It was to have a scene of crimination and recrimination
between the prisoners, in which mutual accusations were to help out
the miserable testimony and the imputed confessions. They are all
made to stop together. Spencer is made to ask the pardon of Small
for having seduced him: Small is made to answer, and with a look
of horror--"_No, by God!_" an answer very little in keeping with
the lowly and Christian character of Small, and rebutted by ample
negative testimony: for this took place after the secret whispering
was over, and in the presence of many. Even Gansevoort, in giving a
minute account of this interview, reports nothing like it, nor any
thing on which it could be founded. Small really seems to have been
a gentle and mild man, imbued with kind and pious feelings, and no
part of his conduct corresponds with the brutal answer to Spencer
attributed to him. When asked if he had any message to send, he
answered, "I have nobody to care for me but a poor old mother, and
I had rather she did not know how I died." In his Bible was found
a letter from his mother, filled with affectionate expressions. In
that letter the mother had rejoiced that her son was contented and
happy, as he had informed her; upon which the commander maliciously
remarked, in his report, "that was before his acquaintance with
Spencer." There was nothing against him, but in the story of the
informer, Wales. He instantly admitted his "foolish conversations"
with Spencer when arrested, but said it was no mutiny. When
standing under the ship gallows (yard-arm) he began a speech to his
shipmates, declaring his innocence, saying "I am no pirate: I never
murdered any body!" At these words Mackenzie sung out to Gansevoort,
"Is that right?" meaning, ought he to be allowed to speak so? He
was soon stopped, and Gansevoort swears he said "he deserved his
punishment." Cromwell protested his innocence to the last, and with
evident truth. When arrested, he declared he knew nothing about the
mutiny, and the commander told him he was to be carried home with
Spencer to be tried; to which he answered, "I assure you I know
nothing about it." His name was not on the razor-case paper. Spencer
had declared his ignorance of all his talk, when the commander
commenced his efforts, under the ten minutes' reprieve, to get
confessions, and when Spencer said to him, as he turned off to go
to Small and Cromwell with the ten minutes' news--the first they
heard of it: "As these are the last words I have to say, I trust
they will be believed: Cromwell is innocent." When told his doom,
he (Cromwell) exclaimed, "God of the Universe look down upon me; I
am innocent! Tell my wife--tell Lieutenant Morris I die innocent!"
The last time that Mackenzie had spoken to him before was to tell
him he would be carried to the United States for trial. The meeting
of the three victims was crowned by reporting them, not only as
confessing, and admitting the justice of their deaths, but even
praising it, as to the honor of the flag, and--penitently begging
pardon and forgiveness from the commander and his lieutenant!--and
they mercifully granting the pardon and forgiveness! The original
record says there were no "hangmen" on board the ship: but that made
no balk. The death signal, and command, were given by the commander
and his lieutenant--the former firing the signal gun himself--the
other singing out "whip!" at which word the three wretched men
went up with a violent jerk to the yard-arm. There is something
unintelligible about Cromwell in the last words of this original
"record." It says: "S. Small stept up. Cromwell overboard, rose
dipping to yard-arm." Upon which the editor remarks: "The above
paper of Commander Mackenzie is so illegible, as not to be correctly
written" (copied). Yet it was this paper that Spencer is officially
reported to have read while waiting to be jerked up, and to have
agreed to its correctness--and near two-thirds of which were not
written until after his death!
The men were dead, and died innocent, as history will tell and
show. Why such conduct towards them--not only the killing, but
the cruel aggravations? The historian Cooper, in solving this
question, says that such was the obliquity of intellect shown by
Mackenzie in the whole affair, that no analysis of his motives
can be made on any consistent principle of human action. This
writer looks upon personal resentment as having been the cause of
the deaths, and terror, and a desire to create terror, the cause
of the aggravations. Both Spencer and Cromwell had indulged in
language which must have been peculiarly offensive to a man of
the commander's temperament, and opinion of himself--an author,
an orator, a fine officer. They habitually spoke of him before
the crew, as "the old humbug--the old fool;" graceless epithets,
plentifully garnished with the prefix of "damned;" and which were so
reported to the captain (after the discovery of the mutiny--never
before) as to appear to him to be "blasphemous vituperation." This
is the only tangible cause for hanging Spencer and Cromwell, and as
for poor Small, it would seem that his knowledge of navigation, and
the necessity of having three mutineers, decided his fate: for his
name is on neither of the three lists (though on the distribution
list), and he frankly told the commander of Spencer's foolish
conversations--always adding, it was no mutiny. These are the only
tangible, or visible causes for putting the men to death. The reason
for doing it at the time it was done, was for fear of losing the
excuse to do it. The vessel was within a day and a half of St.
Thomas, where she was ordered to go--within less time of many other
islands to which she might go--in a place to meet vessels at any
time, one of which she saw nearly in her course, and would not go
to it. The excuse for not going to these near islands, or joining
the vessel seen, was that it was disgraceful to a man-of-war to
seek protection from foreigners! as if it was more honorable to
murder than to take such protection. But the excuse was proved to
be false; for it was admitted the vessel seen was too far off to
know her national character: therefore, she was not avoided as a
foreigner, but for fear she might be American. The same of the
islands: American vessels were sure to be at them, and therefore
these islands were not gone to. It was therefore indispensable to do
the work before they got to St. Thomas, and all the machinery of new
arrests, and rescue was to justify that consummation. And as for not
being able to carry the ship to St. Thomas, with an obedient crew of
100 men, it was a story not to be told in a service where Lieutenant
John Rodgers and Midshipman Porter, with 11 men, conducted a French
frigate with 173 French prisoners, three days and nights, into safe
port.
The three men having hung until they ceased to give signs of
life, and still hanging up, the crew were piped down to dinner,
and to hear a speech from the commander, and to celebrate divine
service--of which several performances the commander gives this
account in his official report:
"The crew were now piped down from witnessing punishment, and
all hands called to cheer ship. I gave the order, 'stand by to
give three hearty cheers for the flag of our country!' Never
were three heartier cheers given. In that electric moment I
do not doubt that the patriotism of even the worst of the
conspirators for an instant broke forth. I felt that I was once
more completely commander of the vessel which had been entrusted
to me; equal to do with her whatever the honor of my country
might require. The crew were now piped down and piped to dinner.
I noticed with pain that many of the boys, as they looked to the
yard-arm, indulged in laughter and derision."
He also gives an impressive account of the religious service which
was performed, the punctuality and devotion with which it was
attended, and the appropriate prayer--that of thanks to God for
deliverance from a great danger--with which it was concluded.
"The service was then read, the responses audibly and devoutly
made by the officers and crew, and the bodies consigned to the
deep. This service was closed with that prayer so appropriate
to our situation, appointed to be read in our ships of war,
'Preserve us from the dangers of the sea, and from the violence
of enemies; that we may be a safeguard to the United States of
America, and a security for such as pass on the seas upon their
lawful occasions; that the inhabitants of our land may in peace
and quietude serve thee our God; and that we may return in
safety to enjoy the blessings of our land, with the fruits of
our labor, with a thankful remembrance of thy mercies, to praise
and glorify thy holy name through Jesus Christ our Lord.'"
This religious celebration concluded, and the prayer read, the
commander indulges in a remark upon their escape from a danger
plotted before the ship left the United States, as unfeeling,
inhuman and impious at the time, as it was afterwards proved to
be false and wicked. After the arrest of Spencer, the delators
discovered that he had meditated these crimes before he left the
United States, and had let his intention become known at a house in
the Bowery at New York. In reference to that early inception of the
plot, now just found out by the commander, he thus remarks:
"In reading this (prayer) and in recollecting the uses to which
the Somers had been destined, as I now find, before she quitted
the waters of the United States, I could not but humbly hope
that divine sanction would not be wanting to the deed of that
day."
Here it is assumed for certain that piratical uses were intended
for the vessel by Spencer before he left New York; and upon that
assumption the favor of Heaven was humbly hoped for in looking down
upon the deed of that day. Now what should be the look of Heaven
if all this early plotting should be a false imputation--a mere
invention--as it was proved to be. Before the court-martial it was
proved that the sailor boarding-house remark about this danger
to the Somers, was made by another person, and before Spencer
joined the vessel--and from which vessel the commander knew he had
endeavored to get transferred to the Grampus, after he had come into
her--the commander himself being the organ of his wishes. Foiled
before the court in attaching this boarding-house remark to Spencer,
the delators before the court undertook to fasten it upon Cromwell:
there again the same fate befell them: the remark was proved to have
been made by a man of the name of Phelps, and before Cromwell had
joined the vessel: and so ended this last false and foul insinuation
in his report.
The commander then made a speech, whereof he incorporates a synopsis
in his report; and of which, with its capital effects upon the crew,
he gives this account:
"The crew were now ordered aft, and I addressed them from the
trunk, on which I was standing. I called their attention first
to the fate of the unfortunate young man, whose ill-regulated
ambition, directed to the most infamous ends, had been the
exciting cause of the tragedy they had just witnessed. I spoke
of his honored parents, of his distinguished father, whose
talents and character had raised him to one of the highest
stations in the land, to be one of the six appointed counsellors
of the representative of our national sovereignty. I spoke of
the distinguished social position to which this young man had
been born; of the advantages of every sort that attended the
outset of his career, and of the professional honors to which a
long, steady, and faithful perseverance in the course of duty
might ultimately have raised him. After a few months' service
at sea, most wretchedly employed, so for as the acquisition of
professional knowledge was concerned, he had aspired to supplant
me in a command which I had only reached after nearly 30 years
of faithful servitude; and for what object I had already
explained to them. I told them that their future fortunes were
in their own control: they had advantages of every sort and in
an eminent degree for the attainment of professional knowledge.
The situations of warrant officers and of masters in the navy
were open to them. They might rise to commands in the merchant
service, to respectability, to competence, and to fortune; but
they must advance regularly, and step by step; every step to be
sure, must be guided by truth, honor, and fidelity. I called
their attention to Cromwell's case. He must have received an
excellent education, his handwriting was even elegant. But he
had also fallen through brutish sensuality and the greedy thirst
for gold."
But there was another speech on the Sunday following, of which
the commander furnishes no report, but of which some parts were
remembered by hearers--as thus by McKee:--(the judge advocate having
put the question to him whether he had heard the commander's
addresses to the crew after the execution). Answer: "I heard him on
the Sunday after the execution: he read Mr. Spencer's letters: he
said he was satisfied the young man had been lying to him for half
an hour before his death." Another witness swore to the same words,
with the addition, "that he died with a lie in his mouth." Another
witness (Green) gives a further view into this letter-reading, and
affords a glimpse of the object of such a piece of brutality. In
answer to the same question, if he heard the commander's speech the
Sunday after the execution? He answered, "Yes, sir. I heard him
read over Mr. Spencer's letter, and pass a good many remarks on it.
He said that Cromwell had been very cruel to the boys: that he had
called him aft, and spoke to him about it several times. To the
question, Did he say any thing of Mr. Spencer? he answered--"Yes,
sir. He said he left his friends, lost all his clothes, and shipped
in a whaling vessel." To the question whether any thing was said
about Mr. Spencer's truth or falsehood? he answered: "I heard the
commander say, this young man died with a lie in his mouth; but do
not know whether he meant Mr. Spencer, or some one else." It is
certain the commander was making a base use of these letters, as he
makes no mention of them any where, and they seem to have been used
solely to excite the crew against Cromwell and Spencer.
In finding the mother's letter in Small's bible, the captain finds
occasion to make two innuendos against the dead Spencer, then still
hanging up. He says:
"She expressed the joy with which she had learned from him that
he was so happy on board the Somers (at that time Mr. Spencer
had not joined her); that no grog was served on board of her.
Within the folds of this sacred volume he had preserved a copy
of verses taken from the Sailor's Magazine, enforcing the value
of the bible to seamen. I read these verses to the crew. Small
had evidently valued his bible, but could not resist temptation."
This happiness of Small is discriminated from his acquaintance with
Spencer: it was before the time that Spencer joined the ship! as
if his misery began from that time! when it only commenced from
the time he was seized and ironed for mutiny. Then the temptation
which he could not resist, _innuendo_, tempted by Spencer--of which
there was not even a tangible hearsay, and no temptation necessary.
Poor Small was an habitual drunkard, and drank all that he could
get--his only fault, as it seems. But this bible of Small's gave
occasion to another speech, and moral and religious harangue, of
which the captain gave a report, too long to be noticed here except
for its characteristics, and which go to elucidate the temper and
state of mind in which things were done:
"I urged upon the youthful sailors to cherish their bibles
with a more entire love than Small had done; to value their
prayer books also; they would find in them a prayer for every
necessity, however great; a medicine for every ailment of the
mind. I endeavored to call to their recollection the terror
with which the three malefactors had found themselves suddenly
called to enter the presence of an offended God. No one who
had witnessed that scene could for a moment believe even in
the existence of such a feeling as honest Atheism: a disbelief
in the existence of a God. They should also remember that
scene. They should also remember that Mr. Spencer, in his last
moments, had said that 'he had wronged many people, but chiefly
his parents.' From these two circumstances they might draw two
useful lessons: a lesson of filial piety, and of piety toward
God. With these two principles for their guides they could never
go astray."
This speech was concluded with giving cheers to God, not by
actual shouting, but by singing the hundredth psalm, and cheering
again--all for deliverance from the hands of the pirates. Thus:
"In conclusion, I told them that they had shown that they could
give cheers for their country; they should now give cheers to
their God, for they would do this when they sung praises to
his name. The colors were now hoisted, and above the American
ensign, the only banner to which it may give place, the banner
of the cross. The hundredth psalm was now sung by all the
officers and crew. After which, the usual service followed;
when it was over, I could not avoid contrasting the spectacle
presented on that day by the Somers, with what it would have
been in pirates' hands."
During all this time the four other men in irons sat manacled behind
the captain, and he exults in telling the fine effects of his
speaking on these "deeply guilty," as well as upon all the rest of
the ship's crew.
"But on this subject I forbear to enlarge. I would not have
described the scene at all, so different from the ordinary
topics of an official communication, but for the unwonted
circumstances in which we were placed, and the marked effect
which it produced on the ship's company, even on those deeply
guilty members of it who sat manacled behind me, and that it was
considered to have done much towards restoring the allegiance of
the crew."
Of these deeply guilty, swelled to twelve before the ship got
home, three appeared before the court-martial, and gave in their
experience of that day's work. McKee, the first one, testifies
that he had so little suspicion of what was going on, that, when
he saw the commander come upon deck in full uniform, he supposed
that some ship was seen, and that it was the intention to visit
or speak her. To the question, what passed between yourself and
the commander, after the execution? he answered: "He said he could
find nothing against any of the four that were then in irons--if
he had found any proof our fate would have been the same; and if
he could find any excuse for not taking them home in irons, he
would do so. I understood him to mean he would release them from
their irons." Green, another of them, in answer to the question
whether the commander spoke to him after hanging, answered--"Yes,
sir. He said he could not find any thing against us; if he could,
our fate would have been the same as the other three. He asked me
if I was satisfied with it?" McKinley was the third, and to the
same question, whether the commander spoke to him on the day of the
executions? he answered--"He did while the men were hanging at the
yard arm, but not before. He came to me, and said, 'McKinley, did
you hear what I said to those other young men?' I told him, 'No,
sir.' 'Well,' said he, 'it is the general opinion of the officers
that you are a pretty good boy, but I shall have to take you home
in irons, to see what the Secretary of the Navy can do for you.'
He said: 'In risking your life for other persons (or something to
that effect) is all that saves you.' He left me then, and I spoke
to Mr. Gansevoort--I asked him if he thought the commander thought
I was guilty of any thing of the kind. He said: 'No, I assure you
if he did, he would have strung you up.'" Wilson, the fourth of
the arrested, was not examined before the court; but the evidence
of three of them, with McKenzie's refusal to proceed against them
in New York, and the attempt to tamper with one of them, is proof
enough that he had no accusation against these four men: that they
were arrested to fulfil the condition on which the first three were
to be hanged, and to be brought home in irons with eight others, to
keep up the idea of mutiny.
The report having finished the history of the mutiny--its detection,
suppression, execution of the ringleaders, and seizure of the rest
(twelve in all) to be brought home in bags and irons--goes on, like
a military report after a great victory, to point out for the notice
and favor of the government, the different officers and men who
had distinguished themselves in the affair, and to demand suitable
rewards for each one according to his station and merits. This
concluding part opened thus:
"In closing this report, a pleasing, yet solemn duty devolves
upon me, which I feel unable adequately to fulfil--to do justice
to the noble conduct of every one of the officers of the Somers,
from the first lieutenant to the commander's clerk, who has
also, since her equipment, performed the duty of midshipman.
Throughout the whole duration of the difficulties in which
we have been involved, their conduct has been courageous,
determined, calm, self-possessed--animated and upheld always by
a lofty and chivalrous patriotism, perpetually armed by day and
by night, waking and sleeping, with pistols often cocked for
hours together."
The commander, after this general encomium, brings forward the
distinguished, one by one, beginning of course with his first
lieutenant:
"I cannot forbear to speak particularly of Lieutenant
Gansevoort. Next to me in rank on board the Somers, he was my
equal in every respect to protect and defend her. The perfect
harmony of our opinions, and of our views of what should be
done, on each new development of the dangers which menaced the
integrity of command, gave us a unity of action that added
materially to our strength. Never since the existence of our
navy has a commanding officer been more ably and zealously
seconded by his lieutenant."
Leaving out every thing minor, and dependent upon the oaths of
others, there are some things sworn to by Gansevoort himself which
derogate from his chivalrous patriotism. _First_, going round to the
officers who were to sit in council upon the three prisoners, and
taking their agreement to execute the three on hand if more arrests
were made. _Secondly_, encouraging and making those arrests on
which the lives of the three depended. _Thirdly_, going out of the
council to obtain from Spencer further proofs of his guilt--Spencer
not knowing for what purpose he was thus interrogated. _Fourthly_,
his calmness and self-possession were shown in the fire of his
pistol while assisting to arrest Cromwell, and in that consternation
inspired in him at the running towards where he was of a cluster
of the apprentice boys, scampering on to avoid the boatswain's
colt--a slender cord to whip them over the clothes, like a switch.
Midshipman Rodgers had gone aft, or forward, as the case may be, to
drive a parcel of these boys to their duty, taking the boatswain
along to apply his colt to all the hindmost. Of course the boys
scampered briskly to escape the colt. The lieutenant heard them
coming--thought they were the mutineers--sung out, God! they are
coming--levelled his revolver, and was only prevented from giving
them the contents of the six barrels, had they not sung out "It
is me--it is me;" for that is what the witnesses stated. But the
richness of the scene can only be fully seen from the lieutenant's
own account of it, which he gave before the court with evident
self-satisfaction: "The commander and myself were standing on the
larboard side of the quarter deck, at the after end of the trunk:
we were in conversation: it was dark at the time. I heard an
unusual noise--a rushing aft toward the quarter deck; I said to the
commander, 'God! I believe they are coming.' I had one of Colt's
pistols, which I immediately drew and cocked: the commander said his
pistols were below. I jumped on the trunk, and ran forward to meet
them. As I was going along I sung out to them not to come aft. I
told them I would blow the first man's brains out who would put his
foot on the quarter deck. I held my pistol pointed at the tallest
man that I saw in the starboard gangway, and I think Mr. Rodgers
sung out to me, that he was sending the men aft to the mast rope.
I then told them they must have no such unusual movements on board
the vessel: what they did, they must do in their usual manner: they
knew the state of the vessel, and might get their brains blown out
before they were aware of it. Some other short remarks, I do not
recollect at this time what they were, and ordered them to come aft
and man the mast rope: to move quietly." To finish this view of Mr.
Gansevoort's self-possession, and the value of his "beliefs," it is
only necessary to know that, besides letting off his pistol when
Cromwell was arrested, he swore before the court that, "I had an
idea that he (Cromwell) meant to take me overboard with him," when
they shook hands under the gallows yard arm, and under that idea,
"turned my arm to get clear of his grasp."
The two non-combatants, purser Heiskill and assistant surgeon
Leecock, come in for high applause, although for the low business of
watching the crew and guarding the prisoners. The report thus brings
them forward:
"Where all, without exception, have behaved admirably, it might
seem invidious to particularize: yet I cannot refrain calling
your attention to the noble conduct of purser H. W. Heiskill,
and passed assistant surgeon Leecock, for the services which
they so freely yielded beyond the sphere of their immediate
duties."
The only specification of this noble conduct, and of these services
beyond their proper sphere, which is given in the report, is
contained in this sentence:
"Both he and Mr. Heiskill cheerfully obeyed my orders to go
perpetually armed, to keep a regular watch, to guard the
prisoners: the worst weather could not drive them from their
posts, or draw from their lips a murmur."
To these specifications of noble conduct, and extra service, might
have been added those of eaves-dropping and delation--capacity to
find the same symptoms of guilt in opposite words and acts--sitting
in council to judge three men whom they had agreed with Gansevoort
two days before to hang if necessary to make more arrests, and which
arrests, four in number, were made with their concurrence and full
approbation. Finally, he might have told that this Heiskill was a
link in the chain of the revelation of the mutinous and piratical
plot. He was the purser of whom Wales was the steward, and to whom
Wales revealed the plot--he then revealing to Gansevoort--and
Gansevoort to Mackenzie. It was, then, through his subordinate (and
who was then stealing his liquor) and himself that the plot was
detected.
A general presentation of government thanks to all the officers, is
next requested by the lieutenant:
"I respectfully request that the thanks of the Navy Department
may be presented to all the officers of the Somers, for their
exertions in the critical situation in which she has been
placed. It is true they have but performed their duty, but they
have performed it with fidelity and zeal."
The purser's steward, Wales, is then specially and encomiastically
presented, and a specific high reward solicited for him:
"I respectfully submit, that Mr. J. W. Wales, by his coolness,
his presence of mind, and his fidelity, has rendered to the
American navy a memorable service. I had a trifling difficulty
with him, not discreditable to his character, on the previous
cruise to Porto Rico--on that account he was sought out, and
tampered with. But he was honest, patriotic, humane; he resisted
temptation, was faithful to his flag, and was instrumental
in saving it from dishonor. A pursership in the navy, or a
handsome pecuniary reward, would after all be an inconsiderable
recompense, compared with the magnitude of his services."
Of this individual the commander had previously reported a
contrivance to make a mistake in doubling the allowed quantity of
brandy carried out on the cruise, saying: "By accident, as it was
thought at the time, but subsequent developments would rather go
to prove by design, he (Wales) had contrived to make a mistake,
and the supply of brandy was ordered from two different groceries;
thus doubling the quantity intended to be taken." Of this double
supply of brandy thus contrived to be taken out, the commander
reports Wales for continual "_stealing_" of it--always adding that
he was seduced into these "thefts" by Spencer. Being a temperance
man, the commander eschews the use of this brandy on board, except
furtively for the corruption of the crew by Spencer through the
seduction of the steward: thus: "None of the brandy was used in the
mess, and all of it is still on board except what was stolen by the
steward at the request of Mr. Spencer, and drank by him, and those
he endeavored to corrupt." By his own story this Wales comes under
the terms of Lord Hale's idea of a "desperate villain"--a fellow who
joins in a crime, gets the confidence of accomplices, then informs
upon them, gets them hanged, and receives a reward. This was the
conduct of Wales upon his own showing: and of such informers the
pious and mild Lord Hale judicially declared his abhorrence--held
their swearing unworthy of credit unless corroborated--said that
they had done more mischief in getting innocent people punished
than they had ever done good in bringing criminals to justice. Upon
this view of his conduct, then, this Wales comes under the legal
idea of a desperate villain. Legal presumptions would leave him
in this category but the steward and the commander have not left
it there. They have lifted a corner of the curtain which conceals
an unmentionable transaction, to which these two persons were
parties--which was heard of, but not understood by the crew--which
was hugger-muggered into a settlement between them about the time
of Spencer's arrest, though originating the preceding cruise--which
neither would explain--which no one could name--and of which
Heiskill, the intermediate between his steward and the commander,
could know nothing except that it was of a "delicate nature," and
that it had been settled between them. The first hint of this
mysterious transaction was in the commander's report--in his proud
commendation of this steward for a pursership in the United States
Navy--and evidently to rehabilitate his witness, and to get a new
lick at Spencer. The hint runs thus: "I had a trifling difficulty,
not discreditable to his character, on the previous cruise to
Porto Rico." On the trial the purser Heiskill was interrogated as
to the nature of this difficulty between his subordinate and his
superior. To the question--"Did he know any thing, and what, about
a misunderstanding between the steward and the commander at Porto
Rico?" he answered, "he knew there was a misunderstanding, which
Wales told him was explained to the satisfaction of the commander."
To the further question, "Was it of a delicate nature?" the answer
was, "yes, sir." To the further question, as to the time when
this misunderstanding was settled? the purser answered: "I do not
know--some time since, I believe." Asked if it was before the
arrest? he answers: "I think Mr. Wales spoke of this matter before
the arrest." Pressed to tell, if it was shortly before the arrest,
the purser would neither give a long nor a short time, but ignored
the inquiry with the declaration, "I won't pretend to fix upon a
time." Wales himself interrogated before the court, as to the fact
of this misunderstanding, and also as to what it was? admitted the
fact, but refused its disclosure. His answer, as it stands in the
official report of the trial is: "I had a difficulty, but decline
to explain it." And the obliging court submitted to the contempt of
this answer.
Left without information in a case so mysterious, and denied
explanation from those who could give it, history can only deal with
the facts as known, and with the inferences fairly resulting from
them; and, therefore, can only say, that there was an old affair
between the commander and the purser's steward, originating in a
previous voyage, and settled in this one, and settled before the
arrest of midshipman Spencer; and secondly, that the affair was of
so delicate a nature as to avoid explanation from either party. Now
the word "delicate" in this connection, implies something which
cannot be discussed without danger--something which will not bear
handling, or exposure--and in which silence and reserve are the
only escapes from a detection worse than any suspicion. And thus
stands before history the informer upon the young Spencer--the
thief of brandies, the desperate villain according to Lord Hale's
classification, and the culprit of unmentionable crime, according
to his own implied admission. Yet this man is recommended for a
pursership in the United States navy, or a handsome pecuniary
reward; while any court in Christendom would have committed him
for perjury, on his own showing, in his swearing before the
court-martial.
Sergeant Michael H. Garty is then brought forward; thus:
"Of the conduct of Sergeant Michael H. Garty (of the marines) I
will only say it was worthy of the noble corps to which he has
the honor to belong. Confined to his hammock by a malady which
threatened to be dangerous, at the moment when the conspiracy
was discovered, he rose upon his feet a well man. Throughout the
whole period, from the day of Mr. Spencer's arrest to the day
after our arrival, and until the removal of the mutineers, his
conduct was calm, steady, and soldierlike. But when his duty was
done, and health was no longer indispensable to its performance,
his malady returned upon him, and he is still in his hammock.
In view of this fine conduct, I respectfully recommend that
Sergeant Garty be promoted to a second lieutenancy in the marine
corps. Should I pass without dishonor through the ordeal which
probably awaits me, and attain in due time to the command of a
vessel entitled to a marine officer, I ask no better fortune
than to have the services of Sergeant Garty in that capacity."
Now here is something like a miracle. A bedridden man to rise up a
well man the moment his country needed his services, and to remain
a well man to the last moment those services required, and then to
fall down a bedridden man again. Such a miracle implies a divine
interposition which could only be bottomed on a full knowledge of
the intended crime, and a special care to prevent it. It is quite
improbable in itself, and its verity entirely marred by answers of
this sergeant to certain questions before the court-martial. Thus:
"When were you on the sick list in the last cruise?" Answer: "I was
twice on the list: the last time about two days." Now these two
days must be that hammock confinement from the return of the malady
which immediately ensued on the removal of the mutineers (the twelve
from the Somers to the North Carolina guardship at New York), and
which seemed as chronic and permanent as it was before the arrest.
Questioned further, whether he "remained in his hammock the evening
of Spencer's arrest?" the answer is, "Yes, sir: I was in and out of
it all that night." So that the rising up a well man does not seem
to have been so instantaneous as the commander's report would imply.
The sergeant gives no account of this malady which confined him to
his hammock in the marvellous way the commander reports. He never
mentioned it until it was dragged out of him on cross-examination.
He was on the sick list. That does not imply bedridden. Men are
put on the sick list for a slight indisposition: in fact, to save
them from sickness. Truth is, this Garty seems to have been one of
the class of which every service contains some specimens--scamps
who have a pain, and get on the sick list when duty runs hard;
and who have no pain, and get on the well list, as soon as there
is something pleasant to do. In this case the sergeant seems to
have had a pleasant occupation from the alacrity with which he
fulfilled it, and from the happy relief which it procured him from
his malady as long as it lasted. That occupation was superintendent
of the bagging business. It was he who attended to the wearing
and fitting of the bags--seeing that they were punctually put on
when a prisoner was made, tightly tied over the head of nights,
and snugly drawn round the neck during the day. To this was added
eavesdropping and delating, and swearing before all the courts, and
in this style before the council of officers: "Thinks there are
some persons at large that would voluntarily assist the prisoners
if they had an opportunity."--"Thinks if the prisoners were at
large the brig would certainly be in great danger."--"Thinks there
are persons adrift yet, who, if opportunity offered, would rescue
the prisoners."--"Thinks the vessel would be safer if Cromwell,
Spencer, and Small were put to death."--"Thinks Cromwell a desperate
fellow."--"Thinks their object (that of Cromwell and Spencer), in
taking slavers, would be to convert them to their own use, and not
to suppress the slave trade." All this was swearing like a sensible
witness, who knew what was wanted, and would furnish it. It covered
all the desired points. More arrests were wanted at that time
to justify the hanging of the prisoners on hand: he thinks more
arrests ought to be made. The fear of a rescue was wanted: he thinks
there will be a rescue attempted. The execution of the prisoners
is wanted: he thinks the vessel would be safer if they were all
three put to death. And it was for these noble services--bagging
prisoners, eavesdropping, delating, swearing to what was
wanted--that this sergeant had his marvellous rise-up from a
hammock, and was now recommended for an officer of marines. History
repulses the marvel which the commander reports. A kind Providence
may interpose for the safety of men and ships, but not through an
agent who is to bag and suffocate innocent men--to eaves-drop and
delate--to swear in all places, and just what was wanted--all by
thoughts, and without any thing to bottom a thought upon. Certainly
this Sergeant Garty, from his stomach for swearing, must have
something in common, besides nativity, with Mr. Jemmy O'Brien; and,
from his alacrity and diligence in taking care of prisoners, would
seem to have come from the school of the famous Major Sirr, of Irish
rebellion memory.
Mr. O. H. Perry, the commander's clerk and nephew, the same whose
blunder in giving the order about the mast, occasioned it to break;
and, in breaking, to become a sign of the plotting, mutiny, and
piracy; and the same that held the watch to mark the ten minutes
that Spencer was to live: this young gentleman was not forgotten,
but came in liberally for praise and spoil--the spoil of the young
man whose messmate he had been, against whom he had testified, and
whose minutes he had counted, and proclaimed when out:
"If I shall be deemed by the Navy Department to have had any
merit in preserving the Somers from those treasonable toils by
which she had been surrounded since and before her departure
from the United States, I respectfully request that it may
accrue without reservation for my nephew O. H. Perry, now clerk
on board the Somers, and that his name may be placed on the
register in the name left vacant by the treason of Mr. Spencer.
I think, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, an act
of Congress, if necessary, might be obtained to authorize the
appointment."
All these recommendations for reward and promotion, bespeak an
obliquity of mental vision, equivalent to an aberration of the mind;
and this last one, obliquitous as any, superadds an extinction of
the moral sense in demanding the spoil of the slain for the reward
of a nephew who had promoted the death of which he was claiming the
benefit. The request was revolting! and, what is equally revolting,
it was granted. But worse still. An act of Congress at that time
forbid the appointment of more midshipmen, of which there were
then too many, unless to fill vacancies: hence the request of the
commander, that his nephew's name may take the place in the Navy
Register of the name left vacant by the "_treason_" of Mr. Spencer!
The commander, through all his witnesses, had multiplied proofs on
the attempts of Spencer to corrupt the crew by largesses lavished
upon them--such as tobacco, segars, nuts, sixpences thrown among the
boys, and two bank-notes given to Cromwell on the coast of Africa
to send home to his wife before the bank failed. Now what were the
temptations on the other side? What the inducements to the witnesses
and actors in this foul business to swear up to the mark which
Mackenzie's acquittal and their promotion required? The remarks of
Mr. Fenimore Cooper, the historian, here present themselves as those
of an experienced man speaking with knowledge of the subject, and
acquaintance with human nature:
"While on this point we will show the extent of the temptations
that were thus inconsiderately placed before the minds of these
men--what preferment they had reason to hope would be accorded
to them should Mackenzie's conduct be approved, _viz._: Garty,
from the ranks, to be an officer, with twenty-five dollars per
month, and fifty cents per diem rations: and the prospect of
promotion. Wales, from purser's steward, at eighteen dollars
a month, to quarter-deck rank, and fifteen hundred dollars
per annum. Browning, Collins, and Stewart, petty officers, at
nineteen dollars a month, to be boatswains, with seven hundred
dollars per annum. King, Anderson, and Rogers, petty officers,
at nineteen dollars a month, to be gunners, at seven hundred
dollars per annum. Dickinson, petty officer, at nineteen dollars
a month, to be carpenter, with seven hundred dollars per annum."
Such was the list of temptations placed before the witnesses by
Commander Mackenzie, and which it is not in human nature to suppose
were without their influence on most of the persons to whom they
were addressed.
The commander could not close his list of recommendations for
reward without saying something of himself. He asked for nothing
specifically, but expected approbation, and looked forward to
regular promotion, while gratified at the promotions which his
subordinates should receive, and which would redound to his own
honor. He did not ask for a court of inquiry, or a court-martial,
but seemed to apprehend, and to deprecate them. The Secretary of
the Navy immediately ordered a court of inquiry--a court of three
officers to report upon the facts of the case, and to give their
opinion. There was no propriety in this proceeding. The facts were
admitted, and the law fixed their character. Three prisoners had
been hanged without trial, and the law holds that to be murder
until reduced by a judicial trial to a lower degree of offence--to
manslaughter, excusable, or justifiable homicide. The finding of
the court was strongly in favor of the commander; and unless this
finding and opinion were disapproved by the President, no further
military proceeding should be had--no court-martial ordered--the
object of the inquiry being to ascertain whether there was necessity
for one. The necessity being negatived, and that opinion approved by
the President, there was no military rule of action which could go
on to a court-martial: to the general astonishment such a court was
immediately ordered--and assembled with such precipitation that the
judge advocate was in no condition to go on with the trial; and, up
to the third day of its sitting, was without the means of proceeding
with the prosecution; and for his justification in not being able to
go on, and in asking some delay, the judge advocate, Wm. H. Norris,
Esq., of Baltimore, submitted to the court this statement in writing:
"The judge advocate states to the court that he has not been
furnished by the department, as yet, with any list of witnesses
on the part of the government: that he has had no opportunity of
conversing with any of the witnesses, of whose names he is even
entirely ignorant except by rumor in respect to a few of them;
and that, therefore, he would need time to prepare the case by
conversation with the officers and crew of the brig Somers,
before he can commence the case on the part of the government.
The judge advocate has issued two subpoenas, _duces tecum_,
for the record in the case of the court of inquiry into the
alleged mutiny, which have not yet been returned, and by which
record he could have been notified of the witnesses and facts to
constitute the case of the government."
The judge advocate then begged a delay, which was granted, until
eleven o'clock the next day. Here then was a precipitation, unheard
of in judicial proceedings, and wholly incompatible with the idea
of any real prosecution. The cause of this precipitancy becomes
a matter of public inquiry, as the public interest requires the
administration of justice to be fair and impartial. The cause of it
then was this: The widow of Cromwell, to whom he had sent his last
dying message, that he was innocent, undertook to have Mackenzie
prosecuted before the civil tribunals for the murder of her
husband. She made three attempts, all in vain. One judge, to whom
an application for a warrant was made, declined to grant it, on the
ground that he was too much occupied with other matters to attend to
that case--giving a written answer to that effect. A commissioner
of the United States, appointed to issue warrants in all criminal
cases, refused one in this case, because, as he alleged, he had no
authority to act in a military case. The attempt was then made in
the United States district court, New York, to get the Grand Jury
to find an indictment: the court instructed the jury that it was
not competent for a civil tribunal to interfere with matters which
were depending before a naval tribunal: in consequence of which
instruction the bill was ignored. Upon this instruction of the court
the historian, Cooper, well remarks: "That after examining the
subject at some length, we are of opinion that the case belonged
exclusively to the civil tribunals." Here, then, is the reason why
Mackenzie was run so precipitately before the court-martial. It was
to shelter him by an acquittal there: and so apprehensive was he of
being got hold of by some civil tribunal, before the court-martial
could be organized, that he passed the intervening days between the
two courts "in a bailiwick where the ordinary criminal process could
not reach him."--(Cooper's Review of the Trial.) When the trial
actually came on, the judge advocate was about as bad off as he was
the first day. He had a list of witnesses. They were Mackenzie's
officers--and refused to converse with him on the nature of their
testimony. He stated their refusal to the court--declared himself
without knowledge to conduct the case--and likened himself to a
new comer in a house, having a bunch of keys given to him, without
information of the lock to which each belonged--so that he must try
every lock with every key before he could find out the right one.
The hurried assemblage of the court being shown, its composition
becomes a fair subject of inquiry. The record shows that three
officers were excused from serving on their own application after
being detailed as members of the court; and the information of the
day made known that another was excused before he was officially
detailed. The same history of the day informs that these four
avoided the service because they had opinions against the accused.
That was all right in them. Mackenzie was entitled to an impartial
trial, although he allowed his victims no trial at all. But how
was it on the other side? any one excused there for opinions in
favor of the accused? None! and history said there were members
on the court strongly in favor of him--as the proceedings on the
trial too visibly prove. Engaged in the case without a knowledge
of it, the judge advocate confined himself to the testimony of one
witness, merely proving the hanging without trial; and then left
the field to the accused. It was occupied in great force--a great
number of witnesses, all the reports of Mackenzie himself, all the
statements before the council of officers--all sorts of illegal,
irrelevant, impertinent or frivolous testimony--every thing that
could be found against the dead since their death, in addition
to all before--assumption or assertion of any fact or inference
wanted--questions put not only leading to the answer wanted, but
affirming the fact wanted--all the persons served as witnesses
who had been agents or instruments in the murders--Mackenzie
himself submitting his own statements before the court: such
was the trial! and the issue was conformable to such a farrago
of illegalities, absurdities, frivolities, impertinences and
wickednesses. He was acquitted; but in the lowest form of acquittal
known to court-martial proceedings. "Not proven," was the equivocal
mode of saying "not guilty:" three members of the court were in
favor of conviction for murder. The finding was barely permitted
to stand by the President. To approve, or disprove court-martial
proceedings is the regular course: the President did neither. The
official promulgation of the proceedings wound up with this unusual
and equivocal sanction: "As these charges involved the life of
the accused, and as the finding is in his favor, he is entitled
to the benefit of it, as in the analogous case of a verdict of
not guilty before a civil court, and there is no power which
can constitutionally deprive him of that benefit. The finding,
therefore, is simply _confirmed_, and carried into effect without
any expression of approbation or disapprobation on the part of
the President: no such expression being necessary." No acquittal
could be of lower order, or less honorable. The trial continued two
months; and that long time was chiefly monopolized by the defence,
which became in fact a trial of the dead--who, having no trial
while alive, had an ample one of sixty days after their deaths. Of
course they were convicted--the dead and the absent being always in
the wrong. At the commencement of the trial, two eminent counsel
of New York--Messrs. Benjamin F. Butler and Charles O'Connor,
Esqs.,--applied to the court at the instance of the father of the
young Spencer to be allowed to sit by, and put questions approved
by the court; and offer suggestions and comments on the testimony
when it was concluded. This request was entered on the minutes, and
refused. So that at the long _post mortem_ trial which was given
to the boy after his death, the father was not allowed to ask one
question in favor of his son.
And here two remarks require to be made--first, as to that faithful
promise of the Commander Mackenzie to send to his parents the dying
message of the young Spencer: not a word was ever sent! all was
sent to the Navy Department and the newspapers! and the "faithful
promise," and the moving appeal to the "feelings of nature," turn
out to have been a mere device to get a chance to make a report to
the Secretary of the Navy of confessions to justify the previous
condemnation and the pre-determined hanging. Secondly: That the
Secretary despatched a man-of-war immediately on the return of
Mackenzie to the Isle of Pines, to capture the confederate pirates
(according to Wales's testimony), who were waiting there for the
young Spencer and the Somers. A bootless errand. The island was
found, and the pines; but no pirates! nor news of any for near
twenty years! Thus failed the indispensable point in the whole
piratical plot: but without balking in the least degree the raging
current of universal belief.
The trial of Mackenzie being over, and he acquitted, the trial
of the rest of the implicated crew--the twelve mutineers in
irons--would naturally come on; and the court remained in session
for that purpose. The Secretary of the Navy had written to the judge
advocate to proceed against such of them as he thought proper: the
judge advocate referred that question to Mackenzie, giving him the
option to choose any one he pleased to carry on the prosecutions.
He chose Theodore Sedgwick, Esq., who had been his own counsel on
his trial. Mackenzie was acquitted on the 28th of March: the court
remained in session until the 1st of April: the judge advocate heard
nothing from Mackenzie with respect to the prosecutions. On that
day Mackenzie not being present, he was sent for. He was not to be
found! and the provost marshal ascertained that he had gone to his
residence in the country, thirty miles off. This was an abandonment
of the prosecutions, and in a very unmilitary way--by running away
from them, and saying nothing to any body. The court was then
dissolved--the prisoners released--and the innocence of the twelve
stood confessed by the recreancy of their fugitive prosecutor. It
was a confession of the innocence of Spencer, Small, and Cromwell;
for he was tried for the three murders together. The trial of
Mackenzie had been their acquittal in the eyes of persons accustomed
to analyze evidence, and to detect perjuries in made-up stories. But
the masses could form no such analysis. With them the confessions
were conclusive, though invalidated by contradictions, and obtained,
if obtained at all, under a refinement of terror and oppression
which has no parallel on the deck of a pirate. When has such a
machinery of terror been contrived to shock and torture a helpless
victim? Sudden annunciation of death in the midst of preparations
to take life: ten minutes allowed to live, and these ten minutes
taken up with interruptions. An imp of darkness in the shape of a
naval officer in full uniform, squat down at his side, writing and
whispering; and evidently making out a tale which was to murder the
character in order to justify the murder of the body. Commander
Mackenzie had once lived a year in Spain, and wrote a book upon its
manners and customs, as a "Young American." He must have read of the
manner in which confessions were obtained in the dungeons of the
Inquisition. If he had, he showed himself an apt scholar; if not,
he showed a genius for the business from which the familiars of the
Holy Office might have taken instruction.
Spencer's real design was clearly deducible even from the tenors of
the vile swearing against him. He meant to quit the navy when he
returned to New York, obtain a vessel in some way, and go to the
northwest coast of America--to lead some wild life there; but not
piratical, as there is neither prey nor shelter for pirates in that
quarter. This he was often saying to the crew, and to this his list
of names referred--mixed up with foolish and even vicious talk about
piracy. His first and his last answer was the same--that it was all
a joke. The answer of Small was the same when he was arrested; and
it was well brought out by the judge advocate in incessant questions
during the two months' trial, that there was not a single soul of
the crew, except Wales, that ever heard Spencer mention one word
about mutiny! and not one, inclusive of Wales, that ever heard one
man of the vessel speak of a rescue of the prisoners. Remaining long
in command of the vessel as Mackenzie did, and with all his power
to punish or reward, and allowed as he was to bring forward all
that he was able to find since the deaths of the men, yet he could
not find one man to swear to these essential points; so that in a
crew steeped in mutiny, there was not a soul that had heard of it!
in a crew determined upon a rescue of prisoners, there was not one
that ever heard the word pronounced. The state of the brig, after
the arrests, was that of crazy cowardice and insane suspicion on
the part of the officers--of alarm and consternation on the part of
the crew. Armed with revolvers, cutlasses and swords, the officers
prowled through the vessel, ready to shoot any one that gave them a
fright--the weapon generally cocked for instant work. Besides the
officers, low wretches, as Wales and Garty, were armed in the same
way, with the same summary power over the lives and deaths of the
crew. The vessel was turned into a laboratory of spies, informers,
eavesdroppers and delators. Every word, look, sign, movement, on
the part of the crew, was equally a proof of guilt. If the men were
quick about their duty, it was to cover up their guilt: if slow, it
was to defy the officers. If they talked loud, it was insolence:
if low, it was plotting. If collected in knots, it was to be
ready to make a rush at the vessel: if keeping single and silent,
it was because, knowing their guilt, they feigned aversion to
escape suspicion. Belief was all that was wanted from any delator.
Belief, without a circumstance to found it upon, and even contrary
to circumstances, was accepted as full legal evidence. Arrests
were multiplied, to excite terror, and to justify murder. The
awe-stricken crew, consisting four-fifths of apprentice boys, was
paralyzed into dead silence and abject submission. Every arrest was
made without a murmur. The prisoners were ironed and bagged as mere
animals. No one could show pity, much less friendship. No one could
extend a comfort, much less give assistance. Armed sentries stood
over them, day and night, to shoot both parties for the slightest
sign of intelligence--and always to shoot the prisoner first. What
Paris was in the last days of the Reign of Terror, the United States
brig Somers was during the terrible week from the arrest to the
hanging of Spencer.
Analogous to the case of Commander Mackenzie was that of Lieutenant
Colonel Wall, of the British service, Governor of Goree on the
coast of Africa--the circumstances quite parallel, and where
they differ, the difference in favor of Wall--but the conclusion
widely different. Governor Wall fancied there was a mutiny in the
garrison, the one half (of 150) engaged in it, and one Armstrong
and two others, leaders in it. He ordered the "long roll" to be
beat--which brings the men, without arms, into line on the parade.
He conversed a few minutes with the officers, out of hearing of the
men, then ordered the line to form circle, a cannon to be placed
in the middle of it, the three men tied upon it, and receive 800
blows each with an inch thick rope. It was not his intent to kill
them, and the surgeon of the garrison, as in all cases of severe
punishment, was ordered to attend, and observe it: which he did,
saying nothing: the three men died within a week. This was in the
year 1782. Wall came home--was arrested (by the civil authority),
broke custody and fled--was gone twenty years, and seized again by
the civil authority on his return to England. The trial took place
at the Old Bailey, and the prisoner easily proved up a complete
case of mutiny, seventy or eighty men, assembled in open day
before the governor's quarters, defying authority, clamoring for
supposed rights, and cursing and damning. The full case was sworn
up, and by many witnesses; but the attorney-general, Sir Edward
Law (afterwards Lord Ellenborough), and the solicitor-general, Mr.
Percival (afterwards First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of
the Exchequer), easily took the made-up stories to pieces, and left
the governor nakedly exposed, a false accuser of the dead, after
having been the foul murderer of the innocent. It was to no purpose
that he plead, that the punishment was not intended to kill: it
was answered that it was sufficient that it was likely to kill,
and did kill. To no purpose that he proved by the surgeon that he
stood by, as the regulations required, to judge the punishment, and
said nothing: the eminent counsel proved upon him, out of his own
mouth, that he was a young booby, too silly to know the difference
between a cat-o'-nine-tails, which cut the skin, and an inch rope,
which bruised to the vitals. The Lord Chief Baron McDonald, charged
the jury that if there was no mutiny, it was murder; and if there
was mutiny, and no trial, it was murder. On this latter point, he
said to the jury: "_If you are of opinion that there was a mutiny,
you are then to consider the degree of it, and whether there was as
much attention paid to the interest of the person accused as the
circumstances of the case would admit, by properly advising him, and
giving him an opportunity of justifying himself if he could._" The
governor was only tried in one case, found guilty, hanged within
eight days, and his body, like that of any other murderer, delivered
up to the surgeons for dissection--the King on application, first
for pardon, then for longer respite, and last for remission of the
anatomization, refusing any favor, upon the ground that it was worse
than any common murder--being done by a man in authority, far from
the eye of the government, on helpless people subject to his power,
and whom he was bound to protect, and to defend from oppression.
It is a case--a common one in England since the judges became
independent of the crown--which does honor to British administration
of justice: and, if any one wishes to view the extremes of judicial
exhibitions--legality, regularity, impartiality, knowledge of the
law, promptitude on one hand, and the reverse of it all on the
other--let them look at the proceedings of the one-day trial of
Governor Wall before a British civil court, and the two months'
trial of Commander Mackenzie before an American naval court-martial.
But the comparison would not be entirely fair. Courts-martial,
both of army and navy, since the trial of Admiral Byng in England
to Commodore Porter, Commander Mackenzie, and Lieutenant-colonel
Frémont in the United States, have been machines in the hands of the
government (where it took an interest in the event), to acquit, or
convict: and has rarely disappointed the intention. Cooper proposes,
in view of the unfitness of the military courts for judicial
investigation, that they be stripped of all jurisdiction in such
cases: and his opinion strongly addresses itself to the legislative
authority.
Commander Mackenzie had been acquitted by the authorities: he had
been complimented by a body of eminent merchants: he had been
applauded by the press: he had been encomiastically reviewed in
a high literary periodical. The loud public voice was for him:
but there was a small inward monitor, whose still and sinister
whisperings went cutting through the soul. The acquitted and
applauded man withdrew to a lonely retreat, oppressed with gloom and
melancholly, visible only to a few, and was only roused from his
depression to give signs of a diseased mind. It was five years after
the event, and during the war with Mexico. The administration had
conceived the idea of procuring peace through the instrumentality
of Santa Anna--then an exile at Havana; and who was to be returned
to his country upon some arrangement of the American government.
This writer going to see the President (Mr. Polk) some day about
this time, mentioned to him a visit from Commander Slidell Mackenzie
to this exiled chief. The President was startled, and asked how
this came to be known to me. I told him I read it in the Spanish
newspapers. He said it was all a profound secret, confined to his
cabinet. The case was this: a secret mission to Santa Anna was
resolved upon: and the facile Mr. Buchanan, Secretary of State,
dominated by the representative Slidell (brother to the commander),
accepted this brother for the place. Now the views of the two
parties were diametrically opposite. One wanted secrecy--the
other notoriety. Restoration of Santa Anna to his country, upon
an agreement, and without being seen in the transaction, was the
object of the government; and that required secrecy: removal from
under a cloud, restoration to public view, rehabilitation by some
mark of public distinction, was the object of the Slidells; and
that required notoriety: and the game being in their hands, they
played it accordingly. Arriving at Havana, the secret minister put
on the full uniform of an American naval officer, entered an open
_volante_, and driving through the principal streets at high noon,
proceeded to the suburban residence of the exiled dictator. Admitted
to a private interview (for he spoke Spanish, learnt in Spain), the
plumed and decorated officer made known his secret business. Santa
Anna was amazed, but not disconcerted. He saw the folly and the
danger of the proceeding, eschewed blunt overture, and got rid of
his queer visitor in the shortest time, and the civilest phrases
which Spanish decorum would admit. The repelled minister gone, Santa
Anna called back his secretary, exclaiming as he entered--"_Porque
el Presidente me ha enviado este tonto?_" (Why has the President
sent me this fool?) It was not until afterwards, and through the
instrumentality of a sounder head, that the mode of the dictator's
return was arranged: and the folly which Mackenzie exhibited on this
occasion was of a piece with his crazy and preposterous conceptions
on board the Somers.
Fourteen years have elapsed since this tragedy of the Somers.
The chief in that black and bloody drama (unless Wales is to be
considered the master-spirit, and the commander and lieutenant
only his instruments) has gone to his long account. Some others,
concerned with him, have passed away. The vessel itself, bearing a
name illustrious in the navy annals, has gone to the bottom of the
sea--foundering--and going down with all on board; the circling
waves closing over the heads of the doomed mass, and hiding all from
the light of Heaven before they were dead. And the mind of seamen,
prone to belief in portents, prodigies, signs and judgments, refer
the hapless fate of the vessel to the innocent blood which had been
shed upon her.
History feels it to be a debt of duty to examine this transaction
to the bottom, and to judge it closely--not with a view to affect
individuals, but to relieve national character from a foul
imputation. It was the crime of individuals: it was made national.
The protection of the government, the lenity of the court, the
evasions of the judiciary, and the general approving voice, made
a nation's offence out of the conduct of some individuals, and
brought reproach upon the American name. All Christendom recoiled
with horror from the atrocious deed: all friends to America beheld
with grief and amazement the national assumption of such a crime.
Cotemporary with the event, and its close observer, the writer of
this View finds confirmed now, upon the fullest examination, the
severe judgment which he formed upon it at the time.
The naval historian, Fenimore Cooper (who himself had been a naval
officer), wrote a clear exposure of all the delusion, falsehood,
and wickedness of this imputed mutiny, and of the mockery of the
court-martial trial of Mackenzie: but unavailing in the then
condition of the public mind, and impotent against the vast
machinery of the public press which was brought to bear on the dead.
From that publication, and the official record of the trial, this
view of the transaction is made up.
CHAPTER CXXIV.
RETIREMENT OF MR. WEBSTER FROM MR. TYLER'S CABINET.
Mr. Tyler's cabinet, as adopted from President Harrison, in April
1841, had broken up, as before related, in September of the same
year--Mr. Webster having been prevailed upon to remain, although
he had agreed to go out with the rest, and his friends thought he
should have done so. His remaining was an object of the greatest
importance with Mr. Tyler, abandoned by all the rest, and for
such reasons as they published. He had remained with Mr. Tyler
until the spring of the year 1843, when the progress of the Texas
annexation scheme, carried on privately, not to say clandestinely,
had reached a point to take an official form, and to become the
subject of government negotiation, though still secret. Mr. Webster,
Secretary of State, was an obstacle to that negotiation. He could
not even be trusted with the secret, much less with the conduct
of the negotiations. How to get rid of him was a question of some
delicacy. Abrupt dismission would have revolted his friends.
Voluntary resignation was not to be expected, for he liked the place
of Secretary of State, and had remained in it against the wishes of
his friends. Still he must be got rid of. A middle course was fallen
upon--the same which had been practised with others in 1841--that of
compelling a resignation. Mr. Tyler became reserved and indifferent
to him. Mr. Gilmer and Mr. Upshur, with whom he had but few
affinities, took but little pains to conceal their distaste to him.
It was evident to him when the cabinet met, that he was one too
many; and reserve and distrust was visible both in the President and
the Virginia part of his cabinet. Mr. Webster felt it, and named it
to some friends. They said, resign! He did so; and the resignation
was accepted with an alacrity which showed that it was waited
for. Mr. Upshur took his place, and quickly the Texas negotiation
became official, though still private; and in this appointment, and
immediate opening of the Texas negotiation, stood confessed, the
true reason for getting rid of Mr. Webster.
CHAPTER CXXV.
DEATH OF WILLIAM H. CRAWFORD.
He was among the few men of fame that I have seen, that aggrandized
on the approach--that having the reputation of a great man,
became greater, as he was more closely examined. There was every
thing about him to impress the beholder favorably and grandly--in
stature "a head and shoulders" above the common race of men, justly
proportioned, open countenance, manly features, ready and impressive
conversation, frank and cordial manners. I saw him for the first
time in 1820, when he was a member of Mr. Monroe's cabinet--when
the array of eminent men was thick--when historic names of the
expiring generation were still on the public theatre, and many of
the new generation (to become historic) were entering upon it: and
he seemed to compare favorably with the foremost. And that was the
judgment of others. For a long time he was deferred to generally,
by public opinion, as the first of the new men who were to become
President. Mr. Monroe, the last of the revolutionary stock, was
passing off: Mr. Crawford was his assumed successor. Had the
election come on one term sooner, he would have been the selected
man: but his very eminence became fatal to him. He was formidable to
all the candidates, and all combined against him. He was pulled down
in 1824; but at an age, with an energy, a will, a talent and force
of character, which would have brought him up within a few years,
if a foe more potent than political combinations had not fallen
upon him: he was struck with paralysis before the canvass was over,
but still received an honorable vote, and among such competitors as
Jackson, Adams, and Clay. But his career was closed as a national
man, and State appointments only attended him during the remaining
years of his life.
Mr. Crawford served in the Senate during Mr. Madison's
administration, and was the conspicuous mark in that body, then
pre-eminent for its able men. He had a copious, ready and powerful
elocution--spoke forcibly and to the point--was the Ajax of the
administration, and as such, had constantly on his hands the
splendid array of federal gentlemen who then held divided empire
in the Senate chamber. Senatorial debate was of high order then--a
rivalship of courtesy, as well as of talent: and the feeling of
respect for him was not less in the embattled phalanx of opposition,
than in the admiring ranks of his own party. He was invaluable
in the Senate, but the state of Europe--then convulsed with the
approaching downfall of the Great Emperor--our own war with Great
Britain, and the uncertainty of the new combinations which might be
formed--all required a man of head and nerve--of mind and will, to
represent the United States at the French Court: and Mr. Crawford
was selected for the arduous post. He told Mr. Madison that the
Senate would be lost if he left it (and it was); but a proper
representative in France in that critical juncture of Europe,
was an overpowering consideration--and he went. Great events took
place while he was there. The Great Emperor fell: the Bourbons
came up, and fell. The Emperor reappeared, and fell again. But the
interests of the United States were kept unentangled in European
politics; and the American minister was the only one that could
remain at his post in all these sudden changes. At the marvellous
return from Elba, he was the sole foreign representative remaining
in Paris. Personating the neutrality of his country with decorum
and firmness, he succeeded in commanding the respect of all, giving
offence to none. From this high critical post he was called by Mr.
Monroe, at his first election, to be Secretary of the Treasury;
and, by public expectation, was marked for the presidency. There
was a desire to take him up at the close of Mr. Monroe's first
term; but a generous and honorable feeling would not allow him to
become the competitor of his friend; and before the second term was
out, the combinations had become too strong for him. He was the
last candidate nominated by a Congress caucus, then fallen into
great disrepute, but immeasurably preferable, as an organ of public
opinion, to the conventions of the present day. He was the dauntless
foe of nullification; and, while he lived, that heresy could not
root in the patriotic soil of Georgia.
CHAPTER CXXVI.
FIRST SESSION OF THE TWENTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS: LIST OF MEMBERS:
ORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
_Senate._
MAINE.--John Fairfield, George Evans.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.--Levi Woodbury, Charles G. Atherton.
VERMONT.--Samuel Phelps, William C. Upham.
MASSACHUSETTS.--Rufus Choate, Isaac C. Bates.
RHODE ISLAND.--William Sprague, James F. Simmons.
CONNECTICUT.--J. W. Huntington, John M. Niles.
NEW YORK.--N. P. Tallmadge, Silas Wright.
NEW JERSEY.--W. L. Dayton, Jacob W. Miller.
PENNSYLVANIA.--D. W. Sturgeon, James Buchanan.
DELAWARE.--R. H. Bayard, Thomas Clayton.
MARYLAND.--William D. Merrick, Reverdy Johnson.
VIRGINIA.--Wm. C. Rives, Wm. S. Archer.
NORTH CAROLINA.--Willie P. Mangum, Wm. H. Haywood, jr.
SOUTH CAROLINA.--Daniel E. Hugér, George McDuffie.
GEORGIA.--John M. Berrien, Walter T. Colquitt.
ALABAMA.--William R. King, Arthur P. Bagby.
MISSISSIPPI.--John Henderson, Robert J. Walker.
LOUISIANA.--Alexander Barrow, Alexander Porter.
TENNESSEE.--E. H. Foster, Spencer Jarnagan.
KENTUCKY.--John T. Morehead, John J. Crittenden.
OHIO.--Benjamin Tappan, William Allen.
INDIANA.--Albert S. White, Ed. A. Hannegan.
ILLINOIS.--James Semple, Sidney Breese.
MISSOURI.--T. H. Benton, D. R. Atchison.
ARKANSAS.--Wm. S. Fulton, A. H. Sevier.
MICHIGAN.--A. S. Porter, W. Woodbridge.
_House of Representatives._
MAINE.--Joshua Herrick, Robert P. Dunlap, Luther Severance, Hannibal
Hamlin.
MASSACHUSETTS.--Robert C. Winthrop, Daniel P. King, William
Parmenter, Charles Hudson, (Vacancy), John Quincy Adams, Henry
Williams, Joseph Grinnel.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.--Edmund Burke, John R. Reding, John P. Hale, Moses
Norris, jr.
RHODE ISLAND.--Henry Y. Cranston, Elisha R. Potter.
CONNECTICUT.--Thomas H. Seymour, John Stewart, George S. Catlin,
Samuel Simons.
VERMONT.--Solomon Foot, Jacob Collamer, George P. Marsh, Paul
Dillingham, jr.
NEW YORK.--Selah B. Strong, Henry C. Murphy, J. Philips Phoenix,
William B. Maclay, Moses G. Leonard, Hamilton Fish, Jos. H.
Anderson, R. D. Davis, Jas. G. Clinton, Jeremiah Russell, Zadoc
Pratt, David L. Seymour, Daniel D. Barnard, Wm. G. Hunter, Lemuel
Stetson, Chesselden Ellis, Charles S. Benton, Preston King, Orville
Hungerford, Samuel Beardsley, J. E. Cary, S. M. Purdy, Orville
Robinson, Horace Wheaton, George Rathbun, Amasa Dana, Byram Green,
Thos. J. Patterson, Charles H. Carroll, Wm. S. Hubbell, Asher Tyler,
Wm. A. Moseley, Albert Smith, Washington Hunt.
NEW JERSEY.--Lucius Q. C. Elmer, George Sykes, Isaac G. Farlee,
Littleton Kirkpatrick, Wm. Wright.
PENNSYLVANIA.--Edward J. Morris, Joseph R. Ingersoll, John T. Smith,
Charles J. Ingersoll, Jacob S. Yost, Michael H. Jenks, Abrah. R.
McIlvaine, Henry Nes, James Black, James Irvin, Andrew Stewart,
Henry D. Foster, Jeremiah Brown, John Ritter, Rich. Brodhead, jr.,
Benj. A. Bidlack, Almond H. Read, Henry Frick, Alexander Ramsey,
John Dickey, William Wilkins, Samuel Hays, Charles M. Read, Joseph
Buffington.
DELAWARE.--George B. Rodney.
MARYLAND.--J. M. S. Causin, F. Brengle, J. Withered, J. P. Kennedy,
Dr. Preston, Thomas A. Spence.
VIRGINIA.--Archibald Atkinson, Geo. C. Dromgoole, Walter Coles,
Edmund Hubard, Thomas W. Gilmer, John W. Jones, Henry A. Wise,
Willoughby Newton, Samuel Chilton, William F. Lucas, William Taylor,
A. A. Chapman, Geo. W. Hopkins, Geo. W. Summers, Lewis Steenrod.
NORTH CAROLINA.--Thomas J. Clingman, D. M. Barringer, David S. Reid,
Edmund Deberry, R. M. Saunders, James J. McKay, J. R. Daniel, A. H.
Arrington, Kenneth Rayner.
SOUTH CAROLINA.--James A. Black, Richard F. Simpson, Joseph A.
Woodward, John Campbell, Artemas Burt, Isaac E. Holmes, R. Barnwell
Rhett.
GEORGIA.--E. J. Black, H. A. Haralson, J. H. Lumpkin, Howell Cobb,
Wm. H. Stiles, Alexander H. Stevens, A. H. Chappell.
KENTUCKY.--Linn Boyd, Willis Green, Henry Grider, George A.
Caldwell, James Stone, John White, William P. Thompson, Garrett
Davis, Richard French, J. W. Tibbatts.
TENNESSEE.--Andrew Johnson, William T. Senter, Julius W. Blackwell,
Alvan Cullom, George W. Jones, Aaron V. Brown, David W. Dickinson,
James H. Peyton, Cave Johnson, John B. Ashe, Milton Brown.
OHIO.--Alexander Duncan, John B. Weller, Robt. C. Schenck, Joseph
Vance, Emery D. Potter, Joseph J. McDowell, John I. Vanmeter, Elias
Florence, Heman A. Moore, Jacob Brinkerhoff, Samuel F. Vinton,
Perley B. Johnson, Alexander Harper, Joseph Morris, James Mathews,
Wm. C. McCauslin, Ezra Dean, Daniel R. Tilden, Joshua R. Giddings,
H. R. Brinkerhoff.
LOUISIANA.--John Slidell, Alcée Labranche, John B. Dawson, P. E.
Bossier.
INDIANA.--Robt. Dale Owen, Thomas J. Henley, Thomas Smith, Caleb B.
Smith, Wm. J. Brown, John W. Davis, Joseph A. Wright, John Pettit,
Samuel C. Sample, Andrew Kennedy.
ILLINOIS.--Robert Smith, John A. McClernand, Orlando B. Ficklin,
John Wentworth, Stephen A. Douglass, Joseph P. Hoge, J. J. Hardin.
ALABAMA.--James Dellet, James E. Belser, Dixon H. Lewis, William W.
Payne, George S. Houston, Reuben Chapman, Felix McConnell.
MISSISSIPPI.--Wm. H. Hammett, Robert W. Roberts, Jacob Thompson,
Tilghman M. Tucker.
MISSOURI.--James M. Hughes, James H. Relfe, Gustavus B. Bower, James
B. Bowlin, John Jameson.
ARKANSAS.--Edward Cross.
MICHIGAN.--Robert McClelland, Lucius Lyon, James B. Hunt.
_Territorial Delegates._
FLORIDA.--David Levy.
WISCONSIN.--Henry Dodge.
IOWA.--Augustus C. Dodge.
The election of Speaker was the first business on the assembling of
the Congress, and its result was the authentic exposition of the
state of parties. Mr. John W. Jones, of Virginia, the democratic
candidate, received 128 votes on the first ballot, and was
elected--the whig candidate (Mr. John White, late Speaker) receiving
59. An adverse majority of more than two to one was the result to
the whig party at the first election after the extra session of
1841--at the first election after that "log-cabin, hard-cider and
coon-skin" campaign in which the whigs had carried the presidential
election by 234 electoral votes against 60: so truly had the
democratic senators foreseen the destruction of the party in the
contests of the extra session of 1841. The Tyler party was "no
where"--Mr. Wise alone being classified as such--the rest, so few
in number as to have been called the "corporal's guard," had been
left out of Congress by their constituents, or had received office
from Mr. Tyler, and gone off. Mr. Caleb McNulty, of Ohio, also
democratic, was elected clerk of the House, and by a vote of two to
one, thus ousting an experienced and capable whig officer, in the
person of Mr. Matthew St. Clair Clarke--a change which turned out
to be unfortunate for the friends of the House, and mortifying to
those who did it--the new clerk becoming a subject of indictment for
embezzlement before his service was over.
CHAPTER CXXVII.
MR. TYLER'S SECOND ANNUAL MESSAGE.
The prominent topics of the message were the state of our affairs
with Great Britain and Mexico--with the former in relation to
Oregon, the latter in relation to Texas. In the same breath in
which the President announced the happy results of the Ashburton
treaty, he was forced to go on and show the improvidence of that
treaty on our part, in not exacting a settlement of the questions
which concerned the interests of the United States, while settling
those which lay near to the interests of Great Britain. The Oregon
territorial boundary was one of these omitted American subjects; but
though passed over by the government in the negotiations, it was
forced upon its attention by the people. A stream of emigration was
pouring into that territory, and their presence on the banks of the
Columbia caused the attention of both governments to be drawn to
the question of titles and boundaries; and Mr. Tyler introduced it
accordingly to Congress.
"A question of much importance still remains to be adjusted
between them. The territorial limits of the two countries in
relation to what is commonly known as the Oregon Territory,
still remains in dispute. The United States would be at all
times indisposed to aggrandize themselves at the expense of any
other nation; but while they would be restrained by principles
of honor, which should govern the conduct of nations as well
as that of individuals, from setting up a demand for territory
which does not belong to them, they would as unwillingly consent
to a surrender of their rights. After the most rigid, and, as
far as practicable, unbiassed examination of the subject, the
United States have always contended that their rights appertain
to the entire region of country lying on the Pacific, and
embraced within 42° and 54° 40' of north latitude. This claim
being controverted by Great Britain, those who have preceded
the present Executive--actuated, no doubt, by an earnest
desire to adjust the matter upon terms mutually satisfactory
to both countries--have caused to be submitted to the British
Government propositions for settlement and final adjustment,
which, however, have not proved heretofore acceptable to it.
Our Minister at London has, under instructions, again brought
the subject to the consideration of that Government; and while
nothing will be done to compromit the rights or honor of the
United States, every proper expedient will be resorted to, in
order to bring the negotiation now in the progress of resumption
to a speedy and happy termination."
This passage, while letting it be seen that we were already engaged
in a serious controversy with Great Britain--engaged in it almost
before the ink was dry which had celebrated the peace mission which
was to settle all questions--also committed a serious mistake in
point of fact, and which being taken up as a party watchword, became
a difficult and delicate point of management at home: it was the
line of 54 degrees 40 minutes north for our northern boundary on
the Pacific. The message says that the United States have always
contended for that line. That is an error. From the beginning of
the dispute, the United States government had proposed the parallel
of 49 degrees, as being the continuation of the dividing line on
this side of the Rocky Mountains, and governed by the same law--the
decision of the commissaries appointed by the British and French
under the tenth article of the treaty of Utrecht to establish
boundaries between them on the continent of North America. President
Jefferson offered that line in 1807--which was immediately after the
return of Messrs. Lewis and Clark from their meritorious expedition,
and as soon as it was seen that a question of boundary was to arise
in that quarter with Great Britain. President Monroe made the same
offer in 1818, and also in 1824. Mr. Adams renewed it in 1826: so
that, so far from having always claimed to 54-40, the United States
had always offered the parallel of 49. As to 54-40, no American
statesman had ever thought of originating a title there. It was
a Russian point of demarcation on the coast and islands--not a
continental line at all--first assigned to the Russian Fur Company
by the Emperor Paul, and afterwards yielded to Russia by the United
States and Great Britain, separately, in separating their respective
claims on the north-west of America. She was allowed to come south
to that point on the coast and islands, not penetrating the interior
of the continent--leaving the rest for Great Britain and the United
States to settle as they could. It was proposed at the time that the
three powers should settle together--in a tripartite treaty: but the
Emperor Alexander, like a wise man, contented himself with settling
his own boundary, without mixing himself in the dispute between the
United States and Great Britain. This he did about the year 1820:
and it was long afterwards, and by those who knew but little of this
establishment of a southern limit for the Russian Fur Company, that
this point established in their charter, and afterwards agreed to by
the United States and Great Britain, was taken up as the northern
boundary for the United States. It was a great error in Mr. Tyler to
put this Russian limit in his message for our line; and, being taken
up by party spirit, and put into one of those mushroom political
creeds, called "platforms" (wherewith this latter generation has
been so plentifully cursed), it came near involving the United
States in war.
The prospective war with Mexico on the subject of Texas was thus
shadowed forth:
"I communicate herewith certain despatches received from our
Minister at Mexico, and also a correspondence which has recently
occurred between the envoy from that republic and the Secretary
of State. It must be regarded as not a little extraordinary
that the government of Mexico, in anticipation of a public
discussion, which it has been pleased to infer, from newspaper
publications, as likely to take place in Congress, relating to
the annexation of Texas to the United States, should have so far
anticipated the result of such discussion as to have announced
its determination to visit any such anticipated decision by
a formal declaration of war against the United States. If
designed to prevent Congress from introducing that question as
a fit subject for its calm deliberation and final judgment, the
Executive has no reason to doubt that it will entirely fail of
its object. The representatives of a brave and patriotic people
will suffer no apprehension of future consequences to embarrass
them in the course of their proposed deliberations. Nor will the
Executive Department of the government fail, for any such cause,
to discharge its whole duty to the country."
At the time of communicating this information to Congress, the
President was far advanced in a treaty with Texas for her annexation
to the United States--an event which would be war itself with
Mexico, without any declaration on her part, or our part--she being
then at war with Texas as a revolted province, and endeavoring to
reclaim her to her former subjection. Still prepossessed with his
idea of a national currency of paper money, in preference to gold
and silver, the President recurs to his previous recommendation for
an Exchequer bank--regrets its rejection by Congress,--vaunts its
utility--and thinks that it would still aid, in a modified form, in
restoring the currency to a sound and healthy state.
"In view of the disordered condition of the currency at the
time, and the high rates of exchange between different parts of
the country, I felt it to be incumbent on me to present to the
consideration of your predecessors a proposition conflicting in
no degree with the constitution or the rights of the States,
and having the sanction--not in detail, but in principle--of
some of the eminent men who had preceded me in the executive
office. That proposition contemplated the issuing of treasury
notes of denominations not less than five, nor more than one
hundred dollars, to be employed in payment of the obligations
of the government in lieu of gold and silver, at the option of
the public creditor, and to an amount not exceeding $15,000,000.
It was proposed to make them receivable every where, and to
establish at various points depositories of gold and silver,
to be held in trust for the redemption of such notes, so as
to insure their convertibility into specie. No doubt was
entertained that such notes would have maintained a par value
with gold and silver--thus furnishing a paper currency of equal
value over the Union, thereby meeting the just expectations of
the people, and fulfilling the duties of a parental government.
Whether the depositories should be permitted to sell or purchase
bills under very limited restrictions, together with all its
other details, was submitted to the wisdom of Congress, and was
regarded as of secondary importance. I thought then, and think
now, that such an arrangement would have been attended with the
happiest results. The whole matter of the currency would have
been placed where, by the constitution, it was designed to be
placed--under the immediate supervision and control of Congress.
The action of the government would have been independent of
all corporations; and the same eye which rests unceasingly on
the specie currency, and guards it against adulteration, would
also have rested on the paper currency, to control and regulate
its issues, and protect it against depreciation. Under all the
responsibilities attached to the station which I occupy, and
in redemption of a pledge given to the last Congress, at the
close of its first session, I submitted the suggestion to its
consideration at two consecutive sessions. The recommendation,
however, met with no favor at its hands. While I am free to
admit that the necessities of the times have since become
greatly ameliorated, and that there is good reason to hope that
the country is safely and rapidly emerging from the difficulties
and embarrassments which every where surrounded it in 1841,
yet I cannot but think that its restoration to a sound and
healthy condition would be greatly expedited by a resort to the
expedient in a modified form."
Such were still the sighings and longings of Mr. Tyler for a
national currency of paper money. They were his valedictory to that
delusive cheat. Before he had an opportunity to present another
annual message, the Independent Treasury System, and the revived
gold currency had done their office--had given ease and safety to
the government finances, had restored prosperity and confidence to
the community, and placed the country in a condition to dispense
with all small money paper currency--all under twenty dollars--if it
only had the wisdom to do so.
CHAPTER CXXVIII.
EXPLOSION OF THE GREAT GUN ON BOARD THE PRINCETON MAN-OF-WAR: THE
KILLED AND WOUNDED.
On the morning of the 28th of February, a company of some hundred
guests, invited by Commodore Stockton, including the President of
the United States, his cabinet, members of both Houses of Congress,
citizens and strangers, with a great number of ladies, headed
by Mrs. Madison, ex-presidentess, repaired on board the steamer
man-of-war Princeton, then lying in the river below the city, to
witness the working of her machinery (a screw propeller), and to
observe the fire of her two great guns--throwing balls of 225 pounds
each. The vessel was the pride and pet of the commodore, and having
undergone all the trials necessary to prove her machinery and her
guns, was brought round to Washington for exhibition to the public
authorities. The day was pleasant--the company numerous and gay.
On the way down to the vessel a person whispered in my ear that
Nicholas Biddle was dead. It was my first information of that event,
and heard not without reflections on the instability and shadowy
fleetingness of the pursuits and contests of this life. Mr. Biddle
had been a Power in the State, and for years had baffled or balanced
the power of the government. He had now vanished, and the news of
his death came in a whisper, not announced in a tumult of voices;
and those who had contended with him might see their own sudden and
silent evanescence in his. It was a lesson upon human instability,
and felt as such; but without a thought or presentiment that, before
the sun should go down, many of that high and gay company should
vanish from earth--and the one so seriously impressed barely fail to
be of the number.
The vessel had proceeded down the river below the grave of
Washington--below Mount Vernon--and was on her return, the machinery
working beautifully, the guns firing well, and the exhibition of
the day happily over. It was four-o'clock in the evening, and a
sumptuous collation had refreshed and enlivened the guests. They
were still at the table, when word was brought down that one of
the guns was to be fired again; and immediately the company rose
to go on deck and observe the fire--the long and vacant stretch in
the river giving full room for the utmost range of the ball. The
President and his cabinet went foremost, this writer among them,
conversing with Mr. Gilmer, Secretary of the Navy. The President
was called back: the others went on, and took their places on the
left of the gun--pointing down the river. The commodore was with
this group, which made a cluster near the gun, with a crowd behind,
and many all around. I had continued my place by the side of Mr.
Gilmer, and of course was in the front of the mass which crowded
up to the gun. The lieutenant of the vessel, Mr. Hunt, came and
whispered in my ear that I would see the range of the ball better
from the breech; and proposed to change my place. It was a tribute
to my business habits, being indebted for this attention to the
interest which I had taken all day in the working of the ship,
and the firing of her great guns. The lieutenant placed me on a
carronade carriage, some six feet in the rear of the gun, and in
the line of her range. Senator Phelps had stopped on my left, with
a young lady of Maryland (Miss Sommerville) on his arm. I asked
them to get on the carriage to my right (not choosing to lose my
point of observation): which they did--the young lady between us,
and supported by us both, with the usual civil phrases, that we
would take care of her. The lieutenant caused the gun to be worked,
to show the ease and precision with which her direction could be
changed and then pointed down the river to make the fire--himself
and the gunners standing near the breech on the right. I opened
my mouth wide to receive the concussion on the inside as well as
on the outside of the head and ears, so as to lessen the force of
the external shock. I saw the hammer pulled back--heard a tap--saw
a flash--felt a blast in the face, and knew that my hat was gone:
and that was the last that I knew of the world, or of myself, for
a time, of which I can give no account. The first that I knew of
myself, or of any thing afterwards, was rising up at the breech
of the gun, seeing the gun itself split open--two seamen, the
blood oozing from their ears and nostrils, rising and reeling near
me--Commodore Stockton, hat gone, and face blackened, standing
bolt upright, staring fixedly upon the shattered gun. I had heard
no noise--no more than the dead. I only knew that the gun had
bursted from seeing its fragments. I felt no injury, and put my arm
under the head of a seaman, endeavoring to rise, and falling back.
By that time friends had ran up, and led me to the bow--telling
me afterwards that there was a supernatural whiteness in the face
and hands--all the blood in fact having been driven from the
surface. I saw none of the killed: they had been removed before
consciousness returned. All that were on the left had been killed,
the gun bursting on that side, and throwing a large fragment, some
tons weight, on the cluster from which I had been removed, crushing
the front rank with its force and weight. Mr. Upshur, Secretary of
State; Mr. Gilmer, Secretary of the Navy; Commodore Kennon, of the
navy; Mr. Virgil Maxey, late United States chargé at the Hague; Mr.
Gardiner of New York, father-in-law that would have been to Mr.
Tyler--were the dead. Eleven seamen were injured--two mortally.
Commodore Stockton was scorched by the burning powder, and stunned
by the concussion; but not further injured. I had the tympanum of
the left ear bursted through, the warm air from the lungs issuing
from it at every breathing. Senator Phelps and the young lady on
my right, had fallen inwards towards the gun, but got up without
injury. We all three had fallen inwards, as into a vacuum. The
President's servant who was next me on the left was killed. Twenty
feet of the vessels bulwark immediately behind me was blown away.
Several of the killed had members of their family on board--to be
deluded for a little while, by the care of friends, with the belief
that those so dear to them were only hurt. Several were prevented
from being in the crushed cluster by the merest accidents--Mr. Tyler
being called back--Mr. Seaton not finding his hat in time--myself
taken out of it the moment before the catastrophe. Fortunately there
were physicians on board to do what was right for the injured,
and to prevent blood-letting, so ready to be called for by the
uninformed, and so fatal when the powers of life were all on the
retreat. Gloomily and sad the gay company of the morning returned
to the city, and the calamitous intelligence flew over the land.
For myself, I had gone through the experience of a sudden death,
as if from lightning, which extinguishes knowledge and sensation,
and takes one out of the world without thought or feeling. I think I
know what it is to die without knowing it--and that such a death is
nothing to him that revives. The rapid and lucid working of the mind
to the instant of extinction, is the marvel that still astonishes
me. I heard the tap--saw the flash--felt the blast--and knew nothing
of the explosion. I was cut off in that inappreciable point of time
which intervened between the flash and the fire--between the burning
of the powder in the touch-hole, and the burning of it in the barrel
of the gun. No mind can seize that point of time--no thought can
measure it; yet to me it was distinctly marked, divided life from
death--the life that sees, and feels, and knows--from death (for
such it was for the time), which annihilates self and the world. And
now is credible to me, or rather comprehensible, what persons have
told me of the rapid and clear working of the mind in sudden and
dreadful catastrophes--as in steamboat explosions, and being blown
into the air, and have the events of their lives pass in review
before them, and even speculate upon the chances of falling on the
deck, and being crushed, or falling on the water and swimming: and
persons recovered from drowning, and running their whole lives over
in the interval between losing hope and losing consciousness.
CHAPTER CXXIX.
RECONSTRUCTION OF MR. TYLER'S CABINET.
This was the second event of the kind during the administration of
Mr. Tyler--the first induced by the resignation of _Messrs._ Ewing,
Crittenden, Bell, and Badger, in 1841; the second, by the deaths of
_Messrs._ Upshur and Gilmer by the explosion of the Princeton gun.
Mr. Calhoun was appointed Secretary of State; John C. Spencer of New
York, Secretary of the Treasury; William Wilkins of Pennsylvania,
Secretary at War; John Y. Mason, of Virginia, Secretary of the Navy;
Charles A. Wickliffe, of Kentucky, Postmaster General; John Nelson,
of Maryland, Attorney General. The resignation of Mr. Spencer in a
short time made a vacancy in the Treasury, which was filled by the
appointment of George M. Bibb, of Kentucky.
CHAPTER CXXX.
DEATH OF SENATOR PORTER, OF LOUISIANA: EULOGIUM OF MR. BENTON.
MR BENTON. I rise to second the motion which has been made to render
the last honors of this chamber to our deceased brother senator,
whose death has been so feelingly announced; and in doing so, I
comply with an obligation of friendship, as well as conform to the
usage of the Senate. I am the oldest personal friend which the
illustrious deceased could have upon this floor, and amongst the
oldest which he could have in the United States. It is now, sir,
more than the period of a generation--more than the third of a
century--since the then emigrant Irish boy, Alexander Porter, and
myself, met on the banks of the Cumberland River, at Nashville, in
the State of Tennessee; when commenced a friendship which death only
dissolved on his part. We belonged to a circle of young lawyers and
students at law, who had the world before them, and nothing but
their exertions to depend upon. First a clerk in his uncle's store,
then a student at law, and always a lover of books, the young Porter
was one of that circle, and it was the custom of all that belonged
to it to spend their leisure hours in the delightful occupation
of reading. History, poetry, elocution, biography, the ennobling
speeches of the living and the dead, were our social recreation; and
the youngest member of the circle was one of our favorite readers.
He read well, because he comprehended clearly, felt strongly,
remarked beautifully upon striking passages, and gave a new charm to
the whole with his rich, mellifluous Irish accent. It was then that
I became acquainted with Ireland and her children, read the ample
story of her wrongs, learnt the long list of her martyred patriots'
names, sympathized in their fate, and imbibed the feelings for a
noble and oppressed people which the extinction of my own life can
alone extinguish.
Time and events dispersed that circle. The young Porter, his law
license signed, went to the Lower Mississippi; I to the Upper. And,
years afterwards, we met on this floor, senators from different
parts of that vast Louisiana which was not even a part of the
American Union at the time that he and I were born. We met here in
the session of 1833-'34--high party times, and on opposite sides of
the great party line; but we met as we had parted years before. We
met as friends; and, though often our part to reply to each other in
the ardent debate, yet never did we do it with other feelings than
those with which we were wont to discuss our subjects of recreation
on the banks of the Cumberland.
I mention these circumstances, Mr. President, because, while they
are honorable to the deceased, they are also justificatory to myself
for appearing as the second to the motion which has been made. A
personal friendship of almost forty years gives me a right to appear
as a friend to the deceased on this occasion, and to perform the
office which the rules and the usage of the Senate permit, and which
so many other senators would so cordially and so faithfully perform.
In performing this office, I have, literally, but little less to do
but to second the motion of the senator from Louisiana (Mr. Barrow).
The mover has done ample justice to his great subject. He also had
the advantage of long acquaintance and intimate personal friendship
with the deceased. He also knew him on the banks of the Cumberland,
though too young to belong to the circle of young lawyers and
law students, of which the junior member--the young Alexander
Porter--was the chief ornament and delight. But he knew him--long
and intimately--and has given evidence of that knowledge in the
just, the feeling, the cordial, and impressive eulogium which he has
just delivered on the life and character of his deceased friend and
colleague. He has presented to you the matured _man_, as developed
in his ripe and meridian age: he has presented to you the finished
scholar--the eminent lawyer--the profound judge--the distinguished
senator--the firm patriot--the constant friend--the honorable
man--the brilliant converser--the social, cheerful, witty companion.
He has presented to you the ripe fruit, of which I saw the early
blossom, and of which I felt the assurance more than thirty years
ago, that it would ripen into the golden fruit which we have all
beheld.
Mr. President, this is no vain or empty ceremonial in which the
Senate is now engaged. Honors to the illustrious dead go beyond
the discharge of a debt of justice to them, and the rendition of
consolation to their friends: they become lessons and examples
for the living. The story of their humble beginning and noble
conclusion, is an example to be followed, and an excitement to be
felt. And where shall we find an example more worthy of imitation,
or more full of encouragement, than in the life and character of
Alexander Porter?--a lad of tender age--an orphan with a widowed
mother and younger children--the father martyred in the cause of
freedom--an exile before he was ten years old--an ocean to be
crossed, and a strange land to be seen, and a wilderness of a
thousand miles to be penetrated before he could find a resting-place
for the sole of his foot: then education to be acquired, support
to be earned, and even citizenship to be gained, before he could
make his own talents available to his support: conquering all these
difficulties by his own exertions, and the aid of an affectionate
uncle--(I will name him, for the benefactor of youth deserves to
be named, and named with honor in the highest places)--with no
other aid but that of an uncle's kindness, Mr. Alexander Porter,
sen., merchant of Nashville, also an emigrant from Ireland, and
full of the generous qualities which belong to the children of
that soil: this lad, an exile and an orphan from the Old World,
thus starting in the New World, with every thing to gain before
it could be enjoyed, soon attained every earthly object, either
brilliant or substantial, for which we live and struggle in this
life--honors, fortune, friends; the highest professional and
political distinction; long a supreme judge in his adopted State;
twice a senator in the Congress of the United States--wearing all
his honors fresh and glowing to the last moment of his life--and
the announcement of his death followed by the adjournment of the
two Houses of the American Congress! What a noble and crowning
conclusion to a beginning so humble, and so apparently hopeless!
Honors to such a life--the honors which we now pay to the memory
of Senator Porter--are not mere offerings to the dead, or mere
consolations to the feelings of surviving friends and relations;
they go further, and become incentives and inducements to the
ingenuous youth of the present and succeeding generations,
encouraging their hopes, and firing their spirits with a generous
emulation.
Nor do the benefits of these honors stop with individuals, nor
even with masses, or generations of men. They are not confined to
_persons_, but rise to _institutions_--to the noble republican
institutions under which such things can be! Republican government
itself--that government which holds man together in the proud
state of equality and liberty--this government is benefited by the
exhibition of the examples such as we now celebrate, and by the
rendition of the honors such as we now pay. Our deceased brother
senator has honored and benefited our free republican institutions
by the manner in which he has advanced himself under them; and we
make manifest that benefit by the honors which we pay him. He has
given a practical illustration of the working of our free, and
equal, and elective form of government; and our honors proclaim the
nature of that working. What is done in this chamber is not done in
a corner, but on a lofty eminence, seen of all people. Europe, as
well as America, will see how our form of government has worked in
the person of an orphan exiled boy, seeking refuge in the land which
gives to virtue and talent all that they will ever ask--the free use
of their own exertions for their own advancement.
Our deceased brother was not an American citizen by accident of
birth; he became so by the choice of his own will, and by the
operation of our laws. The events of his life, and the business of
this day, shows this title to citizenship to be as valid in our
America as it was in the great republic of antiquity. I borrow the
thought, not the language of Cicero, in his pleading for the poet
Archias, when I place the citizen who becomes so by law and choice
on an equal footing with the citizen who becomes so by chance. And,
in the instance before us, we may say that our adopted citizen has
repaid us for the liberality of our laws; that he has added to the
stock of our national character by the contributions which he has
brought to it in the purity of his private life, the eminence of
his public services, the ardor of his patriotism, and the elegant
productions of his mind.
And here let me say--and I say it with pride and satisfaction--our
deceased brother senator loved and admired his adopted country,
with a love and admiration increasing with his age, and with his
better knowledge of the countries of the Old World. A few years ago,
and after he had obtained great honor and fortune in this country,
he returned on a visit to his native land, and to the continent
of Europe. It was an occasion of honest exultation for the orphan
emigrant boy to return to the land of his fathers, rich in the goods
of this life, and clothed with the honors of the American Senate.
But the visit was a melancholy one to him. His soul sickened at
the state of his fellow man in the Old World (I had it from his
own lips), and he returned from that visit with stronger feelings
than ever in favor of his adopted country. New honor awaited him
here--that of a second election to the American Senate. But of this
he was not permitted to taste; and the proceedings of this day
announce his second brief elevation to this body, and his departure
from it through the gloomy portals of death, and the radiant temple
of enduring fame.
CHAPTER CXXXI.
NAVAL ACADEMY, AND NAVAL POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES.
By scraps of laws, regulations, and departmental instructions, a
Naval Academy has grown up, and a naval policy become established
for the United States, without the legislative wisdom of the country
having passed upon that policy, and contrary to its previous policy,
and against its interest and welfare. A Naval Academy, with 250
pupils, and annually coming off in scores, makes perpetual demand
for ships and commissions; and these must be furnished, whether
required by the public service or not; and thus the idea of a
limited navy, or of a naval peace establishment, is extinguished;
and a perpetual war establishment in time of peace is growing up
upon our hands. Prone to imitate every thing that was English,
there was a party among us from the beginning which wished to
make the Union, like Great Britain, a great naval power, without
considering that England was an island, with foreign possessions;
which made a navy a necessity of her position and her policy, while
we were a continent, without foreign possessions, to whom a navy
would be an expensive and idle encumbrance; without considering
that England is often by her policy required to be aggressive, the
United States never; without considering that England is a part of
the European system, and subject to wars (to her always maritime)
in which she has no interest, while the United States, in the
isolation of their geographical position, and the independence of
their policy, can have no wars but her own; and those defensive.
On the other hand, there was a large party, and dominant after the
presidential election of 1800, which saw great evil in emulating
Great Britain as a naval power, and made head against that emulation
in all the modes of acting on the public mind: speeches and votes in
Congress, essays, legislative declarations. The most authoritative,
and best considered declaration of the principles of this party,
was made some fifty years ago, in the General Assembly of Virginia,
in the era of her greatest men; and when the minds of these men,
themselves fathers of the State, was most profoundly turned to the
nature, policy, and working of our government. All have heard of the
Virginia resolutions of 1798-'99, to restrain the unconstitutional
and unwise action of the federal government: there were certain
other cotemporaneous resolutions from the same source in relation
to a navy, of which but little has been known; and which, for forty
years, and now, are of more practical importance than the former. In
the session of her legislature, 1799-1800, in their "Instructions to
Senators," that General Assembly said:
"With respect to the navy, it may be proper to remind you, that
whatever may be the proposed object of its establishment, or
whatever may be the prospect of temporary advantages resulting
therefrom, it is demonstrated by the experience of all nations,
which have ventured far into naval policy, that such prospect
is ultimately delusive; and that a navy has ever, in practice,
been known more as an instrument of power, a source of expense,
and an occasion of collisions and of wars with other nations,
than as an instrument of defence, of economy, or of protection
to commerce. Nor is there any nation, in the judgment of this
General Assembly, to whose circumstances these remarks are more
applicable than to the United States."
Such was the voice of the great men of Virginia, some fifty
years ago--the voice of reason and judgment then; and more
just, judicious, and applicable, now, than then. Since that
time the electro-magnetic telegraph, and the steam-car, have
been invented--realizing for defensive war, the idea of the
whole art of war, as conceived and expressed by the greatest of
generals--DIFFUSION FOR SUBSISTENCE: CONCENTRATION FOR ACTION. That
was the language of the Great Emperor: and none but himself could
have so conceived and expressed that idea. And now the ordinary
commander can practise that whole art of war, and without ever
having read a book upon war. He would know what to have done, and
the country would do it. Play the telegraph at the approach of
an invader, and summon the volunteer citizens to meet him at the
water's edge. They would be found at home, diffused for subsistence:
they would concentrate for action, and at the rate of 500 miles
a day, or more if need be. In two days they would come from the
Mississippi to the Atlantic. It would be the mere business of the
accumulation of masses upon a given point, augmenting continually,
and attacking incessantly. Grand tactics, and the "nineteen
manoeuvres," would be unheard of: plain and direct killing would
be the only work. No amount of invading force could sustain itself
a fortnight on any part of our coast. If hundreds of thousands were
not enough to cut them up, millions would come--arms, munitions,
provisions, arriving at the same time. With this defence--cheap,
ready, omnipotent--who, outside of an insane hospital, would think
of building and keeping up eternal fleets to meet the invader and
fight him at sea? The idea would be senseless, if practicable; but
it would be impracticable. There will never be another naval action
fought for the command of the seas. There has been none such fought
since the French and British fleets met off Ouessant, in 1793.
That is the last instance of a naval action fought upon consent:
all the rest have been mere catching and whipping: and there will
never be another. Fleets must approach equality before they can
fight; and with her five hundred men-of-war on hand, Great Britain
is too far ahead to be overtaken by any nation, even if any one was
senseless enough to incur her debt and taxes for the purpose. Look
at Russia: building ships from the time of Peter the Great; and the
first day they were wanted, all useless and a burden! only to be
saved by the strongest fortifications in the world, filled with the
strongest armies of the world! and all burnt, or sunk, that could
not be so protected. Great Britain is compelled by the necessities
of her position, to keep up great fleets: the only way to make head
against them is to avoid swelling their numbers with the fleets of
other nations--avoid the Trafalgars, Aboukirs, Copenhagens, St.
Vincents--and prey upon her with cruisers and privateers. It is the
profound observation of Alison, the English historian of the wars
of the French revolution that the American cruisers did the British
more mischief in their two years' war of 1812, than all the fleets
of France did during their twenty years' war. What a blessing to
our country, if American statesmen could only learn that one little
sentence in Alison.
The war of 1812 taught American statesmen a great lesson; but they
read it backwards, and understood it the reverse of its teaching.
It taught the efficacy of cruising--the inefficacy of fleets.
American cruisers, and privateers, did immense mischief to British
commerce and shipping: British fleets did no mischief to America.
Their cruisers did some mischief--their fleets none. And that is
the way to read the lesson taught by the naval operations of the
war of 1812. Cruisers, to be built when they are needed for use:
not fleets to rot down in peace, while waiting for war. Yet, for
forty years we have been building great ships--frigates equal
to ships of the line: liners, nearly double the old size--120
guns instead of seventy-fours. Eleven of these great liners have
been built, merely to rot! at enormous cost in the building, and
great continual cost to delay the rotting; which, nevertheless,
goes on with the regularity and certainty of time. A judicious
administrative economy would have them all broken up (to say nothing
of others), and the serviceable parts all preserved, to be built
into smaller vessels when there shall be need for them. It is forty
years since this system of building vessels for which there was
no use, took its commencement, and the cry for more is greater
now than it was in the beginning; and must continue. A history of
each ship built in that time--what the building cost? what the
repairs? what the alterations? what the equipment? what the crew?
and how many shot she fired at an enemy? would be a history which
ought to be instructive; for it would show an incredible amount
of money as effectually wasted as if it had been thrown into the
sea. Great as this building and rotting has been for forty years
past, it must continue to become greater. The Naval Academy is
a fruitful mother, bearing 250 embryo officers in her womb at a
time, and all the time; and most of them powerfully connected: and
they must have ships and commissions, when they leave the mother's
breast. They are the children of the country, and must be provided
for--they and their children after them. This academy commits the
government to a great navy, as the Military Academy commits it to
a great army. It is no longer the wants of the country, but of the
_eleves_ of the institution which must be provided for; and routine
officers are to take all the places. Officers are now to be made in
schools, whether they have any vocation for the profession or not;
and slender is the chance of the government to get one that would
ever have gained a commission by his own exertions. This writer
was not a senator for thirty years, and the channel of incessant
applications for cadet and midshipman places, without knowing the
motives on which such applications were made; and these motives may
be found in three classes. First, and most honorable would be the
case of a father, who would say--"I have a son, a bright boy, that
I have been educating for a profession, but his soul is on fire for
the army, or navy, and I have yielded to his wishes, though against
my own, and believe if he gets the place, that he will not dishonor
his country's flag." One of the next class would say--"I have a
son, and he is not a bright boy (meaning that he is a booby), and
cannot take a profession, but he would do very well in the army or
navy." Of the third class, an unhappy father would say--"I have a
son, a smart boy, but wild (meaning he was vicious), and I want to
get him in the army or navy, where he could be disciplined." These,
and the hereditary class (those whose fathers and grandfathers have
been in the service) are the descriptions of applicants for these
appointments; so that, it may be seen, the chances are three or
four to one against getting a suitable subject for an officer; and
of those who are suitable, many resign soon after they have got
educated at public expense, and go into civil life. Routine officers
are, therefore, what may be expected from these schools--officers
whom nature has not licensed, and who keep out of the service those
whom she has. The finest naval officers that the world ever saw,
were bred in the merchant service; and of that England, Holland,
France, Genoa, and Venice, are proofs; and none more so than our own
country. The world never saw a larger proportion of able commanders
than our little navy of the Revolution, and of the Algerine and
Tripolitan wars, and the war of 1812, produced. They all came (but
few exceptions) from the merchant service; and showed an ability and
zeal which no school-house officers will ever equal.
Great Britain keeps up squadrons in time of peace, and which is a
necessity of her insular position, and of her remote possessions:
we must have squadrons also, though no use for them abroad, and
infinitely better to remain in our own ports, and spend the millions
at home which are now spent abroad. There is not a sea in which our
commerce is subject to any danger of a kind which a man-of-war would
prevent, or punish, in which a cruiser would not be sufficient.
All our squadrons are anomalies, and the squadron system should
be broken up. The Home should never have existed, and owes its
origin to the least commendable period of our existence; the same
of the African, conceived at the same time, put upon us by treaty,
under the insidious clause that we could get rid of it in five
years, and which has already continued near three times five; and
which timidity and conservatism will combine to perpetuate--that
timidity which is the child of temporization, and sees danger in
every change. As for the Mediterranean, the Brazil, the Pacific,
the East India squadron, they are mere British imitations without
a reason for the copy, and a pretext for saying the ships are at
sea. The fact is, they are in comfortable stations, doing nothing,
and had far better be at home, and in ordinary. One hundred and
forty court-martials, many dismissions without courts, and two
hundred eliminations at a single dash, proclaim the fact that our
navy is idle! and that this idleness gives rise to dissipation,
to dissensions, to insubordination, to quarrels, to accusations,
to court-martials. The body of naval officers are as good as any
other citizens, but idleness is a destroyer which no body of men
can stand. We have no use for a navy, and never shall have; yet we
continue building ships and breeding officers--the ships to rot--the
officers to become "the cankers of a calm world and a long peace."
The Virginia resolves of 1799-1800 on the subject of a navy, contain
the right doctrine for the United States, even if the state of
the world had remained what it was--even if the telegraph and the
steam-car had not introduced a new era in the art of defensive war.
It is the most expensive and inefficient of all modes of warfare.
Its cost is enormous: its results nothing. A naval victory decides
nothing but which shall have the other's ships.
In the twenty years of the wars of the French revolution, Great
Britain whipped all the inimical fleets she could catch. She got
all their ships; and nothing but their ships. Not one of her naval
victories had the least effect upon the fate of the wars: land
battles alone decided the fate of countries, and commanded the
issues of peace or war. Concluding no war, they are one of the
fruitful sources of beginning wars. Only employed (by those who
possess them) at long intervals, they must be kept up the whole
time. Enormously expensive, the expense is eternal. Armies can be
disbanded--navies must be kept up. Long lists of officers must be
receiving pay when doing nothing. Pensions are inseparable from
the system. Going to sea in time of peace is nothing but visiting
foreign countries at the expense of the government. The annual
expense of our navy now (all the heads of expense incident to the
establishment included) is some fifteen millions of dollars: the
number of men employed, is some 10,000--being at a cost of $1,500
a man, and they nothing to do. The whole number of guns afloat is
some 2,000--which is at the rate of some $9,000 a gun; and they
nothing in the world to shoot at. The expense of a navy is enormous.
The protection of commerce is a phrase incessantly repeated, and
of no application. Commerce wants no protection from men-of-war
except against piratical nations; and they are fewer now than they
were fifty years ago; and some cruisers were then sufficient. The
Mediterranean, which was then the great seat of piracy, is now as
free from it as the Chesapeake Bay is. We have no naval policy--no
system adapted by the legislative wisdom--no peace establishment--no
understood principle of action in relation to a navy. All goes by
fits and starts. A rumor of war is started: more ships are demanded:
a combined interest supports the demand--officers, contractors,
politicians. The war does not come, but the ships are built, and
rot: and so on in a circle without end.
CHAPTER CXXXII.
THE HOME SQUADRON: ITS INUTILITY AND EXPENSE.
Early in the session of '43-'44, Mr. Hale, of New Hampshire, brought
into the House a resolution of inquiry into the origin, use, and
expense of the home squadron: to which Mr. Hamlin, of Maine,
proposed the further inquiry to know what service that squadron had
performed since it had been created. In support of his proposition,
Mr. Hale said:
"He believed they were indebted to this administration for the
home squadron. The whole sixteen vessels which composed that
squadron were said to be necessary to protect the coasting
trade; and though the portion of the country from which he came
was deeply concerned in the coasting trade, yet he himself was
convinced that many of those vessels might be dispensed with.
If this information were laid before the House, they would have
something tangible on which to lay their hands, in the way of
retrenchment and reform. He wanted this information for the
purpose of pointing out to the House where an enormous expense
might be cut down, without endangering any of the interests of
the country. Gentlemen had talked about being prepared with a
sufficient navy to meet and contend with the naval power of
Great Britain; but had they any idea of the outlay which was
required to support such a navy? The expense of the navy of
Great Britain amounted to between eighty and a hundred millions
of dollars annually. We were not in want of such a great naval
establishment to make ourselves respected at home or abroad.
General Jackson alone had produced an impression upon one of
the oldest nations of Europe, which it would be impossible for
this administration to do with the assistance of all the navies
in the world."
Mr. Jared Ingersoll was in favor of retrenchment and economy, but
thought the process ought to begin in the civil and diplomatic
department--in the Congress itself, and in the expenses it allowed
for multiplied missions abroad and incessant changes in the
incumbents. With respect to abuses in the naval expenditures, he
said:--
"He had no knowledge of his own on this subject; but he had
learned from a distinguished officer of the navy, that in
the navy-yards, in the equipment of ships, by the waste and
extravagance caused by allowing officers to rebuild ships when
they pleased, and the loss on the provisions of ships just
returned from sea, which have been taken or thrown away, the
greatest abuses have been practised, which have assisted in
swelling up the naval expenditures to their present enormous
amount."
Mr. Adams differed from Mr. Ingersoll in the scheme of beginning
retrenchment on the civil list, and presented the army and the navy
as the two great objects of wasteful expenditure, and the points at
which reform ought to begin, and especially with retrenching this
home squadron, for which he had voted in 1841, but now condemned. He
said:
"The gentleman gave the House, undoubtedly, a great deal of
instruction as to the manner in which it should carry out
retrenchment and reform, and finally elect a President; but his
remarks did not happen to apply to the motion of the gentleman
from New Hampshire; for he led them away from that motion, and
told them, in substance, that it was not the nine million of
dollars asked for by the Secretary of the Navy--and he did not
know how much asked for the army--that was to be retrenched.
Oh, no! The army and the navy were not the great expenses of
this nation; it was not by curtailing the military and naval
expenditures that economy was to be obtained; but by beginning
with the two Houses of Congress. And what was the comparison,
to come to dollars and cents, between the expenses of that
House and the Navy Department? Why, the gentleman, with all his
exaggerating eloquence, had made the executive, legislative, and
judicial powers of the country, to cost at least two millions of
dollars; while the estimates for the navy were nine millions,
to enable our ships to go abroad and display the stripes and
stars. And for what purpose was it necessary to have this home
squadron? Was the great maritime power of the earth in such a
position towards us as to authorize us to expect a hostile
British squadron on our coasts? No; he believed not. Then
what was this nine millions of dollars wanted for? There was
a statement, two years ago, in the report of the Secretary
of the Navy, in which they were told that our present navy,
in comparison with that of Great Britain, was only as one to
eight--that is, that the British navy was eight times as large
as ours. Now, in that year eight millions of dollars was asked
for for the navy; the report of the present year asks for nine
millions. This report contained the principle that we must go
on to increase our navy until it is at least one-half as large
as that of Great Britain; and what, then, was the proportion
of additional expense we must incur to arrive at that result?
Why, four times eight are thirty-two; so that it will take an
annual expenditure of thirty-two millions to give us a navy
half as large as that of Great Britain. If, however, gentlemen
were to go on in this way, $32,000,000--nay, $50,000,000 would
not be enough to pay the expense of their navy. He expressed
his approval of the resolution of the gentleman from New
Hampshire, and his gratification that it had come from such a
quarter--a quarter which was so deeply interested in having a
due protection for their mercantile navy and their coasting
trade, by the establishment of a home squadron. At the time the
home squadron was first proposed, he was, himself, in favor of
it, and it was adopted with but very little opposition; and
the reason was, because the House did not understand it at
that time. It looked to a war with Great Britain. It looked
more particularly to a war with Great Britain (the honorable
gentleman was understood to say), provided she took the island
of Cuba. He saw no necessity for a large navy, unless it was to
insult other nations, by taking possession of their territory
in time of peace. What was the good, he asked, of a navy which
cost the country $9,000,000 a year, compared with what was done
there in the legislative department of the nation? He expressed
his ardent hope that the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Cave
Johnson], and the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. McKay]--now
the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means--would persevere
in the same spirit that marked their conduct during the last
Congress, and still advocate reductions in the army and the
navy."
Mr. Hale replied to the several gentlemen who, without offering
a word in favor of the utility of this domestic squadron, were
endeavoring to keep it up; and who, without denying the great abuse
and extravagance in the naval disbursements, were endeavoring to
prevent their correction by starting smaller game--and that smaller
game not to be pursued, and bagged, but merely started to prevent
the pursuit of the great monster which was ravaging the fields.
Thus:--
"He believed that the greatest abuses existed in every
department of the government, and that the extravagances of all
required correction. Look at the army of 8,000 men only, kept
up at an expense to the nation of $1,000 for each man. Was not
this a crying abuse that ought to be corrected? Why, if the
proposition had succeeded to increase the army to 20,000 men,
the expenditure at this rate would have been twenty millions
annually. If any gentleman knew of the existence of abuses, let
him bring them to the notice of the House, and he would vote
not only for the proper inquiry into them, but to apply the
remedy. In regard to this home squadron, he begged leave to
disclaim any of the suspicions entertained by the gentleman from
Massachusetts. In offering his resolution he had no reference to
Cuba, or any thing else suggested by the gentleman. He wanted
the House and the country to look at it as the Secretary of the
Navy presented it to their view. As to the pretence that it was
intended for the protection of the coasting trade, it was a most
idle one. He wished the gentlemen from Maine (the State most
largely interested in that trade) to say whether they needed any
such protection. He would answer for them, and say that they did
not. He himself lived among those who were extensively engaged
in the coasting trade, and part of his property was invested
in it. He could, therefore, speak with some knowledge on the
subject; and he hesitated not to say, that the idea of keeping
up this squadron for its protection was a most preposterous
and idle one. Sir, said he, the navy has been the pet child
of the nation, and, like all other pet children, has run away
with the whole patrimonial estate. If it were found that the
best interest of the country required the maintenance of the
home squadron, then he would go for it; but if it were found
to be utterly useless, as he believed, then he was decidedly
against it. But he would give this further notice; that he did
not mean to stop here; that when the appropriations should
come up, he intended to propose to limit those appropriations
to a sum sufficient only to support the squadron stationed in
the Mediterranean. It was entirely useless for this country to
endeavor to contend with monarchies in keeping up the pageantry
of a naval establishment."
The proposed inquiry produced no result, only ending in
demonstrating what was well known to the older members, namely,
the difficulty, and almost impossibility of introducing any
reform, or economy into the administration of any department of
the government unless the Executive takes the lead. And of this
truth a striking instance occurred at this session and upon this
subject. The executive government, that is to say, the President and
his Secretary of the Navy had made a lawless expenditure of about
$700,000 during the recess of Congress; and Congress under a moral
duress, was compelled to adopt that expenditure as its own, and
make it good. When the clause in the naval appropriation bill for
covering this item, was under consideration, Mr. Ezra Dean, of Ohio,
stood up and said:
"It was nothing less than a bill making appropriations to the
amount of $750,000 which had been expended by the department in
virtue of its own will and pleasure, and without the sanction
of any law whatever; and the House was called on to approve
this proceeding. He had supposed that any department which took
upon itself the power of expending the public money, without
authority of law, would have been subjected to the severest
rebuke of Congress. He had supposed that this would have been a
reform Congress, and that all the abuses of this administration
would be ferreted out and corrected; but in this he had been
grievously disappointed. He had endeavored to get the consent
of the House to take up the navy retrenchment bill, which would
correct all these abuses, but he had been mistaken; and so far
from being able to get the bill before the House, he had been
unable even to get the yeas and nays on the question of taking
it up. There was great reason for this. This Navy Department
had been for the last two years the great vortex which had
swallowed up two-thirds of the revenues of the government. In
1840, a law was passed that no money should be expended for the
building of ships without the express sanction of Congress; and
yet, in defiance of this law, the Navy Department had gone on
to build an iron steamship at Pittsburg, and six sloops-of-war;
and he was told that part of the appropriations in this bill
were to complete these vessels. Mr. D. then spoke of the utter
uselessness of these steamships on the western waters, and
referred to the number of ships that were now rotting for
want of use, both on the stocks and laid up in ordinary; and
particularly referred to the magnificent ship Delaware, which
had just returned from a cruise, and was dismantled, and laid
up to rot at Norfolk, while the department was clamorous for
building more ships. There were not only more ships now built
and building than could be used, but there were three times as
many officers as could be employed. There were 96 commanders,
with salaries of $3,500 a-year, while there was only employment
for 38 of them; and there were 68 captains, while there was
only employment for but 18. He then referred to the number of
officers waiting orders, and on leave of absence, and said
that the country would be astonished to learn, that for such
officers, the country was now paying $283,700 a year; and that,
by referring to the records of the Navy Department, it would
be found that for the last twenty years, more than half of the
officers of the navy were drawing their pay and emoluments
while at home, on leave of absence, or waiting orders. Mr. D.
spoke of many other abuses in the navy, which he said required
correction, and expressed his great regret that he had not been
able to get the House to act on his navy retrenchment bill."
Mr. McKay, of North Carolina, who was the chairman of the Committee
of Ways and Means, whose duty it became to present this item in the
appropriation bill, fully admitted its illegality and wastefulness;
but plead the necessity of providing for its payment, as the
money had been earned by work and labor done on the faith of the
government, and to withhold payment would be a wrong to laborers,
and no punishment to the officers who had occasioned the illegal
expenditure. A high officer had done this wrong. He was ready to
join in a vote of censure upon him: but to repudiate the debt, and
leave laboring people without pay for their work and materials was
what he could not do. And thus ended the session with sanctioning an
abuse of $700,000 in one item in the navy, which session had opened
with a manly attempt to correct some of its extravagances. And thus
have ended all similar attempts since. A powerful combined interest
pushes forward an augmented navy, without regard to any object
but their own interest in it. First, the politicians who raise a
clamor of war at the return of each presidential canvass, and a
cry for ships to carry it on. Next, the naval officers, who are
always in favor of more ships to give more commands. And, thirdly,
the contractors who are to build these ships, and get rich upon
their contracts. These three parties combine to build ships, and
Congress becomes a helpless instrument in their hands. The friends
of economy, and of a wise national policy, which prefers cruisers
and privateers to ships of the line, may deliver their complaints
in vain. Ship building, and ship rotting, goes on unchecked, and
even with accelerated speed; and must continue to so go on until
the enormity of the abuse produces a revulsion which, in curing the
abuse may nearly kill the navy itself.
CHAPTER CXXXIII.
PROFESSOR MORSE: HIS ELECTRO-MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH.
Communication of intelligence by concerted signals is as old as the
human race, and by all, except the white race, remains where it was
six thousand years ago. The smokes raised on successive hills to
give warning of the approach of strangers, or enemies, were found
to be the same by Frémont in his western explorations which were
described by Herodotus as used for the same purpose by the barbarian
nations of his time: the white race alone has made advances upon
that rude and imperfect mode of communication, and brought the art
to a marvellous perfection, but only after the intervention of
thousands of years. It was not until the siege of Vienna by the
Turks, that the very limited intelligence between the besieged in a
city and their friends outside, was established by the telegraph:
and it was not until the breaking out of the French revolution that
that mode of intelligence was applied to the centre and to the
circumference of a country: and at that point it was stationary
for fifty years. It was reserved for our own day, and our own
country to make the improvement which annihilates distance, which
disregards weather and darkness, and which rivals the tongue and the
pen in the precision and infinitude of its messages. Dr. Franklin
first broached the idea of using electricity for communicating
intelligence: Professor Morse gave practical application to his
idea. This gentleman was a portrait painter by profession, and had
been to Europe to perfect himself in his art. Returning in the
autumn of 1832, and while making the voyage, the recent discoveries
and experiments in electro-magnetism, and the affinity of
electricity to magnetism, or rather their probable identity, became
a subject of casual conversation between himself and a few of the
passengers. It had recently been discovered that an electric spark
could be obtained from a magnet, and this discovery had introduced a
new branch of science, to wit: magneto-electricity. Dr. Franklin's
experiments on the velocity of electricity, exceeding that of
light, and exceeding 180,000 miles in a moment, the feasibility
of making electricity the means of telegraphic intercourse, that
is to say of writing at a distance, struck him with great force,
and became the absorbing subject of his meditations. The idea of
telegraphing by electricity was new to him. Fortunately he did not
know that some eminent philosophers had before conceived the same
idea, but without inventing a plan by which the thought could be
realized. Knowing nothing of their ideas, he was not embarrassed
or impeded by the false lights of their mistakes. As the idea
was original with him, so was his plan. All previous modes of
telegraphing had been by evanescent signs: the distinctive feature
of Morse's plan was the self-recording property of the apparatus,
with its ordinarily inseparable characteristic of audible clicks,
answering the purposes of speech; for, in impressing the characters,
the sounds emitted by the machinery gave notice of each that was
struck, as well understood by the practised ear as the recorded
language was by the eye. In this he became the inventor of a new
art--the art of telegraphic recording, or imprinting characters
telegraphically.
Mr. Morse then had his invention complete in his head, and his labor
then begun to construct the machinery and types to reduce it to
practice, in which having succeeded to the entire satisfaction of a
limited number of observers in the years 1836 and '37, he laid it
before Congress in the year 1838, made an exhibit of its working
before a committee, and received a favorable report. Much time was
then lost in vain efforts to procure patents in England and France,
and returning to Congress in 1842, an appropriation of $30,000 was
asked for to enable the inventor to test his discovery on a line of
forty miles, between Washington and Baltimore. The appropriation
was granted--the preparations completed by the spring of 1844, and
messages exchanged instantaneously between the two points. The line
was soon extended to New York, and since so multiplied, that the
Morse electro-magnetic telegraph now works over 80,000 miles in
America and 50,000 in Europe. It is one of the marvellous results of
science, putting people who are thousands of miles apart in instant
communication with the accuracy of a face to face conversation. Its
wonderful advantages are felt in social, political, commercial and
military communications, and, in conjunction with the steam car, is
destined to work a total revolution in the art of defensive warfare.
It puts an end to defensive war on the ocean, to the necessity of
fortifications, except to delay for a few days the bombardment
of a city. The approach of invaders upon any point, telegraphed
through the country, brings down in the flying cars myriads of
citizen soldiers, arms in hand and provisions in abundance, to
overwhelm with numbers any possible invading force. It will dispense
with fleets and standing armies, and all the vast, cumbrous, and
expensive machinery of a modern army. Far from dreading an invasion,
the telegraph and the car may defy and dare it--may invite any
number of foreign troops to land--and assure the whole of them of
death or captivity, from myriads of volunteers launched upon them
hourly from the first moment of landing until the last invader is a
corpse or a prisoner.
CHAPTER CXXXIV.
FREMONT'S SECOND EXPEDITION.
"The government deserves credit for the zeal with which it has
pursued geographical discovery." Such is the remark which a leading
paper made upon the discoveries of Frémont, on his return from his
second expedition to the Great West; and such is the remark which
all writers will make upon all his discoveries who write history
from public documents and outside views. With all such writers
the expeditions of Frémont will be credited to the zeal of the
government for the promotion of science; as if the government under
which he acted had conceived and planned these expeditions, as Mr.
Jefferson did that of Lewis and Clark, and then selected this young
officer to carry into effect the instructions delivered to him. How
far such history would be true in relation to the first expedition,
which terminated in the Rocky Mountains, has been seen in the
account which has been given of the origin of that undertaking,
and which leaves the government innocent of its conception; and,
therefore, not entitled to the credit of its authorship, but
only to the merit of permitting it. In the second, and greater
expedition, from which great political as well as scientific
results have flowed, their merit is still less; for, while equally
innocent of its conception, they were not equally passive to its
performance--countermanding the expedition after it had begun;
and lavishing censure upon the adventurous young explorer for his
manner of undertaking it. The fact was, that his first expedition
barely finished, Mr. Frémont sought and obtained orders for a
second one, and was on the frontier of Missouri with his command
when orders arrived at St. Louis to stop him, on the ground that
he had made a military equipment which the peaceful nature of his
geographical pursuit did not require! as if Indians did not kill and
rob scientific men as well as others if not in a condition to defend
themselves. The particular point of complaint was that he had taken
a small mountain howitzer, in addition to his rifles: and which, he
was informed, was charged to him, although it had been furnished
upon a regular requisition on the commandant of the Arsenal at
St. Louis, approved by the commander of the military department
(Colonel, afterwards General Kearney). Mr. Frémont had left St.
Louis, and was at the frontier, Mrs. Frémont being requested to
examine the letters that came after him, and forward those which he
ought to receive. She read the countermanding orders, and detained
them! and Frémont knew nothing of their existence until after he had
returned from one of the most marvellous and eventful expeditions
of modern times--one to which the United States are indebted (among
other things) for the present ownership of California, instead of
seeing it a British possession. The writer of this View, who was
then in St. Louis, approved of the course which his daughter had
taken (for she had stopped the orders before he knew of it); and he
wrote a letter to the department condemning the recall, repulsing
the reprimand which had been lavished upon Frémont, and demanding a
court-martial for him when he should return. The Secretary at War
was then Mr. James Madison Porter, of Pennsylvania; the chief of the
Topographical corps the same as now (Colonel Aberts), himself an
office man, surrounded by West Point officers, to whose pursuit of
easy service Frémont's adventurous expeditions was a reproach; and
in conformity to whose opinions the secretary seemed to have acted.
On Frémont's return, upwards of a year afterwards, Mr. William
Wilkins, of Pennsylvania, was Secretary at War, and received the
young explorer with all honor and friendship, and obtained for him
the brevet of captain from President Tyler. And such is the inside
view of this piece of history--very different from what documentary
evidence would make it.
To complete his survey across the continent, on the line of travel
between the State of Missouri and the tide-water region of the
Columbia, was Frémont's object in this expedition; and it was all
that he had obtained orders for doing; but only a small part, and to
his mind, an insignificant part, of what he proposed doing. People
had been to the mouth of the Columbia before, and his ambition was
not limited to making tracks where others had made them before
him. There was a vast region beyond the Rocky Mountains--the whole
western slope of our continent--of which but little was known; and
of that little, nothing with the accuracy of science. All that
vast region, more than seven hundred miles square--equal to a
great kingdom in Europe--was an unknown land--a sealed book, which
he longed to open, and to read. Leaving the frontier of Missouri
in May, 1843, and often diverging from his route for the sake of
expanding his field of observation, he had arrived in the tide-water
region of Columbia in the month of November; and had then completed
the whole service which his orders embraced. He might then have
returned upon his tracks, or been brought home by sea, or hunted the
most pleasant path for getting back; and if he had been a routine
officer, satisfied with fulfilling an order, he would have done
so. Not so the young explorer who held his diploma from Nature,
and not from the United States' Military Academy. He was at Fort
Vancouver, guest of the hospitable Dr. McLaughlin, Governor of the
British Hudson Bay Fur Company; and obtained from him all possible
information upon his intended line of return--faithfully given,
but which proved to be disastrously erroneous in its leading and
governing feature. A southeast route to cross the great unknown
region diagonally through its heart (making a line from the Lower
Columbia to the Upper Colorado of the Gulf of California), was his
line of return: twenty-five men (the same who had come with him
from the United States) and a hundred horses, were his equipment;
and the commencement of winter the time of starting--all with out a
guide, relying upon their guns for support; and, in the last resort,
upon their horses--such as should give out! for one that could carry
a man, or a pack, could not be spared for food.
All the maps up to that time had shown this region traversed from
east to west--from the base of the Rocky Mountains to the Bay of San
Francisco--by a great river called the _Buena Ventura_: which may be
translated, the _Good Chance_. Governor McLaughlin believed in the
existence of this river, and made out a conjectural manuscript map
to show its place and course. Frémont believed in it, and his plan
was to reach it before the dead of winter, and then hybernate upon
it. As a great river, he knew that it must have some rich bottoms;
covered with wood and grass, where the wild animals would collect
and shelter, when the snows and freezing winds drove them from the
plains: and with these animals to live on, and grass for the horses,
and wood for fires, he expected to avoid suffering, if not to enjoy
comfort, during his solitary sojourn in that remote and profound
wilderness. He proceeded--soon encountered deep snows which impeded
progress upon the high lands--descended into a low country to the
left (afterwards known to be the Great Basin, from which no water
issues to any sea)--skirted an enormous chain of mountain on the
right, luminous with glittering white snow--saw strange Indians, who
mostly fled--found a desert--no Buena Ventura: and death from cold
and famine staring him in the face. The failure to find the river,
or tidings of it, and the possibility of its existence seeming to
be forbid by the structure of the country, and hybernation in the
inhospitable desert being impossible, and the question being that
of life and death, some new plan of conduct became indispensable.
His celestial observations told him that he was in the latitude of
the Bay of San Francisco, and only seventy miles from it. But what
miles! up and down that snowy mountain which the Indians told him
no men could cross in the winter--which would have snow upon it as
deep as the trees, and places where people would slip off, and fall
half a mile at a time;--a fate which actually befell a mule, packed
with the precious burden of botanical specimens, collected along a
travel of two thousand miles. No reward could induce an Indian to
become a guide in the perilous adventure of crossing this mountain.
All recoiled and fled from the adventure. It was attempted without
a guide--in the dead of winter--accomplished in forty days--the men
and surviving horses--a woful procession, crawling along one by
one: skeleton men leading skeleton horses--and arriving at Suter's
Settlement in the beautiful valley of the Sacramento; and where a
genial warmth, and budding flowers, and trees in foliage, and grassy
ground, and flowing streams, and comfortable food, made a fairy
contrast with the famine and freezing they had encountered, and the
lofty _Sierra Nevada_ which they had climbed. Here he rested and
recruited; and from this point, and by way of Monterey, the first
tidings were heard of the party since leaving Fort Vancouver.
Another long progress to the south, skirting the western base of
the Sierra Nevada, made him acquainted with the noble valley of the
San Joaquin, counterpart to that of the Sacramento; when crossing
through a gap and turning to the left, he skirted the Great Basin;
and, by many deviations from the right line home, levied incessant
contributions to science from expanded lands, not described before.
In this eventful exploration all the great features of the western
slope of our continent were brought to light--the Great Salt Lake,
the Utah Lake, the Little Salt Lake; at all which places, then
desert, the Mormons now are; the Sierra Nevada, then solitary in the
snow, now crowded with Americans, digging gold from its flanks; the
beautiful valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquin, then alive with
wild horses, elk, deer, and wild fowls, now smiling with American
cultivation; the Great Basin itself, and its contents; the Three
Parks; the approximation of the great rivers which, rising together
in the central region of the Rocky Mountains, go off east and west,
towards the rising and the setting sun:--all these, and other
strange features of a new region, more Asiatic than American, were
brought to light, and revealed to public view in the results of this
exploration. Eleven months he was never out of sight of snow; and
sometimes, freezing with cold, would look down upon a sunny valley,
warm with genial heat;--sometimes panting with the summer's heat,
would look up at the eternal snows which crowned the neighboring
mountain. But it was not then that California was secured to the
Union--to the greatest power of the New World--to which it of right
belonged: but it was the first step towards the acquisition, and
the one that led to it. That second expedition led to a third,
just in time to snatch the golden California from the hands of the
British, ready to clutch it. But of this hereafter. Frémont's second
expedition was now over. He had left the United States a fugitive
from his government, and returned with a name that went over Europe
and America, and with discoveries bearing fruit which the civilized
world is now enjoying.
CHAPTER CXXXV.
TEXAS ANNEXATION: SECRET ORIGIN; BOLD INTRIGUE FOR THE PRESIDENCY.
In the winter of 1842-'3, nearly two years before the presidential
election, there appeared in a Baltimore newspaper an elaborately
composed letter on the annexation of Texas, written by Mr. Gilmer, a
member of Congress from Virginia, urging the immediate annexation,
as necessary to forestall the designs of Great Britain upon that
young country. These designs, it was alleged, aimed at a political
and military domination on our south-western border, with a view to
abolition and hostile movements against us; and the practical part
of the letter was an earnest appeal to the American people to annex
the Texas republic immediately, as the only means of preventing
such great calamities. This letter was a clap of thunder in a clear
sky. There was nothing in the political horizon to announce or
portend it. Great Britain had given no symptom of any disposition
to war upon us, or to excite insurrection among our slaves. Texas
and Mexico were at war, and to annex the country was to adopt the
war: far from hastening annexation, an event desirable in itself
when it could be honestly done, a premature and ill-judged attempt,
upon groundless pretexts, could only clog and delay it. There was
nothing in the position of Mr. Gilmer to make him a prime mover
in the annexation scheme; and there was much in his connections
with Mr. Calhoun to make him the reflector of that gentleman's
opinions. The letter itself was a counterpart of the movement made
by Mr. Calhoun in the Senate, in 1836, to bring the Texas question
into the presidential election of that year; its arguments were
the amplification of the seminal ideas then presented by that
gentleman: and it was his known habit to operate through others. Mr.
Gilmer was a close political friend, and known as a promulgator of
his doctrines--having been the first to advocate nullification in
Virginia.
Putting all these circumstances together, I believed, the moment
I saw it, that I discerned the finger of Mr. Calhoun in that
letter, and that an enterprise of some kind was on foot for the
next presidential election--though still so far off. I therefore
put an eye on the movement, and by observing the progress of the
letter, the papers in which it was republished, their comments, the
encomiums which it received, and the public meetings in which it was
commended, I became satisfied that there was no mistake in referring
its origin to that gentleman; and became convinced that this
movement was the resumption of the premature and abortive attempt
of 1836. In the course of the summer of 1843, it had been taken up
generally in the circle of Mr. Calhoun's friends, and with the zeal
and pertinacity which betrayed the spirit of a presidential canvass.
Coincident with these symptoms, and indicative of a determined
movement on the Texas question, was a pregnant circumstance in
the executive branch of the government. Mr. Webster, who had been
prevailed upon to remain in Mr. Tyler's cabinet when all his
colleagues of 1841 left their places, now resigned his place,
also--induced, as it was well known, by the altered deportment of
the President towards him; and was succeeded first by Mr. Legare, of
South Carolina, and, on his early death, by Mr. Upshur, of Virginia.
Mr. Webster was inflexibly opposed to the Texas annexation, and also
to the presidential elevation of Mr. Calhoun; the two gentlemen,
his successors, were both favorable to annexation, and one (Mr.
Upshur) extremely so to Mr. Calhoun; so that, here were two steps
taken in the suspected direction--an obstacle removed and a facility
substituted. This change in the head of the State Department, upon
whatever motive produced, was indispensable to the success of the
Texas movement, and could only have been made for some great cause
never yet explained, seeing the service which Mr. Webster did Mr.
Tyler in remaining with him when the other ministers withdrew.
Another sign appeared in the conduct of the President himself. He
was undergoing another change. Long a democrat, and successful in
getting office at that, he had become a whig, and with still greater
success. Democracy had carried him to the Senate; whiggism elevated
him to the vice-presidency; and, with the help of an accident, to
the presidency. He was now settling back, as shown in a previous
chapter, towards his original party, but that wing of it which had
gone off with Mr. Calhoun in the nullification war--a natural line
of retrogression on his part, as he had travelled it in his transit
from the democratic to the whig camp. The papers in his interest
became rampant for Texas; and in the course of the autumn, the rumor
became current and steady that negotiations were in progress for the
annexation, and that success was certain.
Arriving at Washington at the commencement of the session of
1843-'44, and descending the steps of the Capitol in a throng of
members on the evening of the first day's sitting, I was accosted
by Mr. Aaron V. Brown, a representative from Tennessee, with
expressions of great gratification at meeting with me so soon;
and who immediately showed the cause of his gratification to be
the opportunity it afforded him to speak to me on the subject of
the Texas annexation. He spoke of it as an impending and probable
event--complimented me on my early opposition to the relinquishment
of that country, and my subsequent efforts to get it back, and
did me the honor to say that, as such original enemy to its loss
and early advocate of its recovery, I was a proper person to
take a prominent part in now getting it back. All this was very
civil and quite reasonable, and, at another time and under other
circumstances, would have been entirely agreeable to me; but
preoccupied as my mind was with the idea of an intrigue for the
presidency, and a land and scrip speculation which I saw mixing
itself up with it, and feeling as if I was to be made an instrument
in these schemes, I took fire at his words, and answered abruptly
and hotly: _That it was, on the part of some, an intrigue for the
presidency and a plot to dissolve the Union--on the part of others,
a Texas scrip and land speculation; and that I was against it._
This answer went into the newspapers, and was much noticed at
the time, and immediately set up a high wall between me and the
annexation party. I had no thought at the time that Mr. Brown had
been moved by anybody to sound me, and presently regretted the
warmth with which I had replied to him--especially as no part of
what I said was intended to apply to him. The occurrence gave rise
to some sharp words at one another afterwards, which, so far as they
were sharp on my part, I have since condemned, and do not now repeat.
Some three months afterwards there appeared in the _Richmond
Enquirer_ a letter from General Jackson to Mr. Brown, in answer to
one from Mr. Brown to the general, covering a copy of Mr. Gilmer's
Texas letter, and asking the favor of his (the general's) opinion
upon it: which he promptly and decidedly gave, and fully in favor
of its object. Here was a revelation and a coincidence which
struck me, and put my mind to thinking, and opened up a new vein
of exploration, into which I went to work, and worked on until I
obtained the secret history of the famous "Jackson Texas letter" (as
it came to be called), and which played so large a part in the Texas
annexation question, and in the presidential election of 1844; and
which drew so much applause upon the general from many who had so
lately and so bitterly condemned him. This history I now propose to
give, confining the narrative to the intrigue for the presidential
nomination, leaving the history of the attempted annexation (treaty
of 1844) for a separate chapter, or rather chapters; for it was an
enterprise of many aspects, according to the taste of different
actors--presidential, disunion, speculation.
The outline of this history--that of the letter--is brief and
authentic; and, although well covered up at the time, was known to
too many to remain covered up long. It was partly made known to me
at the time, and fully since. It runs thus:
Mr. Calhoun, in 1841-'2, had resumed his design (intermitted in
1840) to stand for the presidency, and determined to make the
annexation of Texas--immediate annexation--the controlling issue
in the election. The death of President Harrison in 1841, and the
retreat of his whig ministers, and the accession of his friends to
power in the person of Mr. Tyler (then settling back to his old
love), and in the persons of some of his cabinet, opened up to his
view the prospect of a successful enterprise in that direction; and
he fully embraced it, and without discouragement from the similar
budding hopes of Mr. Tyler himself, which it was known would be
without fruit, except what Mr. Calhoun would gather--the ascendant
of his genius assuring him the mastery when he should choose to
assume it. His real competitors (foreseen to be Mr. Van Buren and
Mr. Clay) were sure to be against it--immediate annexation--and they
would have a heavy current to encounter, all the South and West
being for the annexation, and a strong interest, also, in other
parts of the Union. There was a basis to build upon in the honest
feelings of the people, and inflammatory arguments to excite them;
and if the opinion of General Jackson could be obtained in its
favor, the election of the annexation candidate was deemed certain.
With this view the Gilmer letter was composed and published, and
sent to him--and was admirably conceived for his purpose. It took
the veteran patriot on the side of his strong feelings--love of
country and the Union--distrust of Great Britain--and a southern
susceptibility to the dangers of a servile insurrection. It carried
him back to the theatre of his glory--the Lower Mississippi--and
awakened his apprehensions for the safety of that most vulnerable
point of our frontier. Justly and truly, but with a refinement of
artifice in this case, it presented annexation as a strengthening
plaster to the Union, while really intended to sectionalize it,
and to effect disunion if the annexation failed. This idea of
strengthening the Union had, and in itself deserved to have, an
invincible charm for the veteran patriot. Besides, the recovery of
Texas was in the line of his policy, pursued by him as a favorite
object during his administration; and this desire to get back that
country, patriotic in itself, was entirely compatible with his
acquiescence in its relinquishment as a temporary sacrifice in 1819;
an acquiescence induced by the "_domestic_" reason communicated to
him by Mr. Monroe.
The great point in sending the Gilmer letter to him, with its
portents of danger from British designs, was to obtain from him
the expression of an opinion in favor of "immediate" annexation.
No other opinion would do any good. A future annexation, no
matter how soon after 1844, would carry the question beyond the
presidential election, and would fall in with the known opinions of
Mr. Van Buren and Mr. Clay, and most other American statesmen, the
common sentiment being for annexation, when it could be honestly
accomplished. Such annexation would make no issue at all. It would
throw Texas out of the canvass. Immediate was, therefore, the game;
and to bring General Jackson to that point was the object. To do
that, the danger of British occupation was presented as being
so imminent as to admit of no delay, and so disastrous in its
consequences as to preclude all consideration of present objections.
It was a bold conception, and of critical execution. Jackson was one
of the last men in the world to be tampered with--one of the last to
be used against a friend or for a foe--the very last to be willing
to see Mr. Calhoun President--and the very first in favor of Mr. Van
Buren. To turn him against his nature and his feelings in all these
particulars was a perilous enterprise: but it was attempted--and
accomplished.
It has already been shown that the letter of Mr. Gilmer was
skilfully composed for its purpose: all the accessories of its
publication and transmission to General Jackson were equally
skilfully contrived. It was addressed to a friend in Maryland, which
was in the opposite direction from the _locus_ of its origin. It
was drawn out upon the call of a friend: that is the technical way
of getting a private letter before the public. It was published
in Baltimore--a city where its writer did not live. The name of
the friend in Maryland who drew it out, was concealed; and that
was necessary to the success of the scheme, as the name of this
suspected friend (Mr. Duff Green) would have fastened its origin
on Mr. Calhoun. And thus the accessories of the publication were
complete, and left the mind without suspicion that the letter had
germinated in a warm southern latitude. It was then ready to start
on its mission to General Jackson; but how to get it there, without
exciting suspicion, was the question. Certainly Mr. Gilmer would
have been the natural agent for the transmission of his own letter;
but he stood too close to Mr. Calhoun--was too much his friend and
intimate--to make that a safe adventure. A medium was wanted, which
would be a conductor of the letter and a non-conductor of suspicion;
and it was found in the person of Mr. Aaron V. Brown. But he was
the friend of Mr. Van Buren, and it was necessary to approach him
through a medium also, and one was found in one of Mr. Gilmer's
colleagues--believed to be Mr. Hopkins, of the House, who came from
near the Tennessee line; and through him the letter reached Mr.
Brown.
And thus, conceived by one, written by another, published by a
third, and transmitted through two successive mediums, the missive
went upon its destination, and arrived safely in the hands of
General Jackson. It had a complete success. He answered it promptly,
warmly, decidedly, affirmatively. So fully did it put him up to the
point of "immediate" annexation, that his impatience outstripped
expectation. He counselled haste--considered the present the
accepted time--and urged the seizure of the "golden opportunity"
which, if lost now, might never return. The answer was dated at the
Hermitage, March 12th, 1843, and was received at Washington as soon
as the mail could fetch it. Of course it came to Mr. Brown, to whom
it belonged, and to whom it was addressed; but I did not hear of it
in his hands. My first information of it was in the hands of Mr.
Gilmer, in the hall of the House, immediately after its arrival--he,
crossing the hall with the letter in his hand, greatly elated, and
showing it to a confidential friend, with many expressions of now
confident triumph over Mr. Van Buren. The friend was permitted to
read the letter, but with the understanding that nothing was to be
said about it at that time.
_Mr. Gilmer then explained to his friend the purpose for which this
letter had been written and sent to General Jackson, and the use
that was intended to be made of his answer (if favorable to the
design of the authors), which use was this: It was to be produced
in the nominating convention, to overthrow Mr. Van Buren, and give
Mr. Calhoun the nomination, both of whom were to be interrogated
beforehand; and as it was well known what the answers would
be--Calhoun for and Van Buren against immediate annexation--and
Jackson's answer coinciding with Calhoun's, would turn the scale in
his favor, "and blow Van Buren sky high."_
This was the plan, and this the state of the game, at the end of
February, 1843; but a great deal remained to be done to perfect the
scheme. The sentiment of the democratic party was nearly unanimous
for Mr. Van Buren, and time was wanted to undermine that sentiment.
Public opinion was not yet ripe for immediate annexation, and time
was wanted to cultivate that opinion. There was no evidence of
any British domination or abolition plot in Texas, and time was
wanted to import one from London. All these operations required
time--more of it than intervened before the customary period for
the meeting of the convention. That period had been the month of
December preceding the year of the election, and Baltimore the
place for these assemblages since Congress presidential caucuses
had been broken down--that near position to Washington being chosen
for the convenient attendance of that part of the members of
Congress who charged themselves with these elections. If December
remained the period for the meeting, there would be no time for the
large operations which required to be performed; for, to get the
delegates there in time, they must be elected beforehand, during
the summer--so that the working season of the intriguers would
be reduced to a few months, when upwards of a year was required.
To gain that time was the first object, and a squad of members,
some in the interest of Mr. Calhoun, some professing friendship
to Mr. Van Buren, but secretly hostile to him, sat privately in
the Capitol, almost nightly, corresponding with all parts of the
country, to get the convention postponed. All sorts of patriotic
motives were assigned for this desired postponement, as that it
would be more convenient for the delegates to attend--nearer to the
time of election--more time for public opinion to mature; and most
favorable to deliberate decision. But another device was fallen
upon to obtain delay, the secret of which was not put into the
letters, nor confided to the body of the nightly committee. It had
so happened that the opposite party--the whigs--since the rout of
the Congress presidential caucuses, had also taken the same time and
place for their conventions--December, and Baltimore--and doubtless
for the same reason, that of the more convenient attending of the
President-making members of Congress; and this led to an intrigue
with the whigs, the knowledge of which was confined to a very few.
It was believed that the democratic convention could be the more
readily put off if the whigs would do the like--and do it first.
There was a committee within the committee--a little nest of head
managers--who undertook this collusive arrangement with the whigs.
They proposed it to them, professing to act in the interest of Mr.
Calhoun, though in fact against him, as well as against Mr. Van
Buren. The whigs readily agreed to this proposal, because, being
themselves then unanimous for Mr. Clay, it made no difference at
what time he should be nominated; and believing they could more
easily defeat Mr. Calhoun than Mr. Van Buren, they preferred him
for an antagonist. They therefore agreed to the delay, and both
conventions were put off (and the whigs first, to enable the
democrats to plead it) from December, 1843, to May, 1844. Time for
operating having now been gained, the night squad in the Capitol
redoubled their activity to work upon the people. Letter writers
and newspapers were secured. Good, easy members, were plied with
specious reasons--slippery ones were directly approached. Visitors
from the States were beset and indoctrinated. Men were picked out
to operate on the selfish, and the calculating; and myriads of
letters were sent to the States, to editors, and politicians. All
these agents worked to a pattern, the primary object being to undo
public sentiment in favor of Mr. Van Buren, and to manufacture one,
ostensibly in favor of Mr. Calhoun, but in reality without being
for him--they being for any one of four (Mr. Cass, Mr. Buchanan,
Colonel Johnson, Mr. Tyler), in preference to either of them. They
were for neither, and the only difference was that Mr. Calhoun
believed they were for him: Mr. Van Buren knew they were against
him. They professed friendship for him; and that was necessary to
enable them to undermine him. The stress of the argument against
him was that he could not be elected, and the effort was to make
good that assertion. Now, or never, was the word with respect to
Texas. Some of the squad sympathized with the speculators in Texas
land and scrip; and to these Mr. Calhoun was no more palatable than
Mr. Van Buren. They were both above plunder. Some wanted office,
and knew that neither of these gentlemen would give it to them.
They had a difficult as well as tortuous part to play. Professing
democracy, they colluded with whigs. Professing friendship to Mr.
Van Buren, they co-operated with Mr. Calhoun's friends to defeat
him. Co-operating with Mr. Calhoun's friends, they were against
his election. They were for any body in preference to either,
and especially for men of easy temperaments, whose principles
were not entrenched behind strong wills. To undo public sentiment
in favor of Mr. Van Buren was their labor; to get unpledged and
uninstructed delegates into convention, and to get those released
who had been appointed under instructions, was the consummation
of their policy. A convention untrammelled by instructions,
independent of the people, and open to the machinations of a few
politicians, was what was wanted. The efforts to accomplish these
purposes were prodigious, and constituted the absorbing night
and day work of the members engaged in it. After all, they had
but indifferent success--more with politicians and editors than
with the people. Mr. Van Buren was almost universally preferred.
Delegates were generally instructed to support his nomination. Even
in the Southern States, in direct question between himself and
Mr. Calhoun, he was preferred--as in Alabama and Mississippi. No
delegates were released from their instructions by any competent
authority, and only a few in any, by clusters of local politicians,
convenient to the machinations of the committee in the Capitol--as
at Shockoe Hill, Richmond, Virginia, where Mr. Ritchie, editor of
the _Enquirer_ (whose proclivity to be deceived in a crisis was
generally equivalent in its effects to positive treachery), led the
way--himself impelled by others.
The labors of the committee, though intended to be secret, and
confined to a small circle, and chiefly carried on in the night,
were subject to be discovered; and were so; and the discovery led
to some public denunciations. The two senators from Ohio, Messrs.
William Allen, and Tappan, and ten of the representatives from that
State, published a card in the _Globe_ newspaper, denouncing it as
a conspiracy to defeat the will of the people. The whole delegation
from South Carolina (Messrs. McDuffie and Huger, senators, and
the seven representatives), fearing that they might be suspected
on account of their friendship for Mr. Calhoun, published a
card denying all connection with the committee; an unnecessary
precaution, as their characters were above that suspicion. Many
other members published cards, denying their participation in
these meetings; and some, admitting the participation, denied
the intrigue, and truly, as it concerned themselves; for all
the disreputable part was kept secret from them--especially the
collusion with the whigs, and all the mysteries of the Gilmer
letter. Many of them were sincere friends of Mr. Van Buren, but
deceived and cheated themselves, while made the instrument of
deceiving and cheating others. It was probably one of the most
elaborate pieces of political cheatery that has ever been performed
in a free country, and well worthy to be studied by all who would
wish to extend their knowledge of the manner in which presidential
elections may be managed, and who would wish to see the purity of
elections preserved and vindicated.
About this time came an occurrence well calculated to make a pause,
if any thing could make a pause, in the working of political
ambition. The explosion of the great gun on board the Princeton
steamer took place, killing, among others, two of Mr. Tyler's
cabinet (Mr. Upshur and Mr. Gilmer), both deeply engaged in the
Texas project--barely failing to kill Mr. Tyler, who was called back
in the critical moment, and who had embraced the Texas scheme with
more than vicarious zeal; and also barely failing to kill the writer
of this View, who was standing at the breech of the gun, closely
observing its working, as well as that of the Texas game, and who
fell among the killed and stunned, fortunately to rise again.
Commodore Kennon, Mr. Virgil Maxcy, Mr. Gardiner, of New York,
father-in-law (that was to be) of the President, were also killed; a
dozen seamen were wounded, and Commodore Stockton burnt and scorched
as he stood at the side of the gun. Such an occurrence was well
calculated to impress upon the survivors the truth of the divine
admonition: "What shadows we are--what shadows we pursue." But it
had no effect upon the pursuit of the presidential shadow. Instantly
Mr. Calhoun was invited to take Mr. Upshur's place in the Department
of State, and took it with an alacrity, and with a patronizing
declaration, which showed his zeal for the Texas movement, and as
good as avowed its paternity. He declared he took the place for
the Texas negotiation alone, and would quit it as soon as that
negotiation should be finished. In brief, the negotiation, instead
of pausing in the presence of so awful a catastrophe, seemed
to derive new life from it, and to go forward with accelerated
impetuosity. Mr. Calhoun put his eager activity into it: politicians
became more vehement--newspapers more clamorous: the interested
classes (land and scrip speculators) swarmed at Washington; and Mr.
Tyler embraced the scheme with a fervor which induced the suspicion
that he had adopted the game for his own, and intended to stand a
cast of the presidential die upon it.
The machinations of the committee, though greatly successful
with individuals, and with the politicians with whom they could
communicate, did not reach the masses, who remained firm to Mr. Van
Buren; and it became necessary to fall upon some new means of acting
upon them. This led to a different use of the Jackson Texas letter
from what had been intended. It was intended to have been kept in
the background, a secret in the hands of its possessors, until the
meeting of the convention--then suddenly produced to turn the scale
between Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Van Buren; and this design had been
adhered to for about the space of a year, and the letter kept close:
it was then recurred to as a means of rousing the masses.
Jackson's name was potential with the people, and it was deemed
indispensable to bring it to bear upon them. The publication of the
letter was resolved upon, and the _Globe_ newspaper selected for
the purpose, and Mr. Aaron V. Brown to have it done. All this was
judicious and regular. The _Globe_ had been the organ of General
Jackson, and was therefore the most proper paper to bring his
sentiments before the public. It was the advocate of Mr. Van Buren's
election, and therefore would prevent the suspicion of sinistrous
design upon him. Mr. Brown was the legal owner of the letter, and
a professing friend of Mr. Van Buren, and, therefore, the proper
person to carry it for publication.
He did so; but the editor, Mr. Blair, seeing no good that it
could do Mr. Van Buren, but, on the contrary, harm, and being
sincerely his friend, declined to publish it; and, after
examination, delivered it back to Mr. Brown. Shortly thereafter,
to wit, on the 22d of March, 1844, it appeared in the Richmond
_Enquirer_, post-dated, that is to say, the date of 1843 changed
into 1844--whether by design or accident is not known; but the
post-date gave the letter a fresher appearance, and a more vigorous
application to the Texas question. The fact that this letter had got
back to Mr. Brown, after having been given up to Mr. Gilmer, proved
that the letter travelled in a circle while kept secret, and went
from hand to hand among the initiated, as needed for use.
The time had now come for the interrogation of the candidates, and
it was done with all the tact which the delicate function required.
The choice of the interrogator was the first point. He must be
a friend, ostensible if not real, to the party interrogated. If
real, he must himself be deceived, and made to believe that he
was performing a kindly service; if not, he must still have the
appearance. And for Mr. Van Buren's benefit a suitable performer was
found in the person of Mr. Hamett, a representative in Congress from
Mississippi, whose letter was a model for the occasion, and, in fact
has been pretty well followed since. It abounded in professions of
friendship to Mr. Van Buren--approached him for his own good--sought
his opinion from the best of motives; and urged a categorical reply,
for or against, immediate annexation. The sagacious Mr. Van Buren
was no dupe of this contrivance, but took counsel from what was due
to himself; and answered with candor, decorum and dignity. He was
against immediate annexation, because it was war with Mexico, but
for it when it could be done peaceably and honorably: and he was
able to present a very fair record, having been in favor of getting
back the country (in a way to avoid difficulties with Mexico) when
Secretary of State, under President Jackson. His letter was sent to
a small circle of friends at Washington before it was delivered to
its address; but to be delivered immediately; which was done, and
soon went into the papers.
Mr. Calhoun had superseded the necessity of interrogation in
his letter of acceptance of the State Department: he was a hot
annexationist, although there was an ugly record to be exhibited
against him. In his almost thirty years of public life he had never
touched Texas, except for his own purposes. In 1819, as one of Mr.
Monroe's cabinet, he had concurred in giving it away, in order to
conciliate the anti-slavery interest in the Northeast by curtailing
slave territory in the Southwest. In 1836 he moved her immature
annexation, in order to bring the question into the presidential
election of that year, to the prejudice of Mr. Van Buren; and urged
instant action, because delay was dangerous. Having joined Mr. Van
Buren after his election, and expecting to become his successor, he
dropped the annexation for which he had been so impatient, and let
the election of 1840 pass by without bringing it into the canvass;
and now revived it for the overthrow of Mr. Van Buren, and for the
excitement of a sectional controversy, by placing the annexation on
strong sectional grounds. And now, at the approach of the election
in 1844, after years of silence, he becomes the head advocate of
annexation; and with all this forbidding record against him, by
help of General Jackson's letter, and the general sentiment in
favor of annexation, and the fictitious alarm of British abolition
and hostile designs, he was able to appear as a champion of Texas
annexation, baffling the old and consistent friends of the measure
with the new form which had been given to the question. Mr. Clay was
of this class. Of all the public men he was able to present the best
and fairest Texas record. He was opposed to the loss of the province
in 1819, and offered resolutions in the House of Representatives,
supported by an ardent speech, in which he condemned the treaty
which gave it away. As Secretary of State, under Mr. Adams, he had
advised the recovery of the province, and opened negotiations to
that effect, and wrote the instructions under which Mr. Poinsett,
the United States minister, made the attempt. As a western man, he
was the natural champion of a great western interest--pre-eminently
western, while also national. He was interrogated according to the
programme, and answered with firmness that, although an ancient and
steadfast friend to the recovery of the country, he was opposed to
immediate annexation, as adopting the war with Mexico, and making
that war by treaty, when the war-making power belonged to Congress.
There were several other democratic candidates, the whole of whom
were interrogated, and answered promptly in favor of immediate
annexation--some of them improving their letters, as advised, before
publication. Mr. Tyler, also, now appeared above the horizon as a
presidential candidate, and needed no interrogatories to bring out
his declaration for immediate annexation, although he had voted
against Mr. Clay's resolution condemning the sacrifice of the
province. In a word, the Texas hobby was multitudinously mounted,
and violently ridden, and most violently by those who had been
most indifferent to it before. Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun were the
only candidates that answered like statesmen, and they were both
distanced.
The time was approaching for the convention to meet, and,
consequently, for the conclusion of the treaty of annexation, which
was to be a touchstone in it. It was signed the 12th of April, and
was to have been sent to the Senate immediately, but was delayed
by a circumstance which created alarm--made a balk--and required
a new turn to be taken. Mr. Van Buren had not yet answered the
interrogatories put to him through Mr. Hamett, or rather his answer
had not yet been published. Uneasiness began to be felt, lest, like
so many others, he should fall into the current, and answer in a way
that would enable him to swim with it. To relieve this uncertainty,
Mr. Blair was applied to by Mr. Robert J. Walker to write to him,
and get his answer. This was a very proper channel to apply through.
Mr. Blair, as the fast friend of Mr. Van Buren, had the privilege
to solicit him. Mr. Calhoun, as the political adversary of Mr. Van
Buren, could not ask Mr. Blair to do it. Mr. Walker stood in a
relation to be ready for the work all round; as a professing friend
of Mr. Van Buren, though co-operating with Mr. Calhoun and all the
rest against him, he could speak with Mr. Blair on a point which
seemed to be for Mr. Van Buren's benefit. As co-operating with Mr.
Calhoun, he could help him against an adversary, though intending to
give him the go-by in the end. As being in all the Texas mysteries,
he was a natural person to ferret out information on every side. He
it was, then, to whose part it fell to hasten the desired answer
from Mr. Van Buren, and through the instrumentality of Mr. Blair.
Mr. Blair wrote as solicited, not seeing any trap in it; but had
received no answer up to the time that the treaty was to go to the
Senate. Ardent for Texas, and believing in the danger of delay, he
wrote and published in the _Globe_ a glowing article in favor of
immediate annexation. That article was a poser and a dumbfounder
to the confederates. It threw the treaty all aback. Considering
Mr. Blair's friendship for Mr. Van Buren, and their confidential
relations, it was concluded that this article could not have been
published without his consent--that it spoke his sentiments--and
was in fact his answer to the letter which had been sent to him.
Here was an ugly balk. It seemed as if the long intrigue had
miscarried--as if the plot was going to work out the contrary way,
and elevate the man it was intended to put down. In this unexpected
conjuncture a new turn became indispensable--and was promptly taken.
Mention has been made in the forepart of this chapter, of the
necessity which was felt to obtain something from London to bolster
up the accusation of that formidable abolition plot which Great
Britain was hatching in Texas, and on the alleged existence of which
the whole argument for immediate annexation reposed. The desired
testimony had been got, and oracularly given to the public, as
being derived from a "_private letter from a citizen of Maryland,
then in London_." The name of this Maryland citizen was not given,
but his respectability and reliability were fully vouched; and the
testimony passed for true. It was to the point in charging upon the
British government, with names and circumstances, all that had been
alleged; and adding that her abolition machinations were then in
full progress. This went back to London, immediately transmitted
there by the British minister at Washington, Sir Richard Pakenham;
and being known to be false, and felt to be scandalous, drew from
the British Secretary of State (Lord Aberdeen) an indignant, prompt,
and peremptory contradiction. This contradiction was given in a
despatch, dated December 26th, 1843. It was communicated by Sir
Richard Pakenham to Mr. Upshur, the United States Secretary of
State, on the 26th day of February, 1844--a few days before the
lamentable death of that gentleman by the bursting of the Princeton
gun. This despatch, having no object but to contradict an unfounded
imputation, required no answer--and received none. It lay in the
Department of State unacknowledged until after the treaty had been
signed, and until the day of the appearance of that redoubtable
article in the _Globe_, which had been supposed to be Mr. Van
Buren's answer to the problem of immediate annexation. Then it was
taken up, and, on the 18th day of April, was elaborately answered
by Mr. Calhoun in a despatch to the British minister--not to argue
the point of the truth of the Maryland citizen's private letter--but
to argue quite off upon a new text. It so happened that Lord
Aberdeen--after the fullest contradiction of the imputed design,
and the strongest assurances of non-interference with any slavery
policy either of the United States or of Texas--did not stop there;
but, like many able men who are not fully aware of the virtue of
stopping when they are done, went on to add something more, of no
necessary connection or practical application to the subject--a mere
general abstract declaration on the subject of slavery; on which Mr.
Calhoun took position, and erected a superstructure of alarm which
did more to embarrass the opponents of the treaty and to inflame the
country, than all other matters put together. This cause for this
new alarm was found in the superfluous declaration, "_That Great
Britain desires, and is constantly exerting herself to procure the
general abolition of slavery throughout the world_." This general
declaration, although preceded and followed by reiterated assurances
of non-interference with slavery in the United States, and no desire
for any dominant influence in Texas, were seized upon as an open
avowal of a design to abolish slavery every where. These assurances
were all disregarded. Our secretary established himself upon the
naked declaration, stripped of all qualifications and denials.
He saw in them the means of making to a northern man (Mr. Van
Buren) just as perilous the support as the opposition of immediate
annexation. So, making the declaration of Lord Aberdeen the text of
a most elaborate reply, he took up the opposite ground (support and
propagation of slavery), arguing it generally in relation to the
world, and specially in relation to the United States and Texas;
and placing the annexation so fully upon that ground, that all its
supporters must be committed to it. Here was a new turn, induced by
Mr. Blair's article in the _Globe_, and by which the support of the
treaty would be as obnoxious in the North as opposition to it would
be in the South.
It must have been a strange despatch for a British minister to
receive--an argument in favor of slavery propagandism--supported
by comparative statements taken from the United States census,
between the numbers of deaf, dumb, blind, idiotic, insane, criminal,
and paupers among the free and the slave negroes--showing a large
disproportion against the free negroes; and thence deducing a
conclusion in favor of slavery. It was a strange diplomatic
despatch, and incomprehensible except with a knowledge of the
circumstances in which it was written. It must have been complete
mystification to Lord Aberdeen; but it was not written for him,
though addressed to him, and was sent to those for whom it was
intended long before he saw it. The use that was made of it showed
for whom it was written. Two days after its date, and before it had
commenced its maritime voyage to London, it was in the American
Senate--sent in with the treaty, with the negotiation of which it
had no connection, being written a week after its signature, and
after the time that the treaty would have been sent in had it not
been for the appearance of the article (supposed to speak Mr. Van
Buren's sentiments) in the _Globe_. It was no embarrassment to Mr.
Van Buren, whose letter in answer to the interrogatories had been
written, and was soon after published. It was an embarrassment to
others. It made the annexation a sectional and a slavery question,
and insured the rejection of the treaty. It disgusted northern
senators; and that was one of the objects with which it had been
written. For the whole annexation business had been conducted with a
double aspect--one looking to the presidency, the other to disunion;
and the latter the alternative, to the furtherance of which the
rejection of the treaty by northern votes was an auxiliary step.
And while the whole negotiation bore that for one of its aspects
from the beginning, this _ex post facto_ despatch, written after the
treaty was signed, and given to the American public before it got
to the British Secretary of State, became the distinct revelation
of what had been before dimly shadowed forth. All hope of the
presidency from the Texas intrigue had now failed--the alternative
aspect had become the absolute one; and a separate republic,
consisting of Texas and some Southern States, had become the object.
Neither the exposure of this object nor the history of the attempted
annexation belong to this chapter. A separate chapter is required
for each. And this incident of the Maryland citizen's private
letter from London, Lord Aberdeen's contradiction, and the strange
despatch of Mr. Calhoun to him, are only mentioned here as links
in the chain of the presidential intrigue; and will be dismissed
with the remark that the Maryland citizen was afterwards found out,
and was discovered to be a citizen better known as an inhabitant
of Washington than of Maryland; and that the private letter was
intended to be for public use and paid for out of the contingent
fund of the State Department; and the writer, a person whose name
was the synonym of subserviency to Mr. Calhoun; namely, Mr. Duff
Green. All this was afterwards brought out under a call from the
United States Senate, moved by the writer of this View, who had been
put upon the track by some really private information: and when the
Presidential Message was read in the Senate, disclosing all these
facts, he used an expression taken from a Spanish proverb which had
some currency at the time: "_At last the devil is pulled from under
the blanket._"
The time was approaching for the meeting of the democratic
presidential convention, postponed by collusion with the whigs (the
managers in each party), from the month of December to the month
of May--the 27th day of it. It was now May, and every sign was not
only auspicious to Mr. Van Buren, but ominous to his opponents. The
delegates almost universally remained under instructions to support
him. General Jackson, seeing how his letter to Mr. Brown had been
used, though ignorant of the artifice by which it had been got from
him, and justly indignant at finding himself used for a foe and
against a friend, and especially when he deemed that foe dangerous
to the Union--wrote a second Texas letter, addressed to the public,
in which, while still adhering to his immediate annexation opinions,
also adhered to Mr. Van Buren as his candidate for the presidency;
and this second letter was a wet blanket upon the fires of the first
one. The friends of Mr. Calhoun, seeing that he would have no chance
in the Baltimore convention, had started a project to hold a third
one in New York; a project which expired as soon as it got to the
air; and in connection with which Mr. Cass deemed it necessary to
make an authoritative contradiction of a statement made by Mr. Duff
Green, who undertook to convince him, in spite of his denials, that
he had agreed to it. In proportion as Mr. Calhoun was disappearing
from this presidential canvass, Mr. Tyler was appearing in it;
and eventually became fully developed as a candidate, intrusively
on the democratic side; but his friends, seeing no chance for him
in the democratic national convention, he got up an individual or
collateral one for himself--to meet at the same time and place; but
of this hereafter. This chapter belongs to the intrigue against Mr.
Van Buren.
CHAPTER CXXXVI.
DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION FOR THE NOMINATION OF PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES.
The Convention met--a motley assemblage, called democratic--many
self-appointed, or appointed upon management or solicitation--many
alternative substitutes--many members of Congress, in violation of
the principle which condemned the Congress presidential caucuses
in 1824--some nullifiers; and an immense outside concourse. Texas
land and scrip speculators were largely in it, and more largely on
the outside. A considerable number were in favor of no particular
candidate, but in pursuit of office for themselves--inflexible
against any one from whom they thought they would not get it,
and ready to go for any one from whom they thought they could.
Almost all were under instructions for Mr. Van Buren, and could
not have been appointed where such instructions were given, except
in the belief that they would be obeyed. The business of undoing
instructions had been attended with but poor success--in no instance
having been done by the instructing body, or its equivalent. Two
hundred and sixty-six delegates were present--South Carolina
absent; and it was immediately seen that after all the packing and
intriguing, the majority was still for Mr. Van Buren. It was seen
that he would be nominated on the first ballot, if the majority
was to govern. To prevent that, a movement was necessary, and was
made. In the morning of the first day, before the verification
of the authority of the delegates--before organization--before
prayers--and with only a temporary chairman--a motion was made to
adopt the two-thirds rule, that is to say, the rule which required
a concurrence of two-thirds to effect a nomination. That rule had
been used in the two previous nominating conventions--not to thwart
a majority, but to strengthen it; the argument being that the result
would be the same, the convention being nearly unanimous; that
the two-thirds would be cumulative, and give more weight to the
nomination. The precedent was claimed, though the reason had failed;
and the effect might now be to defeat the majority instead of adding
to its voice.
Men of reflection and foresight objected to this rule when
previously used, as being in violation of a fundamental
principle--opening the door for the minority to rule--encouraging
intrigue and combination--and leading to corrupt practices
whenever there should be a design to defeat the popular will.
These objections were urged in 1832 and in 1836, and answered by
the reply that the rule was only adopted by each convention for
itself, and made no odds in the result: and now they were answered
with "precedents." A strenuous contest took place over the adoption
of this rule--all seeing that the fate of the nomination depended
upon it. Mr. Romulus M. Saunders of North Carolina, was its mover.
Messrs. Robert J. Walker, and Hopkins of Virginia, its most active
supporters: and precedent the stress of their argument. Messrs.
Morton of Massachusetts, Clifford of Maine, Dickinson and Butler of
New York, Medary of Ohio, and Alexander Kayser of Missouri, were
its principal opponents: their arguments were those of principle,
and the inapplicability of precedents founded on cases where the
two-thirds vote did not defeat, but strengthened the majority. Mr.
Morton of Massachusetts, spoke the democratic sentiment when he said:
"He was in the habit of advancing his opinions in strong and
plain language, and he hoped that no exception would be taken to
any thing that he might say. He thought the majority principle
was the true one of the democratic party. The views which had
been advanced on the other side of the question were mainly
based upon precedent. He did not think that they properly
applied here. We were in danger of relying too much upon
precedent--let us go upon principle. He had endeavored, when
at school, to understand the true principles of republicanism.
He well recollected the nominations of Jefferson and others,
and the majority principle had always ruled. In fact it was
recognized in all the different ramifications of society. The
State, county and township conventions were all governed by this
rule."
Mr. Benjamin F. Butler, of New York, enforced the majority principle
as the one which lay at the foundation of our government--which
prevailed at the adoption of every clause in the Declaration of
Independence--every clause in the constitution--all the legislation,
and all the elections, both State and federal; and he totally
denied the applicability of the precedents cited. He then went on
to expose the tricks of a caucus within a caucus--a sub and secret
caucus--plotting and combining to betray their instructions through
the instrumentality and under the cover of the two-thirds rule. Thus:
"He made allusion to certain caucusing and contriving, by which
it was hoped to avert the well-ascertained disposition of the
majority of the democracy. He had been appointed a delegate
to the convention, and accepted his credentials, as did his
colleagues, with instructions to support and do all in their
power to secure the nomination of a certain person (V.B.). By
consenting to the adoption of the two-thirds rule, he, with
them, would prove unfaithful to their trust and their honor. He
knew well that in voting by simple majority, the friend he was
pledged to support would receive ten to fifteen majority, and,
consequently, the nomination. If two-thirds should be required
to make a choice, that friend must inevitably be defeated, and
that defeat caused by the action of States which could not be
claimed as democratic."
This last remark of Mr. Butler should sink deep into the mind of
every friend to the elective system. These conventions admitted
delegations from anti-democratic States--States which could not
give a democratic vote in the election, and yet could control
the nomination. This is one of the most unfair features in the
convention system.
The rule was adopted, and by the help of delegates instructed to
vote for Mr. Van Buren, and who took that method of betraying their
trust while affecting to fulfil it. The body then organized and the
balloting commenced, all the States present except South Carolina,
who stood off, although she had come into it at the preceding
convention, and cast her vote for Mr. Van Buren. Two hundred and
sixty-six electoral votes were represented, of which 134 would be
the majority, and 177 the two-thirds. Mr. Van Buren received 151 on
the first ballot, gradually decreasing at each successive vote until
the seventh, when it stood at 99; probably about the true number
that remained faithful to their constituents and their pledges.
Of those who fell off it was seen that they chiefly consisted of
those professing friends who had supported the two-thirds rule, and
who now got an excuse for their intended desertion and premeditated
violation of instructions in being able to allege the impossibility
of electing the man to whom they were pledged.
At this stage of the voting, a member from Ohio (Mr. Miller) moved
a resolve, _that Mr. Van Buren, having received a majority of the
votes on the first ballot, was duly nominated, and should be so
declared_. This motion was an unexpected step, and put delegates
under the necessity of voting direct on the majority principle,
which lies at the foundation of all popular elections, and at the
foundation of the presidential election itself, as prescribed by
the constitution. That instrument only requires a majority of the
electoral votes to make an election of President; this intriguing
rule requires him to get two-thirds before he is competent to
receive that majority. The motion raised a storm. It gave rise to a
violent, disorderly, furious and tumultuary discussion--a faint idea
of which may be formed from some brief extracts from the speeches:
Mr. Brewster, of Pennsylvania.--"They (the delegation from this
State) had then been solemnly instructed to vote for Martin Van
Buren first, and to remain firm to that vote as long as there
was any hope of his success. He had been asked by gentlemen
of the convention why the delegation of Pennsylvania were so
divided in their vote. He would answer that it was because some
gentlemen of the delegation did not think proper to abide by
the solemn instructions given them, but rather chose to violate
those instructions. Pennsylvania had come there to vote for
Martin Van Buren, and she would not desert him until New York
had abandoned him. The delegation had entered into a solemn
pledge to do so; and he warned gentlemen that if they persisted
in violating that pledge, they would be held to a strict account
by their constituency, before whom, on their return home, they
would have to hang their heads with shame. Sorry would he be to
see them return, after having violated their pledge."
Mr. Hickman, of Pennsylvania.--"He charged that the delegation
from the 'Keystone State' had violated the solemn pledge taken
before they were entitled to seats on the floor. He asserted
on the floor of this convention, and would assert it every
where, that the delegation from Pennsylvania came to the
convention instructed to vote for, and to use every means to
obtain the nomination of Martin Van Buren for President, and
Richard M. Johnson for Vice President; and yet a portion of the
delegation, among whom was his colleague who had just preceded
him, had voted against the very proposition upon which the fate
of Martin Van Buren hung. He continued his remarks in favor of
the inviolability of instructions and in rebuke of those of
the Pennsylvania delegation, who had voted for the two-thirds
rule, knowing, as they did, that it would defeat Mr. Van Buren's
nomination."
Mr. Bredon, of Pennsylvania.--"He had voted against the
two-thirds rule. He had been instructed, he said, and he
believed had fulfilled those instructions, although he differed
from some of his colleagues. His opinion was, that they were
bound by instructions only so long as they were likely to be
available, and then every member was at liberty to consult his
own judgment. He had stood by Mr. Van Buren, and would continue
to do so until the New York and Ohio delegates flew the track."
Mr. Frazer, of Pennsylvania, "replied to the remarks of his
colleagues, and amidst much and constantly increasing confusion,
explained his motives for having deserted Mr. Van Buren. On the
last ballot he had voted for James K. Polk, and would do so on
the next, despite the threat that had been thrown out, that
those who had not voted for Mr. Van Buren would be ashamed to
show their faces before their constituents. He threw back the
imputation with indignation. He denied that he had violated
his pledge; that he had voted for Mr. Van Buren on three
ballots, but finding that Mr. Van Buren was not the choice of
the convention, he had voted for Mr. Buchanan. Finding that
Mr. Buchanan could not succeed, he had cast his vote for James
K. Polk, the bosom friend of General Jackson, and a pure,
whole-hogged democrat, the known enemy of banks, distribution,
&c. He had carried out his instructions as he understood them,
and others would do the same."
Mr. Young, of New York, "said it had been intimated that New
York desired pertinaciously to force a candidate upon the
convention. This he denied. Mr. Van Buren had been recommended
by sixteen States to this convention for their suffrages before
New York had spoken on the subject, and when she did speak it
was with a unanimous voice, and, if an expression of opinion on
the part of these people could now be had, it would be found
that they had not changed. (As Mr. Y proceeded the noise and
confusion increased.) It was true, he said, that a firebrand had
been thrown into their camp by the 'Mongrel administration at
Washington,' and this was the motive seized upon as a pretext
for a change on the part of some gentlemen. That firebrand was
the abominable Texas question, but that question, like a fever,
would wear itself out or kill the patient. It was one that
should have no effect; and some of those who were now laboring
to get up an excitement on a subject foreign to the political
contest before them, would be surprised, six months hence, that
they had permitted their equanimity to be disturbed by it. Nero
had fiddled while Rome was burning, and he believed that this
question had been put in agitation for the especial purpose of
advancing the aspiring ambition of a man, who, he doubted not,
like Nero, 'was probably fiddling while Rome was falling.'"
The crimination and recrimination in the Pennsylvania delegation,
arose from division among the delegates: in some other delegations
the disregard of instructions was unanimous, and there was no one to
censure another, as in Mississippi. The Pennsylvania delegation, may
be said to have decided the nomination. They were instructed to vote
for Mr. Van Buren, and did so, but they divided on the two-thirds
rule, and gave a majority of their votes for it, that is to say,
13 votes; but as 13 was not a majority of 26, one delegate was got
to stand aside: and then the vote stood 13 to 12. The Virginia
delegation, headed by the most respectable William H. Roane (with
a few exceptions), remained faithful--disregarding the attempt to
release them at Shockoe Hill, and voting steadily for Mr. Van Buren,
as well on all the ballotings as on the two-thirds question--which
was the real one. Some members of the Capitol nocturnal committee
were in the convention, and among its most active managers--and the
most zealous against Mr. Van Buren. In that profusion of letters
with which they covered the country to undermine him, they placed
the objection on the ground of the impossibility of electing him:
now it was seen that the impossibility was on the other side--that
it was impossible to defeat him, except by betraying trusts,
violating instructions, combining the odds and ends of all factions;
and then getting a rule adopted by which a minority was to govern.
The motion of Mr. Miller was not voted upon. It was summarily
disposed of, without the responsibility of a direct vote. The
enemies of Mr. Van Buren having secured the presiding officer at
the start, all motions were decided against them; and after a
long session of storm and rage, intermitted during the night for
sleep and intrigue, and resumed in the morning, an eighth ballot
was taken: and without hope for Mr. Van Buren. As his vote went
down, that for Messrs. Cass, Buchanan, and R. M. Johnson rose;
but without ever carrying either of them to a majority, much less
two-thirds. Seeing the combination against him, the friends of
Mr. Van Buren withdrew his name, and the party was then without a
candidate known to the people. Having killed off the one chosen by
the people, the convention remained masters of the field, and ready
to supply one of its own. The intrigue, commenced in 1842, in the
Gilmer letter, had succeeded one-half. It had put down one man, but
another was to be put up; and there were enough of Mr. Van Buren's
friends to defeat that part of the scheme. They determined to render
their country that service, and therefore withdrew Mr. Van Buren,
that they might go in a body for a new man. Among the candidates
for the vice-presidency was Mr. James K. Polk, of Tennessee. His
interest as a vice-presidential candidate lay with Mr. Van Buren,
and they had been much associated in the minds of each other's
friends. It was an easy step for them to support for the first
office, on the loss of their first choice, the citizen whom they
intended for the second. Without public announcements, he was
slightly developed as a presidential candidate on the eighth ballot;
on the ninth he was unanimously nominated, all the president-makers
who had been voting for others--for Cass, Buchanan, Johnson--taking
the current the instant they saw which way it was going, in order
that they might claim the merit of conducting it. "You bring but
seven captives to my tent, but thousands of you took them," was the
sarcastic remark of a king of antiquity at seeing the multitude
that came to claim honors and rewards for taking a few prisoners.
Mr. Polk might have made the same exclamation in relation to the
multitude that assumed to have nominated him. Their name was legion:
for, besides the unanimous convention, there was a host of outside
operators, each of whom claimed the merit of having governed the
vote of some delegate. Never was such a multitude seen claiming the
merit, and demanding the reward, for having done what had been done
before they heard of it.
The nomination was a surprise and a marvel to the country. No voice
in favor of it had been heard; no visible sign in the political
horizon had announced it. Two small symptoms--small in themselves
and equivocal in their import, and which would never have been
remembered except for the event--doubtfully foreshadowed it. One
was a paragraph in a Nashville newspaper, hypothetically suggesting
that Mr. Polk should be taken up if Mr. Van Buren should be
abandoned; the other, the ominous circumstance that the Tennessee
State nominating convention made a recommendation (Mr. Polk) for
the second office, and none for the first; and Tennessee being
considered a Van Buren State, this omission was significant, seeming
to leave open the door for his ejection, and for the admission of
some other person. And so the delegates from that State seemed to
understand it, voting steadily against him, until he was withdrawn.
The ostensible objection to the last against Mr. Van Buren, was
his opposition to immediate annexation. The shallowness of that
objection was immediately shown in the unanimous nomination of
his bosom friend, Mr. Silas Wright, identified with him in all
that related to the Texas negotiation, for Vice-President. He
was nominated upon the proposition of Mr. Robert J. Walker--a
main-spring in all the movements against Mr. Van Buren, whose most
indefatigable opponents sympathized with the Texas scrip and land
speculators. Mr. Wright instantly declined the nomination; and Mr.
George M. Dallas, of Pennsylvania, was taken in his place.
The Calhoun New York convention expired in the conception. It
never met. The Tyler Baltimore convention was carried the length
of an actual meeting, and went through the forms of a nomination,
without the distraction of a rival candidate. It met the same day
and place with the democratic convention, as if to officiate with
it, and to be ready to offer a _pis aller_, but to no purpose. It
made its own nomination--received an elaborate letter of thanks and
acceptance from Mr. Tyler, who took it quite seriously; and two
months afterwards joined the democracy for Polk and Dallas, against
Clay and Frelinghuysen--his old whig friends. He had co-operated in
all the schemes against Mr. Van Buren, in the hope of being taken up
in his place; and there was an interest, calling itself democratic,
which was willing to oblige him. But all the sound heart of the
democracy recoiled from the idea of touching a man who, after having
been raised high by the democracy, had gone over to the whigs, to
be raised still higher, and now came back to the democracy to obtain
the highest office they could give.
And here ends the history of this long intrigue--one of the most
elaborate, complex and daring, ever practised in an intelligent
country; and with too much success in putting down some, and just
disappointment in putting up others: for no one of those who engaged
in this intrigue ever reached the office for which they strived. My
opinion of it was expressed, warmly but sincerely, from the first
moment it was broached to me on the steps of the Capitol, when
accosted by Mr. Brown, down to the rejection of the treaty in the
Senate, and the defeat of Mr. Van Buren in the convention. Of this
latter event, the author of this View thus wrote in a public letter
to Missouri:
"Neither Mr. Polk nor Mr. Dallas has any thing to do with the
intrigue which has nullified the choice of the people, and the
rights of the people, and the principles of our government,
in the person of Mr. Van Buren; and neither of them should be
injured or prejudiced by it. Those who hatched that intrigue,
have become its victims. They who dug a pit for the innocent
have fallen into it; and there let them lie, for the present,
while all hands attend to the election, and give us our full
majority of ten thousand in Missouri. For the rest, the time
will come; and people now, as twenty years ago (when their
choice was nullified in the person of General Jackson), will
teach the Congress intriguers to attend to law-making and let
President-making and un-making alone in future. The Texas
treaty, which consummated this intrigue, was nothing but the
final act in a long conspiracy, in which the sacrifice of Mr.
Van Buren had been previously agreed upon; and the nomination
of Mr. Wright for Vice-President proves it; for his opinions
and those of Mr. Van Buren, on the Texas question, were
identical, and if fatal to one should have been fatal to the
other. Besides, Mr. Van Buren was right, and whenever Texas is
admitted, it will have to be done in the way pointed out by
him. Having mentioned Mr. Wright, I will say that recent events
have made him known to the public, as he has long been to his
friends, _the Cato of America, and a star of the first magnitude
in our political firmament_."
And now, why tell these things which may be quoted to the prejudice
of democratic institutions? I answer: To prevent that prejudice!
and to prevent the repetition of such practices. Democracy is not
to be prejudiced by it, for it was the work of politicians; and as
far as depended upon the people, they rebuked it. The intrigue
did not succeed in elevating any of its authors to the presidency;
and the annexation treaty, the fruit of so much machination, was
rejected by the Senate; and the annexation afterwards effected
by the legislative concurrence of the two powers. From the
first inception, with the Gilmer letter, down to the Baltimore
conclusion in the convention, the intrigue was carried on; and was
only successful in the convention by the help of the rule which
made the minority its master. That convention is an era in our
political history, to be looked back upon as the starting point
in a course of usurpation which has taken the choice of President
out of the hands of the people, and vested it in the hands of a
self-constituted and irresponsible assemblage. The wrong to Mr.
Van Buren was personal and temporary, and died with the occasion,
and constitutes no part of the object in writing this chapter: the
wrong to the people, and the injury to republican institutions,
and to our frame of government, was deep and abiding, and calls
for the grave and correctional judgment of history. It was the
first instance in which a body of men, unknown to the laws and the
constitution, and many of them (as being members of Congress, or
holding offices of honor or profit) constitutionally disqualified
to serve even as electors, assumed to treat the American presidency
as their private property, to be disposed at their own will and
pleasure; and, it may be added, for their own profit: for many
of them demanded, and received reward. It was the first instance
of such a disposal of the presidency--for these nominations are
the election, so far as the party is concerned; but not the last.
It has become the rule since, and has been improved upon. These
assemblages now perpetuate themselves, through a committee of their
own, ramified into each State, sitting permanently from four years
to four years; and working incessantly to govern the election that
is to come, after having governed the one that is past. The man they
choose must always be a character of no force, that they may rule
him: and they rule always for their own advantage--"constituting
a power behind the throne greater than the throne." The reader
of English history is familiar with the term, "cabal," and its
origin--taking its spelling from the initial letters of the names
of the five combined intriguing ministers of Charles II.--and
taking its meaning from the conduct and characters of these five
ministers. What that meaning was, one of the five wrote to another
for his better instruction, not suspecting that the indefatigable
curiosity of a subsequent generation would ever ferret out the
little missive. Thus: "_The principal spring of our actions was to
have the government in our own hands; that our principal views were
the conservation of this power--great employments to ourselves--and
great opportunities of rewarding those who have helped to raise us,
and of harming those who stood in opposition to us._" Such was the
government which the "cabal" gave England; and such is the one which
the convention system gives us: and until this system is abolished,
and the people resume their rights, the elective principle of our
government is suppressed: and the people have no more control over
the selection of the man who is to be their President, than the
subjects of kings have over the birth of the child who is to be
their ruler.
CHAPTER CXXXVII.
PRESIDENTIAL: DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION: MR. CALHOUN'S REFUSAL
TO SUBMIT HIS NAME TO IT: HIS REASONS.
Before the meeting of this convention Mr. Calhoun, in a public
address to his political friends, made known his determination not
to suffer his name to go before that assemblage as a candidate for
the presidency, and stated his reasons for that determination.
Many of those reasons were of a nature to rise above personal
considerations--to look deep into the nature and working of our
government--and to show objections to the convention system (as
practised), which have grown stronger with time. His first objection
was as to the mode of choosing delegates, and the manner of their
giving in their votes--he contending for district elections, and the
delegates to vote individually, and condemning all other modes of
electing and voting:
"I hold, then, that the convention should be so constituted,
as to utter fully and clearly the voice of the people, and
not that of political managers, or office holders and office
seekers, and for that purpose, I hold it indispensable that
the delegates should be appointed directly by the people, or
to use the language of General Jackson, should be 'fresh from
the people.' I also hold, that the only possible mode to effect
this, is for the people to choose the delegates by districts,
and that they should vote _per capita_. Every other mode of
appointing would be controlled by political machinery, and place
the appointments in the hands of the few, who work it."
This was written ten years ago: there have been three of these
conventions since that time by each political party: and each have
verified the character here given of them. Veteran office holders,
and undaunted office seekers, collusively or furtively appointed,
have had the control of these nominations--the office holders all
being forbid by the constitution to be even electors, and the office
seekers forbid by shame and honor (if amenable to such sensations),
to take part in nominating a President from whom they would demand
pay for their vote. Mr. Calhoun continues:
"I object, then, to the proposed convention, because it will
not be constituted in conformity with the fundamental articles
of the republican creed. The delegates to it will be appointed
from some of the States, not by the people in districts, but,
as has been stated, by State conventions en masse, composed
of delegates appointed in all cases, as far as I am informed,
by county or district conventions, and in some cases, if not
misinformed, these again composed of delegates appointed by
still smaller divisions, or a few interested individuals.
Instead then of being directly, or fresh from the people, the
delegates to the Baltimore convention will be the delegates of
delegates; and of course removed, in all cases, at least three,
if not four degrees from the people. At each successive remove,
the voice of the people will become less full and distinct,
until, at last, it will be so faint and imperfect, as not to
be audible. To drop metaphor, I hold it impossible to form a
scheme more perfectly calculated to annihilate the control of
the people over the presidential election, and vest it in those
who make politics a trade, and who live or expect to live on the
government."
Mr. Calhoun proceeds to take a view of the working of the
constitution in a fair election by the people and by the States,
and considered the plan adopted as a compromise between the large
and the small States. In the popular election through electors, the
large States had the advantage, as presenting masses of population
which would govern the choice: in the election by States in the
House of Representatives, the small States had the advantage, as the
whole voted equally. This, then, was considered a compromise. The
large States making the election when they were united: when not
united, making the nomination of three (five as the constitution
first stood), out of which the States chose one. This was a
compromise; and all compromises should be kept when founded in the
structure of the government, and made by its founders. Total defeat
of the will of the people, and total frustration of the intent of
the constitution, both in the electoral nomination and the House
choice of a President, was seen in the exercise of this power
over presidential nominations by Congress caucuses, before their
corruption required a resort to conventions, intended to be the
absolute reflex of the popular will. Of this Mr. Calhoun says:
"The danger was early foreseen, and to avoid it, some of the
wisest and most experienced statesmen of former days so strongly
objected to congressional caucuses to nominate candidates for
the presidency, that they never could be induced to attend
them; among these it will be sufficient to name Mr. Macon and
Mr. Lowndes. Others, believing that this provision of the
constitution was too refined for practice, were solicitous to
amend it, but without impairing the influence of the smaller
States in the election. Among these, I rank myself. With that
object, resolutions were introduced, in 1828, in the Senate by
Colonel Benton, and in the House by Mr. McDuffie, providing
for districting the State, and for referring the election back
to the people, in case there should be no choice, to elect one
from the two highest candidates. The principle which governed
in the amendment proposed, was to give a fair compensation to
the smaller States for the surrender of their advantage in the
eventual choice, by the House, and at the same time to make
the mode of electing the President more strictly in conformity
with the principles of our popular institutions, and to be less
liable to corruption, than the existing. They (the resolutions
of McDuffie and Benton) received the general support of the
party, but were objected to by a few, as not being a full
equivalent to the smaller States."
The Congress presidential caucuses were put down by the will of the
people, and in both parties at the same time. They were put down
for not conforming to the will of the people, for incompatibility
between the legislative and the elective functions, for being in
office at the same time, for following their own will, instead of
representing that of their constituents. Mr. Calhoun concurred in
putting them down, but preferred them a hundred times over to the
intriguing, juggling, corrupt and packed machinery into which the
conventions had so rapidly degenerated.
"And here let me add, that as objectionable as I think a
congressional caucus for nominating a President, it is, in
my opinion, far less so than a convention constituted as is
proposed. The former had indeed many things to recommend it.
Its members consisting of senators and representatives, were
the immediate organs of the State legislatures, or the people;
were responsible to them, respectively, and were for the most
part, of higher character, standing, and talents. They voted
per capita, and what is very important, they represented fairly
the relative strength of the party in their respective States.
In all these important particulars, it was all that could be
desired for a nominating body, and formed a striking contrast
to the proposed convention; and yet, it could not be borne by
the people in the then purer days of the republic. I, acting
with General Jackson and most of the leaders of the party at
that time, contributed to put it down, because we believed it
to be liable to be acted on and influenced by the patronage of
the government--an objection far more applicable to a convention
constituted as the one proposed, than to a congressional caucus.
Far however was it from my intention, in aiding to put that
down, to substitute in its place what I regard as a hundred
times more objectionable in every point of view. Indeed, if
there must be an intermediate body between the people and the
election, unknown to the constitution, it may be well questioned
whether a better than the old plan of a congressional caucus can
be devised."
Mr. Calhoun considered the convention system, degenerated to
the point it was in 1844, to have been a hundred times more
objectionable than the Congress caucuses which had been repudiated
by the people: measured by the same scale, and they are a thousand
times worse at present--having succeeded to every objection that
was made against the Congress caucuses, and superadded a multitude
of others going directly to scandalous corruption, open intrigue,
direct bargain and sale, and flagrant disregard of the popular
will. One respect in which they had degenerated from the Congress
caucus was in admitting a State to give its full vote in nominating
a President, which could either give no vote at all, or a divided
one, to the nominated candidate. In the Congress caucus that anomaly
could not happen. The members of the party only voted: and if there
were no members of a party from a State, there was no vote from
that State in the caucus: if a divided representation, then a vote
according to the division. This was fair, and prevented a nomination
being made by those who could do nothing in the election. This
objection to the convention system, and a grievous one it is as
practised, he sets forth in a clear and forcible point of view. He
says:
"I have laid down the principle, on which I rest the objection
in question, with the limitation, that the relative weight of
the States should be maintained, making due allowance for their
relative party strength. The propriety of the limitation is
so apparent, that but a few words, in illustration, will be
required. The convention is a party convention, and professedly
intended to take the sense of the party, which cannot be done
fairly, if States having but little party strength, are put on
equality with those which have much. If that were done, the
result might be, that a small portion of the party from States
the least sound, politically, and which could give but little
support in Congress, might select the candidate, and make the
President, against a great majority of the soundest, and on
which the President and his administration would have to rely
for support. All this is clearly too unfair and improper to be
denied. There may be a great difficulty in applying a remedy in
a convention, but I do not feel myself called upon to say how
it can be done, or by what standard the relative party strength
of the respective States should be determined; perhaps the best
would be their relative strength in Congress at the time. In
laying down the principle, I added the limitation for the sake
of accuracy, and to show how imperfectly the party must be
represented, when it is overlooked. I see no provision in the
proposed convention to meet it."
The objection is clearly and irresistibly shown: the remedy is
not so clear. The Congress representation for the time being is
suggested for the rule of the convention: it is not always the
true rule. A safer one is, the general character of the State--its
general party vote--and its probable present party strength. Even
that rule may not attain exact precision; but, between a rule
which may admit of a slight error, and no rule at all to keep out
notorious unfounded votes--votes representing no constituency,
unable to choose an elector, having no existence when the election
comes on, yet potential at the nomination, and perhaps governing
it: between these two extremes there is no room for hesitation, or
choice: the adoption of some rule which would exclude notoriously
impotent votes, becomes essential to the rights and safety of the
party, and is peremptorily demanded by the principle of popular
representation. The danger of centralizing the nomination--(which,
so far as the party is concerned, is the election)--in the hands of
a few States, by the present convention mode of nomination, is next
shown by Mr. Calhoun.
"But, in order to realize how the convention will operate,
it will be necessary to view the combined effects of the
objections which I have made. Thus viewed, it will be
found, that a convention so constituted, tends irresistibly
to centralization--centralization of the control over the
presidential election in the hands of a few of the central,
large States, at first, and finally, in political managers,
office-holders, and office-seekers; or to express it
differently, in that portion of the community, who live, or
expect to live on the government, in contradistinction to
the great mass, who expect to live on their own means or
their honest industry; and who maintain the government; and
politically speaking, emphatically the people. That such would
be the case, may be inferred from the fact, that it would afford
the means to some six or seven States lying contiguous and not
far from the centre of the Union, to control the nomination,
and through that the election, by concentrating their united
votes in the convention. Give them the power of doing so, and
it would not long lie dormant. What may be done by combination,
where the temptation is so great, will be sure ere long to be
done. To combine and conquer, is not less true as a maxim, where
power is concerned, than 'divide and conquer.' Nothing is better
established, than that the desire for power can bring together
and unite the most discordant materials."
After showing the danger of centralizing the nomination in the
hands of a few great contiguous States, Mr. Calhoun goes on to show
the danger of a still more fatal and corrupt centralization--that
of throwing the nomination into the meshes of a train-band of
office-holders and office-seekers--professional President-makers,
who live by the trade, having no object but their own reward,
preferring a weak to a strong man because they can manage him
easiest: and accomplishing their purposes by corrupt combinations,
fraudulent contrivances, and direct bribery. Of these train-bands,
Mr. Calhoun says:
"But the tendency to centralization will not stop there. The
appointment of delegates en masse by State convention, would
tend at the same time, and even with great force, to neutralize
the control in the hands of the few, who make politics a
trade. The farther the convention is removed from the people,
the more certainly the control over it will be placed in the
hands of the interested few, and when removed three or four
degrees, as has been shown it will be, where the appointment
is by State conventions, the power of the people will cease,
and the seekers of Executive favor will become supreme. At that
stage, an active, trained and combined corps will be formed in
the party, whose whole time and attention will be directed to
politics. Into their hands the appointments of delegates in all
the stages will fall, and they will take special care that none
but themselves or their humble and obedient dependents shall
be appointed. The central and State conventions will be filled
by the most experienced and cunning, and after nominating the
President, they will take good care to divide the patronage
and offices, both of the general and State governments, among
themselves and their dependents. But why say _will_? Is it not
_already the case_? Have there not been many instances of State
conventions being filled by office holders and office seekers,
who, after making the nomination, have divided the offices in
the State among themselves and their partisans, and joined in
recommending to the candidate whom they have just nominated to
appoint them to the offices to which they have been respectively
allotted? If such be the case in the infancy of the system, it
must end, if such conventions should become the established
usage, in the President nominating his successor. When it comes
to that, it will not be long before the sword will take the
place of the constitution."
And it has come to that. Mr. Tyler set the example in
1844--immediately after this address of Mr. Calhoun was written--and
had a presidential convention of his own, composed of office
holders and office seekers. Since then the example has been pretty
well followed; and now any President that pleases may nominate his
successor by having the convention filled with the mercenaries in
office, or trying to get in. The evil has now reached a pass that
must be corrected, or the elective franchise abandoned. Conventions
must be reformed--that is to say, purged of office holders and
office seekers--purged of impotent votes--purged of all delegates
forbid by the constitution to be electors--purged of intrigue,
corruption and jugglery--and brought to reflect the will of the
people; or, they must suffer the fate of the Congress caucuses,
and be put down. Far better--a thousand times better--to let the
constitution work its course; as many candidates offer for President
as please; and if no one gets a majority of the whole, then the
House of Representatives to choose one from the three highest on the
list. In that event, the people would be the nominating body: they
would present the three, out of which their representatives would be
obliged to take one. This would be a nomination by the _People_, and
an election by the States.
One other objection to these degenerate conventions Mr. Calhoun did
not mention, but it became since he made his address a prominent
one, and an abuse in itself, which insures success to the train-band
mercenaries whose profligate practices he so well describes. This
is the two-thirds rule, as it is called; the rule that requires a
vote of two-thirds of the convention to make a nomination. This
puts it in the power of the minority to govern the majority, and
enables a few veteran intriguers to manage as they please. And
when it is remembered that many are allowed--even the delegates of
whole States--to vote in the convention, which can give no vote to
the party at the election, it might actually happen that the whole
nomination might be contrived and made by straw-delegates, whose
constituency could not give a single electoral vote.
CHAPTER CXXXVIII.
ANNEXATION OF TEXAS: SECRET NEGOTIATION PRESIDENTIAL INTRIGUE:
SCHEMES OF SPECULATION AND DISUNION.
The President's annual message at the commencement of the session
1843-'44, contained an elaborated paragraph on the subject of Texas
and Mexico, which, to those not in the secret, was a complete
mystification: to others, and especially to those who had been
observant of signs, it foreshadowed a design to interfere in the war
between those parties, and to take Texas under the protection of the
Union, and to make her cause our own. A scheme of annexation was
visible in the studied picture presented of homogeniality between
that country and the United States, geographically and otherwise;
and which homogeniality was now sufficient to risk a war with Great
Britain and Mexico (for the message squinted at war with both),
to get Texas back, although it had not been sufficient when the
country was ceded to Spain to prevent Mr. Tyler from sanctioning
the cession--as he did as a member of the House in 1820 in voting
against Mr. Clay's resolution, disapproving and condemning that
cession. This enigmatical paragraph was, in fact, intended to break
the way for the production of a treaty of annexation, covertly
conceived and carried on with all the features of an intrigue,
and in flagrant violation of the principles and usages of the
government. Acquisitions of territory had previously been made by
legislation, and by treaty, as in the case of Louisiana in 1803, and
of Florida in 1819; but these treaties were founded upon legislative
acts--upon the consent of Congress previously obtained--and in which
the treaty-making power was but the instrument of the legislative
will. This previous consent and authorization of Congress had not
been obtained--on the contrary, had been eschewed and ignored by
the secrecy with which the negotiation had been conducted; and was
intended to be kept secret until the treaty was concluded, and then
to force its adoption for the purpose of increasing the area of
slave territory, or to make its rejection a cause for the secession
of the Southern States; and in either event, and in all cases, to
make the question of annexation a controlling one in the nomination
of presidential candidates, and also in the election itself.
The complication of this vast scheme, leading to a consummation
so direful as foreign war and domestic disunion, and having its
root in personal ambition, and in scrip and land speculation, and
spoliation claims--the way it was carried on, and the way it was
defeated--altogether present one of the most instructive lessons
which the working of our government exhibits; and the more so as
the two prominent actors in the scheme had reversed their positions
since Texas had been retroceded to Spain. Mr. Calhoun was then
in favor of curtailing the area of slave territory, and as a
member of Mr. Monroe's cabinet, counselled the establishment of
the Missouri compromise line, which abolished slavery in all the
upper half of the great province of Louisiana; and, as a member of
the same cabinet, counselled the retrocession of Texas to Spain,
which extinguished all the slave territory south of the compromise
line. Mr. Calhoun was then against slavery extension, and so much
in favor of extinguishing slave territory as to be a favorite in
the free States, and beat Mr. Adams himself in those States in the
presidential election of 1824--receiving more of their votes for
Vice-President than Mr. Adams did for President. After the failure
in 1833 to unite the slave States against the free ones on the
Tariff agitation, he took up the slavery agitation--pursuing it
during his life, and leaving it at his death as a legacy to the
disciples in his political school. Mr. Tyler was a follower in these
amputations and extinction of slave territory in 1819-'20: he was
now a follower in the slavery agitation to get back the province
which was then given away, or to make it the means of a presidential
election, or of Southern dismemberment. This scheme had been going
on for two years before it appeared above the political horizon; and
the right understanding of the Texas annexation movement in 1844,
requires the hidden scheme to be uncovered from its source, and laid
open through its long and crooked course: which will be the subject
of the next chapter, as shown at the time in a speech from Senator
Benton.
CHAPTER CXXXIX.
TEXAS ANNEXATION TREATY: FIRST SPEECH OF MR. BENTON AGAINST IT:
EXTRACTS.
MR. BENTON. The President, upon our call, sends us a map and
a memoir from the Topographical bureau to show the Senate the
boundaries of the country he proposes to annex. This memoir is
explicit in presenting the Rio Grande del Norte in its whole extent
as a boundary of the republic of Texas, and that in conformity to
the law of the Texian Congress establishing its boundaries. The
boundaries on the map conform to those in the memoir: each takes for
the western limit the Rio Grande from head to mouth; and a law of
the Texian Congress is copied into the margin of the map, to show
the legal, and the actual, boundaries at the same time. From all
this it results that the treaty before us, besides the incorporation
of Texas proper, also incorporates into our Union the left bank of
the Rio Grande, in its whole extent from its head spring in the
_Sierra Verde_ (Green Mountain), near the South Pass in the Rocky
Mountains, to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico, four degrees south of
New Orleans, in latitude 26°. It is a "_grand and solitary river_,"
almost without affluents or tributaries. Its source is in the region
of eternal snow; its outlet in the clime of eternal flowers. Its
direct course is 1,200 miles; its actual run about 2,000. This
immense river, second on our continent to the Mississippi only, and
but little inferior to it in length, is proposed to be added in the
whole extent of its left bank to the American Union! and that by
virtue of a treaty for the _re_-annexation of Texas! Now, the real
Texas which we acquired by the treaty of 1803, and flung away by
the treaty of 1819, never approached the Rio Grande except near its
mouth! while the whole upper part was settled by the Spaniards, and
great part of it in the year 1694--just one hundred years before
La Salle first saw Texas!--all this upper part was then formed
into provinces, on both sides of the river, and has remained under
Spanish, or Mexican authority ever since. These former provinces of
the Mexican viceroyalty, now departments of the Mexican republic,
lying on both sides of the Rio Grande from its head to its mouth, we
now propose to incorporate, so far as they lie on the left bank of
the river, into our Union, by virtue of a treaty of _re_-annexation
with Texas. Let us pause and look at our new and important proposed
acquisitions in this quarter. First: there is the department,
formerly the province of New Mexico, lying on both sides of the
river from its head spring to near the Paso del Norte--that is to
say, half down the river. This department is studded with towns and
villages--is populated--well cultivated--and covered with flocks
and herds. On its left bank (for I only speak of the part which we
propose to _re_-annex) is, first, the frontier village Taos, 3,000
souls, and where the custom-house is kept at which the Missouri
caravans enter their goods. Then comes Santa Fé, the capital, 4,000
souls--then Albuquerque, 6,000 souls--then some scores of other
towns and villages--all more or less populated, and surrounded
by flocks and fields. Then come the departments of Chihuahua,
Coahuila, and Tamaulipas, without settlements on the left bank of
the river, but occupying the right bank, and commanding the left.
All this--being parts of four Mexican departments--now under Mexican
governors and governments--is permanently reannexed to this Union,
if this treaty is ratified; and is actually reannexed from the
moment of the signature of the treaty, according to the President's
last message, to remain so until the acquisition is rejected by
rejecting the treaty! The one-half of the department of New Mexico,
with its capital, becomes a territory of the United States: an angle
of Chihuahua, at the Paso del Norte, famous for its wine, also
becomes ours: a part of the department of Coahuila, not populated on
the left bank, which we take, but commanded from the right bank by
Mexican authorities: the same of Tamaulipas, the ancient Nuevo San
Tander (New St. Andrew), and which covers both sides of the river
from its mouth for some hundred miles up, and all the left bank of
which is in the power and possession of Mexico. These, in addition
to the old Texas; these parts of four States--these towns and
villages--these people and territory--these flocks and herds--this
_slice_ of the republic of Mexico, two thousand miles long, and
some hundred broad--all this our President has cut off from its
mother empire, and presents to us, and declares it is ours till the
Senate rejects it! He calls it Texas! and the cutting off he calls
_re_-annexation! Humboldt calls it New Mexico, Chihuahua, Coahuila,
and Nuevo San Tander (now Tamaulipas); and the civilized world may
qualify this _re_-annexation by the application of some odious and
terrible epithet. Demosthenes advised the people of Athens not to
take, but to _re_-take a certain city; and in that _re_ laid the
virtue which saved the act from the character of spoliation and
robbery. Will it be equally potent with us? and will the _re_,
prefixed to the annexation, legitimate the seizure of two thousand
miles of a neighbor's dominion, with whom we have treaties of peace,
and friendship, and commerce? Will it legitimate this seizure, made
by virtue of a treaty with Texas, when no Texian force--witness the
disastrous expeditions to Mier and to Santa Fé--have been seen near
it without being killed or taken, to the last man?
The treaty, in all that relates to the boundary of the Rio Grande,
is an act of unparalleled outrage on Mexico. It is the seizure of
two thousand miles of her territory without a word of explanation
with her, and by virtue of a treaty with Texas, to which she is no
party. Our Secretary of State (Mr. Calhoun) in his letter to the
United States chargé in Mexico, and seven days after the treaty was
signed, and after the Mexican minister had withdrawn from our seat
of government, shows full well that he was conscious of the enormity
of this outrage; knew it was war; and proffered volunteer apologies
to avert the consequences which he knew he had provoked.
The President, in his special message of Wednesday last, informs
us that we have acquired a title to the ceded territories by his
signature to the treaty, wanting only the action of the Senate to
perfect it; and that, in the mean time, he will protect it from
invasion, and for that purpose has detached all the disposable
portions of the army and navy to the scene of action. This is a
caper about equal to the mad freaks with which the unfortunate
emperor Paul, of Russia, was accustomed to astonish Europe about
forty years ago. By this declaration the thirty thousand Mexicans
in the left half of the valley of the Rio del Norte are our
citizens, and standing, in the language of the President's message,
in a hostile attitude towards us, and subject to be repelled as
invaders. Taos, the seat of the custom-house, where our caravans
enter their goods, is ours: Santa Fé, the capital of New Mexico,
is ours: Governor Armijo is our governor, and subject to be tried
for treason if he does not submit to us: twenty Mexican towns and
villages are ours; and their peaceful inhabitants, cultivating
their fields and tending their flocks, are suddenly converted, by a
stroke of the President's pen, into American citizens, or American
rebels. This is too bad: and, instead of making themselves party to
its enormities, as the President invites them to do, I think rather
that it is the duty of the Senate to wash its hands of all this
part of the transaction by a special disapprobation. The Senate is
the constitutional adviser of the President, and has the right, if
not the duty, to give him advice when the occasion requires it. I
therefore propose, as an additional resolution, appliable to the
Rio del Norte boundary only--the one which I will read and send to
the Secretary's table--stamping as a spoliation this seizure of
Mexican territory--and on which, at the proper time, I shall ask the
vote of the Senate.
I now proceed a step further, and rise a step higher, Mr.
President, in unveiling the designs and developing the conduct of
our administration in this hot and secret pursuit after Texas. It
is my business now to show that war with Mexico is a design and
an object with it from the beginning, and that the treaty-making
power was to be used for that purpose. I know the responsibility
of a senator--I mean his responsibility to the moral sense of his
country and the world--in attributing so grave a culpability to this
administration. I know the whole extent of this responsibility, and
shall therefore be careful to proceed upon safe and solid ground. I
shall say nothing but upon proof--upon the proof furnished by the
President himself--and ask for my opinions no credence beyond the
strict letter of these proofs. For this purpose I have recourse
to the messages and correspondence which the President has sent
us, and begin with the message of the 22d of April--the one which
communicated the treaty to the Senate. That message, after a strange
and ominous declaration that no sinister means have been used--no
intrigue set on foot--to procure the consent of Texas to the
annexation, goes on to show exactly the contrary, and to betray the
President's design to protect Texas by receiving her into our Union
and adopting her war with Mexico.
I proceed to another piece of evidence to the same effect--namely,
the letter of the present Secretary of State to Mr. Benjamin Green,
our chargé at Mexico, under date of the 19th of April past. The
letter has been already referred to, and will be only read now in
the sentence which declares that the treaty has been made in the
full view of war! for that alone can be the meaning of this sentence:
"It has taken the step (to wit, the step of making the treaty)
in full view of all possible consequences, but not without a
desire and a hope that a full and fair disclosure of the causes
which induced it to do so, would prevent the disturbance of the
harmony subsisting between the two countries, which the United
States is anxious to preserve."
This is part of the despatch which communicates to Mexico the
fact of the conclusion of the treaty of annexation--that treaty,
the conclusion of which the formal and reiterated declarations of
the Mexican government informed our administration, during its
negotiation, would be war. I will quote one of these declarations,
the last one made by General Almonte, the Mexican minister, and in
reply to the letter of our Secretary who considered the previous
declarations as _threats_. General Almonte disclaims the idea of a
_threat_--repeats his asseveration that it is a _notice_ only, and
that in a case in which it was the right and the duty of Mexico to
give the _notice_ which would apprise us of the consequences of
carrying the treaty of annexation to a conclusion.
After receiving this notification from the Mexican minister,
the letter of our present Secretary, of the 19th instant, just
quoted, directing our chargé to inform the Mexican government of
the conclusion of the treaty of annexation, must be considered as
an official notification to Mexico that the war has begun! and so
indeed it has! and as much to our astonishment as to that of the
Mexicans! Who among us can ever forget the sensations produced in
this chamber, on Wednesday last, when the marching and the sailing
orders were read! and still more, when the message was read which
had set the army and navy in motion!
These orders and the message, after having been read in this
chamber, were sent to the printer, and have not yet returned: I can
only refer to them as I heard them read, and from a brief extract
which I took of the message; and must refer to others to do them
justice. From all that I could hear, the war is begun; and begun by
orders issued by the President before the treaty was communicated
to the Senate! We are informed of a squadron, and an army of
"_observation_," sent to the Mexican ports, and Mexican frontier,
with orders to watch, remonstrate, and report; and to communicate
with President Houston! Now, what is an army of _observation_, but
an army in the field for war? It is an army whose name is known,
and whose character is defined, and which is incident to war alone.
It is to watch the ENEMY! and can never be made to watch a FRIEND!
Friends cannot be watched by armed men, either individually or
nationally, without open enmity. Let an armed man take a position
before your door, show himself to your family, watch your movements,
and remonstrate with you, and report upon you, if he judged your
movements equivocal: let him do this, and what is it but an act of
hostility and of outrage which every feeling of the heart, and every
law of God and man, require you to resent and repulse? This would be
the case with the mere individual; still more with nations, and when
squadrons and armies are the watchers and remonstrants. Let Great
Britain send an army and navy _to lie in wait_ upon our frontiers,
and before our cities, and then see what a cry of war would be
raised in our country. The same of Mexico. She must feel herself
outraged and attacked; she must feel our treaties broken; all our
citizens within her dominions alien enemies; their commerce to be
instantly ruined, and themselves expelled from the country. This
must be our condition, unless the Senate (or Congress) saves the
country. We are at war with Mexico now; and the message which covers
the marching and sailing orders is still more extraordinary than
they. The message assumes the republic of Texas to be part of the
American Union by the mere signature of the treaty, and to remain
so until the treaty is rejected, if rejected at all; and, in the
mean time, the President is to use the army and the navy to protect
the acquired country from invasion, like any part of the existing
Union, and to treat as hostile all adverse possessors or intruders.
According to this, besides what may happen at Vera Cruz, Tampico,
Matamoros, and other ports, and besides what may happen on the
frontiers of Texas proper, the Mexican population in New Mexico, and
Governor Armijo, or in his absence the governor _ad interim_, Don
Mariano Chaves, may find themselves pursued as rebels and traitors
to the United States.
The war with Mexico, and its unconstitutionality, is fully shown:
its injustice remains to be exhibited, and that is an easy task.
What is done in violation of treaties, in violation of neutrality,
in violation of an armistice, must be unjust. All this occurs in
this case, and a great deal more. Mexico is our neighbor. We are
at peace with her. Social, commercial, and diplomatic relations
subsist between us, and the interest of the two nations requires
these relations to continue. We want a country which was once ours,
but which, by treaty, we have acknowledged to be hers. That country
has revolted. Thus far it has made good its revolt, and not a doubt
rests upon my mind that she will make it good for ever. But the
contest is not over. An armistice, duly proclaimed, and not revoked,
strictly observed by each in not firing a gun, though inoperative
thus far in the appointment of commissioners to treat for peace:
this armistice, only determinable upon notice, suspends the war. Two
thousand miles of Texian frontier is held in the hands of Mexico,
and all attempts to conquer that frontier have signally failed:
witness the disastrous expeditions to Mier and to Santa Fé. We
acknowledge the right--the moral and political right--of Mexico to
resubjugate this province, if she can. We declare our neutrality: we
profess friendship: we proclaim our respect for Mexico. In the midst
of all this, we make a treaty with Texas for transferring herself
to the United States, and that without saying a word to Mexico,
while receiving notice from her that such transfer would be war.
Mexico is treated as a nullity; and the province she is endeavoring
to reconquer is suddenly, by the magic of a treaty signature,
changed into United States domain. We want the country; but instead
of applying to Mexico, and obtaining her consent to the purchase,
or waiting a few months for the events which would supersede the
necessity of Mexican consent--instead of this plain and direct
course, a secret negotiation was entered into with Texas, in total
contempt of the acknowledged rights of Mexico, and without saying
a word to her until all was over. Then a messenger is despatched
in furious haste to this same Mexico, the bearer of volunteer
apologies, of deprecatory excuses, and of an offer of ten millions
of dollars for Mexican acquiescence in what Texas has done. Forty
days are allowed for the return of the messenger; and the question
is, will he bring back the consent? That question is answered in
the Mexican official notice of war, if the treaty of annexation
was made! and it is answered in the fact of not applying to her
for her consent before the treaty was made. The wrong to Mexico is
confessed in the fact of sending this messenger, and in the terms of
the letter of which he was the bearer. That letter of Mr. Secretary
Calhoun, of the 19th of April, to Mr. Benjamin Green, the United
States chargé in Mexico, is the most unfortunate in the annals of
human diplomacy! By the fairest implications, it admits insult and
injury to Mexico, and violation of her territorial boundaries! it
admits that we should have had her previous consent--should have had
her concurrence--that we have injured her as little as possible--and
that we did all this in full view of all possible consequences!
that is to say, in full view of war! in plain English, that we have
wronged her, and will fight her for it. As an excuse for all this,
the imaginary designs of a third power, which designs are four times
solemnly disavowed, are brought forward as a justification of our
conduct; and an incomprehensible terror of immediate destruction
is alleged as the cause of not applying to her for her "_previous
consent_" during the eight months that the negotiation continued,
and during the whole of which time we had a minister in Mexico, and
Mexico had a minister in Washington. This letter is surely the most
unfortunate in the history of human diplomacy. It admits the wrong,
and tenders war. It is a confession throughout, by the fairest
implication, of injustice to Mexico. It is a confession that her
"_concurrence_" and "_her previous consent_" were necessary.
It is now my purpose, Mr. President, to show that all this movement,
which is involving such great and serious consequences, and drawing
upon us the eyes of the civilized world, is bottomed upon a weak and
groundless pretext, discreditable to our government, and insulting
and injurious to Great Britain. We want Texas--that is to say,
the Texas of La Salle; and we want it for great national reasons,
obvious as day, and permanent as nature. We want it because it
is geographically appurtenant to our division of North America,
essential to our political, commercial, and social system, and
because it would be detrimental and injurious to us to have it
fall into the hands or to sink under the domination of any foreign
power. For these reasons, I was against sacrificing the country
when it was thrown away--and thrown away by those who are now so
suddenly possessed of a fury to get it back. For these reasons, I am
for getting it back whenever it can be done with peace and honor,
or even at the price of just war against any intrusive European
power: but I am against all disguise and artifice--against all
pretexts--and especially against weak and groundless pretexts,
discreditable to ourselves, offensive to others, too thin and
shallow not to be seen through by every beholder, and merely
invented to cover unworthy purposes. I am against the inventions
which have been brought forward to justify the secret concoction of
this treaty, and its sudden explosion upon us, like a ripened plot,
and a charged bomb, forty days before the conventional nomination
of a presidential candidate. In looking into this pretext, I shall
be governed by the evidence alone which I find upon the face of the
papers, regretting that the resolution which I have laid upon the
table for the examination of persons at the bar of the Senate, has
not yet been adopted. That resolution is in these words:
"_Resolved_, That the AUTHOR of the '_private letter_' from
London, in the summer of 1843 (believed to be Mr. Duff Green),
addressed to the American Secretary of State (Mr. Upshur), and
giving him the first intelligence of the (imputed) British
anti-slavery designs upon Texas, and the contents of which
'_private letter_' were made the basis of the Secretary's
leading despatch of the 8th of August following, to our chargé
in Texas, for procuring the annexation of Texas to the United
States, be SUMMONED to appear at the bar of the Senate, to
answer on oath to all questions in relation to the contents of
said '_private letter_,' and of any others in relation to the
same subject: and also to answer all questions, so far as he
shall be able, in relation to the origin and objects of the
treaty for the annexation of Texas, and of all the designs,
influences, and interests which led to the formation thereof.
"_Resolved, also_, That the Senate will examine at its bar,
or through a committee, such other persons as shall be deemed
proper in relation to their knowledge of any, or all, of the
foregoing points of inquiry."
I hope, Mr. President, this resolution will be adopted. It is due
to the gravity of the occasion that we should have facts and good
evidence before us. We are engaged in a transaction which concerns
the peace and the honor of the country; and extracts from private
letters, and letters themselves, with or without name, and, it may
be, from mistaken or interested persons, are not the evidence on
which we should proceed. Dr. Franklin was examined at the bar of
the British House of Commons before the American war, and I see no
reason why those who wish to inform the Senate, and others from
whom the Senate could obtain information, should not be examined
at our bar, or at that of the House, before the Senate or Congress
engages in the Mexican war. It would be a curious incident in the
Texas drama if it should turn out to be a fact that the whole
annexation scheme was organized before the reason for it was
discovered in London! and if, from the beginning, the abolition
plot was to be burst upon us, under a sudden and overwhelming sense
of national destruction, exactly forty days before the national
convention at Baltimore! I know nothing about these secrets; but,
being called upon to act, and to give a vote which may be big with
momentous consequences, I have a right to know the truth; and shall
continue to ask for it, until fully obtained, or finally denied.
I know not what the proof will be, if the examination is had. I
pretend to no private knowledge; but I have my impressions; and if
they are erroneous, let them be effaced--if correct, let them be
confirmed.
In the absence of the evidence which this responsible and
satisfactory examination might furnish, I limit myself to the
information which appears upon the face of the papers--imperfect,
defective, disjointed, and fixed up for the occasion, as those
papers evidently are. And here I must remark upon the absence of
all the customary information which sheds light upon the origin,
progress, and conclusion of treaties. No minutes of conferences--no
protocols--no propositions, or counter-propositions--no inside view
of the nascent and progressive negotiation. To supply all this
omission, the Senate is driven to the tedious process of calling
on the President, day by day, for some new piece of information;
and the endless necessity for these calls--the manner in which
they are answered--and the often delay in getting any answer at
all--become new reasons for the adoption of my resolution, and for
the examination of persons at the bar of the Senate.
The first piece of testimony I shall use in making good the position
I have assumed, is the letter of Mr. Upshur, our Secretary of State,
to Mr. Murphy, our chargé in Texas dated the 8th day of August, in
the year 1843. It is the first one, so far as we are permitted to
see, that begins the business of the Texas annexation; and has all
the appearance of beginning it in the middle, so far as the United
States are concerned, and upon grounds previously well considered:
for this letter of the 8th of August, 1843, contains every reason
on which the whole annexation movement has been defended, or
justified. And, here, I must repeat what I have already said: in
quoting these letters of the secretaries, I use the name of the
writer to discriminate the writer, but not to impute it to him.
The President is the author: the secretary only his head clerk,
writing by his command, and having no authority to write any thing
but as he commands. This important letter, the basis of all Texian
"_immediate_" annexation, opens thus:
"SIR: A private letter from a citizen of Maryland, then in
London, contains the following passage:
"'I learn from a source entitled to the fullest confidence, that
there is now here a Mr. Andrews, deputed by the abolitionists
of Texas to negotiate with the British government. That he has
seen Lord Aberdeen, and submitted his project for the abolition
of slavery in Texas, which is, that there shall be organized a
company in England, who shall advance a sum sufficient to pay
for the slaves now in Texas, and receive in payment Texas lands;
that the sum thus advanced shall be paid over as an indemnity
for the abolition of slavery; and I am authorized by the Texian
minister to say to you, that Lord Aberdeen has agreed that the
British government will guarantee the payment of the interest
on this loan, upon condition that the Texian government will
abolish slavery.'
"The writer professes to feel entire confidence in the accuracy
of this information. He is a man of great intelligence, and well
versed in public affairs. Hence I have every reason to confide
in the correctness of his conclusions."
The name of the writer is not given, but he is believed to be Mr.
Duff Green--a name which suggests a vicarious relation to our
Secretary of State--which is a synonym for intrigue--and a voucher
for finding in London whatever he was sent to bring back--who is the
putative recipient of the Gilmer letter to a friend in Maryland,
destined for General Jackson--and whose complicity with this Texas
plot is a fixed fact. Truly this "inhabitant of Maryland," who lived
in Washington, and whose existence was as ubiquitous as his _rôle_
was vicarious, was a very indispensable agent in all this Texas plot.
The letter then goes on, through a dozen elaborate paragraphs,
to give every reason for the annexation of Texas, founded on the
apprehension of British views there and the consequent danger
to the slave property of the South, and other injuries to the
United States, which have been so incontinently reproduced, and so
tenaciously adhered to ever since.
Thus commenced the plan for the immediate annexation of Texas to
the United States, as the only means of saving that country from
British domination, and from the anti-slavery schemes attributed to
her by Mr. Duff Green. Unfortunately, it was not deemed necessary
to inquire into the truth of this gentleman's information; and it
was not until four months afterwards, and until after the most
extraordinary efforts to secure annexation had been made by our
government, that it was discovered that the information given by
Mr. Green was entirely mistaken and unfounded! The British minister
(the Earl of Aberdeen) and the Texian chargé in London (Mr. Ashbel
Smith), both of whom were referred to by Mr. Green, being informed
in the month of November of the use which had been made of their
names, availed themselves of the first opportunity to contradict the
whole story to our minister, Mr. Everett. This minister immediately
communicated these important contradictions to his own government,
and we find them in the official correspondence transmitted to us
by Mr. Everett, under dates of the 3d and 16th of November, 1843. I
quote first from that of the 3d of November:
(Here was read Mr. Everett's account of his first conversation with
the Earl of Aberdeen on this subject.)
I quote copiously, and with pleasure, Mr. President, from this
report of Lord Aberdeen's conversation with Mr. Everett; it is
frank and friendly, equally honorable to the minister as a man and
a statesman, and worthy of the noble spirit of the great William
Pitt. Nothing could dissipate more completely, and extinguish more
utterly, the insidious designs imputed to Great Britain; nothing
could be more satisfactory and complete; nothing more was wanting to
acquit the British government of all the alarming designs imputed
to her. It was enough; but the Earl of Aberdeen, in the fulness of
his desire to leave the American government no ground for suspicion
or complaint on this head, voluntarily returned to the topic a few
days afterwards; and, on the 6th of November, again disclaims in the
strongest terms the offensive designs imputed to his government. Mr.
Everett thus relates, in his letter of the 16th of November, the
substance of these renewed declarations:
(Here the letter giving an account of the second interview was read.)
Thus, twice, in three days, the British minister fully, formally,
and in the broadest manner contradicted the whole story upon the
faith of which our President had commenced (so far as the papers
show the commencement of it) his immediate annexation project, as
the only means of counteracting the dangerous designs of Great
Britain! But this was not all. There was another witness in London
who had been referred to by Mr. Duff Green; and it remained for this
witness to confirm or contradict his story. This was the Texian
chargé (Mr. Ashbel Smith): and the same letter from Mr. Everett,
of the 16th of November, brought his contradiction in unequivocal
terms. Mr. Everett thus recites it:
(The passage was read.)
Such was the statement of Mr. Ashbel Smith! and the story of Mr.
Duff Green, which had been made the basis of the whole scheme for
_immediate_ annexation, being now contradicted by two witnesses--the
two which he himself had named--it might have been expected that
some halt or pause would have taken place, to give an opportunity
for consideration and reflection, and for consulting the American
people, and endeavoring to procure the consent of Mexico. This
might have been expected: but not so the fact. On the contrary, the
_immediate_ annexation was pressed more warmly than ever, and the
administration papers became more clamorous and incessant in their
accusations of Great Britain. Seeing this, and being anxious (to use
his own words) to put a stop to these misrepresentations, and to
correct the errors of the American government, the Earl of Aberdeen,
in a formal despatch to Mr. Pakenham, the new British minister at
Washington, took the trouble of a third contradiction, and a most
formal and impressive one, to all the evil designs in relation to
Texas, and, through Texas, upon the United States, which were thus
perseveringly attributed to his government. This paper, destined to
become a great landmark in this controversy, from the frankness and
fulness of its disavowals, and from the manner in which detached
phrases, picked out of it, have been used by our Secretary of State
[Mr. CALHOUN] since the treaty was signed, to justify its signature,
deserves to be read in full, and to be made a corner-stone in the
debate on this subject. I therefore, quote it in full, and shall
read it at length in the body of my speech. This is it:
(The whole letter read.)
This was intended to stop the misrepresentations which were
circulated, and to correct the errors of the government in relation
to Great Britain and Texas. It was a reiteration, and that for the
third time, and voluntarily, of denial of all the alarming designs
attributed to Great Britain, and by means of which a Texas agitation
was getting up in the United States. Besides the full declaration
made to our federal government, as head of the Union, a special
assurance was given to the slaveholding States, to quiet their
apprehensions, the truth and sufficiency of which must be admitted
by every person who cannot furnish proof to the contrary. I read
this special assurance a second time, that its importance may be
more distinctly and deeply felt by every senator:
"_And the governments of the slaveholding States may be
assured, that, although we shall not desist from those open and
honest efforts which we have constantly made for procuring the
abolition of slavery throughout the world, we shall neither
openly nor secretly resort to any measures which can tend to
disturb their internal tranquillity, or thereby to affect the
prosperity of the American Union._"
It was on the 26th day of February that this noble despatch was
communicated to the (then) American Secretary of State. That
gentleman lost his life by an awful catastrophe on the 28th, and it
seems to be understood, and admitted all around, that the treaty
of annexation was agreed upon, and virtually concluded before his
death. Nothing, then, in Lord Aberdeen's declaration, could have
had any effect upon its formation or conclusion. Yet, six days
after the actual signature of the treaty by the present Secretary
of State--namely, on the 18th day of April--this identical despatch
of Lord Aberdeen is seized upon, in a letter to Mr. Pakenham, to
justify the formation of the treaty, and to prove the necessity
for the _immediate_ annexation of Texas to the United States, as
a measure of self-defence, and as the only means of saving our
Union! Listen to the two or three first paragraphs of that letter:
it is the long one filled with those negro statistics of which Mr.
Pakenham declines the controversy. The secretary says:
(Here the paragraphs were read, and the Senate heard with as
much amazement as Mr. Pakenham could have done, that comparative
statement of the lame, blind, halt, idiotic, pauper and jail tenants
of the free and the slave blacks, which the letter to the British
minister contained, with a view to prove that slavery was their best
condition.)
It is evident, Mr. President, that the treaty was commenced, carried
on, formed, and agreed upon, so far as the documents show its
origin, in virtue of the information given in the private letter of
Mr. Duff Green, contradicted as that was by the Texian and British
ministers, to whom it referred. It is evident from all the papers
that this was the case. The attempt to find in Lord Aberdeen's
letter a subsequent pretext for what had previously been done, is
evidently an afterthought, put to paper, for the first time, just
six days after the treaty had been signed! The treaty was signed
on the 12th of April: the afterthought was committed to paper, in
the form of a letter to Mr. Pakenham, on the 18th! and on the 19th
the treaty was sent to the Senate! having been delayed seven days
to admit of drawing up, and sending in along with it, this _ex post
facto_ discovery of reasons to justify it. The letter of Mr. Calhoun
was sent in with the treaty: the reply of Mr. Pakenham to it, though
brief and prompt, being written on the same day (the 19th of April),
was not received by the Senate until ten days thereafter--to wit: on
the 29th of April; and when received, it turns out to be a fourth
disavowal, in the most clear and unequivocal terms, of this new
discovery of the old designs imputed to Great Britain, and which
had been three times disavowed before. Here is the letter of Mr.
Pakenham, giving this fourth contradiction to the old story, and
appealing to the judgment of the civilized world for its opinion
on the whole transaction. I read an extract from this letter; the
last one, it is presumed, that Mr. Pakenham can write till he hears
from his government, to which he had immediately transmitted Mr.
Calhoun's _ex post facto_ letter of the 18th.
(It was read.)
Now what will the civilized world, to whose good opinion we must all
look: what will Christendom, now so averse to war, and pretexted
war: what will the laws of reason and honor, so just in their
application to the conduct of nations and individuals: what will
this civilized world, this Christian world, these just laws--what
will they all say that our government ought to have done, under
this accumulation of peremptory denials of all the causes which
we had undertaken to find in the conduct of Great Britain for our
"_immediate_" annexation of Texas, and war with Mexico? Surely these
tribunals will say: _First_, That the disavowals should have been
received as sufficient; _or Secondly_, They should be disproved, if
not admitted to be true; _or Thirdly_, That reasonable time should
be allowed for looking further into their truth.
One of these things should have been done: our President does
neither. He concludes the treaty--retains it a week--sends it to
the Senate--and his Secretary of State obtains a promise from the
chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations [Mr. ARCHER] to
delay all action upon it--not to take it up for forty days--the
exact time that would cover the sitting of the Baltimore democratic
convention for the nomination of presidential candidates! This
promise was obtained under the assurance that a special messenger
had been despatched to Mexico for her consent to the treaty; and the
forty days was the time claimed for the execution of his errand,
and at the end of which he was expected to return with the required
consent. Bad luck again! This despatch of the messenger, and delay
for his return, and the _reasons_ he was understood to be able to
have offered for the consent of Mexico, were felt by all as an
admission that the consent of Mexico must be obtained, cost what
millions it might. This admission was fatal! and it became necessary
to take another tack, and do it away! This was attempted in a
subsequent message of the President, admitting, to be sure, that
the messenger was sent, and sent to operate upon Mexico in relation
to the treaty; but taking a fine distinction between obtaining her
consent to it, and preventing her from being angry at it! This
message will receive justice at the hands of others; I only heard it
as read, and cannot quote it in its own words. But the substance of
it was, that the messenger was sent to prevent Mexico from going to
war with us on account of the treaty! as if there was any difference
between getting her to consent to the treaty, and getting her not to
dissent! But, here again, more bad luck. Besides the declarations
of the chairman of Foreign Relations, showing what this messenger
was sent for, there is a copy of the letter furnished to us of which
he was the bearer, and which shows that the "_concurrence_" of
Mexico was wanted, and that apologies are offered for not obtaining
her "_previous consent_." But, of this hereafter. I go on with the
current of events. The treaty was sent in, and forty days' silence
upon it was demanded of the Senate. Now why send it in, if the
Senate was not to touch it for forty days? Why not retain it in the
Department of State until the lapse of these forty days, when the
answer from Mexico would have been received, and a fifth disavowal
arrived from Great Britain! if, indeed, it is possible for her to
reiterate a disavowal already four times made, and not received?
Why not retain the treaty during these forty days of required
silence upon it in the Senate, and when that precious time might
have been turned to such valuable account in interchanging friendly
explanations with Great Britain and Mexico? Why not keep the treaty
in the Secretary of State's office, as well as in the Secretary of
the Senate's office, during these forty days? Precisely because the
Baltimore convention was to sit in thirty-eight days from that time!
and forty days would give time for the "_Texas bomb_" to burst and
scatter its fragments all over the Union, blowing up candidates for
the presidency, blowing up the _tongue-tied_ Senate itself for not
ratifying the treaty, and furnishing a new Texas candidate, anointed
with gunpowder, for the presidential chair. This was the reason,
and as obvious as if written at the head of every public document.
In the mean time, all these movements give fresh reason for an
examination of persons at the bar of the Senate. The determination
of the President to conclude the treaty, before the Earl of
Aberdeen's despatch was known to him--that is to say, before the
26th of February, 1844: the true nature of the messenger's errand
to Mexico, and many other points, now involved in obscurity, may
be cleared up in these examinations, to the benefit and well being
of the Union. Perhaps it may chance to turn out in proof, that the
secretary, who found his reasons for making the treaty and hastening
the immediate annexation, had determined upon all that long before
he heard of Lord Aberdeen's letter.
But to go on. Instead of admitting, disproving, or taking time to
consider the reiterated disavowals of the British government, the
messenger to Mexico is charged with our manifesto of war against
that government, on account of the imputed designs of Great Britain,
and in which they are all assumed to be true! and not only true,
but fraught with such sudden, irresistible, and irretrievable ruin
to the United States, that there was no time for an instant of
delay, nor any way to save the Union from destruction but by the
"_immediate_" annexation of Texas. Here is the letter. It is too
important to be abridged; and though referred to several times, will
now be read in full. Hear it:
(The letter read.)
This letter was addressed to Mr. Benjamin Green, the son of Mr. Duff
Green; so that the beginning and the ending of this "_immediate_"
annexation scheme, so far as the invention of the pretext, and the
inculpation of Great Britain is concerned, is in the hands of father
and son--a couple, of whom it may be said, in the language of Gil
Blas, "These two make a pair." The letter itself is one of the most
unfortunate that the annals of diplomacy ever exhibited. It admits
the wrong to Mexico, and offers to fight her for that wrong; and not
for any thing that she has done to the United States, but because
of some supposed operation of Great Britain upon Texas. Was there
ever such a comedy of errors, or, it may be, tragedy of crimes! Let
us analyze this important letter; let us examine it, paragraph by
paragraph.
The first paragraph enjoins the strongest assurances to be given to
Mexico of our indisposition to wound the dignity or honor of Mexico
in making this treaty, and of our regret if she should consider
it otherwise. This admits that we have done something to outrage
Mexico, and that we owe her a volunteer apology, to soften her
anticipated resentment.
The same paragraph states that we have been driven to this step in
self-defence, and to counteract the "_policy adopted_," and the
"_efforts made_" by Great Britain to abolish slavery in Texas.
This is an admission that we have done what may be offensive and
injurious to Mexico, not on account of any thing she has done to us,
but for what we fear Great Britain may do to Texas. And as for this
plea of self-defence, it is an invasion of the homicidal criminal's
prerogative, to plead it. All the murders committed in our country,
are done in self-defence--a few through insanity. The choice of the
defence lies between them, and it is often a nice guess for counsel
to say which to take. And so it might have been in this case; and
insanity would have been an advantage in the plea, being more
honorable, and not more false.
The same paragraph admits that the United States has made this
treaty in full view of war with Mexico; for the words "_all possible
consequences_," taken in connection with the remaining words of the
sentence, and with General Almonte's notice filed by order of his
government at the commencement of this negotiation, can mean nothing
else but war! and that to be made by the treaty-making power.
The second paragraph directs the despatch of Lord Aberdeen to be
read to the Mexican Secretary of State, to show him our cause of
complaint against Great Britain. This despatch is to be read--not
delivered, not even a copy of it--to the Mexican minister. He may
take notes of it during the reading, but not receive a copy, because
it is a document to be sent to the Senate! Surely the Senate would
have pardoned a departure from _etiquette_ in a case where war
was impending, and where the object was to convince the nation we
were going to fight! that we had a right to fight her for fear of
something which a third power might do to a fourth. To crown this
scene, the reading is to be of a document in the English language,
to a minister whose language is Spanish; and who may not know what
is read, except through an interpreter.
The third paragraph of this pregnant letter admits that questions
are to grow out of this treaty, for the settlement of which a
minister will be sent by us to Mexico. This is a most grave
admission. It is a confession that we commit such wrong upon Mexico
by this treaty, that it will take another treaty to redress it;
and that, as the wrong doer, we will volunteer an embassy to atone
for our misconduct. Boundary is named as one of these things to be
settled, and with reason; for we violate 2,000 miles of Mexican
boundary which is to become ours by the ratification of this treaty,
and to remain ours till restored to its proper owner by another
treaty. Is this right? Is it sound in morals? Is it safe in policy?
Would we take 2,000 miles of the Canadas in the same way? I presume
not. And why not? why not treat Great Britain and Mexico alike? why
not march up to "Fifty-Four Forty" as courageously as we march
upon the Rio Grande? Because Great Britain is powerful, and Mexico
weak--a reason which may fail in policy as much as in morals. Yes,
sir! Boundary will have to be adjusted, and that of the Rio Grande;
and until adjusted, we shall be aggressors, by our own admission, on
the undisputed Mexican territory on the Rio Grande.
The last paragraph is the most significant of the whole. It is a
confession, by the clearest inferences, that our whole conduct to
Mexico has been tortuous and wrongful, and that she has "_rights_,"
to the settlement of which Mexico must be a party. The great
admissions are, the want of the concurrence of Mexico; the want of
her previous consent to this treaty; its objectionableness to her;
the violation of her boundary; the "_rights_" of each, and of course
the right of Mexico to settle questions of security and interest
which are unsettled by the present treaty. The result of the whole
is, that the war, in full view of which the treaty was made, was an
unjust war upon Mexico.
Thus admitting our wrong in injuring Mexico, in not obtaining her
concurrence; in not securing her previous consent; in violating her
boundary; in proceeding without her in a case where her rights,
security, and interests are concerned; admitting all this, what is
the reason given to Mexico for treating her with the contempt of
a total neglect in all this affair? And here strange scenes rise
up before us. This negotiation began, upon the record, in August
last. We had a minister in Mexico with whom we could communicate
every twenty days. Mexico had a minister here, with whom we could
communicate every hour in the day. Then why not consult Mexico
before the treaty? Why not speak to her during these eight months,
when in such hot haste to consult her afterwards, and so anxious to
stop our action on the treaty till she was heard from, and so ready
to volunteer millions to propitiate her wrath, or to conciliate her
consent? Why this haste after the treaty, when there was so much
time before? It was because the plan required the "_bomb_" to be
kept back till forty days before the Baltimore convention, and then
a storm to be excited.
The reason given for this great haste after so long delay, is that
the safety of the United States was at stake: that the British would
abolish slavery in Texas, and then in the United States, and so
destroy the Union. Giving to this imputed design, for the sake of
the argument, all the credit due to an uncontradicted scheme, and
still it is a preposterous excuse for not obtaining the previous
consent of Mexico. It turns upon the idea that this abolition of
slavery in Texas is to be sudden, irresistible, irretrievable! and
that not a minute was to be lost in averting the impending ruin!
But this is not the case. Admitting what is charged--that Great
Britain has adopted a policy, and made efforts to abolish slavery in
Texas, with a view to its abolition in the United States--yet this
is not to be done by force, or magic. The Duke of Wellington is not
to land at the head of some 100,000 men to set the slaves free. No
gunpowder plot, like that intended by Guy Fawkes, is to blow the
slaves out of the country. No magic wand is to be waved over the
land, and to convert it into the home of the free. No slips of magic
carpet in the Arabian Nights is to be slipped under the feet of the
negroes to send them all whizzing, by a wish, ten thousand miles
through the air. None of these sudden, irresistible, irretrievable
modes of operating is to be followed by Great Britain. She wishes
to see slavery abolished in Texas, as elsewhere; but this wish,
like all other human wishes, is wholly inoperative without works
to back it: and these Great Britain denies. She denies that she
will operate by works, only by words where acceptable. But admit
it. Admit that she has now done what she never did before--_denied
her design!_ admit all this, and you still have to confess that she
is a human power and has to work by human means, and in this case
to operate upon the minds of people and of nations--upon Mexico,
Texas, the United States, and slaves within the boundaries of these
two latter countries. She has to work by moral means; that is to
say, by operating on the mind and will. All this is a work of
time--a work of years--the work of a generation! Slavery is in the
constitution of Texas, and in the hearts, customs, and interests
of the people; and cannot be got out in many years, if at all. And
are we to be told that there was no time to consult Mexico? or,
in the vague language of the letter, that _circumstances_ did not
permit the consultation, and that without disclosing what these
circumstances were? It was last August that the negotiation began.
Was there fear that Mexico would liberate Texian slaves if she
found out the treaty before it was made? Alas! sir, she refused to
have any thing to do with the scheme! Great Britain proposed to her
to make emancipation of slaves the condition of acknowledging Texian
independence. She utterly refused it; and of this our government was
officially informed by the Earl of Aberdeen. No, sir, no! There is
no reason in the excuse. I profess to be a man that can understand
reason, and could comprehend the force of the circumstances which
would show that the danger of delay was so imminent that nothing
but _immediate_ annexation could save the United States from
destruction. But none such are named, or can be named; and the true
reason is, that the Baltimore convention was to sit on the 27th of
May.
Great Britain avows all she intends, and that is--a wish--TO
SEE--slavery abolished in Texas; and she declares all the means
which she means to use, and that is, advice where it is acceptable.
It will be a strange spectacle, in the nineteenth century, to
behold the United States at war with Mexico, because Great Britain
wishes--TO SEE--the abolition of slavery in Texas.
So far from being a just cause of war, I hold that the expression of
such a wish is not even censurable by us, since our naval alliance
with Great Britain for the suppression of the slave trade--since
our diplomatic alliance with her to close the markets of the world
against the slave trade--and since the large effusion of mawkish
sentimentality on the subject of slavery, in which our advocates of
the aforesaid diplomatic and naval alliance indulged themselves at
the time of its negotiation and conclusion. Since that time, I think
we have lost the right (if we ever possessed it) of fighting Mexico,
because Great Britain says she wishes--TO SEE--slavery abolished in
Texas, as elsewhere throughout the world.
The civilized world judges the causes of war, and discriminates
between motives and pretexts: the former are respected when true and
valid--the latter are always despised and exposed. Every Christian
nation owes it to itself, as well as to the family of Christian
nations, to examine well its grounds of war, before it begins one,
and to hold itself in a condition to justify its act in the eyes
of God and man. Not satisfied of either the truth or validity of
the cause for our war with Mexico, in the alleged interference of
Great Britain in Texian affairs, I feel myself bound to oppose it,
and not the less because it is deemed a small war. Our constitution
knows no difference between wars. The declaration of all wars is
given to Congress--not to the President and Senate--much less to
the President alone. Besides, a war is an ungovernable monster,
and there is no knowing into what proportions even a small one may
expand! especially when the interference of one large power may lead
to the interference of another.
Great Britain disavows (and that four times over) all the designs
upon Texas attributed to her. She disavows every thing. I believe
I am as jealous of the encroaching and domineering spirit of that
power, as any reasonable man ought to be; but these disavowals are
enough for me. That government is too proud to lie! too wise to
criminate its future conduct by admitting the culpability which the
disavowal implies. Its fault is on the other side of the account--in
its arrogance in avowing, and even overstating, its pretensions.
Copenhagen is her style! I repeat it, then, the disavowal of all
design to interfere with Texian Independence, or with the existence
of slavery in Texas, is enough for me. I shall believe in it until
I see it disproved by evidence, or otherwise falsified. Would to
God that our administration could get the same disavowal in all the
questions of real difference between the two countries! that we
could get it in the case of the Oregon--the claim of search--the
claim of visitation--the claim of impressment--the practice of
liberating our fugitive and criminal slaves--the repetition of the
Schlosser invasion of our territory and murder of our citizens--the
outrage of the Comet, Encomium, Enterprise, and Hermosa cases!
And here, without regard to the truth or falsehood of this imputed
design of British intentions to abolish slavery in Texas, a very
awkward circumstance crosses our path in relation to its validity,
if true: for, it so happens that we did that very thing ourselves!
By the Louisiana treaty of 1803, Texas, and all the country,
between the Red River and Arkansas, became ours, and was subject
to slavery: by the treaty of 1819, made, as Mr. Adams assures us,
by the majority of Mr. Monroe's cabinet, who were Southern men,
this Texas, and a hundred thousand square miles of other territory
between the Red River and Arkansas, were dismembered from our Union,
and added to Mexico, a non-slaveholding empire. By that treaty of
1819, slavery was actually abolished in all that region in which
we now only fear, contrary to the evidence, that there is a design
to abolish it! and the confines of a non-slaveholding empire were
then actually brought to the boundaries of Louisiana, Arkansas, and
Missouri! the exact places which we now so greatly fear to expose to
the contact of a non-slaveholding dominion. All this I exposed at
the time the treaty of 1819 was made, and pointed out as one of the
follies or crimes, of that unaccountable treaty; and now recur to it
in my place here to absolve Mr. Adams, the negotiator of the treaty
of 1819, from the blame which I then cast upon him. His responsible
statement on the floor of the House of Representatives has absolved
him from that blame, and transferred it to the shoulders of the
majority of Mr. Monroe's cabinet. On seeing the report of his speech
in the papers, I deemed it right to communicate with Mr. Adams,
through a senator from his State, now in my eye, and who hears
what I say (looking at Mr. BATES, of Massachusetts), and through
him received the confirmation of the reported speech, that he (Mr.
Adams) was the last of Mr. Monroe's cabinet to yield our true
boundaries in that quarter. [Here Mr. Bates nodded assent.] Southern
men deprived us of Texas, and made it non-slaveholding in 1819.
Our present Secretary of State was a member of that cabinet, and
counselled that treaty: our present President was a member of the
House, and sanctioned it in voting against Mr. Clay's condemnatory
resolution. They did a great mischief then: they should be cautious
not to err again in the _manner_ of getting it back.
I have shown you, Mr. President, that the ratification of this
treaty would be war with Mexico--that it would be unjust war,
unconstitutionally made--and made upon a weak and groundless
pretext. It is not my purpose to show for what object this war is
made--why these marching and sailing orders have been given--and why
our troops and ships, as squadrons and corps of observation, are
now in the Gulf of Mexico, watching Mexican cities; or on the Red
River, watching Mexican soldiers. I have not told the reasons for
this war, and warlike movements, nor is it necessary to do so. The
purpose of the whole is plain and obvious. It is in every body's
mouth. It is in the air, and we can see and feel it. Mr. Tyler wants
to be President; and, different from the perfumed fop of Shakspeare,
to whom the smell of gunpowder was so offensive, he not only wants
to smell that compound, but also to smell of it. He wants an odor
of the "_villanous compound_" upon him. He has become infected
with the modern notion that gunpowder popularity is the passport
to the presidency; and he wants that passport. He wants to play
Jackson; but let him have a care. From the sublime to the ridiculous
there is but a step; and, in heroic imitations, there is no middle
ground. The hero missed, the harlequin appears; and hisses salute
the ears which were itching for applause. Jackson was no candidate
for the presidency when he acted the real, not the mock hero. He
staked himself for his country--did nothing but what was just--and
eschewed intrigue. His elevation to the presidency was the act of
his fellow-citizens--not the machination of himself.
CHAPTER CXL.
TEXAS OR DISUNION: SOUTHERN CONVENTION: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH:
EXTRACTS.
The senator from South Carolina (Mr. McDuffie) assumes it for
certain, that the great meeting projected for Nashville is to take
place: and wishes to know who are to be my bedfellows in that great
gathering: and I on my part, would wish to know who are to be his!
Misery, says the proverb, makes strange bedfellows: and political
combinations sometimes make them equally strange. The fertile
imagination of Burke has presented us with a view of one of these
strange sights; and the South Carolina procession at Nashville (if
nothing occurs to balk it) may present another. Burke has exhibited
to us the picture of a cluster of old political antagonists (it was
after the formation of Lord North's broad bottomed administration,
and after the country's good and love of office had smothered old
animosities)--all sleeping together in one truckle-bed: to use his
own language, all pigging together (that is, lying like pigs, heads
and tails, and as many together) in the same truckle-bed: and a
queer picture he made of it! But if things go on as projected here,
never did misery, or political combination, or the imagination
of Burke, present such a medley of bedfellows as will be seen at
Nashville. All South Carolina is to be there: of course General
Jackson will be there, and will be good and hospitable to all. But
let the travellers take care who goes to bed to him. If he should
happen to find old tariff disunion, disguised as Texas disunion,
lying by his side! then woe to the hapless wight that has sought
such a lodging. Preservation of the Federal Union is as strong in
the old Roman's heart now as ever: and while, as a Christian, he
forgives all that is past (if it were past!), yet, no old tricks
under new names. Texas disunion will be to him the same as tariff
disunion: and if he detects a Texas disunionist nestling into his
bed, I say again, woe to the luckless wight! Sheets and blankets
will be no salvation. The tiger will not be toothless--the senator
understands the allusion--nor clawless either. Teeth and claws he
will have, and sharp use he will make of them! Not only skin and
fur, but blood and bowels may fly, and double-quick time scampering
may clear that bed! I shall not be there: even if the scheme goes
on (which I doubt after this day's occurrences); if it should go
on, and any thing should induce me to go so far out of my line, it
would be to have a view of the senator from South Carolina, and the
friends for whom he speaks, and their new bedfellows, or fellows in
bed, as the case may be, all pigging together in one truckle-bed at
Nashville.
But I advise the contrivers to give up this scheme. Polk and Texas
are strong, and can carry a great deal, but not every thing. The
oriental story informs us that it was the last ounce which broke
the camel's back? What if a mountain had been put first on the poor
animal's back? Nullification is a mountain! Disunion is a mountain!
and what could Polk and Texas do with two mountains on their backs?
And here, Mr. President, I must speak out. The time has come for
those to speak out who neither fear nor count consequences when
their country is in danger. Nullification and disunion are revived,
and revived under circumstances which menace more danger than ever,
since coupled with a popular question which gives to the plotters
the honest sympathies of the patriotic millions. I have often
intimated it before, but now proclaim it. Disunion is at the bottom
of this long-concealed Texas machination. Intrigue and speculation
co-operate; but disunion is at the bottom, and I denounce it to
the American people. Under the pretext of getting Texas into
the Union, the scheme is to get the South out of it. A separate
confederacy, stretching from the Atlantic to the Californias (and
hence the secret of the Rio Grande del Norte frontier), is the
cherished vision of disappointed ambition; and for this consummation
every circumstance has been carefully and artfully contrived. A
secret and intriguing negotiation, concealed from Congress and the
people: an abolition quarrel picked with Great Britain to father
an abolition quarrel at home: a slavery correspondence to outrage
the North: war with Mexico: the clandestine concentration of troops
and ships in the southwest: the secret compact with the President
of Texas, and the subjection of American forces to his command:
the flagrant seizure of the purse and the sword: the contradictory
and preposterous reasons on which the detected military and
naval movement was defended--all these announce the prepared
catastrophe; and the inside view of the treaty betrays its design.
The whole annexed country is to be admitted as one territory, with
a treaty-promise to be admitted as States, when we all know that
Congress alone can admit new States, and that the treaty-promise,
without a law of Congress to back it, is void. The whole to be slave
States (and with the boundary to the Rio Grande there may be a great
many); and the correspondence, which is the key to the treaty, and
shows the design of its framers, wholly directed to the extension of
slavery and the exasperation of the North. What else could be done
to get up Missouri controversies and make sure of the non-admission
of these States? Then the plot is consummated: and Texas without
the Union, sooner than the Union without Texas (already the
premonitory chorus of so many resolves), receives its practical
application in the secession of the South, and its adhesion to the
rejected Texas. Even without waiting for the non-admission of the
States, so carefully provided for in the treaty and correspondence,
secession and confederation with the foreign Texas is already the
scheme of the subaltern disunionists. The subalterns, charged too
high by their chiefs, are ready for this; but the more cunning
chiefs, want Texas in as a territory--in by treaty--the supreme
law of the land--with a void promise for admission as States. Then
non-admission can be called a breach of the treaty. Texas can be
assumed to be a part of the Union; and secession and conjunction
with her becomes the rightful remedy. This is the design, and I
denounce it; and blind is he who, occupying a position at this
capitol, does not behold it!
I mention secession as the more cunning method of dissolving the
Union. It is disunion, and the more dangerous because less palpable.
Nullification begat it, and if allowed there is an end to the Union.
For a few States to secede, without other alliances, would only
put the rest to the trouble of bringing them back; but with Texas
and California to retire upon, the Union would have to go. _Many
persons would secede on the non-admission of Texian States who
abhor disunion now._ To avoid all these dangers, and to make sure
of Texas, pass my bill! which gives the promise of Congress for the
admission of the new States--neutralizes the slave question--avoids
Missouri controversies--pacifies Mexico--and harmonizes the Union.
The senator from South Carolina complains that I have been arrogant
and overbearing in this debate, and dictatorial to those who were
opposed to me. So far as this reproach is founded, I have to regret
it, and to ask pardon of the Senate and of its members. I may be in
some fault. I have, indeed, been laboring under deep feeling; and
while much was kept down, something may have escaped. I marked the
commencement of this Texas movement long before it was visible to
the public eye; and always felt it to be dangerous, because it gave
to the plotters the honest sympathies of the millions. I saw men who
never cared a straw about Texas--one of whom gave it away--another
of whom voted against saving it--and all of whom were silent and
indifferent while the true friends of the sacrificed country were
laboring to get it back: I saw these men lay their plot in the
winter of 1842-'43, and told every person with whom I talked every
step they were to take in it. All that has taken place, I foretold:
all that is intended, I foresee. The intrigue for the presidency
was the first act in the drama; the dissolution of the Union the
second. And I, who hate intrigue, and love the Union, can only
speak of intriguers and disunionists with warmth and indignation.
The oldest advocate for the recovery of Texas, I must be allowed to
speak in just terms of the criminal politicians who prostituted the
question of its recovery to their own base purposes, and delayed its
success by degrading and disgracing it. A western man, and coming
from a State more than any other interested in the recovery of this
country so unaccountably thrown away by the treaty of 1819, I must
be allowed to feel indignant at seeing Atlantic politicians seizing
upon it, and making it a sectional question, for the purposes of
ambition and disunion. I have spoken warmly of these plotters and
intriguers; but I have not permitted their conduct to alter my own,
or to relax my zeal for the recovery of the sacrificed country. I
have helped to reject the disunion treaty; and that obstacle being
removed, I have brought in the bill which will insure the recovery
of Texas (with peace, and honor, and with the Union) as soon as
the exasperation has subsided which the outrageous conduct of this
administration has excited in every Mexican breast. No earthly
power but Mexico has a right to say a word. Civil treatment and
consultation beforehand would have conciliated her; but the seizure
of two thousand miles of her undisputed territory, an insulting
correspondence, breach of the armistice, secret negotiations with
Texas, and sending troops and ships to waylay and attack her, have
excited feelings of resentment which must be allayed before any
thing can be done.
The senator from South Carolina compares the rejected treaty to
the slain Cæsar, and gives it a ghost, which is to meet me at
some future day, as the spectre met Brutus at Philippi. I accept
the comparison, and thank the senator for it. It is both classic
and just; for as Cæsar was slain for the good of his country, so
has been this treaty; and as the spectre appeared at Philippi on
the side of the ambitious Antony and the hypocrite Octavius, and
against the patriot Brutus, so would the ghost of this poor treaty,
when it comes to meet me, appear on the side of the President and
his secretary, and against the man who was struggling to save his
country from their lawless designs. But here the comparison must
stop; for I can promise the ghost and his backers that if the fight
goes against me at this new Philippi, with which I am threatened,
and the enemies of the American Union triumph over me as the enemies
of Roman liberty triumphed over Brutus and Cassius, I shall not fall
upon my sword, as Brutus did, though Cassius be killed, and run
it through my own body; but I shall save it, and save myself for
another day, and for another use--for the day when the battle of the
disunion of these States is to be fought--not with words, but with
iron--and for the hearts of the traitors who appear in arms against
their country.
The comparison is just. Cæsar was rightfully killed for conspiring
against his country; but it was not he that destroyed the liberties
of Rome. That work was done by the profligate politicians, without
him, and before his time; and his death did not restore the
republic. There were no more elections. Rotten politicians had
destroyed them; and the nephew of Cæsar, as heir to his uncle,
succeeded to the empire on the principle of hereditary succession.
And here, Mr. President, History appears in her grand and
instructive character, as Philosophy teaching by example: and let
us not be senseless to her warning voice. Superficial readers
believe it was the military men who destroyed the Roman republic. No
such thing! It was the politicians who did it! factious, corrupt,
intriguing, politicians! destroying public virtue in their mad
pursuit after office! destroying their rivals by crime! deceiving
and debauching the people for votes! and bringing elections into
contempt by the frauds and violence with which they were conducted.
From the time of the Gracchi there were no elections that could bear
the name. Confederate and rotten politicians bought and sold the
consulship. Intrigue, and the dagger, disposed of rivals. Fraud,
violence, bribes, terror, and the plunder of the public treasury,
commanded votes. The people had no choice: and long before the time
of Cæsar nothing remained of republican government, but the name,
and the abuse. Read Plutarch. In the life of Cæsar, and not three
pages before the crossing of the Rubicon, he paints the ruined
state of the elections--shows that all elective government was
gone--that the hereditary form had become a necessary relief from
the contests of the corrupt--and that in choosing between Pompey
and Cæsar, many preferred Pompey, not because they thought him
republican, but because they thought he would make the milder king.
Even arms were but a small part of Cæsar's reliance when he crossed
the Rubicon. Gold, still more than the sword, was his dependence:
and he sent forward the accumulated treasures of plundered Gaul, to
be poured into the laps of rotten politicians. There was no longer
a popular government; and in taking all power to himself, he only
took advantage of the state of things which profligate politicians
had produced. In this he was culpable, and paid the forfeit with his
life; but in contemplating his fate, let us never forget that the
politicians had undermined and destroyed the republic, before he
came to seize and to master it.
It was the same in our day. We have seen the conqueror of Egypt
and Italy overturn the Directory, usurp all power, and receive the
sanction of the people. And why? Because the government was rotten,
and elections had become a farce. The elections of forty-eight
departments, at one time, in the year 1798, were annulled, to give
the Directory a majority in the legislative councils. All sorts of
fraud and violence were committed at the elections. The people had
no confidence in them, and submitted to Bonaparte.
All elective governments have failed in this manner; and, in process
of time, must fail here, unless elections can be taken out of the
hands of the politicians, and restored to the full control of the
people. The plan which I have submitted this day, for dispensing
with intermediate bodies, and holding a second election for
President when the first fails, is designed to accomplish this great
purpose; and will do much good if adopted. Never have politicians,
in so young a country, shown such a thirst for office--such
disregard of the popular will, such readiness to deceive and betray
the people. The Texas treaty (for I must confine myself to the case
before us) is an intrigue for the presidency, and a contrivance
to get the Southern States out of the Union, instead of getting
Texian States into it; and is among the most unscrupulous intrigues
which any country every beheld. But we know how to discriminate.
We know how to separate the wrong from the right. Texas, which the
intriguers prostrated to their ambitious purposes (caring nothing
about it, as their past lives show), will be rescued from their
designs, and restored to this Union as naturally, and as easily,
as the ripened pear falls to the earth. Those who prepared the
result at the Baltimore convention, in which the will of the people
was overthrown, will be consigned to oblivion; while the nominees
of the convention will be accepted and sustained: and as for the
plotters of disunion and secession, they will be found out and will
receive their reward; and I, for one, shall be ready to meet them at
Philippi, sword in hand, whenever they bring their parricidal scheme
to the test of arms.
CHAPTER CXLI.
TEXAS OR DISUNION: VIOLENT DEMONSTRATIONS IN THE SOUTH: SOUTHERN
CONVENTION PROPOSED.
The secret intrigue for the annexation of Texas was framed with
a double aspect--one looking to the presidential election, the
other to the separation of the Southern States; and as soon as
the rejection of the treaty was foreseen, and the nominating
convention had acted (Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Tyler standing no chance),
the disunion aspect manifested itself over many of the Southern
States--beginning of course with South Carolina. Before the end
of May a great meeting took place (with the muster of a regiment)
at Ashley, in the Barnwell district of that State, to combine
the slave States in a convention to unite the Southern States to
Texas, if Texas should not be received into the Union; and to
invite the President to convene Congress to arrange the terms of
the dissolution of the Union if the rejection of the annexation
should be persevered in. At this meeting all the speeches and
resolves turned upon the original idea in the Gilmer letter--that
of British alliance with Texas--the abolition of slavery in Texas
in consequence of that alliance, and a San Domingo insurrection of
slaves in the Southern States; and the conjunction of the South and
Texas in a new republic was presented as the only means of averting
these dire calamities. With this view, and as giving the initiative
to the movement, these resolutions were adopted:
"_First_: To call upon our delegations in Congress, if in
session, or our senators, if they be at the seat of government,
to wait on the Texian Minister, and remonstrate with him against
any negotiation with other powers, until the Southern States
shall have had a reasonable time to decide upon their course.
"_Second_: That object secured, a convention of the people of
each State should be promptly called, to deliberate and decide,
upon the action to be taken by the slave States on the question
of annexation; and to appoint delegates to _a convention of
the slave States_, with instructions to carry into effect the
behests of the people.
"_Third_: That a convention of the slave States by delegations
from each, appointed as aforesaid, should be called, to meet at
some central position, to take into consideration the question
of annexing Texas to the Union, if _the Union will accept it_;
or, if the Union _will not accept it_, then of _annexing Texas
to the Southern States_!
"_Fourth_: That the President of the United States be requested
by the general convention of the slave States, to call Congress
together immediately; when, _the final issue_ shall be made up,
and the alternative distinctly presented to the free States,
either to _admit Texas into the Union_, or to proceed _peaceably
and calmly_ to _arrange the terms of a dissolution of the
Union_!"
About the same time another large meeting was held at Beaufort, in
the same State, in which it was
"_Resolved_, That if the Senate of the United States--under the
drill of party leaders--should reject the treaty of annexation,
we appeal to the citizens of Texas, and urge them not to yield
to a just resentment, and turn their eyes to other alliances,
but to believe that they have the warm advocacy of a large
portion of the American public, who are resolved, that sooner
or later, the pledge in the treaty of 1803 shall be redeemed,
and Texas be incorporated into our Union. But if--on the other
hand--we are not permitted to bring Texas into our Union
peacefully and legitimately, as now we may, then we solemnly
announce to the world--that we will dissolve this Union, sooner
than abandon Texas.
"_Resolved_, That the chair, at his leisure, appoint a committee
of vigilance and correspondence, to consist of twenty-one, to
aid in carrying forward the cause of Texas annexation."
In the Williamsburg District in the same State another large meeting
resolved:
"That in the opinion of this meeting, the honor and integrity
of our Union require the immediate annexation of Texas; and we
hold it to be better and more to the interest of the Southern
and Southwestern portions of this confederacy 'to be out of the
Union with Texas than in it without her.'
"That we cordially approve of the recommendation of a
Southern convention composed of delegates from the Southern
and Southwestern portions of this confederacy, to deliberate
together, and adopt such measures as may best promote the great
object of annexation; provided such annexation is not previously
brought about by joint resolution of Congress, either at its
present or an extra session."
Responsive resolutions were adopted in several States, and the 4th
day of July furnished an occasion for the display of sentiments
in the form of toasts, which showed both the depth of the feeling
on this subject, and its diffusion, more or less, through all the
Southern States. "Texas, or Disunion," was a common toast, and a
Southern convention generally called for. Richmond, Virginia, was
one of the places indicated for its meeting, by a meeting in the
State of Alabama. Mr. Ritchie, the editor of the Enquirer, repulsed
the idea, on the part of the Democracy, of holding the meeting
there, saying, "_There is not a democrat in Virginia who will
encourage any plot to dissolve the Union._" The Richmond Whig, on
the part of the whigs, equally repulsed it. Nashville, in the State
of Tennessee, was proposed in the resolves of many of the public
meetings, and the assembling of the convention at that place--the
home of General Jackson--was still more formally and energetically
repulsed. A meeting of the citizens of the town was called, which
protested against "_the desecration of the soil of Tennessee by
having any convention held there to hatch treason against the
Union_," and convoked a general meeting for the purpose of bringing
out a full expression of public opinion on the subject. The meeting
took place accordingly, and was most numerously and respectably
attended, and adopted resolutions worthy of the State, worthy of the
_home_ of General Jackson, honorable to every individual engaged
in it; and so ample as to stand for an authentic history of that
attempt to dissolve the Union. The following were the resolves,
presented by Dr. John Shelby:
"Whereas, at several public meetings recently held in the
South, resolutions have been adopted urging with more or less
directness the assembling of a convention of States friendly to
the immediate annexation of Texas, at Nashville, some time in
August next; and whereas it is apparent from the resolutions
themselves and the speeches of some of its prime movers in
those meetings, and the comments of public journals friendly
to them, that the convention they propose to hold in this city
was contemplated _as a means towards an end_--that end being
to present deliberately and formally the issue, 'annexation of
Texas or dissolution of this Union.'
"And whereas, further, it is manifested by all the indications
given from the most reliable sources of intelligence, that there
is a party of men in another quarter of this nation who--in
declaring that 'the only true issue before the South should
be Texas or disunion,' and in proposing the line of operation
indicated by the South Carolinian, their organ published at
Columbia, South Carolina, in the following words,
"That the President of the United States be requested by the
general convention of the slave States to call Congress together
immediately, when the final issue shall be made up, and the
alternative distinctly presented to the free States, either
to admit Texas into the Union, or to proceed peaceably and
calmly to arrange the terms of a dissolution of the Union'--are
influenced by sentiments and opinions directly at issue with the
solemn obligation of the citizens of every State to our national
Union--sentiments and opinions which, if not repressed and
condemned, may lead to the destruction of our tranquillity and
happiness, and to the reign of anarchy and confusion. Therefore,
we, the citizens of Davidson County, in the State of Tennessee,
feel ourselves called upon by these demonstrations to express,
in a clear, decided, and unequivocal manner, our deliberate
sentiments in regard to them. And upon the momentous question
here involved, we are happy to believe there is no material
division of sentiment among the people of this State.
"The citizens here assembled are _Tennesseans_; they are
Americans. They glory in being citizens of this great
confederate republic; and, whether friendly or opposed to
the immediate annexation of Texas, they join with decision,
firmness, and zeal in avowing their attachment to our glorious,
and, we trust, impregnable Union, and in condemning every
attempt to bring its preservation into issue, or its value into
calculation.
"Under these impressions, and with these feelings, regarding
with deep and solemn interest the circumstances under which
this new issue may be ere long sprung upon us, and actuated by a
sense of the high responsibility to his country imposed on every
American citizen, in the language of the immortal Washington,
'to frown upon the first dawnings of every attempt to alienate
any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the
sacred ties which now link together the various parts,' we
hereby adopt and make known, as expressing our deliberate
sentiments, the following resolutions:
"_Resolved_, That while we never have interfered, and never will
interfere with the arrangements of any of the parties divided
on the general political questions of the day, and while we
absolutely repel the charge of designing any such interference
as totally unfounded and unjustifiable, yet when we see men
of any party and any quarter of this nation announcing as
their motto, 'Texas or Disunion,' and singling out the city of
Nashville as a place of general gathering, in order to give
formality and solemnity to the presentation of that issue, we
feel it to be not only our sacred right, but our solemn duty to
protest, as we now do protest, against the desecration of the
soil of Tennessee, by any act of men holding within its borders
a convention for any such object.
"_Resolved_, That when our fellow-citizens of any State come
hither as Americans, loyal to our glorious Union, they will
be received and welcomed by us with all the kindness and
hospitality which should characterize the intercourse of a
band of brothers, whatever may be our differences on political
subjects; but when they avow their willingness to break up the
Union rather than fail to accomplish a favorite object, we feel
bound to tell them this is no fit place to concert their plans.
"_Resolved_, That we entertain for the people of South Carolina,
and the other quarters in which this cry of 'Texas or Disunion'
has been raised, feelings of fraternal regard and affection;
that we sincerely lament the exhibition by any portion of
them of disloyalty to the Union, or a disposition to urge
its dissolution with a view to annexation with Texas, if not
otherwise obtained; and that we hope a returning sense of what
is due to themselves, to the other States of the Union, to the
American people, and to the cause of American liberty, will
prevent them from persevering in urging the issue they have
proposed."
The energy with which this proposed convention was repulsed from
Nashville and Richmond, and the general revolt against it in most of
the States, brought the movement to a stand, paralyzed its leaders,
and suppressed the disunion scheme for the time being--only to lie
in wait for future occasions. But it was not before the people only
that this scheme for a Southern convention with a view to the
secession of the slave States, was matter of discussion: it was the
subject of debate in the Senate. Mr. McDuffie mentioned it, and in a
way to draw a reply from Mr. Benton--an extract from which has been
given in a previous chapter, and which, besides some information on
its immediate subject, and besides foreseeing the failure of _that_
attempt to get up a disunion convention, also told that the design
of the secessionists was to extend the new Southern republic to the
Californias: and this was told two years before the declaration of
the war by which California was acquired.
CHAPTER CXLII.
REJECTION OF THE ANNEXATION TREATY: PROPOSAL OF MR. BENTON'S PLAN.
The treaty was supported by all the power of the administration;
but in vain. It was doomed to defeat, ignominious and entire, and
was rejected by a vote of two to one against it, when it would have
required a vote of two to one to have ratified it. The yeas were:
Messrs. Atchison, Bagby, Breese, Buchanan, Colquitt, Fulton,
Haywood, Henderson, Huger, Lewis, McDuffie, Semple, Sevier,
Sturgeon, Walker, Woodbury.--16.
The nays were:
Messrs. Allen, Archer, Atherton, Barrow, Bates, Bayard, Benton,
Berrien, Choate, Clayton, Crittenden, Dayton, Evans, Fairfield,
Foster, Francis, Huntington, Jarnagin, Johnson, Mangum, Merrick,
Miller, Morehead, Niles, Pearce, Phelps, Porter, Rives, Simmons,
Tallmadge, Tappan, Upham, White, Woodbridge, Wright.--35.
This vote was infinitely honorable to the Senate, and a severe
rebuke upon those who had the hardihood to plot the annexation of
Texas as an intrigue for the presidency, and to be consummated at
the expense of war with Mexico, insults to Great Britain, breach
of our own constitution, and the disgrace and shame of committing
an outrage upon a feeble neighboring power. But the annexation was
desirable in itself, and had been the unceasing effort of statesmen
from the time the province had been retroceded to Spain. The
treaty was a wrong and criminal way of doing a right thing. That
obstacle removed, and the public mind roused and attracted to the
subject, disinterested men who had no object but the public good,
took charge of the subject, and initiated measures to effect the
annexation in an honorable and constitutional manner. With this view
Mr. Benton brought into the Senate a bill authorizing and advising
the President to open negotiations with Mexico and Texas for the
adjustment of boundaries between them, and the annexation of the
latter to the United States. In support of his bill, he said:
"The return of Texas to our Union, and all the dismembered
territory of 1819 along with it, is as certain as that the Red
River and the Arkansas rise within our natural limits, and
flow into the Mississippi. I wish to get it back, and to get
it with peace and honor--at all events without unjust war,
unconstitutionally made, on weak and groundless pretexts. I wish
it to come back without sacrificing our trade even with Mexico,
so valuable to us on account of the large returns of specie
which it gave us, especially before the commencement of the
Texian revolution, the events of which have alienated Mexican
feeling from us, and reduced our specie imports from eleven
millions of dollars per annum to one million and a half. I wish
it to come back in a way to give as little dissatisfaction to
any part of the Union as possible; and I believe it is very
practicable to get it back without a shock to any part. The
difficulty now is in the aspect which has been put upon it as
a sectional, political, and slave question; as a movement of
the South against the North, and of the slaveholding States for
political supremacy. This is as unfounded in the true nature
of the question, as it is unwise and unfortunate in the design
which prompted it. The question is more Western than Southern,
and as much free as slave. The territory to be recovered extends
to the latitude of 38° in its north-east corner, and to latitude
42° in its north-west corner. One-half of it will lie in the
region not adapted to slave labor; and, of course when regained,
will be formed into non-slaveholding States. So far as slavery
is concerned, then, the question is neutralized: it is as much
free as slave; and it is greatly to be regretted--_regretted
by all the friends of the Union_--that a different aspect has
been given to it. I am southern by my birth--southern in my
affections, interests, and connections--and shall abide the
fate of the South in every thing in which she has right upon
her side. I am a slaveholder, and shall take the fate of other
slaveholders in every aggression upon that species of property,
and in every attempt to excite a San Domingo insurrection among
us. I have my eyes wide open to that danger, and fixed on the
laboratories of insurrection, both in Europe and America; but
I must see a real case of danger before I take the alarm. I am
against the cry of wolf, when there is no wolf. I will resist
the intrusive efforts of those whom it does not concern, to
abolish slavery among us; but I shall not engage in schemes for
its extension into regions where it was never known--into the
valley of the Rio del Norte, for example, and along a river of
two thousand miles in extent, where a slave's face was never
seen."
The whole body of the people, South and West, a majority of those in
the Middle States, and respectable portions of the Northern States,
were in favor of getting back Texas; and upon this large mass the
intriguers operated, having their feelings in their favor, and
exciting them by fears of abolition designs from Great Britain, and
the fear of losing Texas for ever, if not then obtained. Mr. Benton
deemed it just to discriminate this honest mass from the intriguers
who worked only in their own interest, and at any cost of war and
dishonor, and even disunion to our own country. Thus:
"A large movement is now going on for the annexation of Texas;
and I, who have viewed this movement from the beginning, believe
that I have analyzed it with a just and discriminating eye.
The great mass of it is disinterested, patriotic, reasonable,
and moderate, and wishes to get back our lost territory, as
soon as it can be done with peace and honor. This large mass
is passive, and had just as lief have Texas next year as this
year. A small part of this movement is interested, and is the
active part, and is unreasonable, and violent, and must have
Texas during the present presidential election, or never. For
the former part--the great mass--I feel great respect, and wish
to give them reasons for my conduct: to the latter part it would
be lost labor in me to offer reasons. Political and interested
parties have no ears; they listen only to themselves, and run
their course upon their own calculations. All that I shall say
is, that the present movement, prostituted as it evidently is,
to selfish and sectional purposes, is injurious to the cause of
annexation, and must end in delaying its consummation. But it
will be delay only. Annexation is the natural and inevitable
order of events, and will come! and when it comes, be it sooner
or later, it will be for the national reasons stated in Mr.
Van Buren's instructions of 1829, and in the rational manner
indicated in his letter of 1844. It will come, because the
country to be received is geographically appurtenant to our
country, and politically, commercially, and socially connected
with our people, and with our institutions: and it will come,
not in the shape of a secret treaty between two Presidents, but
as a _legislative_ as well as an _executive_ measure--as the
act of two nations (the United States and Texas) and with the
consent of Mexico, if she is wise, or without her consent, upon
the lapse of her rights."
The wantonness of getting up a quarrel with Great Britain on this
subject, was thus exposed:
"Our administration, and especially the negotiator of this
treaty, has been endeavoring to pick a quarrel with England, and
upon the slave question. Senators have observed this, and have
remarked upon the improvidence of seeking a quarrel with a great
power on a weak point, and in which we should be in the wrong,
and have the sympathies of the world against us, and see divided
opinions at home; and doing this when we have several great
questions of real difficulty with that power, in any war growing
out of which we should have right on our side, good wishes from
other nations, and unity among ourselves. Senators have remarked
this, and set it down to the account of a great improvidence.
I look upon it, for my part, as a designed conclusion, and
as calculated to promote an ulterior scheme. The disunion of
these States is still desired by many, and the slave question
is viewed as the instrument to effect it; and in that point of
view, the multiplication of quarrels about slavery, both at home
and abroad, becomes a natural part of the disunion policy. Hence
the attempt to pick a quarrel with Great Britain for imputed
anti-slavery designs in Texas, and among ourselves, and all the
miserable correspondence to which that imputation has given
birth; and that by persons who, two years ago, were emulating
Great Britain in denunciation of the slave trade, and forming a
naval and diplomatic alliance with her for closing the markets
of the world against the introduction of slaves. Since then the
disunion scheme is revived; and this accounts for the change of
policy, and for the search after a quarrel upon a weak point,
which many thought so improvident."
The closing sentences of this paragraph refer to the article in the
Ashburton treaty which stipulated for a joint British and American
squadron to guard the coast of Africa from slave-trading vessels: a
stipulation which Mr. Calhoun and his friends supported, and which
showed him at that time to be against the propagation of slavery,
either in the United States or elsewhere. He had then rejoined the
democratic party, and expected to be taken up as the successor to
Mr. Van Buren; and, in that prospect of becoming President of the
whole Union, had suspended his design for a separation, and for a
new republic South, and was conciliating instead of irritating the
free States; and in which scheme of conciliation he went so far as
to give up all claim for reclamation for slaves liberated by the
British authorities in their passage from one port of the United
States to another, and even relinquished all opposition to the
practice. The danger of an alliance offensive and defensive between
Great Britain and Texas was still insisted upon by the President,
and an attempt made upon the public sensibilities to alarm the
country into immediate annexation as the means of avoiding that
danger. The folly of such an apprehension was shown by the interest
which Great Britain had in the commerce and friendship of Mexico,
compared to which that of Texas was nothing:
"The President expresses his continued belief in a declaration
previously made to the Senate, that an alliance, offensive and
defensive, is to be formed between Texas and Great Britain,
if the treaty is rejected. Well, the treaty is rejected! and
the formidable alliance is not heard of, and never will be.
It happens to take two to make a bargain; and the President
would seem to have left out both parties when he expressed his
belief, amounting almost to certainty, 'that instructions have
already been given by the Texian government to propose to the
government of Great Britain forthwith, on the failure (of the
treaty) to enter into a treaty of commerce, and an alliance
offensive and defensive. Alliance offensive and defensive,
between Great Britain and Texas! a true exemplification of that
famous alliance between the giant and the dwarf, of which we all
read at the age of seven years. But let us see. First, Texas is
to apply for this honor: and I, who know the people of Texas,
and know them to be American and republican, instead of British
and monarchical, know full well that they will apply for no such
dependent alliance; and, if they did, would show themselves
but little friendly to our country or its institutions. Next,
Great Britain is to enter into this alliance; and how stands
the account of profit and loss with her in such a contract for
common cause against the friends and foes of each other? An
alliance offensive and defensive, is a bargain to fight each
other's enemies--each in proportion to its strength. In such a
contract with Texas, Great Britain might receive a contingent
of one Texian soldier for her Afghanistan and Asiatic wars: on
the other hand she would lose the friendship of Mexico, and the
twenty millions of silver dollars which the government or the
merchants of Great Britain now annually draw from Mexico. Such
would be the effect of the alliance offensive and defensive
which our President so fully believes in--amounting, as he says
his belief does, to an almost entire certainty. Incredible
and absurd! The Mexican annual supply of silver dollars is
worth more to Great Britain than all the Texases in the world.
Besides the mercantile supply, the government itself is deeply
interested in this trade of silver dollars. Instead of drawing
gold from London to pay her vast establishments by sea and land
throughout the NEW WORLD, and in some parts of the Old--instead
of thus depleting herself of her bullion at home, she finds the
silver for these payments in the Mexican mines. A commissary
of purchases at $6,000 per annum, and a deputy at $4,000, are
incessantly employed in these purchases and shipments of silver;
and if interrupted, the Bank of England would pay the forfeit.
Does any one suppose that Great Britain, for the sake of the
Texian alliance, and the profit upon her small trade, would make
an enemy of Mexico? would give up twenty millions annually of
silver, deprive herself of her fountain of supply, and subject
her bank to the drains which the foreign service of her armies
and navies would require? The supposition is incredible: and I
say no more to this scare-crow alliance, in which the President
so fully believes."
The magnitude and importance of our young and growing trade with
Mexico--the certainty that her carrying trade would fall into our
hands, as her want of ports and ship timber would for ever prevent
her from having any marine--were presented as a reason why we should
cultivate peace with her.
"The legal state between the United States and Mexico is
that of war; and the legal consequence is the abrogation of
all treaties between the two powers, and the cessation of
all commercial intercourse. This is a trifle in the eyes of
the President; not sufficient to impede for an instant his
intrigue for the presidency, and the ulterior scheme for the
dissolution of the Union. But how is it in the eyes of the
country? Is it a trifle in the eyes of those whose eyes are
large enough to behold the extent of the Mexican commerce, and
whose hearts are patriotic enough to lament its loss? Look at
that commerce! The richest stream which the world beholds:
for, of exports, silver is its staple article; of imports, it
takes something of every thing, changed, to be sure, into the
form of fine goods and groceries: of navigation, it requires a
constant foreign supply; for Mexico neither has, nor can have,
a marine, either commercial or military. The want of ports
and timber deny her a marine now and for ever. This country,
exporting what we want--(hard money)--taking something of all
our exports--using our own ships to fetch and carry--lying at
our door--with many inland streams of trade besides the great
maritime stream of commerce--pouring the perennial product of
her innumerable mines into our paper-money country, and helping
us to be able to bear its depredations: this country, whose
trade was so important to us under every aspect, is treated
as a nullity by the American President, or rather, is treated
with systematic outrage; and even the treaty which secures us
her trade is disparagingly acknowledged with the contemptuous
prefix of mere!--a mere commercial treaty. So styles it the
appeal message. Now let us look to this commerce with our
nearest neighbor, depreciated and repudiated by our President:
let us see its origin, progress, and present state. Before the
independence of Mexico, that empire of mines had no foreign
trade: the mother country monopolized the whole. It was the
Spanish Hesperides, guarded with more than the fabulous dragon's
care. Mexican Independence was declared at Iguala, in the year
1821. In that year its trade with the United States began,
humbly to be sure, but with a rapid and an immense development.
In 1821, our exports to Mexico were about $100,000; our imports
about the double of that small sum. In the year 1835, the
year before the Texian revolution, our exports to the same
country (and that independent of Honduras, Campeachy, and the
Mosquito shore) amounted to $1,500,639; and that of direct
trade, without counting exportations from other countries. Our
imports were, for the same year, in merchandise, $5,614,819; of
which the whole, except about $200,000 worth, was carried in
American vessels. Our specie imports, for the same year, were
$8,343,181. This was the state of our Mexican trade (and that
without counting the inland branches of it), the year of the
commencement of the Texian revolution--an event which I then
viewed, as my speeches prove, under many aspects! And, with
every sympathy alive in favor of the Texians, and with the full
view of their return to our Union after a successful revolt, I
still wished to conciliate this natural event with the great
object of preserving our peaceful relations, and with them our
commercial, political, social, and moral position in regard to
Mexico, the second power of the New World after ourselves, and
the first of the Spanish branch of the great American family."
Political and social considerations, and a regard for the character
of republican government, were also urged as solid reasons for
effecting the annexation of Texas without an outbreak or collision
with Mexico:
"Mr. President, I have presented you considerations, founded
in the relations of commerce and good neighborhood, for
preserving not merely peace, but good-will with Mexico. We
are the first--she the second power of the New World. We
stand at the head of the Anglo-Saxon--she at the head of the
South-European race--but we all come from the same branch of the
human family--the white branch--which, taking its rise in the
Caucasian Mountains, and circling Europe by the north and by
the south, sent their vanguards to people the two Americas--to
redeem them from the savage and the heathen, and to bring them
within the pale of the European systems. The independence of
these vanguards from their metropolitan ancestors, was in
the natural order of human events; and the precedence of the
Anglo-Saxon branch in this assertion of a natural right, was
the privilege and prerogative of their descent and education.
The descendants of the English became independent first;
those of the Spaniards followed; and, from the first dawn of
their national existences, were greeted with applause, and
saluted with the affection of brothers. They, on their part,
showed a deference and an affection for us fraternal and
affecting. Though speaking a different language, professing
a different religion, bred in a different system of laws and
of government, and guarded from all communication with us for
centuries, yet they instantly took us for their model, framed
their constitutions upon ours, and spread the great elements
of old English liberty--elections, legislatures, juries,
habeas corpus, face-to-face trials, no arrests but on special
warrants!--spread all these essentials of liberty from the
ancient capital of Montezuma to the end of the South American
continent. This was honorable to us, and we felt it; it was
beneficial to them, and we wished to cement the friendship they
had proffered, and to perpetuate among them the institutions
they had adopted. Conciliation, arising from justice and
fairness, was our only instrument of persuasion; and it was used
by all, and with perfect effect. Every administration--all the
people--followed the same course; and, until this day--until
the present administration--there has not been one to insult or
to injure a new State of the South. Now it is done. Systematic
insult has been practised; spoliation of two thousand miles
of incontestable territory, over and above Texas, has been
attempted; outrage to the perpetration of clandestine war,
and lying in wait to attack the innocent by land and water,
has been committed: and on whom? The second power of the New
World after ourselves--the head of the Spanish branch--and the
people in whose treatment at our hands the rest may read their
own. Descended from the proud and brave Castilian--as proud
and as brave now as in the time of Charles the Fifth, when
Spain gave law to nations, and threatened Europe with universal
domination--these young nations are not to be outraged with
impunity. Broken and dispersed, the Spanish family has lost
much of its power, but nothing of its pride, its courage, its
chivalry, and its sensitiveness to insult.
"The head of the powers of the New World--deferred to as a
model by all--the position of the United States was grand,
and its vocation noble. It was called to the high task of
uniting the American nations in the bonds of brotherhood, and
in the social and political systems which cherish and sustain
liberty. They are all republics, and she the elder sister;
and it was her business to preserve harmony, friendship, and
concord in a family of republics, occupying the whole extent
of the New World. Every interest connected with the welfare
of the human race required this duty at our hands. Liberty,
religion, commerce, science, the liberal and the useful arts,
all required it; and, until now, we had acted up to the grandeur
of our position, and the nobleness of our vocation. A sad
descent is now made; but the decision of the Senate arrests the
plunge, and gives time to the nation to recover its place, and
its character, and again to appear as the elder sister, the
friendly head, and the model power of the cordon of republics
which stretch from the north to the south, throughout the two
Americas. The day will come when the rejection of this treaty
will stand, uncontestedly, amongst the wisest and most patriotic
acts of the American Senate.
"The bill which I have offered, Mr. President, is the true
way to obtain Texas. It conciliates every interest at home
and abroad, and makes sure of the accomplishment of its
object. Offence to Mexico, and consequent loss of her trade
and friendship, is provided against. If deaf to reason, the
annexation would eventually come without her consent, but not
without having conciliated her feelings by showing her a proper
respect. The treaty only provided difficulties--difficulties
at home and abroad--war and loss of trade with Mexico--slavery
controversies, and dissolution of the Union at home. When the
time came for admitting new States under the treaty, had it been
ratified, then came the tug of war. The correspondence presented
it wholly as a slave question. As such it would be canvassed
at the elections; and here numerical strength was against us.
If the new States were not admitted with slaves, they would
not come in at all. Then Southern States might say they would
stand out with them: and then came the crisis! So obviously
did the treaty mode of acquisition, and the correspondence,
lead to this result, that it may be assumed to have been their
object; and thus a near period arranged for the dissolution of
our Union. Happily, these dire consequences are averted, for
the present; and the bill I have brought in provides the way of
obviating them for ever, and, at the same time, making sure of
the annexation."
This bill, by referring the question of annexation to the
legislative and executive authorities combined, gave the right turn
to the public mind, and led to the measure which was adopted by
Congress at the ensuing session, and marred by Mr. Tyler's assuming
to execute it in the expiring moments of his administration, when,
forestalling his successor, he rejected the clause for peaceful
negotiations, and rushed forward the part of the act which, taken
alone, involved war with Mexico.
During the whole continuance of these debates in the Senate, the
lobbies of the chamber were crowded with speculators in Texas scrip
and lands, and with holders of Mexican claims, all working for the
ratification of the treaty, which would bring with it an increase
of value to their property, and war with Mexico, to be followed
by a treaty providing for their demands. They also infested the
Department of State, the presidential mansion, all the public
places, and kept the newspapers in their interest filled with
abuse and false accusations against the senators who stood between
themselves and their prey. They were countenanced by the politicians
whose objects were purely political in getting Texas, as well as
by those who were in sympathy or complicity with their schemes.
Persons employed by the government were known to be in the ranks of
these speculators; and, to uncover them to the public, Mr. Benton
submitted this resolution:
"_Resolved_, That the Committee on Foreign Affairs be instructed
to inquire whether any provisions are necessary in providing
for the annexation of Texas, to protect the United States from
speculating operations in Texas lands or scrip, and whether
any persons employed by the government are connected with such
speculations."
The resolve was not adopted, as it was well foreseen would be the
case, there being always in every public body, a large infusion of
gentle tempered men, averse to any strong measure, and who usually
cast the balance between contending parties. The motion, however,
had the effect of fixing public attention the more earnestly upon
these operators; and its fate did not prevent the mover from
offering other resolves of a kindred character. It had been well
known that Mr. Calhoun's letter of slave statistics to Mr. Pakenham,
as a cause for making the treaty of annexation, had been written
after the treaty had been concluded and signed by the negotiators;
and this fact was clearly deducible from the whole proceeding, as
well as otherwise known to some. There was enough to satisfy close
observers; but the mass want the proof, or an offer to prove; and
for their benefit, Mr. Benton moved:
"Also, that said committee be instructed to inquire whether the
Texas treaty was commenced or agreed upon before the receipt of
Lord Aberdeen's despatch of December 26, 1843, to Mr. Pakenham,
communicated to our government in February, 1844."
This motion shared the fate of the former; but did not prevent a
similar movement on another point. It will be remembered that this
sudden commencement in the summer of 1843, was motived exclusively
upon the communication of a British abolition plot in Texas,
contained in a private letter from a citizen of Maryland in London,
an "_extract_" from which had been sent to the Senate to justify the
"_self-defence_" measures in the immediate annexation of Texas. The
writer of that letter had been ascertained, and it lent no credit to
the information conveyed. It had also been ascertained that he had
been paid, and largely, out of the public Treasury, for that voyage
to London--which authorized the belief that he had been sent for
what had been found. An extract of the letter only had been sent to
the Senate: a view of the whole was desired by the Senate in such
an important case--and was asked for--but not obtained. Mr. Upshur
was dead, and the President, in his answer, had supposed it had been
taken away among his private papers--a very violent supposition
after the letter had been made the foundation for a most important
public proceeding. Even if so carried, it should have been pursued,
and reclaimed, and made an archive in the Department: and this, not
having been done by the President, was proposed to be done by the
Senate; and this motion submitted:
"Also, that it be instructed to obtain, if possible, the
'_private letter_' from London, quoted in Mr. Upshur's first
despatch on the Texas negotiation, and supposed by the President
to have been carried away among his private papers; and to
ascertain the name of the writer of said letter."
To facilitate all these inquiries an additional resolve proposed
to clothe the committee with authority to send for persons and
papers--to take testimony under oath--and to extend their inquiries
into all subjects which should connect themselves with selfish,
or criminal motives for the acquisition of Texas. And all these
inquiries, though repulsed in the Senate, had their effect upon the
public mind, already well imbued with suspicions and beliefs of
sinister proceedings, marked with an exaggerated demonstration of
zeal for the public good.
CHAPTER CXLIII.
OREGON TERRITORY: CONVENTIONS OF 1818 AND 1828: JOINT OCCUPATION:
ATTEMPTED NOTICE TO TERMINATE IT.
These conventions provided for the joint occupation of the countries
respectively claimed by Great Britain and the United States on
the north-west coast of America--that of 1818 limiting the joint
occupancy to ten years--that of 1828 extending it indefinitely
until either of the two powers should give notice to the other of
a desire to terminate it. Such agreements are often made when it
is found difficult to agree upon the duration of any particular
privilege, or duty. They are seductive to the negotiators because
they postpone an inconvenient question: they are consolatory to
each party, because each says to itself it can get rid of the
obligation when it pleases--a consolation always delusive to one of
the parties: for the one that has the advantage always resists the
notice, and long baffles it, and often through menaces to consider
it as an unfriendly proceeding. On the other hand, the party to
whom it is disadvantageous often sees danger in change; and if the
notice is to be given in a legislative body, there will always be a
large per centum of easy temperaments who are desirous of avoiding
questions, putting off difficulties, and suffering the evils they
have in preference of flying to those they know not: and in this
way these temporary agreements, to be terminated on the notice of
either party, generally continue longer than either party dreamed of
when they were made. So it was with this Oregon joint occupancy.
The first was for ten years: not being able to agree upon ten years
more, the usual delusive resource was fallen upon: and, under the
second joint occupation had already continued in operation fourteen
years. Western members of Congress now took up the subject, and
moved the Senate to advise the government to give the notice. Mr.
Semple, senator from Illinois, proposed the motion: it was debated
many days--resisted by many speakers: and finally defeated. It was
first resisted as discourteous to Great Britain--then as offensive
to her--then as cause of war on her side--finally, as actual war
on our side--and even as a conspiracy to make war. This latter
accusation was so seriously urged as to call out a serious answer
from one of the senators friendly to the notice, not so much in
exculpation of himself, as that of a friend at whom the imputation
was levelled. In this sense, Mr. Breese, of Illinois, stood up, and
said:
"His friend on the left (Mr. Benton) was accused of being at the
head of a conspiracy, having no other object than the involving
us in a war with Great Britain; and it was said with equal
truth that his lever for moving the different elements was the
northern boundary question. What foundation was there for so
grave an accusation? None other than that he had fearlessly,
from the beginning, resisted every encroachment, come from what
quarter it might. He had stemmed the tide of British influence,
if any such there was--he had rendered great and imperishable
services to the West, and the West was grateful to him--he had
watched her interests from the cradle; and now, when arrived
at maturity, and able to take care of herself, he boldly stood
forth her advocate. If devotion to his country, then, made him a
conspirator, he was indeed guilty."
Upon all this talk of war the commercial interest became seriously
alarmed, and looked upon the delivery of the notice as the signal
for a disastrous depression in our foreign trade. In a word, the
general uneasiness became so great that there was no chance for
doing what we had a right to do, what the safety of our territory
required us to do, and without the right to do which the convention
of 1828 could not have been concluded. The motion for the notice was
defeated by a vote of 28 against 18. The yeas were:
"YEAS--Messrs. Allen, Atchison, Atherton, Bagby, Benton,
Breese, Buchanan, Colquitt, Fairfield, Fulton, Hannegan, King,
Semple, Sevier, Sturgeon, Walker, Woodbury, and Wright--18."
"NAYS--Messrs. Archer, Barrow, Bates, Bayard, Berrien, Choate,
Clayton, Crittenden, Dayton, Evans, Foster, Haywood, Huger,
Huntington, Jarnagin, Johnson, McDuffie, Mangum, Merrick,
Miller, Morehead, Phelps, Rives, Simmons, Tallmadge, Upham,
White, and Woodbridge--28."
CHAPTER CXLIV.
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
Mr. James Knox Polk, and Mr. George Mifflin Dallas, had been
nominated, as shown, for President and Vice-President by the
democratic convention: Mr. Calhoun had declined to suffer his
name to go before that election for reasons which he published,
and an attempt to get up a separate convention for him, entirely
failed: Mr. Tyler, who had a separate convention, and received its
unanimous nomination, and thankfully accepted it, soon withdrew,
and without having had a vice-presidential candidate on his ticket.
On the whig side, Mr. Clay and Mr. Theodore Frelinghuysen were the
candidates, and the canvass was conducted without those appeals to
"hard cider, log-cabins, and coon-skins" which had been so freely
used by the whig party during the last canvass, and which were so
little complimentary to the popular intelligence. The democratic
candidates were elected--and by a large electoral vote--170 to
105. The States which voted the democratic ticket, were: Maine,
New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina,
Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana, Illinois, Alabama,
Missouri, Arkansas, Michigan. Those which voted the opposite ticket,
were: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey,
Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio. The
popular vote was, for the democratic candidate, 1,536,196: for
the opposite ticket, 1,297,912. This was a large increase upon
the popular vote of 1840--large as that vote was, and Mr. Clay,
though defeated, receiving 22,000 votes more than General Harrison
did--affording good evidence that he would have been elected if
he had been the candidate at that time. The issue in the election
was mainly the party one of whig and democrat, modified by the
tariff and Texas questions--Mr. Clay being considered the best
representative of the former interest, Mr. Polk of the latter.
The difference in the electoral vote was large--65: in the popular
vote, not so considerable: and in some of the States (and in enough
of them to have reversed the issue), the difference in favor of
Mr. Polk quite small, and dependent upon causes independent of
himself and his cause. Of these it is sufficient to mention New
York. There the popular vote was about five hundred thousand: the
difference in favor of Mr. Polk, about five thousand: and that
difference was solely owing to the association of Mr. Silas Wright,
with the canvass. Refusing the nomination for the vice-presidency,
and seeing a person nominated for the presidency by a long intrigue
at the expense of his friend, Mr. Van Buren, he suffered himself
to be persuaded to quit the Senate, which he liked, to become the
democratic candidate for governor of New York--a place to which he
was absolutely averse. The two canvasses went on together, and were
in fact one; and the name and popularity of Mr. Wright brought to
the presidential ticket more than enough votes to make the majority
that gave the electoral vote of the State to Mr. Polk, but without
being able to bring it up to his own vote for governor; which was
still five thousand more. It was a great sacrifice of feeling and
of wishes on his part to quit the Senate to stand this election--a
sacrifice purely for the good of the cause, and which became a
sacrifice, in a more material sense for himself and his friends. The
electoral vote of New York was 36, which, going all together, and
being taken from one side and added to the other, would have made a
difference of 72--being seven more than enough to have elected Mr.
Clay. Mr. Polk was also aided by the withdrawal of Mr. Tyler, and
by receiving the South Carolina vote; both of which contingencies
depended upon causes independent of his cause, and of his own
merits: but of this in another place. I write to show how things
were done, more than what was done; and to save, if possible, the
working of the government in the hands of the people whose interests
and safety depend upon its purity, not upon its corruptions.
CHAPTER CXLV.
AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION: ELECTION OF PRESIDENT AND
VICE-PRESIDENT: MR. BENTON'S PLAN.
Mr. Benton asked the leave for which he had given notice on
Wednesday, to bring in a joint resolution for the amendment of
the Constitution of the United States in relation to the election
of President and Vice-President, and prefaced his motion with an
exposition of the principle and details of the amendment which he
proposed to offer. This exposition, referring to a speech which
he had made in the year 1824, and reproducing it for the present
occasion, can only be analyzed in this brief notice.
Mr. B. said he found himself in a position to commence most of
his speeches with "_twenty years ago!_"--a commencement rather
equivocal, and liable to different interpretations in the minds
of different persons; for, while he might suppose himself to be
displaying sagacity and foresight, in finding a medicine for the
cure of the present disorders of the state in the remedies of
prevention which he had proposed long since, yet others might
understand him in a different character, and consider him as
belonging to the category of those who, in that long time, had
learned nothing, and had forgot nothing. So it might be now; for he
was endeavoring to revive a proposition which he had made exactly
twenty years before, and for the revival of which he deemed the
present time eminently propitious. The body politic was now sick;
and the patient, in his agony, might take the medicine as a cure,
which he refused, when well, to take as a prevention.
Mr. B. then proceeded to state the object and principle of his
amendment, which was, to dispense with all intermediate bodies
in the election of President and Vice-President, and to keep the
election wholly in the hands of the people; and to do this by giving
them a direct vote for the man of their choice, and holding a second
election between the two highest, in the event of a failure in the
first election to give a majority to any one. This was to do away
with the machinery of all intermediate bodies to guide, control,
or defeat the popular choice; whether a Congress caucus, or a
national convention, to dictate the selection of candidates; or a
body of electors to receive and deliver their votes; or a House of
Representatives to sanction or frustrate their choice.
Mr. B. spoke warmly and decidedly in favor of the principle of his
proposition, assuming it as a fundamental truth to which there was
no exception, _that liberty would be ruined by providing any kind
of substitute for popular election!_ asserting that all elections
would degenerate into fraud and violence, if any intermediate body
was established between the voters and the object of their choice,
and placed in a condition to be able to control, betray, or defeat
that choice. This fundamental truth he supported upon arguments,
drawn from the philosophy of government, and the nature of man,
and illustrated by examples taken from the history of all elective
governments which had ever existed. He showed that it was the law
of the few to disregard the will of the many, when they got power
into their hands; and that liberty had been destroyed wherever
intermediate bodies obtained the direction of the popular will. He
quoted a vast number of governments, both ancient and modern, as
illustrations of this truth; and referred to the period of direct
voting in Greece and in Rome, as the grand and glorious periods of
popular government, when the unfettered will of the people annually
brought forward the men of their own choice to administer their own
affairs, and when those people went on advancing from year to year,
and produced every thing great in arts and in arms--in public and in
private life--which then exalted them to the skies, and still makes
them fixed stars in the firmament of nations. He believed in the
capacity of the people for self-government, but they must have fair
play--fair play at the elections, on which all depended; and for
that purpose should be free from the control of any intermediate,
irresponsible body of men.
At present (he said), the will of the people was liable to be
frustrated in the election of their chief officers (and that
at no less than three different stages of the canvass), by the
intervention of small bodies of men between themselves and the
object of their choice. First, at the beginning of the process,
in the nomination or selection of candidates. A Congress caucus
formerly, and a national convention now govern and control that
nomination; and never fail, when they choose, to find pretexts for
substituting their own will for that of the people. Then a body
of electors, to receive and hold the electoral votes, and who, it
cannot be doubted, will soon be expert enough to find reasons for
a similar substitution. Then the House of Representatives may come
in at the conclusion, to do as they have done heretofore, and set
the will of the people at absolute defiance. The remedy for all
this is the direct vote, and a second election between the two
highest, if the first one failed. This would operate fairly and
rightfully. No matter how many candidates then appeared in the
field. If any one obtained a majority of the whole number of votes,
the popular principle was satisfied; the majority had prevailed,
and acquiescence was the part of the minority. If no one obtained
the majority, then the first election answered the purpose of a
nomination--a real nomination by the people; and a second election
between the two highest would give effect to the real will of the
people.
Mr. B. then exposed the details of his proposed amendment, as
contained in the joint resolution which he intended to offer. The
plan of election contained in that resolution, was the work of
eminent men--of Mr. Macon, Mr. Van Buren, Mr. Hugh L. White, Mr.
Findlay, of Pennsylvania, Mr. Dickerson, of New Jersey, Mr. Holmes,
Mr. Hayne, and Mr. R. M. Johnson, and was received with great
favor by the Senate and the country at the time it was reported.
Subsequent experience should make it still more acceptable, and
entitle its details to a careful and indulgent consideration from
the people, whose rights and welfare it is intended to preserve and
promote.
The detail of the plan is to divide the States into districts;
the people to vote direct in each district for the candidate they
prefer; the candidate having the highest vote for President to
receive the vote of the district for such office, and to count
one. If any candidate receives the majority of the whole number
of districts, such person to be elected; if no one receives such
majority, the election to be held over again between the two
highest. To afford time for these double elections, when they
become necessary, the first one is proposed to be held in the month
of August--at a time to which many of the State elections now
conform, and to which all may be made to conform--and to be held
on the same days throughout the Union. To receive the returns of
such elections, the Congress is required to be in session, on the
years of such elections, in the month of October; and if a second
election becomes necessary, it will be held in December. Two days
are proposed for the first election, because most of the State
elections continue two days: one day alone is allowed for the second
election, it being a brief issue between two candidates. To provide
for the possibility of remote and most improbable contingencies,
that of an equality of votes between the two candidates--a thing
which _cannot_ occur where the whole number of votes is odd, and
is utterly improbable when they are even--and to keep the election
from the House of Representatives, while preserving the principle
which should prevail in elections by the House of Representatives,
it is provided that the candidate, in the case of such equality,
having the majority of votes in the majority of the States, shall
be the person elected President. To provide against the possibility
of another almost impossible contingency (that of more than two
candidates having the highest, and, of course, the same number
of votes in the first election, by an equality of votes between
several), the proposed amendment is so worded as to let all--that
is, all having the two highest number of votes--go before the people
at the second election.
Such are the details for the election of President: they are the
same for that of Vice-President, with the single exception that,
when the first election should have been effective for the election
of President, and not so for Vice-President, then, to save the
trouble of a second election for the secondary office only, the
present provision of the constitution should prevail, and the Senate
choose between the two highest.
Having made this exposition of the _principle_ and of the _details_
of the plan he proposed, Mr. B. went on to speak at large in favor
of its efficacy and practicability in preserving the rights of the
people, maintaining the purity of elections, preventing intrigue,
fraud, and treachery, either in guiding or defeating the choice
of the people and securing to our free institutions a chance for a
prolonged and virtuous existence.
Mr. B. said he had never attended a nominating caucus or convention,
and never intended to attend one. He had seen the last Congress
caucus in 1824, and never wished to see another, or hear of another;
he had seen the national convention of 1844, and never wished to see
another. He should support the nominations of the last convention;
but hoped to see such conventions rendered unnecessary, before the
recurrence of another presidential election.
Mr. B. after an extended argument, concluded with an appeal to the
Senate to favor his proposition, and send it to the country. His
only object at present was to lay it before the country: the session
was too far advanced to expect action upon it. There were two modes
to amend the constitution--one by Congress proposing, and two-thirds
of the State legislatures adopting, the amendment; the other by a
national convention called by Congress for the purpose. Mr. B. began
with the first mode: he might end with the second.
Disclaiming every thing temporary or invidious in this attempt
to amend the constitution in an important point--referring
to his labors twenty years ago for the elucidation of his
motives--despising all pursuit after office, high or low--detesting
all circumvention, intrigue, and management--anxious to restore our
elections to their pristine purity and dignity--and believing the
whole body of the people to be the only safe and pure authority
for the selection as well as election of the first officers of the
republic,--he confidently submitted his proposition to the Senate
and the people, and asked for it the indulgent consideration which
was due to the gravity and the magnitude of the subject.
Mr. B. then offered his amendment, which was unanimously received,
and ordered to be printed.
The following is the copy of this important proposition:
"_Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled, two-thirds
of both Houses concurring_, That the following amendment to
the constitution of the United States be proposed to the
legislatures of the several States, which, when ratified by the
legislatures of three-fourths of the States, shall be valid to
all intents and purposes as part of the constitution:
"That, hereafter, the President and Vice-President of the
United States shall be chosen by the people of the respective
States, in the manner following: Each State shall be divided,
by the legislature thereof, into districts, equal in number to
the whole number of senators and representatives to which such
State may be entitled in the Congress of the United States;
the said districts to be composed of contiguous territory,
and to contain, as nearly as may be, an equal number of
persons, entitled to be represented under the constitution,
and to be laid off, for the first time, immediately after
the ratification of this amendment, and afterwards, at the
session of the legislature next ensuing the apportionment of
representatives by the Congress of the United States; that,
on the first Thursday in August, in the year 1848, and on the
same day every fourth year thereafter, the citizens of each
State who possess the qualifications requisite for electors of
the most numerous branch of the State legislatures, shall meet
within their respective districts, and vote for a President
and Vice-President of the United States, one of whom at least
shall not be an inhabitant of the same State with themselves;
and the person receiving the greatest number of votes for
President, and the one receiving the greatest number of votes
for Vice-President in each district, shall be holden to have
received one vote; which fact shall be immediately certified
by the governor of the State, to each of the senators in
Congress from such State, and to the President of the Senate
and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. The Congress
of the United States shall be in session on the second Monday
in October, in the year 1848, and on the same day on every
fourth year thereafter; and the President of the Senate, in
the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, shall
open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted.
The person having the greatest number of votes for President,
shall be President, if such number be equal to a majority of
the whole number of votes given; but if no person have such
majority, then a second election shall be held on the first
Thursday in the month of December then next ensuing, between
the persons having the two highest numbers for the office of
President; which second election shall be conducted, the result
certified, and the votes counted, in the same manner as in the
first; and the person having the greatest number of votes for
President, shall be President. But, if two or more persons shall
have received the greatest, and an equal number of votes, at the
second election, then the person who shall have received the
greatest number of votes in the greatest number of States, shall
be President. The person having the greatest number of votes for
Vice-President, at the first election, shall be Vice-President,
if such number be equal to a majority of the whole number of
votes given: and, if no person have such majority, then a second
election shall take place between the persons having the two
highest numbers on the same day that the second election is
held for President; and the person having the highest number of
votes for Vice-President, shall be Vice-President. But if there
should happen to be an equality of votes between the persons so
voted for at the second election, then the person having the
greatest number of votes in the greatest number of States, shall
be Vice-President. But when a second election shall be necessary
in the case of Vice-President, and not necessary in the case
of President, then the Senate shall choose a Vice-President
from the persons having the two highest numbers in the first
election, as is now prescribed in the constitution."
CHAPTER CXLVI.
THE PRESIDENT AND THE SENATE: WANT OF CONCORD: NUMEROUS REJECTIONS
OF NOMINATIONS.
Mr. Tyler was without a party. The party which elected him
repudiated him: the democratic party refused to receive him. His
only resource was to form a Tyler party, at which he made but little
progress. The few who joined him from the other parties were, most
of them, importunate for office; and whether successful or not in
getting through the Senate (for all seemed to get nominations), they
lost the moral force which could aid him. The incessant rejection
of these nominations, and the pertinacity with which they were
renewed, presents a scene of presidential and senatorial oppugnation
which had no parallel up to that time, and of which there has
been no example since. Nominations and rejections flew backwards
and forwards as in a game of shuttlecock--the same nomination, in
several instances, being three times rejected in the same day (as it
appears on the journal), but within the same hour, as recollected
by actors in the scene. Thus: on the 3d day of March, 1843, Mr.
Caleb Cushing having been nominated to the Senate for Secretary
of the Treasury, was rejected by a vote of 27 nays to 19 yeas.
The nays were: Messrs. Allen, Archer, Bagby, Barrow, Bayard,
Benton, Berrien, Thomas Clayton, Conrad, Crafts, Crittenden,
Graham, Henderson, Huntingdon, Kerr, Linn, Mangum, Merrick, Miller,
Morehead, Phelps, Porter, Simmons, Smith of Indiana, Sprague,
Tappan, White. This vote was taken after dark in the night of
the last day of the session. The President, who according to the
custom on such occasions, attended in an ante-chamber appropriated
to the Vice-President, immediately sent back Mr. Cushing's name,
re-nominated for the same office. He was immediately rejected
again by the same 27 nays, and with a diminution of nine who had
voted for him. Incontinently the private secretary of Mr. Tyler
returned with another re-nomination of the same citizen for the
same office; which was immediately rejected by a vote of 29 to 2.
The two senators who voted for him on this last trial were, Messrs.
Robert J. Walker and Cuthbert. The 19 who voted for the nomination
on the first trial were: Messrs. Bates, Buchanan, Calhoun, Choate,
Cuthbert, Evans, Fulton, King, McDuffie, McRoberts, Sevier,
Sturgeon, Tallmadge, Walker, Wilcox, Williams, Woodbury, Wright. The
message containing this second re-nomination was written in such
haste and flurry that half the name of the nominee was left out. "I
nominate _Cushing_ as Secretary of the Treasury, in place of Walter
Forward, resigned," was the whole message; but the Senate acted upon
it as it was, without sending the message back for rectification,
as the rule always has been in the case of clerical mistakes. These
re-nominations by Mr. Tyler were the more notable because, as
chairman of the committee which had the duty of reporting upon the
nomination of the United States Bank directors in the time of the
"_war_," as it was called of the government upon the bank, he had
made the report against President Jackson on the re-nomination of
the four government directors (Messrs. Gilpin, Sullivan, Wager and
McEldery), who had been rejected for reporting to the President, at
his request, the illegal and corrupt proceedings of the bank (such
as were more fully established by a committee of the stockholders);
and also voted against the whole four re-nominations.
The same night Mr. Henry A. Wise underwent three rejections on a
nomination, and two re-nominations as minister plenipotentiary and
envoy extraordinary to France. The first rejection was by a vote of
24 to 12--the second, 26 to 8--the third, 29 to 2. The two yeas in
this case were the same as on the third rejection of Mr. Cushing.
The yeas and nays in the first vote were, yeas: Messrs. Archer,
Buchanan, Calhoun, Choate, Cuthbert, Evans, Fulton, King, McDuffie,
Sturgeon, Tallmadge, Walker. The nays: Messrs. Bagby, Barrow,
Benton, Berrien, Clayton (Thomas), Conrad, Crafts, Crittenden,
Dayton, Graham, Henderson, Huntingdon, John Leeds Kerr, Mangum,
Merrick, Miller, Phelps, Porter, Simmons, Smith of Indiana, Sprague,
Tappan, White, Woodbridge. Mr. Wise had been nominated in the place
of Lewis Cass, Esq., resigned.
At the ensuing session a rapid succession of rejections of
nominations took place. Mr. George H. Proffit, of Indiana, late of
the House of Representatives, was nominated minister plenipotentiary
and envoy extraordinary to the Emperor of Brazil. He had been
commissioned in the vacation, and had sailed upon his destination,
drawing the usual outfit and quarter's salary, leaving the principal
part behind, bet upon the presidential election. He was not
received by the Emperor of Brazil, and was rejected by the Senate.
Only eight members voted for his confirmation--Messrs. Breese,
Colquitt, Fulton, Hannegan, King, Semple, Sevier, Walker. He had
been nominated in the place of William Hunter, Esq., ex-senator
from Rhode Island, recalled--a gentleman of education, reading,
talent, and finished manners; and eminently fit for his place. It
was difficult to see in Mr. Proffit, intended to supersede him, any
cause for his appointment except his adhesion to Mr. Tyler.
Mr. David Henshaw, of Massachusetts, had been commissioned Secretary
of the Navy in the recess, in place of Mr. Upshur, appointed
Secretary of State. He was rejected--only eight senators voting for
his nomination: they were: Messrs. Colquitt, Fulton, Haywood, King,
Semple, Sevier, Walker, Woodbury. The same fate attended Mr. James
M. Porter, of Pennsylvania, appointed in the recess Secretary at
War, in the place of Mr. John C. Spencer, resigned. No more than
three senators voted for his confirmation--Messrs. Haywood, Porter
of Michigan, and Tallmadge. Mr. John C. Spencer himself, nominated
an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, in
the place of Smith Thompson, Esq., deceased, was also rejected--26
to 21 votes. The negatives were: Messrs. Allen, Archer, Atchison,
Barrow, Bates, Bayard, Benton, Berrien, Choate, Clayton, Crittenden,
Dayton, Evans, Foster, Haywood, Henderson, Huntingdon, Jarnagin,
Mangum, Merrick, Miller, Morehead, Pearce, Simmons, Tappan,
Woodbridge.--Mr. Isaac Hill, of New Hampshire, was another subject
of senatorial rejection. He was nominated for the place of the chief
of the bureau of provisions and clothing of the Navy Department, to
fill a vacancy occasioned by the death of Charles W. Goldsborough,
Esq., and rejected by a vote of 25 to 11. The negatives were:
Messrs. Allen, Archer, Atchison, Bagby, Barrow, Bates, Bayard,
Benton, Berrien, Breese, Clayton (Thomas), Crittenden, Dayton,
Evans, Foster, Huntingdon, Jarnagin, Mangum, Merrick, Morehead,
Pearce, Sturgeon, Tappan, Walker, White.--Mr. Cushing was nominated
at the same session for minister plenipotentiary and envoy
extraordinary to China, the proceedings on which have not been made
public.
CHAPTER CXLVII.
MR. TYLER'S LAST MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.
Texas was the prominent topic of this message, and presented in
a way to have the effect, whatever may have been the intent, of
inflaming and exasperating, instead of soothing and conciliating
Mexico. Mr. Calhoun was now the Secretary of State, and was now
officially what he had been all along actually, the master spirit
in all that related to Texas annexation. Of the interests concerned
in the late attempted negotiation, one large interest, both active
and powerful, was for war with Mexico--not for the sake of the war,
but of the treaty of peace which would follow it, and by which
their Texas scrip and Texas land, now worth but little, would
become of great value. Neither Mr. Tyler nor Mr. Calhoun were among
these speculators, but their most active supporters were; and
these supporters gave the spirit in which the Texas movement was
conducted; and in this spirit the message, in all that related to
the point, was conceived. The imperious notification given at the
last session to cease the war, was repeated with equal arrogance,
and with an intimation that the United States would come to the aid
of Texas, if it went on. Thus:
"In my last annual message, I felt it to be my duty to make
known to Congress, in terms both plain and emphatic, my opinion
in regard to the war which has so long existed between Mexico
and Texas; and which, since the battle of San Jacinto, has
consisted altogether of predatory incursions, attended by
circumstances revolting to humanity. I repeat now, what I then
said, that, after eight years of feeble and ineffectual efforts
to recover Texas, it was time that the war should have ceased."
This was not the language for one nation to hold towards another,
nor would such have been held towards Mexico, except from her
inability to help herself, and our desire to get a chance to make
a treaty of acquisitions with her. The message goes on to say,
"_Mexico has no right to jeopard the peace of the world, by urging
any longer a useless and fruitless contest._" Very imperious
language that, but entirely unfounded in the facts. Hostilities
had ceased between Mexico and Texas upon an armistice under the
guarantee of the great powers, and peace with Mexico was immediate
and certain when Mr. Tyler's government effected the breach and
termination of the armistice by the Texas negotiations, and by
lending detachments of the army and navy to President Houston, to
assist in the protection of Texas. This interposition, and by the
lawless and clandestine loan of troops and ships, to procure a
rupture of the armistice, and prevent the peace which Mexico and
Texas were on the point of making, was one of the most revolting
circumstances in all this Texas intrigue. Thus presenting a defiant
aspect to Mexico, the President recommended the admission of Texas
into the Union upon an act of Congress, to be passed for that
purpose, and under the clause in the constitution which authorizes
Congress to admit new States. Thus, a great constitutional point was
gained by those who had opposed and defeated the annexation treaty.
By that mode of annexation the treaty-making power--the President
and Senate--made the acquisition: by the mode now recommended the
legislative authority was to do it.
The remainder of the message presents nothing to be noted, except
the congratulations of the President upon the restoration of the
federal currency to what he called a sound state, but which was,
in fact, a solid state--for it had become gold and silver; and his
equal felicitations upon the equalization of the exchanges (which
had never been unequal between those who had money to exchange),
saying that exchange was now only the difference of the expense
of transporting gold. That had been the case always with those
who had gold; and what had been called inequalities of exchange
before, was nothing but the different degrees of the depreciation of
different bank notes. But what the President did not note, but which
all others observed, was the obvious fact, that this restoration
and equalization were attained without any of the remedies which
he had been prescribing for four years! without any of those
Fiscal Institutes--Fiscal Corporations--Fiscal Agents--or Fiscal
Exchequers, which he had been prescribing for four years. It was the
effect of the gold bill, and of the Independent Treasury, and the
cessation of all attempts to make a national currency of paper money.
CHAPTER CXLVIII.
LEGISLATIVE ADMISSION OF TEXAS INTO THE UNION AS A STATE.
A joint resolution was early brought into the House of
Representatives for the admission of Texas as a State of the Union.
It was in these words:
"That Congress doth consent that the territory properly included
within, and rightfully belonging to the republic of Texas, may
be erected into a new State, to be called the State of Texas,
with a republican form of government, to be adopted by the
people of said republic, by deputies in convention assembled,
with the consent of the existing government, in order that
the same may be admitted as one of the States of this Union.
And, that the foregoing consent of Congress is given upon the
following conditions, and with the following guarantees:
"First. Said State to be formed, subject to the adjustment by
this government of all questions of boundary that may arise
with other governments; and the constitution thereof, with the
proper evidence of its adoption by the people of said republic
of Texas, shall be transmitted to the President of the United
States, to be laid before Congress for its final action, on or
before the 1st day of January, 1846.
"Second. Said State, when admitted into the Union, after ceding
to the United States all public edifices, fortifications,
barracks, ports and harbors, navy and navy-yards, docks,
magazines, arms, armaments, and all other property and means
pertaining to the public defence belonging to said republic
of Texas, shall retain all the public funds, debts, taxes,
and dues of every kind which may belong to, or be due and
owing said republic; and shall also retain all the vacant and
unappropriated lands lying within its limits, to be applied to
the payment of the debts and liabilities of said republic of
Texas; and the residue of said lands, after discharging said
debts and liabilities, to be disposed of as said State may
direct; but in no event are said debts and liabilities to become
a charge upon the government of the United States.
"Third. New States, of convenient size, not exceeding four
in number, in addition to said State of Texas, and having
sufficient population, may hereafter by the consent of said
State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall
be entitled to admission under the provisions of the federal
constitution. And such States as may be formed out of that
portion of said territory lying south of thirty-six degrees
thirty minutes north latitude, commonly known as the Missouri
compromise line, shall be admitted into the Union, with or
without slavery, as the people of each State asking admission
may desire; and in such State or States as shall be formed
out of said territory north of said Missouri compromise line,
slavery or involuntary servitude (except for crime) shall be
prohibited."
To understand the third, and last clause of this resolve, it must
be recollected that the boundaries of Texas, by the treaty of 1819,
which retroceded that province to Spain, were extended north across
the Red River, and entirely to the Arkansas River; and following
that river up to the 37th, the 38th, and eventually to the 42d
degree of north latitude; so that all this part of the territory
lying north of 36 degrees 30 minutes, came within the terms of the
Missouri compromise line prohibiting slavery north of that line.
Here then was an anomaly--slave territory, and free territory within
the same State; and it became the duty of Congress to provide for
each accordingly: and it was done. The territory lying south of that
compromise line might become free or slave States as the inhabitants
should decide: the States to be formed out of the territory north of
it were to be bound by the compromise: and lest any question should
arise on that point in consequence of Texas having been under a
foreign dominion since the line was established, it was expressly
re-enacted by this clause of the resolution, and in the precise
words of the Missouri compromise act. Thus framed, and made clear in
its provisions in respect to slavery, the resolutions, after ample
discussion, were passed through the House by a good majority--120 to
97. The affirmatives were
"Archibald H. Arrington, John B. Ashe, Archibald Atkinson,
Thomas H. Bayly, James E. Belser, Benjamin A. Bidlack, Edward
J. Black, James Black, James A. Black, Julius W. Blackwell,
Gustavus M. Bower, James B. Bowlin, Linn Boyd, Richard Brodhead,
Aaron V. Brown, Milton Brown, William J. Brown, Edmund Burke,
Armistead Burt, George Alfred Caldwell, John Campbell, Shepherd
Carey, Reuben Chapman, Augustus A. Chapman, Absalom H. Chappell,
Duncan L. Clinch, James G. Clinton, Howell Cobb, Walter Coles,
Edward Cross, Alvan Cullom, John R. J. Daniel, John W. Davis,
John B. Dawson, Ezra Dean, James Dellet, Stephen A. Douglass,
George C. Dromgool, Alexander Duncan, Chesselden Ellis, Isaac
G. Farlee, Orlando B. Ficklin, Henry D. Foster, Richard
French, George Fuller, William H. Hammett, Hugh A. Haralson,
Samuel Hays, Thomas J. Henley, Isaac E. Holmes, Joseph P.
Hoge, George W. Hopkins, George S. Houston, Edmund W. Hubard,
William S. Hubbell, James M. Hughes, Charles J. Ingersoll,
John Jameson, Cave Johnson, Andrew Johnson, George W. Jones.
Andrew Kennedy, Littleton Kirkpatrick, Alcée Labranche, Moses G.
Leonard, William Lucas, John H. Lumpkin, Lucius Lyon, William
C. McCauslen, William B. Maclay, John A. McClernand, Felix G.
McConnel, Joseph J. McDowell, James J. McKay, James Mathews,
Joseph Morris, Isaac E. Morse, Henry C. Murphy, Willoughby
Newton, Moses Norris, jr., Robert Dale Owen, William Parmenter,
William W. Payne, John Pettit, Joseph H. Peyton, Emery D.
Potter, Zadock Pratt, David S. Reid, James H. Relfe, R. Barnwell
Rhett, John Ritter, Robert W. Roberts, Jeremiah Russell, Romulus
M. Saunders, William T. Senter, Thomas H. Seymour, Samuel
Simons, Richard F. Simpson, John Slidell, John T. Smith, Thomas
Smith, Robert Smith, Lewis Steenrod, Alexander H. Stephens, John
Stewart, William H. Styles, James W. Stone, Alfred P. Stone,
Selah B. Strong, George Sykes, William Taylor, Jacob Thomson,
John W. Tibbatts, Tilghman M. Tucker, John B. Weller, John
Wentworth, Joseph A. Woodward, Joseph A. Wright, William L.
Yancey, Jacob S. Yost."
Members from the slave and free States voted for these resolutions,
and thereby asserted the right of Congress to legislate upon slavery
in territories, and to prohibit or prevent it as they pleased,
and also exercised the right each way--forbidding it one side of a
line, and leaving it optional with the State on the other--and not
only acknowledging the validity of the Missouri compromise line, but
enforcing it by a new enactment; and without this enactment every
one saw that the slavery institution would come to the Arkansas
River in latitude 37, and 38, and even 42. The vote was, therefore,
an abolition of the institution legally existing between these two
lines, and done in the formal and sacred manner of a compact with a
foreign State, as a condition of its admission into the Union. One
hundred and twenty members of the House of Representatives voted in
favor of these resolutions, and thereby both asserted, and exercised
the power of Congress to legislate upon slavery in territories, and
to abolish it therein when it pleased: of the 97 voting against the
resolution, not one did so from any objection to that power. The
resolutions came down from the Department of State, and corresponded
with the recommendation in the President's message.
Sent to the Senate for its concurrence, this joint resolution found
a leading friend in the person of Mr. Buchanan, who was delighted
with every part of it, and especially the re-enactment of the
Missouri compromise line in the part where it might otherwise have
been invalidated by the Texian laws and constitution, and which thus
extinguished for ever the slavery question in the United States. In
this sense he said:
"He was pleased with it, again, because it settled the question
of slavery. These resolutions went to re-establish the Missouri
compromise, by fixing a line within which slavery was to be
in future confined. That controversy had nearly shaken this
Union to its centre in an earlier and better period of our
history; but this compromise, should it be now re-established,
would prevent the recurrence of similar dangers hereafter.
Should this question be now left open for one or two years, the
country could be involved in nothing but one perpetual struggle.
We should witness a feverish excitement in the public mind;
parties would divide on the dangerous and exciting question of
abolition; and the irritation might reach such an extreme as to
endanger the existence of the Union itself. But close it now,
and it would be closed for ever.
"Mr. B. said he anticipated no time when the country would ever
desire to stretch its limits beyond the Rio del Norte; and,
such being the case, ought any friend of the Union to desire to
see this question left open any longer? Was it desirable again
to have the Missouri question brought home to the people to goad
them to fury? That question between the two great interests in
our country had been well discussed and well decided; and from
that moment Mr. B. had set down his foot on the solid ground
then established, and there he would let the question stand for
ever. Who could complain of the terms of that compromise?
"It was then settled that north of 36° 30' slavery should
be for ever prohibited. The same line was fixed upon in the
resolutions recently received from the House of Representatives,
now before us. The bill from the House for the establishment of
a territorial government in Oregon excluded slavery altogether
from that vast country. How vain were the fears entertained in
some quarters of the country that the slaveholding States would
ever be able to control the Union! While, on the other hand,
the fears entertained in the south and south-west as to the
ultimate success of the abolitionists, were not less unfounded
and vain. South of the compromise line of 36° 30' the States
within the limits of Texas applying to come into the Union were
left to decide for themselves whether they would permit slavery
within their limits or not. And under this free permission,
he believed, with Mr. Clay (in his letter on the subject of
annexation), that if Texas should be divided into five States,
two only of them would be slaveholding, and three free States.
The descendants of torrid Africa delighted in the meridian rays
of a burning sun; they basked and rejoiced in a degree of heat
which enervated and would destroy the white man. The lowlands of
Texas, therefore, where they raised cotton, tobacco, and rice,
and indigo, was the natural region for the slave. But north of
San Antonio, where the soil and climate were adapted to the
culture of wheat, rye, corn, and cattle, the climate was exactly
adapted to the white man of the North; there he could labor
for himself without risk or injury. It was, therefore, to be
expected that three out of the five new Texian States would be
free States--certainly they would be so, if they but willed it.
Mr. B. was willing to leave that question to themselves, as they
applied for admission into the Union. He had no apprehensions
of the result. With that feature in the bill, as it came from
the House, he was perfectly content; and, whatever bill might
ultimately pass, he trusted this would be made a condition in
it."
It was in the last days of his senatorial service that Mr. Buchanan
crowned his long devotion to the Missouri compromise by celebrating
its re-enactment where it had been abrogated, taking a stand upon
it as the solid ground on which the Union rested, and invoking a
perpetuity of duration for it.
This resolution, thus adopted by the House, would make the admission
a legislative act, but in the opinion of many members of the
Senate that was only a step in the right direction: another in
their opinion required to be taken: and that was to combine the
treaty-making power with it--the Congress taking the initiative in
the question, and the President and Senate finishing it by treaty,
as done in the case of Louisiana and Florida. With this view
Mr. Benton had brought in a bill for commissioners to treat for
annexation, and so worded as to authorize negotiations with Mexico
at the same time, and get her acquiescence to the alienation in the
settlement of boundaries with her. His bill was in these terms:
"That a State, to be formed out of the present republic of
Texas, with suitable extent and boundaries, and with two
representatives in Congress until the next apportionment of
representation, shall be admitted into the Union by virtue of
this act, on an equal footing with the existing States, as soon
as the terms and conditions of such admission, and the cession
of the remaining Texian territory to the United States shall be
agreed upon by the government of Texas and the United States.
"SEC. 2. _And be it further enacted_, That the sum of
one hundred thousand dollars be, and the same is hereby
appropriated, to defray the expenses of missions and
negotiations to agree upon the terms of said admission and
cession, either by treaty, to be submitted to the Senate, or by
articles to be submitted to the two Houses of Congress, as the
President may direct."
In support of this bill, Mr. Benton said:
"It was a copy, substantially, of the bill which he had
previously offered, with the omission of all the terms and
conditions which that bill contained. He had been induced to
omit all these conditions because of the difficulty of agreeing
upon them, and because it was now clear that whatever bill was
passed upon the subject of Texas, the execution of it must
devolve upon the new President, who had been just elected by
the people with a view to this object. He had confidence in
Mr. Polk, and was willing to trust the question of terms and
conditions to his untrammelled discretion, certain that he would
do the best that he could for the success of the object, the
harmony of the Union, and the peace and honor of the country.
"The occasion is an extraordinary one, and requires an
extraordinary mission. The voluntary union of two independent
nations is a rare occurrence, and is worthy to be attended
by every circumstance which lends it dignity, promotes its
success, and makes it satisfactory. When England and Scotland
were united, at the commencement of the last century, no less
than thirty-one commissioners were employed to agree upon the
terms; and the terms they agreed upon received the sanction
of the Parliaments of the two kingdoms, and completed a union
which had been in vain attempted for one hundred years.
Extraordinary missions, nationally constituted, have several
times been resorted to in our own country, and always with
public approbation, whether successful or not. The first
Mr. Adams sent Marshall, Gerry, and Pinckney to the French
directory in 1798: Mr. Jefferson sent Ellsworth, Davie, and
Murray to the French consular government of 1800: Mr. Madison
sent Adams, Bayard, Gallatin, Clay, and Russell to Ghent in
1814. All these missions, and others which might be named, were
nationally constituted--composed of eminent citizens taken from
each political party, and from different sections of the Union;
and, of course, all favorable to the object for which they
were employed. An occasion has occurred which, in my opinion,
requires a mission similarly constituted--as numerous as the
missions to Paris or to Ghent--and composed of citizens from
both political parties, and from the non-slaveholding as well
as the slaveholding States. Such a commission could hardly fail
to be successful, not merely in agreeing upon the terms of the
union, but in agreeing upon terms which would be satisfactory
to the people and the governments of the two countries. And
here, to avoid misapprehension and the appearance of disrespect
where the contrary is felt, I would say that the gentleman now
in Texas as the chargé of the United States, is, in my opinion,
eminently fit and proper to be one of the envoys extraordinary
and ministers plenipotentiary which my bill contemplates.
"In withdrawing from my bill the terms and conditions which had
been proposed as a basis of negotiation, I do not withdraw them
from the consideration of those who may direct the negotiation.
I expect them to be considered, and, as far as judged proper,
to be acted on. The compromise principle between slave and
non-slaveholding territory is sanctioned by the vote of the
House of Representatives, and by the general voice of the
country. In withdrawing it from the bill, I do not withdraw it
from the consideration of the President: I only leave him free
and untrammelled to do the best he can for the harmony of the
Union on a delicate and embarrassing point.
"The assent of Mexico to the annexation is judged to be
unnecessary, but no one judges her assent to a new boundary line
to be unnecessary: no one judges it unnecessary to preserve her
commerce and good will; and, therefore, every consideration of
self-interest and national policy requires a fair effort to
be made to settle this boundary and to preserve this trade and
friendship; and I shall consider all this as remaining just as
fully in the mind of the President as if submitted to him in a
bill.
"The bill which I now offer is the same which I have presented
heretofore, divested of its conditions, and committing the
subject to the discretion of the President to accomplish the
object in the best way that he can, and either negotiate a
treaty to be submitted to the Senate, or to agree upon articles
of union to be submitted to the two Houses of Congress. I deem
this the best way of proceeding under every aspect. It is the
safest way; for it will settle all questions beforehand, and
leave no nest-eggs to hatch future disputes. It is the most
speedy way; for commissioners conferring face to face will
come to conclusions much sooner than two deliberative bodies
sitting in two different countries, at near two thousand miles
apart, and interchanging categorical propositions in the shape
of law. It is the most satisfactory way; for whatever such
a commission should agree upon, would stand the best chance
to be satisfactory to all parts of the Union. It is the most
respectful way to Texas, and the mode for which she has shown a
decided preference. She has twice sent envoys extraordinary and
ministers plenipotentiary here to treat with us; and the actual
President, Mr. Jones, has authentically declared his willingness
to engage in further negotiations. Ministers sent to confer and
agree--to consult and to harmonize--is much more respectful
than the transmission, by mail or messenger, of an inflexible
proposition, in the shape of law, to be accepted or rejected
in the precise words in which we send it. In every point of
view, the mode which I propose seems to me to be the best; and
as its execution will devolve upon a President just elected by
the people with a view to this subject, I have no hesitation in
trusting it to him, armed with full power, and untrammelled with
terms and conditions."
It was soon ascertained in the Senate, that the joint resolution
from the House could not pass--that unless combined with
negotiation, it would be rejected. Mr. Walker, of Mississippi,
then proposed to join the two together--the bill of Mr. Benton
and the resolution from the House--with a clause referring it to
the discretion of the President to act under them as he deemed
best. It being then the end of the session, and the new President
arrived so as to be ready to act immediately; and it being fully
believed that the execution of the bill was to be left to him,
the conjunction was favored by the author of the bill, and his
friends; and the proposal of Mr. Walker was agreed to. The bill
was added as an amendment, and then the whole was passed--although
by a close vote--27 to 25. The yeas were: Messrs. Allen, Ashley,
Atchison, Atherton, Bagby, Benton, Breese, Buchanan, Colquitt,
Dickinson, Dix, Fairfield, Hannegan, Haywood, Henderson, Huger,
Johnson, Lewis, McDuffie, Merrick, Niles, Semple, Sevier, Sturgeon,
Tappan, Walker, Woodbury,--27. The nays were: Messrs. Archer,
Barrow, Bates, Bayard, Berrien, Choate, Clayton, Crittenden, Dayton,
Evans, Foster, Francis, Huntington, Jarnagin, Mangum, Miller,
Morehead, Pearce, Phelps, Porter, Rives, Simmons, Upham, White,
Woodbridge--25. The resolve of the House was thus passed in the
Senate, and the validity of the Missouri compromise was asserted,
and its re-enactment effected in the Senate, as well as in the
House. But the amendment required the bill to go back to the House
for its concurrence in that particular, which was found to increase
the favor of the measure--an addition of thirty-six being added to
the affirmative vote. Carried to Mr. Tyler for his approval, or
disapproval, it was immediately approved by him, with the hearty
concurrence of his Secretary of State (Mr. Calhoun), who even
claimed the passage of the measure as a triumph of his own. And
so the executive government, in the persons of the President and
his cabinet, added their sanction to the validity of the Missouri
compromise line, and the full power of Congress which it exercised,
to permit or abolish slavery in territories. This was the month of
March, 1845--so that a quarter of a century after the establishment
of that compromise line, the dogmas of "squatter sovereignty"--"no
power in Congress to legislate upon slavery in the territories"--and
"the extension of slavery to the territories by the self-expansion
of the constitution," had not been invented. The discovery of these
dogmas was reserved for a later period, and a more heated state of
the public mind.
The bill providing for the admission of Texas had undergone all its
formalities, and became a law on Saturday, the first day of March;
the second was Sunday, and a _dies non_. Congress met on Monday for
the last day of its existence; and great was the astonishment of
members to hear that the actual President had assumed the execution
of the act providing for the admission of Texas--had adopted the
legislative clause--and sent it off by a special messenger for
the adoption of Texas. It was then seen that some senators had
been cheated out of their votes, and that the passage of the act
through the Senate had been procured by a fraud. At least five of
the senators who voted affirmatively would have voted against the
resolutions of the House, if Mr. Benton's bill had not been added,
and if it had not been believed that the execution of the act would
be left to the new President, and that he would adopt Mr. Benton's.
The possibility of a contrary course had been considered, and, as
it was believed, fully guarded against. Several senators and some
citizens conversed with Mr. Polk, then in the city, and received
his assurance that he would act on Mr. Benton's proposition, and
in carrying it into effect would nominate for the negotiation a
national commission, composed of safe and able men of both parties,
such as Mr. Benton had suggested. Among those who thus conversed
with Mr. Polk were two (senator Tappan, of Ohio, and Francis P.
Blair, Esq., of Washington City), who published the result of their
conversations, and the importance of which requires to be stated
in their own words: which is here done. Mr. Tappan, writing to the
editors of the New York Evening Post, says:
"When the joint resolution declaring the terms on which Congress
will admit Texas into the Union as a State, was before the
Senate, it was soon found that a number of the democratic
members who were favorable to the admission of Texas, would
vote against that resolution. I was one of them. In this stage
of the matter it was proposed, that instead of rejecting
the House resolution, we should amend it by adding, as an
alternative proposition, the substance of Mr. Benton's bill to
obtain Texas by negotiation. Mr. Polk was in the city; it was
understood that he was very anxious that Congress should act on
the subject before he came into office; it was also understood
that the proposition to amend the House resolution originated
with Mr. Polk. It had been suggested, that, if we did so amend
the resolution, Mr. Calhoun would send off the House resolution
to Texas, and so endeavor to forestall the action of Mr. Polk;
but Mr. McDuffie, his friend, having met this suggestion by the
declaration that he would not have the 'audacity' to do such
a thing, it was no more thought of. One difficulty remained,
and that was the danger of putting it into the power of Mr.
Polk to submit the House resolution to Texas. We understood,
indeed, that he intended to submit the Senate proposition to
that government; but, without being satisfied that he would do
this, I would not vote for the resolution, and it was well
ascertained that, without my vote, it could not pass. Mr.
Haywood, who had voted with me, and was opposed to the House
resolution, undertook to converse with Mr. Polk on the subject,
and did so. He afterwards told me that he was authorized by Mr.
Polk to say to myself and other senators, that, if we could
pass the resolution with the amendment proposed to be made, he
would not use the House resolution, but would submit the Senate
amendment as the sole proposition to Texas. Upon this assurance
I voted for the amendment moved by Mr. Walker, containing the
substance of Mr. Benton's bill, and voted for the resolution as
it now stands on the statute book."
Mr. Francis P. Blair, in a letter addressed to Mr. Tappan, and
conversing with Mr. Polk at a different time, gives his statement to
the same effect:
"When the resolution passed by the House of Representatives for
the annexation of Texas reached the Senate, it was ascertained
that it would fail in that body. Benton, Bagby, Dix, Haywood,
and as I understood, you also, were opposed to this naked
proposition of annexation, which necessarily brought with
it the war in which Texas was engaged with Mexico. All had
determined to adhere to the bill submitted by Col. Benton,
for the appointment of a commission to arrange the terms of
annexation with Texas, and to make the attempt to render its
accession to our Union as palatable as possible to Mexico
before its consummation. It was hoped that this point might
be effected by giving (as has been done in the late treaty of
peace) a pecuniary consideration, fully equivalent in value for
the territory desired by the United States, and to which Texas
could justly assert any title. The Senate had been polled, and
it was ascertained that any two of the democratic senators who
were opposed to Brown's resolution, which had passed the House,
could defeat it--the whole whig party preferring annexation by
negotiation, upon Col. Benton's plan, to that of Brown. While
the question was thus pending, I met Mr. Brown (late Governor
of Tennessee, then a member or the House), who suggested that
the resolution of the House, and the bill of Col. Benton,
preferred by the Senate, might be blended, making the latter an
alternative, and leaving the President elect (who alone would
have time to consummate the measure), to act under one or the
other at his discretion. I told Mr. Brown that I did not believe
that the democratic senators opposed to the resolution of the
House, and who had its fate in their hands, would consent to
this arrangement, unless they were satisfied in advance by Mr.
Polk that the commission and negotiation contemplated in Col.
Benton's plan would be tried, before that of direct legislative
annexation was resorted to. He desired me to see Colonel Benton
and the friends of his proposition, submit the suggestions he
had made, and then confer with Mr. Polk to know whether he would
meet their views. I complied; and after several interviews with
Messrs. Haywood, Dix, Benton, and others (Mr. Allen, of Ohio,
using his influence in the same direction), finding that the
two plans could be coupled and carried, if it were understood
that the pacific project was first to be tried, I consulted
the _President elect on the subject_. In the conference I had
with him, _he gave me full assurance that he would appoint
a commission, as contemplated in the bill prepared by Col.
Benton, if passed in conjunction with the House resolution as an
alternative_. In the course of my conversation with Mr. Polk,
I told him that the friends of this plan were solicitous that
the commission should be filled by distinguished men of both
parties, and that Colonel Benton had mentioned to me the names
of Crittenden and Wright, as of the class from which it should
be formed. _Mr. Polk responded, by declaring with an emphasis,
'that the first men of the country should fill the commission.'_
I communicated the result of this interview to Messrs. Benton,
Dix, Haywood, &c. The two last met, on appointment, to adapt the
phraseology of Benton's bill, to suit as an alternative for the
resolution of the House, and it was passed, after a very general
understanding of the course which the measure was to take. Both
Messrs. Dix and Haywood told me they had interviews with Mr.
Polk on the subject of the communication I had reported to them
from him, and they were confirmed by his immediate assurance in
pursuing the course which they had resolved on in consequence
of my representation of his purpose in regard to the point on
which their action depended. After the law was passed, and Mr.
Polk inaugurated, he applied to Gen. Dix (as I am informed by
the latter), to urge the Senate to act upon one of the suspended
cabinet appointments, saying that he wished his administration
organized immediately, as he intended the instant recall of the
messenger understood to have been despatched by Mr. Tyler, and
to revoke his orders given in the last moments of his power,
to thwart the design of Congress in affording him (Mr. Polk)
the means of instituting a negotiation, with a view of bringing
Texas peaceably into the Union."
All this was perfectly satisfactory with respect to the President
elect; but there might be some danger from the actual President, or
rather, from Mr. Calhoun, his Secretary of State, and who had over
Mr. Tyler that ascendant which it is the prerogative of genius to
exercise over inferior minds. This danger was suggested in debate
in open Senate. It was repulsed as an impossible infamy. Such a
cheat upon senators and such an encroachment upon the rights of
the new President, were accounted among the impossibilities: and
Mr. McDuffie, a close and generous friend of Mr. Calhoun, speaking
for the administration, and replying to the suggestion that they
might seize upon the act, and execute it without regard to the
Senate's amendment, not only denied it for them, but repulsed it
in terms which implied criminality if they did. He said they would
not have the "_audacity_" to do it. Mr. McDuffie was an honorable
man, standing close to Mr. Calhoun; and although he did not assume
to speak by authority, yet his indignant repulse of the suggestion
was entirely satisfactory, and left the misgiving senators released
from apprehension on account of Mr. Tyler's possible conduct. Mr.
Robert J. Walker also, who had moved the conjunction of the two
measures, and who was confidential both with the coming in and
going out President, assisted in allaying apprehension in the
reason he gave for opposing an amendment offered by Mr. Ephraim H.
Foster, of Tennessee, which, looking to the President's adoption
of the negotiating clause, required that he should make a certain
"_stipulation_" in relation to slavery, and another in relation to
the public debt. Mr. Walker objected to this proposition, saying it
was already in the bill, "_and if the President proceeded properly
in the negotiation he would act upon it_." This seemed to be
authoritative that negotiation was to be the mode, and consequently
that Mr. Benton's plan was to be adopted. Thus quieted in their
apprehensions, five senators voted for the act of admission, who
would not otherwise have done so; and any two of whom voting against
it would have defeated it. Mr. Polk did not despatch a messenger to
recall Mr. Tyler's envoy; and that omission was the only point of
complaint against him. Mr. McDuffie stood exempt from all blame,
known to be an honorable man speaking from a generous impulsion.
Thus was Texas incorporated into the Union--by a deception, and
by deluding five senators out of their votes. It was not a barren
fraud, but one prolific of evil, and pregnant with bloody fruit.
It established, so far as the United States was concerned, the
state of war with Mexico: it only wanted the acceptance of Texas
to make war the complete legal condition of the two countries: and
that temptation to Texas was too great to be resisted. She desired
annexation any way: and the government of the United States having
broken up the armistice, and thwarted the peace prospects, and
brought upon her the danger of a new invasion, she leaped at the
chance of throwing the burden of the war on the United States. The
legislative proposition sent by Mr. Tyler was accepted: Texas became
incorporated with the United States: by that incorporation the state
of war--_the status belli_--was established between the United
States and Mexico: and it only became a question of time and chance,
when hostilities were to begin. Mr. Calhoun, though the master
spirit over Mr. Tyler, and the active power in sending off the
proposition to Texas, was not in favor of war, and still believed,
as he did when he made the treaty, that the weakness of Mexico, and
a _douceur_ of ten millions in money, would make her submit: but
there was another interest all along working with him, and now to
supersede him in influence, which was for war, not as an object, but
as a means--as a means of getting a treaty providing for claims and
indemnities, and territorial acquisitions. This interest, long his
adjunct, now became independent of him, and pushed for the war; but
it was his conduct that enabled this party to act; and this point
became one of earnest debate between himself and Mr. Benton the year
afterwards; in which he was charged as being the real author of the
war; and in which Mr. Benton's speech being entirely historical,
becomes a condensed view of the whole Texas annexation question; and
as such is presented in the next chapter.
ADMINISTRATION OF JAMES K. POLK.
CHAPTER CXLIX.
THE WAR WITH MEXICO: ITS CAUSE: CHARGED ON THE CONDUCT OF MR.
CALHOUN: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH.
Mr. BENTON: The senator from South Carolina (Mr. Calhoun) has
boldly made the issue as to the authorship of this war, and as
boldly thrown the blame of it upon the present administration. On
the contrary, I believe himself to be the author of it, and will
give a part of my reasons for believing so. In saying this, I do
not consider the march to the Rio Grande to have been the cause of
the war, any more than I consider the British march upon Concord
and Lexington to have been the cause of the American Revolution,
or the crossing of the Rubicon by Cæsar to have been the cause of
the civil war in Rome. In all these cases, I consider the causes
of war as pre-existing, and the marches as only the effect of
these causes. I consider the march upon the Rio Grande as being
unfortunate, and certainly should have advised against it if I had
been consulted, and that without the least fear of diminishing my
influence in the settlement of the Oregon question--a fear which
the senator from South Carolina says prevented him from interposing
to prevent the war which he foresaw. My opinion of Mr. Polk--and
experience in that very Oregon case has confirmed it--did not
authorize me to conjecture that any one would lose influence with
him by giving him honest opinions; so I would have advised against
the march to the Rio Grande if I had been consulted. Nor do I see
how any opinion adverse to the President's was to have the effect of
lessening his influence in the settlement of the Oregon question.
That question was settled by us, not by the President. Half the
democratic senators went contrary to the President's opinion, and
none of them lost influence with him on that account; and so I can
see no possible connection between the facts of the case and the
senator's reason for not interfering to save his country from the
war which, he says, he saw. His reason to me is unintelligible,
incomprehensible, unconnectable with the facts of the case. But the
march on the Rio Grande was not the cause of the war; but the causes
of this event, like the causes of our own revolutionary war, were
in progress long before hostilities broke out. The causes of this
Mexican war were long anterior to this march; and, in fact, every
circumstance of war then existed, except the actual collision of
arms. Diplomatic intercourse had ceased; commerce was destroyed;
fleets and armies confronted each other; treaties were declared
to be broken; the contingency had occurred in which Mexico had
denounced the existence of war; the incorporation of Texas, with a
Mexican war on her hands, had produced, in legal contemplation, the
_status belli_ between the two countries: and all this had occurred
before the march upon the Rio Grande, and before the commencement of
this administration, and had produced a state of things which it was
impossible to continue, and which could only receive their solution
from arms or negotiation. The march to the Rio Grande brought on
the collision of arms; but, so far from being the cause of the war,
it was itself the effect of these causes. The senator from South
Carolina is the author of those causes, and therefore the author
of the war; and this I propose to show, at present, by evidence
drawn from himself--from his public official acts--leaving all the
evidence derived from other sources, from private and unofficial
acts, for future production, if deemed necessary.
The senator from South Carolina, in his effort to throw the blame
of the war upon the President, goes no further back in his search
for causes than to this march upon the Rio Grande: upon the same
principle, if he wrote a history of the American Revolution, he
would begin at the march upon Lexington and Concord, leaving out
of view the ten years' work of Lord North's administration which
caused that march to be made. No, the march upon the Rio Grande was
not the cause of the war: had it not been for pre-existing causes,
the arrival of the American army on the Mexican frontier would have
been saluted with military courtesy, according to the usage of all
civilized nations, and with none so much as with the Spaniards.
Complimentary visits, dinners, and fandangos, balls--not cannon
balls--would have been the salutation. The causes of the war are
long anterior; and I begin with the beginning, and show the senator
from South Carolina an actor from the first. In doing this, I am
acting in defence of the country, for the President represents
the country. The senator from South Carolina charges the war upon
the President: the whole opposition follow him: the bill under
discussion is forgotten: crimination of the President is now the
object: and in that crimination, the country is injured by being
made to appear the aggressor in the war. This is my justification
for defending the President, and showing the truth that the senator,
in his manner of acquiring Texas, is the true cause of the war.
The cession of Texas to Spain in 1819 is the beginning point in
the chain of causes which have led to this war; for unless the
country had been ceded away, there could have been no quarrel with
any power in getting it back. For a long time the negotiator of
that treaty of cession (Mr. J. Q. Adams) bore all the blame of
the loss of Texas; and his motives for giving it away were set
down to hostility to the South and West, and a desire to clip the
wings of the slaveholding States. At last the truth of history
has vindicated itself, and has shown who was the true author of
that mischief to the South and West. Mr. Adams has made a public
declaration, which no one controverts, that that cession was made
in conformity to the decision of Mr. Monroe's cabinet, a majority
of which was slaveholding, and among them the present senator from
South Carolina, and now the only survivor of that majority. He does
not contradict the statement of Mr. Adams: he, therefore, stands
admitted the co-author of that mischief to the South and West which
the cession of Texas involved, and to escape from which it became
necessary, in the opinion of the senator from South Carolina, to get
back Texas at the expense of war with Mexico. This conduct of the
senator in giving away Texas when we had her, and then making war
to get her back, is an enigma which he has never yet condescended
to explain, and which, until explained, leaves him in a state of
self-contradiction, which, whether it impairs his own confidence in
himself or not, must have the effect of destroying the confidence
of others in him, and wholly disqualifies him for the office of
champion of the slaveholding States. It was the heaviest blow they
had ever received, and put an end, in conjunction with the Missouri
compromise, and the permanent location of the Indians west of the
Mississippi, to their future growth or extension as slave States
beyond the Mississippi. The compromise, which was then in full
progress, and established at the next session of Congress, cut off
the slave States from all territory north and west of Missouri, and
south of thirty-six and a half degrees of north latitude: the treaty
of 1819 ceded nearly all south of that degree, comprehending not
only all Texas, but a large part of the valley of the Mississippi
on the Red River and the Arkansas, to a foreign power, and brought
a non-slaveholding empire to the confines of Louisiana and
Arkansas: the permanent appropriation of the rest of the territory
for the abode of civilized Indians swept the little slaveholding
territory west of Arkansas and lying between the compromise line
and the cession line; and left the slave States without one inch
of ground for their future growth. Nothing was left. Even the
then territory of Arkansas was encroached upon. A breadth of
forty miles wide, and three hundred long was cut off from her, and
given to the Cherokees; and there was not as much slave territory
left west of the Mississippi as a dove could have rested the sole
of her foot upon. It was not merely a curtailment, but a total
extinction of slaveholding territory; and done at a time when the
Missouri controversy was raging, and every effort made by Northern
abolitionists to stop the growth of slave States.[8]
[8] At the presidential election of 1824, the Northern States voted
pretty much in a body for Mr. Calhoun, as Vice-President, giving him
near the same vote which they gave Mr. Adams for President. Thus:
_For Mr. Adams._ _For Mr. Calhoun._
New Hampshire, 8 7
Massachusetts, 15 15
Rhode Island, 4 3
Vermont, 7 7
New York, 26 29
I come now to the direct proofs of the senator's authorship of
the war; and begin with the year 1836, and with the month of May
of that year, and with the 27th day of that month, and with the
first rumors of the victory of San Jacinto. The Congress of the
United States was then in session: the senator from South Carolina
was then a member of this body; and, without even waiting for the
official confirmation of that great event, he proposed at once
the immediate recognition of the independence of Texas, and her
immediate admission into this Union. He put the two propositions
together--recognition and admission: and allowed us no further time
for the double vote than the few days which were to intervene before
the official intelligence of the victory should arrive. Here are
some extracts from his speech on that occasion, and which verify
what I say, and show that he was then ready to plunge the country
into the Texian war with Mexico, without the slightest regard to its
treaties, its commerce, its duties, or its character.
(The extracts.)
Here, then, is the proof of the fact that, ten years ago, and
without a word of explanation with Mexico, or any request from
Texas--without the least notice to the American people, or time for
deliberation among ourselves, or any regard to existing commerce--he
was for plunging us into instant war with Mexico. I say, instant
war; for Mexico and Texas were then in open war; and to incorporate
Texas, was to incorporate the war at the same time. All this the
senator was then for, immediately after his own gratuitous cession
of Texas, and long before the invention of the London abolition
plot came so opportunely to his aid. Promptness and unanimity were
then his watchwords. Immediate action--action before Congress
adjourned--was his demand. No delay. Delays were dangerous. We
must vote, and vote unanimously, and promptly. I well remember the
senator's look and attitude on that occasion--the fixedness of
his look, and the magisteriality of his attitude. It was such as
he often favors us with, especially when he is in a "crisis," and
brings forward something which ought to be instantly and unanimously
rejected--as when he brought in his string of abstractions on
Thursday last. So it was in 1836--prompt and unanimous action, and a
look to put down opposition. But the Senate was not looked down in
1836. They promptly and unanimously refused the senator's motion!
and the crisis and the danger--good-natured souls!--immediately
postponed themselves until wanted for another occasion.
The peace of the country was then saved; but it was a respite
only; and the speech of the senator from South Carolina, brief as
it was, becomes momentous as foreshadowing every thing that has
subsequently taken place in relation to the admission of Texas.
In this brief speech we have the shadows of all future movements,
coming in procession--in advance of the events. In the significant
intimation, qualified with the if----"_the Texians prudently managed
their affairs, they (the Senate) might soon be called upon to
decide the question of admission_." In that pregnant and qualified
intimation, there was a visible doubt that the Texians might _not_
be prudent enough to manage their own affairs, and might require
help; and also a visible feeling of that paternal guardianship
which afterward assumed the management of their affairs for them.
In the admonitions to unanimity, there was that denunciation of
any difference of opinion which afterwards displayed itself in the
ferocious hunting down of all who opposed the Texas treaty. In the
reference to southern slavery, and annoyance to slave property from
Texas, we have the germ of the "_self-defence_" letter, and the
first glimpse of the abolition plot of John Andrews, Ashbel Smith,
Lord Aberdeen--I beg pardon of Lord Aberdeen for naming him in
such a connection--and the World's Convention, with which Mexico,
Texas, and the United States were mystified and bamboozled in April,
1844. And, in the interests of the manufacturing and navigating
States of the north and east, as connected with Texas admission, we
have the text of all the communications to the agent, Murphy, and
of all the letters and speeches to which the Texas question, seven
years afterwards, gave rise. We have all these subsequent events
here shadowed forth. And now, the wonder is, why all these things
were not foreseen a little while before, when Texas was being ceded
to a non-slaveholding empire? and why, after being so imminent and
deadly in May, 1836, all these dangers suddenly went to sleep, and
never waked up again until 1844? These are wonders; but let us not
anticipate questions, and let us proceed with the narrative.
The Congress of 1836 would not admit Texas. The senator from South
Carolina became patient: the Texas question went to sleep; and for
seven good years it made no disturbance. It then woke up, and with a
suddenness and violence proportioned to its long repose. Mr. Tyler
was then President: the senator from South Carolina was potent under
his administration, and soon became his Secretary of State. All the
springs of intrigue and diplomacy were immediately set in motion
to resuscitate the Texas question, and to re-invest it with all
the dangers and alarms which it had worn in 1836. Passing over all
the dangers of annoyance from Texas as possibly non-slaveholding,
_foreseen_ by the senator in 1836, and not foreseen by him in
1819, with all the need for guardianship then foreshadowed, and
all the arguments then suggested: all these immediately developed
themselves, and intriguing agents traversed earth and sea, from
Washington to Texas, and from London to Mexico:--passing over all
this, as belonging to a class of evidence, not now to be used, I
come at once to the letter of the 17th of January, from the Texian
minister to Mr. Upshur, the American Secretary of State; and the
answer to that letter by Mr. CALHOUN, of April 11th of the same
year. They are both vital in this case; and the first is in these
words:
(The letter.)
This letter reveals the true state of the Texian question in
January, 1844, and the conduct of all parties in relation to it.
It presents Texas and Mexico, weary of the war, reposing under
an armistice, and treating for peace; Great Britain and France
acting the noble part of mediators, and endeavoring to make peace:
our own government secretly intriguing for annexation, acting the
wicked part of mischief-makers, and trying to renew the war; and
the issue of its machinations to be unsuccessful unless the United
States should be involved in the renewed hostilities. That was the
question; and the letter openly puts it to the American Secretary
of State. The answer to that question, in my opinion, should have
been, that the President of the United States did not know of the
armistice and the peace negotiations at the time that he proposed to
Texas to do an act which would be a perfidious violation of those
sacred engagements, and bring upon herself the scourge of renewed
invasion and the stigma of perfidy--that he would not have made
such a proposal for the whole round world, if he had known of the
armistice and the peace negotiations--that he wished success to the
peace-makers, both for the sake of Mexico and Texas, and because
Texas could then come into the Union without the least interruption
to our friendly, commercial, and social relations with our sister
republic of Mexico; and that, as to secretly lending the army and
navy of the United States to Texas to fight Mexico while we were at
peace with her, it would be a crime against God, and man, and our
own constitution, for which heads might be brought to the block,
if presidents and their secretaries, like constitutional kings and
ministers, should be held capitally responsible for capital crimes.
This, in my opinion, should have been the answer.
Mr. Nelson refused to lend the army and navy, because to do so was
to violate our own constitution. This is very constitutional and
proper language: and if it had not been reversed, there would have
been no war with Mexico. But it was reversed. Soon after it was
written, the present senator from South Carolina took the chair of
the Department of State. Mr. Pinckney Henderson, whom Mr. Murphy
mentions as coming on with full powers, on the faith of the pledge
he had given, arrived also, and found that pledge entirely cancelled
by Mr. Tyler's answer through Mr. Nelson; and he utterly refused to
treat. The new secretary was in a strait; for time was short, and
Texas must be had; and Messrs. Henderson and Van Zandt would not
even begin to treat without a renewal of the pledge given by Mr.
Murphy. That had been cancelled in writing, and the cancellation
had gone to Texas, and had been made on high constitutional
ground. The new secretary was profuse of verbal assurances, and
even permitted the ministers to take down his words in writing,
and read them over to him, as was shown by the senator from Texas
(General Houston) when he spoke on this subject on Thursday last.
But verbal assurances, or memoranda of conversations, would not do.
The instructions under which the ministers acted required the pledge
to be in writing, and properly signed. The then President, present
senator from Texas, who had been a lawyer in Tennessee before he
went to Texas, seemed to look upon it as a case under the statute
of frauds and perjuries--a sixth case added to the five enumerated
in that statute--in which the promise is not valid, unless reduced
to writing, and signed by the person to be charged therewith,
or by some other person duly authorized by him to sign for him.
The firmness of the Texian ministers, under the instructions of
President Houston, prevailed; and at last, and after long delay, the
secretary wrote, and signed the pledge which Murphy had given, and
in all the amplitude of his original promise.
The promise was clear and explicit to lend the army and navy to
the President of Texas, to fight the Mexicans while they were at
peace with us. That was the point--at peace with us. Mr. Calhoun's
assumpsit was clear and explicit to that point; for the cases in
which they were to fight were to be before the ratification of the
treaty by the Senate, and consequently before Texas should be in our
Union, and could be constitutionally defended as a part of it. And,
that no circumstance of contradiction or folly should be wanting
to crown this plot of crime and imbecility, it so happened that on
the same day that our new secretary here was giving his written
assumpsit to lend the army and navy to fight Mexico while we were
at peace with her, the agent Murphy was communicating to the Texian
government, in Texas, the refusal of Mr. Tyler, through Mr. Nelson,
to do so, because of its unconstitutionality.
In conformity with the secretary's letter of April 11th, detachments
of the army and navy were immediately sent to the frontiers of
Texas, and to the coast of Mexico. The senator from South Carolina,
in his colloquy with the senator from Texas (General Houston), on
Thursday last, seemed anxious to have it understood that these land
and naval forces were not to _repel_ invasions, but only to _report_
them to our government, for its report to Congress. The paper read
by the senator from Texas, consisting of our secretary's words,
taken down in his presence, and read over to him for his correction
by the Texian ministers, establishes the contrary, and shows that
the repulse of the invasion was in the mean time to be made. And in
fact, any other course would have been a fraud upon the promise.
For, if the invasion had to be made known at Washington, and the
sense of Congress taken on the question of repelling it, certainly,
in the mean time, the mischief would have been done--the invasion
would have been made; and, therefore, to be consistent with himself,
the President in the mean time was bound to repel the invasion,
without waiting to hear what Congress would say about it. And this
is what he himself tells us in his two messages to the Senate,
of the 15th and 31st of May, doubtless written by his Secretary
of State, and both avowing and justifying his intention to fight
Mexico, in case of invasion, while the treaty of annexation was
depending, without awaiting the action of Congress.
(The message.)
Here are the avowals of the fact, and the reasons for it--that
honor required us to fight for Texas, if we intrigued her into a
war. I admit that would be a good reason between individuals, and
in a case where a big bully should involve a little fellow in the
fight again after he had got himself parted; but not so between
nations, and under our constitution. The engagement to fight Mexico
for Texas, while we were at peace with Mexico, was to make war with
Mexico!--a piece of business which belonged to the Congress, and
which should have been referred to them! and which, on the contrary,
was concealed from them, though in session, and present! and the
fact only found out after the troops had marched, and then by dint
of calls from the Senate.
The proof is complete that the loan of the land and naval forces was
to fight Mexico while we were at peace with her! and this becomes a
great turning point in the history of this war. Without this pledge
given by our Secretary of State--without his reversal of Mr. Tyler's
first decision--there could have been no war! Texas and Mexico
would have made peace, and then annexation would have followed of
itself. The victor of San Jacinto, who had gone forth and recovered
by the sword, and erected into a new republic the beautiful domain
given away by our secretary in 1819, was at the head of the Texas
government, and was successfully and honorably conducting his
country to peace and acknowledged independence. If let alone, he
would have accomplished his object; for he had already surmounted
the great difficulty of the first step--the armistice and the
commencement of peace negotiations; and under the powerful mediation
of Great Britain and France, the establishment of peace was certain.
A heavenly benediction rests upon the labors of the peacemaker; and
what is blessed of God must succeed. At all events, it does not
lie in the mouth of any man--and least of all, in the mouth of the
mischief-maker--to say that the peaceful mediation would not have
succeeded. It was the part of all men to have aided, and wished, and
hoped for success; and had it not been for our secretary's letter
of April 11th, authentic facts warrant the assertion that Texas and
Mexico would have made peace in the spring of 1844. Then Texas would
have come into this Union as naturally, and as easily, and with as
little offence to any body, as Eve went into Adam's bosom in the
garden of Eden. There would have been no more need for intriguing
politicians to get her in, by plots and tricks, than there was
for some old hag of a match-making beldame, with her arts and
allurements, her philters and her potions, to get Eve into Adam's
bosom. And thus, the breaking up of the peace negotiations becomes
the great turning point of the problem of the Mexican war.
The pledge of the 11th of April being _signed_, the treaty was
_signed_, and being communicated to the Senate, it was _rejected_:
and the great reason for the rejection was that the ratification
of the treaty would have been WAR with Mexico! an act which the
President and Senate together, no more than President Tyler and his
Secretary of State together, had the power to make.
The treaty of annexation was signed, and in signing it the
secretary knew that he had made war with Mexico. No less than three
formal notices were on file in the Department of State, in which
the Mexican government solemnly declared that it would consider
annexation as equivalent to a declaration of war; and it was in
allusion to these notices that the Secretary of State, in his
notification to Mexico of the signature of the treaty, said it had
been signed IN FULL VIEW OF ALL POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES! meaning war
as the consequence! At the same time, he suited the action to the
word; he sent off detachments of the army and navy, and placed them
under the command of President Houston, and made him the judge of
the emergencies and exigencies in which they were to fight. This
authority to the President of Texas was continued in full force
until after the rejection of the treaty, and then only modified by
placing the American diplomatic agent in Texas between President
Houston and the naval and military commanders, and making him the
medium of communication between a foreign President and our forces;
but the forces themselves were not withdrawn. They remained on
the Texian and Mexican frontier, waiting for the _exigencies_ and
_emergencies_ in which they were to fight. During all that time
a foreign President was commander-in-chief of a large detachment
of the army and navy of the United States. Without a law of
Congress--without a nomination from the President and confirmation
by the Senate--without citizenship--without the knowledge of the
American people--he was president-general of our land and sea
forces, made so by the senator from South Carolina, with authority
to fight them against Mexico with whom we were at peace--an office
and authority rather above that of lieutenant-general!--and we are
indebted to the forbearance and prudence of President Houston for
not incurring the war in 1844, which fell upon us in 1846. This is a
point--this secret and lawless appointment of this president-general
to make war upon Mexico, while we were at peace with her--on which
I should like to hear a constitutional argument from the senator
from South Carolina, showing it to be constitutional and proper,
and that of the proposed lieutenant-general unconstitutional and
improper; and upon which he has erected himself into the _foreman_
of the grand-jury of the whole American people, and pronounced a
unanimous verdict for them before he had time to hear from the
ten-thousandth part of them.
The treaty was rejected by the Senate; but so apprehensive was the
senator of immediate war, that, besides keeping the detachments
of the army and navy at their posts, a messenger was despatched
with a deprecatory letter to Mexico, and the offer of a large sum
of money (ten millions of dollars) to purchase peace from her, by
inducing her to treat for a boundary which would leave Texas within
our limits. This was report: and I would not mention it, if the
senator was not present to contradict it, if not correct. Report at
the time said from five to ten millions of dollars: from one of Mr.
Shannon's letters, we may set it down at ten millions. Be it either
sum, it will show that the senator was then secretly willing to pay
an immense sum to pacify Mexico, although he now declares that he
does not know how he will vote in relation to the three millions
responsibly asked by Mr. Polk.
The secretary knew that he had made war with Mexico--that in
accepting the gage three times laid down, he had joined an issue
which that compound of Celtic and Roman blood, called Spanish, would
redeem. I knew it, and said it on this floor, in secret session--for
I did not then choose to say it in public--that if there was but
one man of that blood in all Mexico, and he no bigger than General
Tom Thumb, he would fight. Senators will recollect it. [Mr. Mangum
nodded assent.]
I now come to the last act in this tragedy of errors--the
alternative resolutions adopted by Congress in the last days of
the session of 1844-'45, and in the last moments of Mr. Tyler's
administration. A resolve, single and absolute, for the admission
of Texas as a State of this Union, had been made by the House of
Representatives; it came to this body; and an alternative resolution
was added, subject to the choice of the President, authorizing
negotiations for the admission, and appropriating one hundred
thousand dollars to defray the expenses of these negotiations. A
senator from North Carolina, not now a member of this body, but who
I have the pleasure to see sitting near me (Mr. Haywood), knows
all about that alternative resolution; and his country owes him
good thanks for his labors about it. It was considered by every
body, that the choice between these resolutions belonged to the new
President, who had been elected with a special view to the admission
of Texas, and who was already in the city, awaiting the morning of
the 4th of March to enter upon the execution of his duties; and upon
whose administration all the evils of a mistake in the choice of
these resolutions were to fall. We all expected the question to be
left open to the new President; and so strong was that expectation,
and so strong the feeling against the decency or propriety of
interference on the part of the expiring administration, to snatch
this choice out of the hands of Mr. Polk, that, on a mere suggestion
of the possibility of such a proceeding, in a debate on this floor,
a senator standing in the relation personally, and politically,
and locally to feel for the honor of the then Secretary of State,
declared they would not have the audacity to do it. Audacity was
his word: and that was the declaration of a gentleman of honor and
patriotism, no longer a member of this body, but who has the respect
and best wishes of all who ever knew him. I speak of Mr. McDuffie,
and quote his words as heard at the time, and as since printed and
published by others. Mr. McDuffie was mistaken! They did have the
audacity! They did do it, or rather, HE did it (looking at Mr.
Calhoun); for it is incontestable that Mr. Tyler was nothing, in
any thing that related to the Texas question, from the time of the
arrival of his last Secretary of State. His last act, in relation
to Texas, was the answer which Mr. Nelson gave for him through the
agent, Murphy, denying his right to lend our forces to the President
of Texas to fight the Mexicans while we were at peace with them:
the reversal of that answer by his new secretary was the extinction
of his power over the Texas question. He, the then Secretary of
State, the present senator from South Carolina, to whom I address
myself, did it. On Sunday, the second day of March--that day which
preceded the last day of his authority--and on that day, sacred
to peace--the council sat that acted on the resolutions--and in
the darkness of a night howling with the storm, and battling with
the elements, as if Heaven warred upon the audacious act (for well
do I remember it), the fatal messenger was sent off which carried
the selected resolution to Texas. The exit of the secretary from
office, and the start of the messenger from Washington, were
coetaneous--twin acts--which come together, and will be remembered
together. The act was then done: Texas was admitted: all the
consequences of admission were incurred--and especially that
consequence which Mr. de Bocanegra had denounced, and which our
secretary had accepted--WAR. The state of war was established--the
_status belli_ was created--and that by the operation of our own
constitution, as well as by the final declaration of Mexico: for
Texas then being admitted into the Union, the war with her extended
to the whole Union; and the duty of protecting her, devolved upon
the President of the United States. The selection of the absolute
resolution exhausted our action: the alternative resolution for
negotiation was defunct: the only mode of admission was the absolute
one, and it made war. The war was made to Mr. Polk's hands: his
administration came into existence with the war upon its hands, and
under the constitutional duty to protect Texas at the expense of
war with Mexico: and to that point, all events rapidly tended. The
Mexican minister, General Almonte, who had returned to Washington
city after the rejection of the treaty of annexation, demanded
his passports, and left the United States. The land forces which
had been advanced to the Sabine, were further advanced to Corpus
Christi; the Mexican troops moved towards the Rio Grande: the fleet
which remained at Vera Cruz, continued there: commerce died out: the
citizens of each country left the other, as far as they could: angry
denunciations filled the press of each country: and when a minister
was sent from the United States, his reception was refused. The
state of war existed legally: all the circumstances of war, except
the single circumstance of bloodshed, existed at the accession of
Mr. Polk; and the two countries, Mexico and the United States, stood
in a relation to each other impossible to be continued. The march
upon the Rio Grande brought on the conflict--made the collision of
arms--but not the war. The war was prepared, organized, established
by the Secretary of State, before he left the department. It was his
legacy to the democracy, and to the Polk administration--his last
gift to them, in the moment of taking a long farewell. And now he
sets up for a man of peace, and throws all the blame of war upon Mr.
Polk, to whom he bequeathed it.
Cicero says that Antony, flying from Rome to the camp of Cæsar in
Cisalpine Gaul, was the cause of the civil war which followed--as
much so as Helen was of the Trojan war. _Ut Helena Trojanis, sic
iste huic reipublica causa belli--causa pestis atque exitii fuit._
He says that that flight put an end to all chance of accommodation;
closed the door to all conciliation; broke up the plans of all
peaceable men; and by inducing Cæsar to break up his camp in Gaul,
and march across the Rubicon, lit up the flames of civil war in
Italy. In like manner, I say that the flight of the winged messenger
from this capital on the Sunday night before the 3d of March,
despatched by the then Secretary of State, in the expiring moment of
his power, and bearing his fatal choice to the capital of Texas, was
the direct cause of the war with Mexico in which we are now engaged.
Like the flight of Antony, it broke up the plans of all peaceable
men, slammed the door upon negotiations, put an end to all chance
for accommodation, broke up the camp on the Sabine, sent the troops
towards Mexico, and lit up the war. Like Antony and Helen, he made
the war; unlike Antony, he does not stand to it; but, copying rather
the conduct of the paramour of Helen, he flies from the conflict
he has provoked! and, worse than Paris, he endeavors to draw along
with him, in his own unhappy flight, the whole American host. Paris
fled alone at the sight of Menelaus: the senator from South Carolina
urges us all to fly at the sight of Santa Anna. And, it may be, that
worse than Paris again, he may refuse to return to the field. Paris
went back under the keen reproach of Hector, and tried to fight:
"For thee the soldier bleeds, the matron mourns,
And wasteful war in all its fury burns."
Stung with this just and keen rebuke--this vivid picture of the ruin
he had made--Paris returned to the field, and tried to fight: and
now, it remains to be seen whether the senator from South Carolina
can do the same, on the view of the ruin which he has made: and,
if not, whether he cannot, at least, cease to obstruct the arms of
others--cease to labor to involve the whole army in his own unmanly
retreat.
Upon the evidence now given, drawn from his public official acts
alone, he stands the undisputed author and architect of that
calamity. History will so write him down. Inexorable HISTORY, with
her pen of iron and tablets of brass, will so write him down: and
two thousand years hence, and three thousand years hence, the boy at
his lesson shall learn it in the book, that as Helen was the cause
of the Trojan, and Antony the cause of the Roman civil war, and Lord
North made the war of the Revolution, just so certainly is JOHN C.
CALHOUN the author of the present war between the United States and
Mexico.
He now sets up for the character of pacificator--with what justice,
let the further fact proclaim which I now expose. Three hundred
newspapers, in the summer of 1844, in the pay of the administration
and Department of State, spoke the sentiments of the Department of
State, and pursued as traitors to the United States all who were for
the peaceable annexation of Texas by settling the boundary line of
Texas with Mexico simultaneously with the annexation. Here is the
instruction under which the three hundred acted:
"As the conductor of the official journal here, he has requested
me to answer it (your letter), which request I comply with
readily. With regard to the course of your paper, you can take
the tone of the administration from the * * * *. I think,
however, and would recommend that you would confine yourself to
attacks upon Benton, showing that he has allied himself with the
whigs on the Texas question. Quote Jackson's letter on Texas,
where he denounces all those as traitors to the country who
oppose the treaty. Apply it to Benton. Proclaim that Benton, by
attacking Mr. Tyler and his friends, and driving them from the
party, is aiding the election of Mr. Clay; and charge him with
doing this to defeat Mr. Polk, and insure himself the succession
in 1848; and claim that full justice be done to the acts and
motives of John Tyler by the leaders. Harp upon these strings.
Do not propose the union; 'it is the business of the democrats
to do this, and arrange it to our perfect satisfaction.' _I
quote here_ from our leading friend at the South. Such is
the course which I recommend, and which you can pursue or not,
according to your real attachment to the administration. Look
out for my leader of to-morrow as an indicator, and regard
this letter as of the most strict and inviolate confidence of
character."
I make no comment on this letter, nor read the other parts of it:
a time will come for that. It is an original, and will keep, and
will prove itself. I merely read a paragraph now, to show with what
justice the person who was in the Department of State when these
three hundred newspapers in its pay were thus attacking the men of
peace, now sets up for the character of pacificator!
Mr. CALHOUN. Does he intend to say that I ever wrote such a letter?
Mr. BENTON. I read it. I say nothing.
Mr. CALHOUN. I never wrote such a letter as that!
Mr. BENTON. I have not said so.
Mr. CALHOUN. I take this occasion to say that I never exercised
the slightest influence over that paper. I never had the slightest
connection with it. I never was a subscriber to it, and I very
rarely read it.
Mr. BENTON. It was the work of one of the organs of the
administration, not John Jones, not the _Madisonian_; and the
instruction was followed by three hundred newspapers in the pay of
the Department of State.
I have now finished what I proposed to say, at this time, in
relation to the authorship of this war. I confine myself to the
official words and acts of the senator, and rely upon them to show
that he, and not Mr. Polk, is the author of this calamity. But,
while thus presenting him as the author of the war, I do not believe
that war was his object, but only an incident to his object; and
that all his conduct in relation to the admission of Texas refers
itself to the periods of our presidential elections, and to some
connection with those elections, and explains his activity and
inactivity on those occasions. Thus, in May, 1836, when he was in
such hot and violent haste for immediate admission, the election of
that year was impending, and Mr. Van Buren the democratic candidate;
and if the Texas question could then have been brought up, he
might have been shoved aside just as easily as he was afterwards,
in 1844. This may explain his activity in 1836. In 1840, the
senator from South Carolina was a sort of a supporter of Mr. Van
Buren, and might have thought that one good turn deserves another;
and so nothing was said about Texas at that election--dangerous
as was the least delay four years before; and this may explain
the inactivity of 1840. The election of 1844 was coming on, and
the senator from South Carolina was on the turf himself; and then
the Texas question, with all its dangers and alarms, which had so
accommodatingly postponed themselves for seven good years, suddenly
woke up; and with an activity and vigor proportioned to its long
repose. Instant admission, at all hazards, and at the expense of
renewing hostilities between Mexico and Texas, and involving the
United States in them, became indispensable--necessary to our own
salvation--a clear case of self-defence; and then commenced all
those machinations which ended in the overthrow of Mr. Van Buren
and Mr. Clay for the presidency, and in producing the present war
with Mexico; but without making the senator President. And this may
explain his activity in 1844. Now, another presidential election is
approaching; and if there is any truth in the rule which interprets
certain gentlemen's declarations by their contraries, he will be a
candidate again: and this may explain the reasons of the production
of that string of resolutions which the senator laid upon the table
last week; and upon which he has required us to vote instantly,
as he did in the sudden Texas movement of 1836, and with the same
magisterial look and attitude. The Texas slave question has gone
by--the Florida slave question has gone by--there is no chance for
it now in any of its old haunts: hence the necessity for a new
theatre of agitation, even if we have to go as far as California for
it, and before we have got California. And thus, all the senator's
conduct in relation to Texas, though involving his country in war,
may have had no other object than to govern a presidential election.
Our northern friends have exceeded my hopes and expectations in
getting themselves and the Union safe through the Texas and Florida
slave questions, and are entitled to a little repose. So far from
that, they are now to be plunged into a California slave question,
long before it could arise of itself, if ever. The string of
resolutions laid on the table by the senator from South Carolina is
to raise a new slave question on the borders of the Pacific Ocean,
which, upon his own principles, cannot soon occur, if ever. He will
not take the country by conquest--only by treaty--and that treaty to
be got by sitting out the Mexicans on a line of occupation. At the
same time, he shows that he knows that Spanish blood is good at that
game, and shows that they sat it out, and fought it out, for 800
years, against the Moors occupying half their country. By-the-by, it
was only 700; but that is enough; one hundred years is no object in
such a matter. The Spaniards held out 700 years against the Moors,
holding half their country, and 300 against the Visigoths, occupying
the half of the other half; and, what is more material, whipped
them both out at the end of the time. This is a poor chance for
California on the senator's principles. His five regiments would be
whipped out in a fraction of the time; but no matter; men contend
more violently for nothing than for something, and if he can get up
a California slave question now, it will answer all the purposes of
a reality, even if the question should never arise in point of fact.
The Senator from South Carolina has been wrong in all this business,
from beginning to ending--wrong in 1819, in giving away Texas--wrong
in 1836, in his sudden and hot haste to get her back--wrong in all
his machinations for bringing on the Texas question of 1844--wrong
in breaking up the armistice and peace negotiations between Mexico
and Texas--wrong in secretly sending the army and navy to fight
Mexico while we were at peace with her--wrong in secretly appointing
the President of Texas president-general of the army and navy of
the United States, with leave to fight them against a power with
whom we were at peace--wrong in writing to Mexico that he took
Texas in view of all possible consequences, meaning war--wrong in
secretly offering Mexico, at the same time, ten millions of dollars
to hush up the war which he had created--wrong now in refusing
Mr. Polk three millions to aid in getting out of the war which he
made--wrong in throwing the blame of this war of his own making upon
the shoulders of Mr. Polk--wrong in his retreat and occupation line
of policy--wrong in expelling old Father Ritchie from the Senate,
who worked so hard for him during the Texas annexation--and more
wrong now than ever, in that string of resolutions which he has laid
upon the table, and in which, as Sylla saw in the young Cæsar many
Mariuses, so do I see in them many nullifications.
In a picture of so many and such dreadful errors, it is hard to
specify the worst, or to dwell upon any one to the exclusion of
the rest; but there is one feature in this picture of enormities
which seems entitled to that distinction: I allude to the pledge
upon which the armistice and the peace negotiations between Mexico
and Texas were broken up in 1844, and those two countries put back
into a state of war, and ourselves involved in the contest. The
story is briefly told, and admits of no dispute. The letter of 17th
of January is the accusing record, from which there is no escape.
Its awful words cannot be read now without freezing up the blood:
"It is known to you that an armistice exists between Mexico and
Texas, and that negotiations for peace are now going on under the
mediation of two powerful sovereigns, mutually friendly. If we yield
to your solicitation to be annexed to the United States, under these
circumstances, we shall draw upon ourselves a fresh invasion from
Mexico, incur the imputation of bad faith, and lose the friendship
and respect of the two great mediating powers. Now, will you, in
the event of our acceding to your request, step between us and
Mexico and take the war off our hands?" This was the letter, and
the terrible question with which it concluded. Mr. Upshur, to whom
it was addressed, gave it no answer. In the forty days that his
life was spared, he gave it no answer. Mr. Nelson, his temporary
successor, gave it an answer; and, speaking for the President of
the United States, positively refused to take annexation on the
awful terms proposed. This answer was sent to Texas, and put an end
to all negotiation for annexation. The senator from South Carolina
came into the Department of State, procured the reversal of the
President's decision, and gave the pledge to the whole extent that
Texas asked it. Without, in the least denying the knowledge of the
armistice, and the negotiations for peace, and all the terrible
consequences which were to result from their breach, he accepts
the whole, and gives the fatal pledge which his predecessors had
refused: and follows it up by sending our troops and ships to fight
a people with whom we were at peace--the whole veiled by the mantle
of secrecy, and pretexted by motives as unfounded as they were
absurd. Now, what says morality and Christianity to this conduct?
Certainly, if two individuals were engaged in strife, and two others
should part them, and put them under an agreement to submit to an
amicable settlement: and while the settlement was going on, another
man, lying behind a hedge, should secretly instigate one of the
parties to break off the agreement and renew the strife, and promise
to take the fight off his hands if he did: what would morality and
Christianity say to this? Surely the malediction of all good men
would fall upon the man who had interfered to renew the strife.
And if this would be the voice of all good men in the case of mere
individuals, what would it be when the strife was between nations,
and when the renewal of it was to involve a third nation in the
contest, and such a war as we now have with our sister republic of
Mexico? This is the feature which stands out in the awful picture:
this is the question which now presents itself to the moral sense
of the civilized world, in judging the conduct of the senator from
South Carolina in writing that letter of the 11th of April, 1844,
aggravated by now throwing upon another the blame of a war for which
he then contracted.
CHAPTER CL.
MR. POLK'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS, AND CABINET.
This was the longest address of the kind which had yet been
delivered, and although condemned by its nature to declarations of
general principles, there were some topics on which it dwelt with
more particularity. The blessings of the Union, and the necessity
of its preservation were largely enforced, and not without point,
considering recent manifestations. Our title to the Oregon Territory
was asserted as clear and indisputable, and the determination
avowed to protect our settlers there. The sentiments were good,
but the necessity or propriety of avowing them so positively, was
quite questionable, seeing that this title was then a subject
of negotiation with Great Britain, upon the harmony of which a
declaration so positive might have an ill effect: and in fact did.
The return voice from London was equally positive on the other side;
and the inevitability of war became the immediate cry. The passage
by Congress of the Texas annexation resolution was dwelt upon with
great exultation, and the measure considered as consummated from the
real disposition of Texas for the measure, and her great desire to
get a partner in the war with Mexico, which would take its expenses
and burdens off her hands.
The cabinet ministers were nominated and confirmed the same
day--the Senate, as always, being convened on the 4th day of March
for that purpose: James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, Secretary of
State; Robert J. Walker, of Mississippi, Secretary of the Treasury;
William L. Marcy, of New York, Secretary at War; George Bancroft, of
Massachusetts, Secretary of the Navy; Cave Johnson, of Tennessee,
Postmaster-general; John Y. Mason, of Virginia, Attorney-general.
The last was the only one retained of the late cabinet. Mr. Calhoun
expected to be, and desired it, to prosecute, as he said, the
Oregon negotiations, which he had commenced; and also to continue
a certain diplomatic correspondence with France, on the subject of
slavery, which he opened through Wm. R. King--greatly to the puzzle
of the King, Louis Phillippe, and his ministers. In place of the
State Department he was offered the mission to London, which he
refused; and the same being offered to his friend, Mr. Francis W.
Pickens, it was refused by him also: and the word became current,
and was justified by the event, that neither Mr. Calhoun, nor any
of his friends, would take office under this administration. In
other respects, there was some balk and change after the cabinet had
been agreed upon--which was done in Tennessee. General William O.
Butler, the particular friend of General Jackson, had been brought
on to receive the place of Secretary at War. He came in company
with the President elect, at his special request, from Louisville,
Kentucky, and was not spared to stop at his own house to get his
wardrobe, though in sight of it: he was thrown out by the effect
of a circuitous arrangement of which Mr. Polk was the dupe, and
himself the victim. In the original cast of the cabinet, Mr. Silas
Wright, the Governor elect of New York, and to whom Mr. Polk was
indebted for his election, was to be Secretary of the Treasury. It
was offered to him. He refused it, as he did all office: it was
then intended for Mr. Azariah Flagg, the able and incorruptible
comptroller of New York, the friend of Wright and Van Buren. He was
superseded by the same intrigue which displaced General Butler.
Mr. Robert J. Walker had been intended for Attorney-general: he
brought an influence to bear upon Mr. Polk, which carried him into
the Treasury. That displaced Mr. Flagg. But New York was not a
State to be left out of the cabinet, and no place could be made for
her except in the War Department; and Mr. Van Buren and Governor
Wright were notified accordingly, with the intimation that the place
belonged to one of their friends; and to name him. They did so
upon the instant, and named Mr. Benjamin F. Butler; and, beginning
to be a little suspicious, and to guard against all danger of
losing, or delaying the name on the road, a special messenger was
despatched to Washington, to travel day and night, and go straight
to the President, and deposit the name in his hands. The messenger
did so--and was informed that he was fifteen minutes too late!
that the place had been assigned to Mr. Wm. L. Marcy. And that was
the beginning of the material damage (not in Kossuth's sense of
the word), which Mr. Polk's administration did to Mr. Van Buren,
Governor Wright, and their friends.
CHAPTER CLI.
MR. BLAIR AND THE GLOBE SUPERSEDED AS THE ADMINISTRATION ORGAN: MR.
THOMAS RITCHIE AND THE DAILY UNION SUBSTITUTED.
It was in the month of August, 1844, that a leading citizen of
South Carolina, and a close friend of Mr. Calhoun--one who had been
at the Baltimore presidential convention, but not in it--arrived
at Mr. Polk's residence in Tennessee, had interviews with him,
and made known the condition on which the vote of South Carolina
for him might be dependent. That condition was to discontinue Mr.
Blair as the organ of the administration if he should be elected.
The electoral vote of the State being in the hands of the General
Assembly, and not in the people, was disposable by the politicians,
and had been habitually disposed of by them--and even twice thrown
away in the space of a few years. Mr. Polk was certain of the vote
of the State if he agreed to the required condition: and he did
so. Mr. Blair was agreed to be given up. That was propitiation to
Mr. Calhoun, to whom Mr. Blair was obnoxious on account of his
inexorable opposition to nullification, and its author. Mr. Blair
was also obnoxious to Mr. Tyler because of his determined opposition
both to him, and to his administration. The Globe newspaper was a
spear in his side, and would continue to be so; and to get it out
had been one of the anxieties and labors of his presidential life.
He had exhausted all the schemes to quiet, or to gain it, without
success. A printing job of twenty thousand dollars had been at one
time given to his office, with the evident design to soften him: to
avoid that suspicion he struck the harder; and the job was taken
away when partly executed. It now became the interest of Mr. Polk
to assist Mr. Tyler in silencing, or punishing that paper; and it
was done. Mr. Tyler had accepted the nomination of his convention
for the presidency, and was in the field with an array of electoral
candidates struggling for it. He stood no chance to obtain a single
electoral vote: but Mr. Polk was in no condition to be able to lose
any part of the popular vote. Mr. Tyler, now fully repudiated by
the whigs, and carrying democratic colors, and with the power and
patronage of the federal government in his hands, would take off
some votes--enough in a closely contested State to turn the scale in
favor of Mr. Clay. Hence it became essential to get Mr. Tyler out of
the way of Mr. Polk; and to do that, the condition was, to get Mr.
Blair out of the way of Mr. Tyler. Mr. Polk was anxious for this. A
friend of his, who afterwards became a member of his cabinet, wrote
to him in July, that the main obstacle to Mr. Tyler's withdrawal
was the course of the Globe towards him and his friends. Another of
those most interested in the result urged Mr. Polk to devise some
mode of inducing Mr. Tyler to withdraw, and General Jackson was
requested "_to ascertain the motives which actuated the course of
the Globe towards Mr. Tyler and his friends_." These facts appear
in a letter from Mr. Polk to General Jackson, in which he says to
him: "_The main object in the way of Mr. Tyler's withdrawal, is
the course of the Globe towards himself and his friends._" These
communications took place in the month before the South Carolina
gentleman visited Tennessee. Mr. Polk's letter to General Jackson
is dated the 23d of July. In about as short time after that visit
as information could come from Tennessee to Washington, Mr. Tyler
publicly withdrew his presidential pretensions! and his official
paper, the Madisonian, and his supporters, passed over to Mr. Polk.
The inference is irresistible, that the consideration of receiving
the vote of South Carolina, and of getting Mr. Tyler out of the way
of Mr. Polk, was the agreement to displace Mr. Blair as government
editor if he should be elected.
And now we come to another fact, in this connection, as the phrase
is, about which also there is no dispute; and that fact is this: on
the fourth day of November, 1844, being after Mr. Tyler had joined
Mr. Polk, and when the near approach of the presidential election
authorized reliable calculations to be made on its result, the sum
of $50,000, by an order from the Treasury in Washington, was taken
from a respectable bank in Philadelphia, where it was safe and
convenient for public use, and transferred to a village bank in the
interior of Pennsylvania, where there was no public use for it, and
where its safety was questionable. This appears from the records of
the Treasury. Authentic letters written in December following from
the person who had control of this village bank (Simon Cameron,
Esq., a senator in Congress), went to a gentleman in Tennessee,
informing him that $50,000 was in his hands for the purpose of
establishing a new government organ in Washington City, proposing to
him to be its editor, and urging him to come on to Washington for
the purpose. These letters were sent to Andrew Jackson Donelson,
Esq., connection and ex-private Secretary of President Jackson,
who immediately refused the proffered editorship, and turned over
the letters to General Jackson. His (Jackson's) generous and high
blood boiled with indignation at what seemed to be a sacrifice of
Mr. Blair for some political consideration; for the letters were so
written as to imply a cognizance on the part of Mr. Polk, and of two
persons who were to be members of his cabinet; and that cognizance
was strengthened by a fact unknown to General Jackson, _namely_,
that Mr. Polk himself, in due season, proposed to Mr. Blair to yield
to Mr. Donelson as actual editor--himself writing _sub rosa_; which
Mr. Blair utterly refused. It was a contrivance of Mr. Polk to get
rid of Mr. Blair in compliance with his engagement to Mr. Calhoun
and Mr. Tyler, without breaking with Mr. Blair and his friends;
but he had to deal with a man, and with men, who would have no
such hugger-mugger work; and to whom an open breach was preferable
to a simulated friendship: General Jackson wrote to Mr. Blair to
apprise him of what was going on, and to assure him of his steadfast
friendship, and to let him know that Mr. Ritchie, of the Richmond
Enquirer, was the person to take place on the refusal of Andrew
Jackson Donelson, and to foretell mischiefs to Mr. Polk and his
party if he fell into these schemes, of which Mr. Robert J. Walker
was believed to be the chief contriver, and others of the cabinet
passive instruments. On the 14th of December, 1844, he (General
Jackson) wrote to Mr. Blair:
"But there is another project on foot as void of good sense and
benefit to the democratic cause as the other, but not as wicked,
proceeding from weak and inexperienced minds. It is this: to
bring about a partnership between you and Mr. Ritchie, you to
continue proprietor, and Ritchie the editor. This, to me, is
a most extraordinary conception coming from any well-informed
mind or experienced politician. It is true, Mr. Ritchie is an
experienced editor, but sometimes goes off at half cock before
he sees the whole ground, and does the party great injury before
he sees his error, and then has great difficulty to get back
into the right track again. Witness his course on my removal
of the deposits, and how much injury he did us before he got
into the right track again. Another _faux pas_ he made when he
went off with Rives and the conservatives, and advocated for
the safe keeping of the public revenue special deposits in the
State banks, as if where the directory were corrupt there could
be any more security in special deposits in corrupt banks than
in general deposits, and it was some time before this great
absurdity could be beat out of his mind.
"These are visionary measures of what I call weak politicians
who suggest them, but who wish to become great by foolish
changes. Polk, I believe, will stick by you faithfully; should
he not, he is lost; but I have no fears but that he will, and
being informed confidentially of this movement, may have it in
his power to put it _all down_. There will be great intrigue
going on at Washington this winter."--(_Dec. 14, 1844._)
"I fear there are some of our democratic friends who are trying
to bring about a partnership of which I wrote you, which
shows a want of confidence, or something worse. Be on your
guard--no partnership; you have the confidence of the great
body of the democrats, and I have no confidence in shifting
politicians."--(_December, 21._)
"Another plan is to get Mr. Ritchie interested as editor of the
Globe--all of which I gave you an intimation of, and which I
thought had been put down. But that any leading Democrat here
had any thought of becoming interested in the Madisonian, to
make it the organ of the administration, was such a thing as
I could not believe; as common sense at once pointed out, as
a consequence that it would divide the democracy, and destroy
Polk's administration. Why, it would blow him up. The moment
I heard it, I adopted such measures as I trust have put an
end to it, as I know nothing could be so injurious to Polk
and his administration. The pretext for this movement will be
the Globe's support of Mr. Wright. _Let me know if there is
any truth in this rumor._ I guarded Colonel Polk against any
abandonment of the Globe. If true, it would place Colonel Polk
in the shoes of Mr. Tyler."--(_February 28, 1845._)
"I have written a long, candid, and friendly letter to Mr. Polk,
bringing to his view the dilemma into which he has got by some
bad advice, and which his good sense ought to have prevented.
I have assured him of your uniform declarations to me of your
firm support, and of the destruction of the democratic party if
he takes any one but you as the executive organ, until you do
something to violate that confidence which the democracy reposes
in you. I ask in emphatic terms, what cause can he assign for
not continuing your paper, the organ that was mine and Mr.
Van Buren's, whose administration he, Polk, and you hand to
hand supported, and those great fundamental principles you and
he have continued to support, and have told him frankly that
you will never degrade yourself or your paper by submitting
to the terms proposed. I am very sick, exhausted by writing
to Polk, and will write you again soon. I can only add, that,
although my letter to Mr. Polk is both friendly and frank, I
have done justice to you, and I hope he will say at once to
you, go on with my organ as you have been the organ of Jackson
and Van Buren. Should he not, I have told him his fate--a
divided democracy, and all the political cliques looking to the
succession, will annoy and crush him--the fairest prospects of
successful administration by folly and jealousy lost. I would
wish you to inform me which of the heads of the Departments,
if any, are hostile to you. If Polk does not look well to his
course, the divisions in New York and Pennsylvania will destroy
him."--(_April 4, 1845._)
I wrote you and the President, on the 4th instant, and was in
hopes that my views would open his eyes to his own interests
and union of the democratic party. But from the letters before
me, I suppose my letter to the President will not prevent
that evil to him and the democratic party that I have used
my voice to prevent. I am too unwell to write much to-day. I
have read your letter with care and much interest. I know you
would never degrade yourself by dividing the editorial chair
with any one for any cause. I well know that you never can or
will abandon your democratic principles. You cannot, under
existing circumstances, do any thing to save your character and
democratic principles, and your high standing with all classes
of the democracy, but by selling out your paper. When you sell,
have good security for the consideration money. Ritchie is
greatly involved, if not finally broke; and you know Cameron,
who boasts that he has $50,000 to invest in a newspaper. Under
all existing circumstances, I say to you, sell, and when you do,
I look to a split in the democratic ranks; which I will sorely
regret, and which might have been so easily avoided."--(_April
7._)
"I have been quite sick for several days. My mind, since ever
I heard of the attitude the President had assumed with you
as editor of the Globe,--which was the most unexpected thing
I ever met with,--my mind has been troubled, and it was not
only unexpected by me, but has shown less good common sense,
by the President, than any act of his life, and calculated to
divide instead of uniting the democracy; which appears to be
his reason for urging this useless and foolish measure at the
very threshold of his administration, and when every thing
appeared to augur well for, to him, a prosperous administration.
The President, here, before he set out for Washington, must
have been listening to the secret counsels of some political
cliques, such as Calhoun or Tyler cliques (for there are such
here); or after he reached Washington, some of the secret
friends of some of the aspirants must have gotten hold of his
ear, and spoiled his common sense, or he never would have made
such a movement, so uncalled for, and well calculated to sever
the democracy by calling down upon himself suspicions, by the
act of secretly favoring some of the political cliques who are
looking to the succession for some favorite. I wrote him a long
letter on the 4th, telling him there was but one safe course
to pursue--review his course, send for you, and direct you and
the _Globe_ to proceed as the organ of his administration, give
you all his confidence, and all would be well, and end well.
_This is the substance_; and I had a hope the receipt of this
letter, and some others written by mutual friends, would have
restored all things to harmony and confidence again. I rested
on this hope until the 7th, when I received yours of the 30th,
and two confidential letters from the President, directed to be
laid before me, from which it would seem that the purchase of
the _Globe_, and to get clear of you, its editor, is the great
absorbing question before the President. _Well, who is to be the
purchaser?_ Mr. Ritchie and Major A. J. Donelson its editors.
_Query as to the latter._ The above question I have asked the
President. Is that renegade politician, Cameron, who boasts of
his $50,000 to set up a new paper, to be one of them? Or is Knox
Walker to be the purchaser? Who is to purchase? and where is the
money to come from? Is Dr. M. Gwinn, the satellite of Calhoun,
the great friend of Robert J. Walker? a perfect bankrupt in
property. I would like to know what portion of the cabinet are
supporting and advising the President to this course, where
nothing but injury can result to him in the end, and division
in his cabinet, arising from jealousy. What political clique
is to be benefited? My dear friend, let me know all about the
cabinet, and their movements on this subject. How loathsome
it is to me to see an old friend laid aside, principles of
justice and friendship forgotten, and all for the sake of
_policy_--and the great democratic party divided or endangered
for _policy_--I cannot reflect upon it with any calmness; every
point of it, upon scrutiny, turns to harm and disunion, and not
one beneficial result can be expected from it. I will be anxious
to know the result. If harmony is restored, and the _Globe_ the
organ, I will rejoice; if sold to whom, and for what. _Have,
if you sell, the purchase money well secured._ This may be the
last letter I may be able to write you; but live or die, I am
your friend (and never deserted one from _policy_), and leave my
papers and reputation in your keeping."--(_April 9._)
From these letters it will be seen that General Jackson, after going
through an agony of indignation and amazement at the idea of shoving
Mr. Blair from his editorial chair and placing Mr. Ritchie in it
(and which would have been greater if he had known the arrangement
for the South Carolina vote and the withdrawal of Mr. Tyler),
advised Mr. Blair to sell his Globe establishment, cautioning him to
get good security; for, knowing nothing of the money taken from the
Treasury, and well knowing the insolvency of all who were ostensible
payers, he did not at all confide in their promises to make payment.
Mr. Blair and his partner, Mr. John C. Rives, were of the same mind.
Other friends whom they consulted (Governor Wright and Colonel
Benton) were of the same opinion; and the Globe was promptly sold to
Mr. Ritchie, and in a way to imply rather an abandonment of it than
a sale--the materials of the office being offered at valuation, and
the "name and good will" of the paper left out of the transaction.
The materials were valued at $35,000, and the metamorphosed paper
took the name of the "Daily Union;" and, in fact, some change of
name was necessary, as the new paper was the reverse of the old
one.--In all these schemes, from first to last, to get rid of Mr.
Blair, the design was to retain Mr. Rives, not as any part editor
(for which he was far more fit than either himself or the public
knew), but for his extraordinary business qualities, and to manage
the machinery and fiscals of the establishment. Accustomed to
trafficking and trading politicians, and fortune being sure to the
government editor, it was not suspicioned by those who conducted
the intrigue that Mr. Rives would refuse to be saved at the expense
of his partner. He scorned it! and the two went out together.--The
letters from General Jackson show his appreciation of the services
of the Globe to the country and the democratic party during the
eight eventful years of his presidency: Mr. Van Buren, on learning
what was going on, wrote to Mr. Rives to show his opinion of the
same services during the four years of his arduous administration;
and that letter also belongs to the history of the extinction of
the Globe newspaper--that paper which, for twelve years, had fought
the battle of the country, and of the democracy, in the spirit of
Jackson: that is to say, victoriously and honorably. This letter
was written to Mr. Rives, who, in spite of his modest estimate of
himself, was classed by General Jackson, Mr. Van Buren, and all
their friends, among the wisest, purest, and safest of the party.
"The Globe has run its career at too critical a period in our
political history--has borne the democratic flag too steadily in
the face of assaults upon popular sovereignty, more violent and
powerful than any which had ever preceded them in this or any
other country, not to have made impressions upon our history and
our institutions, which are destined to be remembered when those
who witnessed its discontinuance shall be no more. The manner
in which it demeaned itself through those perilous periods, and
the repeated triumphs which crowned its labors, will when the
passions of the day have spent their force, be matters of just
exultation to you and to your children. _None have had better
opportunities to witness, nor more interest in observing your
course, than General Jackson and myself; and I am very sure
that I could not, if I were to attempt it, express myself more
strongly in favor of the constancy, fidelity, and ability with
which it was conducted, than he would sanction with his whole
heart._ He would, I have no doubt, readily admit that it would
have been exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for his
administration to have sustained itself in its contest with a
money power (a term as well understood as that of democrat,
and much better than that of whig at the present day), if the
corruptions which were in those days spread broadcast through
the length and breadth of the land, had been able to subvert
the integrity of the Globe; and I am very certain that the one
over which I had the honor to preside, could never, in such
an event, have succeeded in obtaining the institution of an
independent treasury, without the establishment of which, the
advantages to be derived from the overthrow of the Bank of the
United States will very soon prove to be wholly illusory. The
Bank of the United States first, and afterwards those of the
States, succeeded in obtaining majorities in both branches of
the national legislature favorable to their views; but they
could never move the Globe from the course which has since
been so extensively sanctioned by the democracy of the nation.
You gave to the country (and when I say you, I desire to be
understood as alluding to Mr. Blair and yourself) at those
momentous periods, the invaluable advantages of a press at
the seat of the general government, not only devoted, root
and branch, to the support of democratic principles, but
independent in fact and in feeling, as well of bank influences
as of corrupting pecuniary influences of any description. The
vital importance of such an establishment to the success of
our cause is incapable of exaggeration. Experience will show,
if an opportunity is ever afforded to test the opinion, that,
without it, the principles of our party can never be upheld in
their purity in the administration of the federal government.
Administrations professedly their supporters may be formed,
but they will prove to be but whited sepulchres, appearing
beautiful outward, but within full of dead men's bones, and all
uncleanness--Administrations which, instead of directing their
best efforts to advance the welfare and promote the happiness of
the toiling millions, will be ever ready to lend a favorable ear
to the advancement of the selfish few."
The Globe was sold, and was paid for, and how? becomes a question
of public concern to answer; for it was paid for out of public
money--those same $50,000 which were removed to the village bank in
the interior of Pennsylvania by a Treasury order on the fourth day
of November, 1844. Three annual instalments made the payment, and
the Treasury did not reclaim the money for these three years; and,
though travelling through tortuous channels, the sharpsighted Mr.
Rives traced the money back to its starting point from that deposit.
Besides, Mr. Cameron admitted before a committee of Congress,
that he had furnished money for the payments--an admission which
the obliging committee, on request, left out of their report. Mr.
Robert J. Walker was Secretary of the Treasury during these three
years, and the conviction was absolute, among the close observers of
the course of things, that he was the prime contriver and zealous
manager of the arrangements which displaced Mr. Blair and installed
Mr. Ritchie.
In the opinions which he expressed of the consequences of that
change of editors, General Jackson was prophetic. The new paper
brought division and distraction into the party--filled it with
dissensions, which eventually induced the withdrawal of Mr. Ritchie;
but not until he had produced the mischiefs which abler men cannot
repair.
CHAPTER CLII.
TWENTY-NINTH CONGRESS: LIST OF MEMBERS: FIRST SESSION: ORGANIZATION
OF THE HOUSE.
_Senators._
MAINE.--George Evans, John Fairfield.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.--Benjamin W. Jenness, Charles G. Atherton.
VERMONT.--William Upham, Samuel S. Phelps.
MASSACHUSETTS.--Daniel Webster, John Davis.
RHODE ISLAND.--James F. Simmons, Albert C. Green.
CONNECTICUT.--John M. Niles, Jabez W. Huntington.
NEW YORK.--John A. Dix, Daniel S. Dickinson.
NEW JERSEY.--Jacob W. Miller, John L. Dayton.
PENNSYLVANIA.--Simon Cameron, Daniel Sturgeon.
DELAWARE.--Thomas Clayton, John M. Clayton.
MARYLAND.--James A. Pearce, Reverdy Johnson.
VIRGINIA.--William S. Archer, Isaac S. Pennybacker.
NORTH CAROLINA.--Willie P. Mangum, William H. Haywood, jr.
SOUTH CAROLINA.--John C. Calhoun, George McDuffie.
GEORGIA.--John McP. Berrien, Walter T. Colquitt.
ALABAMA.--Dixon H. Lewis, Arthur P. Bagby.
MISSISSIPPI.--Joseph W. Chalmers, Jesse Speight.
LOUISIANA.--Alexander Barrow, Henry Johnson.
TENNESSEE.--Spencer Jarnagin, Hopkins L. Turney.
KENTUCKY.--James T. Morehead, John J. Crittenden.
OHIO.--William Allen, Thomas Corwin.
INDIANA.--Ed. A. Hannegan, Jesse D. Bright.
ILLINOIS.--James Semple, Sidney Breese.
MISSOURI.--David R. Atchison, Thomas H. Benton.
ARKANSAS.--Chester Ashley, Ambrose H. Sevier.
MICHIGAN.--William Woodbridge, Lewis Cass.
FLORIDA.--David Levy, James D. Westcott.
In this list will be seen the names of several new senators, not
members of the body before, and whose senatorial exertions soon made
them eminent;--Dix and Dickinson of New York, Reverdy Johnson of
Maryland, Jesse D. Bright of Indiana, Lewis Cass of Michigan; and to
these were soon to be added two others from the newly incorporated
State of Texas, Messrs. General Sam Houston and Thomas F. Rusk,
Esq., and of whom, and their State, it may be said they present a
remarkable instance of mutual confidence and concord, neither having
been changed to this day (1856).
_House of Representatives._
MAINE.--John F. Scammon, Robert P. Dunlap, Luther Severance, John D.
McCrate, Cullen Sawtelle, Hannibal Hamlin, Hezekiah Williams.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.--Moses Norris, jr., Mace Moulton, James H. Johnson.
VERMONT.--Solomon Foot, Jacob Collamer, George P. Marsh, Paul
Dillingham, jr.
MASSACHUSETTS.--Robert C. Winthrop, Daniel P. King, Amos Abbot,
Benjamin Thompson, Charles Hudson, George Ashmun, Julius Rockwell,
John Quincy Adams, Joseph Grinnell.
RHODE ISLAND.--Henry Y. Cranston, Lemuel H. Arnold.
CONNECTICUT.--James Dixon, Samuel D. Hubbard, John A. Rockwell,
Truman Smith.
NEW YORK.--John W. Lawrence, Henry I. Seaman, William S. Miller,
William B. Maclay, Thomas M. Woodruff, William W. Campbell, Joseph
H. Anderson, William W. Woodworth, Archibald C. Niven, Samuel
Gordon, John F. Collin, Richard P. Herrick, Bradford R. Wood,
Erastus D. Culver, Joseph Russell, Hugh White, Charles S. Benton,
Preston King, Orville Hungerford, Timothy Jenkins, Charles Goodyear,
Stephen Strong, William J. Hough, Horace Wheaton, George Rathbun,
Samuel S. Ellsworth, John De Mott, Elias B. Holmes, Charles H.
Carcoll, Martin Grover, Abner Lewis, William A. Mosely, Albert
Smith, Washington Hunt.
NEW JERSEY.--James G. Hampton, George Sykes, John Runk, John Edsall,
William Wright.
PENNSYLVANIA.--Lewis C. Levin, Joseph R. Ingersoll, John H.
Campbell, Charles J. Ingersoll, Jacob S. Yost, Jacob Erdman, Abraham
R. McIlvaine, John Strohm, John Ritter, Richard Brodhead, jr.,
Owen D. Leib, David Wilmot, James Pollock, Alexander Ramsay, Moses
McLean, James Black, James Blanchard, Andrew Stewart, Henry D.
Foster, John H. Ewing, Cornelius Darragh, William S. Garvin, James
Thompson, Joseph Buffington.
DELAWARE.--John W. Houston.
MARYLAND.--John G. Chapman, Thomas Perry, Thomas W. Ligon, William
F. Giles, Albert Constable, Edward Long.
VIRGINIA.--Archibald Atkinson, George C. Dromgoole, William M.
Treadway, Edward W. Hubard, Shelton F. Leake, James A. Seddon,
Thomas H. Bayly, Robert M. T. Hunter, John S. Pendleton, Henry
Redinger, William Taylor, Augustus A. Chapman, George W. Hopkins,
Joseph Johnson, William G. Brown.
NORTH CAROLINA.--James Graham, Daniel M. Barringer, David S. Reid,
Alfred Dockery, James C. Dobbin, James J. McKay, John R. J. Daniels,
Henry S. Clarke, Asa Biggs.
SOUTH CAROLINA.--James A. Black, Richard F. Simpson, Joseph A.
Woodward, A. D. Sims, Armistead Burt, Isaac E. Holmes, R. Barnwell
Rhett.
GEORGIA.--Thomas Butler King, Seaborn Jones, Hugh A. Haralson, John
H. Lumpkin, Howell Cobb, Alex. H. Stephens, Robt. Toombs.
ALABAMA.--Samuel D. Dargin, Henry W. Hilliard, William L. Yancey,
Winter W. Payne, George S. Houston, Reuben Chapman, Felix G.
McConnell.
MISSISSIPPI.--Jacob Thompson, Stephen Adams, Robert N. Roberts,
Jefferson Davis.
LOUISIANA.--John Slidell, Bannon G. Thibodeaux, J. H. Harmonson,
Isaac E. Morse.
OHIO.--James J. Faran, F. A. Cunningham, Robert C. Schenck, Joseph
Vance, William Sawyer, Henry St. John, Joseph J. McDowell, Allen G.
Thurman, Augustus L. Perrill, Columbus Delano, Jacob Brinkerhoff,
Samuel F. Vinton, Isaac Parish, Alexander Harper, Joseph Morris,
John D. Cummins, George Fries, D. A. Starkweather, Daniel R. Tilden,
Joshua R. Giddings, Joseph M. Root.
KENTUCKY.--Linn Boyd, John H. McHenry, Henry Grider, Joshua F. Bell,
Bryan R. Young, John P. Martin, William P. Thomasson, Garrett Davis,
Andrew Trumbo, John W. Tibbatts.
TENNESSEE.--Andrew Johnson, William M. Cocke, John Crozier, Alvan
Cullom, George W. Jones, Barclay Martin, Meridith, P. Gentry,
Lorenzo B. Chase, Frederick P. Stanton, Milton Brown.
INDIANA.--Robert Dale Owen, Thomas J. Henley, Thomas Smith, Caleb
B. Smith, William W. Wick, John W. Davis, Edward W. McGaughey, John
Petit, Charles W. Cathcart, Andrew Kennedy.
ILLINOIS.--Robert Smith, John A. McClernand, Orlando B. Ficklin,
John Wentworth, Stephen A. Douglass, Joseph P. Hoge, Edward D. Baker.
MISSOURI.--James B. Bowlin, James H. Relf, Sterling Price, John S.
Phelps, Leonard H. Simms.
ARKANSAS.--Archibald Yell.
MICHIGAN.--Robert McClelland, John S. Chapman, James B. Hunt.
The delegates from territories were:
FLORIDA.--Edward C. Cabell.
IOWA.--Augustus C. Dodge.
WISCONSIN.--Morgan L. Martin.
The election of Speaker was readily effected, there being a large
majority on the democratic side. Mr. John W. Davis, of Indiana,
being presented as the democratic candidate, received 120 votes;
Mr. Samuel F. Vinton, of Ohio, received the whig vote, 72. Mr.
Benjamin B. French, of New Hampshire, was appointed clerk (without
the formality of an election), by a resolve of the House, adopted
by a general vote. He was of course democratic. The House being
organized, a motion was made by Mr. Hamlin, of Maine, to except the
hour rule (as it was called) from the rules to be adopted for the
government of the House--which was lost, 62 to 143.
CHAPTER CLIII.
MR. POLK'S FIRST ANNUAL MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.
The leading topic in the message was, naturally, the incorporation
of Texas, then accomplished, and the consequent dissatisfaction
of Mexico--a dissatisfaction manifested every way short of actual
hostilities, and reason to believe they were intended. On our
side, strong detachments of the army and navy had been despatched
to Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, to be ready for whatever might
happen. The Mexican minister, General Almonte, had left the United
States: an American minister sent to Mexico had been refused to be
received, and had returned home. All this was the natural result
of the _status belli_ between the United States and Mexico which
the incorporation of Texas had established; and, that there were
not actual hostilities was only owing to the weakness of one of the
parties. These things were thus stated by the President:
"Since that time Mexico has, until recently, occupied an
attitude of hostility towards the United States--has been
marshalling and organizing armies, issuing proclamations, and
avowing the intention to make war on the United States, either
by an open declaration, or by invading Texas. Both the Congress
and convention of the people of Texas invited this government
to send an army into that territory, to protect and defend them
against the menaced attack. The moment the terms of annexation,
offered by the United States, were accepted by Texas, the latter
became so far a part of our own country, as to make it our duty
to afford such protection and defence. I therefore deemed it
proper, as a precautionary measure, to order a strong squadron
to the coast of Mexico, and to concentrate an efficient military
force on the western frontier of Texas. Our army was ordered
to take position in the country between the Nueces and the Del
Norte, and to repel any invasion of the Texian territory which
might be attempted by the Mexican forces. Our squadron in the
Gulf was ordered to co-operate with the army. But though our
army and navy were placed in a position to defend our own,
and the rights of Texas, they were ordered to commit no act
of hostility against Mexico, unless she declared war, or was
herself the aggressor by striking the first blow. The result
has been, that Mexico has made no aggressive movement, and our
military and naval commanders have executed their orders with
such discretion, that the peace of the two republics has not
been disturbed."
Thus the armed forces of the two countries were brought into
presence, and the legal state of war existing between them
was brought to the point of actual war. Of this the President
complained, assuming that Texas and the United States had a _right_
to unite, which was true as to the right; but asserting that Mexico
had no right to oppose it, which was a wrong assumption. For, in
taking Texas into the Union, she was taken with her circumstances,
one of which was a state of war with Mexico. Denying her right to
take offence at what had been done, the message went on to enumerate
causes of complaint against her, and for many years back, and to
make out cause of war against her on account of injuries done by her
to our citizens. In this sense the message said:
"But though Mexico cannot complain of the United States on
account of the annexation of Texas, it is to be regretted that
serious causes of misunderstanding between the two countries
continue to exist, growing out of unredressed injuries inflicted
by the Mexican authorities and people on the persons and
property of citizens of the United States, through a long
series of years. Mexico has admitted these injuries, but has
neglected and refused to repair them. Such was the character of
the wrongs, and such the insults repeatedly offered to American
citizens and the American flag by Mexico, in palpable violation
of the laws of nations and the treaty between the two countries
of the 5th April, 1831, that they have been repeatedly brought
to the notice of Congress by my predecessors. As early as the
8th February, 1837, the President of the United States declared,
in a message to Congress, that 'the length of time since some of
the injuries have been committed, the repeated and unavailing
application for redress, the wanton character of some of the
outrages upon the persons and property of our citizens, upon the
officers and flag of the United States, independent of recent
insults to this government and people by the late extraordinary
Mexican minister, would justify, in the eyes of all nations,
immediate war.' He did not, however, recommend an immediate
resort to this extreme measure, which he declared 'should not be
used by just and generous nations, confiding in their strength,
for injuries committed, if it can be honorably avoided;' but, in
a spirit of forbearance, proposed that another demand be made
on Mexico for that redress which had been so long and unjustly
withheld. In these views, committees of the two Houses of
Congress, in reports made in their respective bodies, concurred.
Since these proceedings more than eight years have elapsed,
during which, in addition to the wrongs then complained of,
others of an aggravated character have been committed on the
persons and property of our citizens. A special agent was sent
to Mexico in the summer of 1838, with full authority to make
another and final demand for redress. The demand was made; the
Mexican government promised to repair the wrongs of which we
complained; and after much delay, a treaty of indemnity with
that view was concluded between the two powers on the 11th of
April, 1839, and was duly ratified by both governments."
This treaty of indemnity, the message went on to show, had never
yet been complied with, and its non-fulfilment, added to the other
causes of complaint, the President considered as just cause for
declaring war against her--saying:
"In the mean time, our citizens, who suffered great losses, and
some of whom have been reduced from affluence to bankruptcy,
are without remedy, unless their rights be enforced by their
government. Such a continued and unprovoked series of wrongs
could never have been tolerated by the United States, had they
been committed by one of the principal nations of Europe. Mexico
was, however, a neighboring sister republic, which, following
our example, had achieved her independence, and for whose
success and prosperity, all our sympathies were early enlisted.
The United States were the first to recognize her independence,
and to receive her into the family of nations, and have ever
been desirous of cultivating with her a good understanding. We
have, therefore, borne the repeated wrongs she has committed,
with great patience, in the hope that a returning sense of
justice would ultimately guide her councils, and that we might,
if possible, honorably avoid any hostile collision with her."
Torn by domestic dissension, in a state of revolution at home, and
ready to be crushed by the power of the United States, the Mexican
government had temporized, and after dismissing one United States
minister, had consented to receive another, who was then on his way
to the City of Mexico. Of this mission, and the consequences of its
failure, the President thus expressed himself:
"The minister appointed has set out on his mission, and is
probably by this time near the Mexican capital. He has been
instructed to bring the negotiation with which he is charged
to a conclusion at the earliest practicable period; which, it
is expected, will be in time to enable me to communicate the
result to Congress during the present session. Until that result
is known, I forbear to recommend to Congress such ulterior
measures of redress for the wrongs and injuries we have so
long borne, as it would have been proper to make had no such
negotiation been instituted."
From this communication it was clear that a recommendation of a
declaration of war was only deferred for the issue of this mission,
which failing to be favorable, would immediately call forth the
deferred recommendation. The Oregon question was next in importance
to that of Texas and Mexico, and like it seemed to be tending to
a warlike solution. The negotiations between the two governments,
which had commenced under Mr. Tyler's administration, and continued
for some months under his own, had come to a dead stand. The
government of the United States had revoked its proposition to
make the parallel of 49 degrees the dividing line between the two
countries, and asserted the unquestionable title of the United
States to the whole, up to the Russian boundary in 54 degrees 40
minutes; and the message recommended Congress to authorize the
notice which was to terminate the joint occupancy, to extend our
laws to the territory, to encourage its population and settlement;
and cast upon Great Britain the responsibility of any belligerent
solution of the difficulty which might arise. Thus, the issue
of peace or war with Great Britain was thrown into the hands of
Congress.
The finances, and the public debt, required a notice, which was
briefly and satisfactorily given. The receipts into the Treasury
for the past year had been $29,770,000: the payments from it
$29,968,000; and the balance in the Treasury at the end of the
year five millions--leaving a balance of $7,658,000 on hand. The
nature of these balances, always equal to about one-fourth of the
revenue even where the receipts and expenditures are even, or the
latter even in some excess, has been explained in the first volume
of this View, as resulting from the nature of great government
transactions and payments, large part of which necessarily go into
the beginning of the succeeding year, when they would be met by the
accruing revenue, even if there was nothing in the Treasury; so
that, in fact, the government may be carried on upon an income about
one-fourth less than the expenditure. This is a paradox--a seeming
absurdity, but true, which every annual statement of the Treasury
will prove; and which the legislative, as well as the executive
government, should understand. The sentiments in relation to the
public debt (of which there would have been none had it not been for
the distribution of the land revenue, and the surplus fund, among
the States, and the absurd plunges in the descent of the duties
on imports in the last two years of the compromise act of 1833),
were just and wise, such as had been always held by the democratic
school, and which cannot be too often repeated. They were these:
"The amount of the public debt remaining unpaid on the first of
October last, was seventeen millions, seventy-five thousand,
four hundred and forty-five dollars and fifty-two cents.
Further payments of the public debt would have been made, in
anticipation of the period of its reimbursement under the
authority conferred upon the Secretary of the Treasury, by the
acts of July twenty-first, 1841, and of April fifteenth, and of
March third, 1843, had not the unsettled state of our relations
with Mexico menaced hostile collision with that power. In view
of such a contingency, it was deemed prudent to retain in the
Treasury an amount unusually large for ordinary purposes. A few
years ago, our whole national debt growing out of the revolution
and the war of 1812 with Great Britain, was extinguished, and we
presented to the world the rare and noble spectacle of a great
and growing people who had fully discharged every obligation.
Since that time the existing debt has been contracted; and
small as it is, in comparison with the similar burdens of
most other nations, it should be extinguished at the earliest
practicable period. Should the state of the country permit,
and especially if our foreign relations interpose no obstacle,
it is contemplated to apply all the moneys in the Treasury as
they accrue beyond what is required for the appropriations by
Congress, to its liquidation. I cherish the hope of soon being
able to congratulate the country on its recovering once more
the lofty position which it so recently occupied. Our country,
which exhibits to the world the benefits of self-government,
in developing all the sources of national prosperity, owes
to mankind the permanent example of a nation free from the
blighting influence of a public debt."
The revision of the tariff was recommended, with a view to revenue
as the object, with protection to home industry as the incident.
CHAPTER CLIV.
DEATH OF JOHN FORSYTH.
Like Mr. Crawford, he was a Virginian by birth Georgian by
citizenship, republican in politics, and eminent in his day. He
ran the career of federal honors--a member of the House and of
the Senate, and a front rank debater in each: minister in Spain,
and Secretary of State under Presidents Jackson and Van Buren;
successor to Crawford in his State, and the federal councils; and
the fast political and personal friend of that eminent citizen in
all the trials and fortunes of his life. A member of the House
when Mr. Crawford, restrained by his office, and disabled by his
calamity, was unable to do any thing for himself, and assailed by
the impersonation of the execrable A. B. plot, it devolved upon him
to stand up for his friend; and nobly did he do it. The examination
through which he led the accuser exterminated him in public
opinion--showed every accusation to be false and malicious; detected
the master spirit which lay behind the ostensible assailants, and
greatly exalted the character of Mr. Crawford.
Mr. Forsyth was a fine specimen of that kind of speaking which
constitutes a debater, and which, in fact, is the effective speaking
in legislative assemblies. He combined the requisites for keen
debate--a ready, copious, and easy elocution; ample knowledge of
the subject; argument and wit; great power to point a sarcasm, and
to sting courteously; perfect self-possession, and a quickness and
clearness of perception to take advantage of every misstep of his
adversary. He served in trying times, during the great contests with
the Bank of the United States, with the heresy of nullification, and
the dawning commencement of the slavery agitation. In social life
he was a high exemplification of refined and courteous manners, of
polite conversation, and of affability, decorum and dignity.
CHAPTER CLV.
ADMISSION OF FLORIDA AND IOWA.
At this time were admitted into the Union, and by a single bill,
two States, which seem to have but few things in common to put
them together--one the oldest, the other the newest territory--one
in the extreme northwest of the Union, the other in the extreme
southeast--one the land of evergreens and perpetual flowers, the
other the climate of long and rigorous winter--one maintaining, the
other repulsing slavery. It would seem strange that two territories
so different in age, so distant from each other, so antagonistic
in natural features and political institutions, should ripen into
States at the same time, and come into the Union by a single act;
but these antagonisms--that is, the antagonistic provisions on the
subject of slavery--made the conjunction, and gave to the two young
States an inseparable admission. It happened that the slave and
free States had long before become equal in number, and a feeling
of jealousy, or a calculation of policy operated to keep them so;
and for that purpose to admit one of each character at the same
time. Thus balancing and neutralizing each other, the bill for
their admission was passed without a struggle, and furnished but
little beyond the yeas and nays--these latter a scant minority in
either House--to show the disposition of members. In the Senate the
negatives were 9 to 36 yeas: in the House 48 to 144. Numerically the
free and the slave States were thus kept even: in political power a
vast inequality was going on--the increase of population being so
much greater in the northern than in the southern region.
CHAPTER CLVI.
OREGON TREATY: NEGOTIATIONS COMMENCED, AND BROKEN OFF.
This was a pretermitted subject in the general negotiations which
led to the Ashburton treaty: it was now taken up as a question
for separate settlement. The British government moved in it, Mr.
Henry S. Fox, the British minister in Washington, being instructed
to propose the negotiation. This was done in November, 1842, and
Mr. Webster, then Secretary of State under Mr. Tyler, immediately
replied, accepting the proposal, and declaring it to be the desire
of his government to have this territorial question immediately
settled. But the movement stopped there. Nothing further took
place between Mr. Webster and Fox, and the question slumbered till
1844, when Mr. (since Sir) Richard Pakenham, arrived in the United
States as British minister, and renewed the proposition for opening
the negotiation to Mr. Upshur, then Secretary of State. This was
February 24th, 1844. Mr. Upshur replied promptly, that is to say,
on the 26th of the same month, accepting the proposal, and naming
an early day for receiving Mr. Pakenham to begin the negotiation.
Before that day came he had perished in the disastrous explosion of
the great gun on board the Princeton man-of-war. The subject again
slumbered six months, and at the end of that time, July 22d, was
again brought to the notice of the American government by a note
from the British minister to Mr. Calhoun, successor to Mr. Upshur
in the Department of State. Referring to the note received from Mr.
Upshur the day before his death, he said:
"The lamented death of Mr. Upshur, which occurred within a
few days after the date of that note, the interval which took
place between that event and the appointment of a successor,
and the urgency and importance of various matters which offered
themselves to your attention immediately after your accession
to office, sufficiently explain why it has not hitherto been in
the power of your government, sir, to attend to the important
matters to which I refer. But, the session of Congress having
been brought to a close, and the present being the season of the
year when the least possible business is usually transacted, it
occurs to me that you may now feel at leisure to proceed to the
consideration of that subject. At all events it becomes my duty
to recall it to your recollection, and to repeat the earnest
desire of her majesty's government, that a question, on which so
much interest is felt in both countries, should be disposed of
at the earliest moment consistent with the convenience of the
government of the United States."
Mr. Calhoun answered the 22d of August declaring his readiness
to begin the negotiation and fixing the next day for taking up
the subject. It was taken up accordingly, and conducted in the
approved and safe way of conducting such negotiations, that is to
say, a protocol of every conference signed by the two negotiators
before they separated, and the propositions submitted by each always
reduced to writing. This was the proper and satisfactory mode of
proceeding, the neglect and total omission of which had constituted
so just and so loud a complaint against the manner in which Mr.
Webster and Lord Ashburton had conducted their conferences. Mr.
Calhoun and Mr. Pakenham met seven times, exchanged arguments and
propositions, and came to a balk, which suspended their labors.
Mr. Calhoun, rejecting the usual arts of diplomacy, which holds in
reserve the ultimate and true offer while putting forward fictitious
ones for experiment, went at once to his ultimatum, and proposed the
continuation of the parallel of the 49th degree of north latitude,
which, after the acquisition of Louisiana, had been adopted by Great
Britain and the United States as the dividing line between their
possessions, from the Lake of the Woods (fixed as a land-mark under
the treaty of Utrecht), to the summit of the Rocky Mountains--the
United States insisting at the same time to continue that line to
the Pacific Ocean under the terms of the same treaty. Mr. Pakenham
declined this proposition in the part that carried the line to the
ocean, but offered to continue it from the summit of the mountains,
to the Columbia River, a distance of some three hundred miles;
and then follow the river to the ocean. This was refused by Mr.
Calhoun; and the ultimatum having been delivered on one hand, and no
instructions being possessed on the other to yield any thing, the
negotiations, after continuing through the month of September, came
to a stand. At the end of four months (January 1845) Mr. Pakenham,
by the direction of his government, proposed to leave the question
to arbitration, which was declined by the American secretary, and
very properly; for, while arbitrament is the commendable mode of
settling minor questions, and especially those which arise from the
construction of existing treaties, yet the boundaries of a country
are of too much gravity to be so submitted.
Mr. Calhoun showed a manly spirit in proposing the line of 49,
as the dominant party in the United States, and the one to which
he belonged, were then in a high state of exultation for the
boundary of 54 degrees 40 minutes, and the presidential canvass,
on the democratic side, was raging upon that cry. The Baltimore
presidential convention had followed a pernicious practice, of
recent invention, in laying down a platform of principles on which
the canvass was to be conducted, and 54-40 for the northern boundary
of Oregon, had been made a canon of political faith, from which
there was to be no departure except upon the penalty of political
damnation. Mr. Calhoun had braved this penalty, and in doing so had
acted up to his public and responsible duty.
The new President, Mr. Polk, elected under that cry, came into
office on the 4th of March, and acting upon it, put into his
inaugural address a declaration that our title to the whole of
Oregon (meaning up to 54-40), was clear and indisputable; and
a further declaration that he meant to maintain that title.
It was certainly an unusual thing--perhaps unprecedented in
diplomacy--that, while negotiations were depending (which was
still the case in this instance, for the last note of Mr. Calhoun
in January, declining the arbitration, gave as a reason for it
that he expected the question to be settled by negotiation), one
of the parties should authoritatively declare its right to the
whole matter in dispute, and show itself ready to maintain it by
arms. The declaration in the inaugural had its natural effect in
Great Britain. It roused the British spirit as high as that of the
American. Their excited voice came thundering back, to be received
with indignation by the great democracy; and war--"_inevitable
war_"--was the cry through the land. The new administration felt
itself to be in a dilemma. To stand upon 54-40 was to have war in
reality: to recede from it, might be to incur the penalty laid
down in the Baltimore platform. Mr. Buchanan, the new Secretary
of State, did me the honor to consult me. I answered him promptly
and frankly, that I held 49 to be the right line, and that, if
the administration made a treaty upon that line, I should support
it. This was early in April. The secretary seemed to expect some
further proposition from the British government; but none came.
The rebuff in the inaugural address had been too public, and too
violent, to admit that government to take the initiative again. It
said nothing: the war cry continued to rage: and at the end of four
months our government found itself under the necessity to take the
initiative, and recommence negotiations as the means of avoiding
war. Accordingly, on the 22d of July, Mr. Buchanan (the direction
of the President being always understood) addressed a note to Mr.
Pakenham, resuming the negotiation at the point at which it had been
left by Mr. Calhoun; and, conforming to the offer that he had made,
and because he had made it, again proposed the line of 49 to the
ocean. The British minister again refused that line, and inviting a
"fairer" proposition. In the mean time the offer of 49 got wind. The
democracy was in commotion. A storm was got up (foremost in raising
which was the new administration organ, Mr. Ritchie's Daily Union),
before which the administration quailed--recoiled--and withdrew its
offer of 49. There was a dead pause in the negotiation again; and so
the affair remained at the meeting of Congress, which came together
under the loud cry of war, in which Mr. Cass was the leader, but
followed by the body of the democracy, and backed and cheered on by
the democratic press--some hundreds of papers. Of course the Oregon
question occupied a place, and a prominent one, in the President's
message--(which has been noticed)--and, on communicating the failure
of the negotiation to Congress, he recommended strong measures
for the security and assertion of our title. The delivery of the
notice which was to abrogate the joint occupation of the country by
the citizens of the two powers, was one of these recommendations,
and the debate upon that question brought out the full expression
of the opinions of Congress upon the whole subject, and took the
management of the questions into the hands of the Senate and House
of Representatives.
CHAPTER CLVII.
OREGON QUESTION: NOTICE TO ABROGATE THE ARTICLE IN THE TREATY FOR
A JOINT OCCUPATION: THE PRESIDENT DENOUNCED IN THE SENATE FOR A
SUPPOSED LEANING TO THE LINE OF FORTY-NINE.
The proposition for the line of 49 having been withdrawn by the
American government on its non-acceptance by the British, had
appeased the democratic storm which had been got up against the
President; and his recommendation for strong measures to assert and
secure our title was entirely satisfactory to those who now came
to be called the Fifty-Four Forties. The debate was advancing well
upon this question of notice, when a sinister rumor--only sinister
to the extreme party--began to spread, that the British government
would propose 49, and that the President was favorable to it. This
rumor was true, and by way of preparing the public mind for it, Mr.
William H. Haywood, a senator from North Carolina, both personally
and politically friendly to the President, undertook to show, not so
much that the line of 49 was right in itself, but that the President
was not so far committed against it as that he could not yet form a
treaty upon it. In this sense he--
"Took a view of the course which had been pursued by the
President, approving of the offer of the parallel of 49° to
Great Britain, and maintaining that there was nothing in
the language of the President to render it improper in him
to negotiate hereafter on that basis, notwithstanding this
rejection. He regarded the negotiation as still open; and he
would not do the President so much wrong as to suppose that,
if we passed the notice, and thus put into his hand a great
moral weapon, that he could be guilty of so miserable a trick
as to use it to the dishonor of his country on the one hand, or
to the reckless provocation of a war on the other. Believing
that the administration stood committed to accept an offer
of a division of the territory on the parallel of 49°--or
substantially that--he should sustain the Executive in that
position. He expressed his conviction that, whatever might be
his individual opinions, the President--as General Washington
did in 1796--would fulfil his obligations to the country; that,
whenever the interests of the country required it, he would
sacrifice his own opinions to the sense of his official duty. He
rebuked the cry which had been set up by some of the friends
of the President, which placed him in the position of being the
mere organ of the Baltimore convention, and declared that, if
he could believe that the Executive would permit the resolution
of that convention to overrule his duty to his country, he
would turn his back upon him. Mr. H. then proceeded to deduce,
from the language and acts of the Executive, that he had not
put himself in a position which imposed on him the necessity of
refusing to negotiate on the parallel of 49°, should negotiation
be resumed on that basis. In this respect, the President did
not occupy that attitude in which some of his friends wished
to place him. It ought to be borne in mind that Great Britain
had held occupancy for above forty years; and it was absurd to
suppose, that, if we turn suddenly upon her and tell her she
must quit, that she will not make resistance. And he asked what
our government would be likely to do if placed in a similar
position and reduced to the same alternative. No one could
contend for a moment that the rejection of the offer of 49° by
Great Britain released the President from the obligation to
accept that offer whenever it should again be made. The question
was to be settled by compromise; and, on this principle, the
negotiation was still pending. It was not to be expected that a
negotiation of this kind could be carried through hastily. Time
must be given for communication with the British government,
for proper consideration and consultation; and true politeness
requires that ample time should be given for this purpose. It
is obvious that Great Britain does not consider the negotiation
terminated, as she would have recalled her minister; and
the President cannot deem it closed, or he would have made
a communication to Congress to that effect. The acts of the
President were not such as to justify any apprehensions of a
rupture; and from that, he did not ask for the notice in order
that he might draw the sword and throw away the scabbard. The
falsehood of any such charge is proved by the fact that he has
asked for no enlargement of the annual appropriations; on the
other hand, his estimates are rather diminished. Knowing him to
be honest, he (Mr. H.) would acquit him of any such imputation
of moral treason, which would subject him to the reprobation
of man and the anger of his God. Mr. H. then referred to the
divisions which had sprung up in the democratic party, the
tendency of which is, to destroy the party, by cutting off its
heads. This question of Oregon had been turned into a party
question, for the purpose of President-making. He repudiated
any submission to the commands of factious meetings, got up
by demagogues, for the purpose of dictating to the Senate how
to make a treaty, and felt thankful that North Carolina had
never taken this course. He did not regard such proceedings as
indicative of that true democracy which, like a potato, grew
at the root, and did not, like the spurious democracy, show
itself from the blossom. The creed of the Baltimore convention
directs the party to re-annex Texas and to _re-occupy_ Oregon.
Texas had been re-annexed, and now we are to go for the
_re-occupation_ of Oregon. Now, Old Oregon, embracing all the
territory on which American foot ever trod, comprised merely
the valley of Willamette, which did not extend above 49°; and
consequently this portion was all which could be contemplated in
the expression "re-occupation," as it would involve an absurdity
to speak of re-occupying what we had never occupied. Referring
to the history of the annexation of Texas, he cited the
impossibility of getting Texas through, until the two questions
had been made twin sisters by the Baltimore convention. Then
Texas passed the House, and came into the Senate, followed so
closely by Oregon, that they seemed to be akin."
In all this Mr. Haywood spoke the sentiments of the President,
personally confided to him, and to prepare the way for his action
in conformity to them. The extreme party suspected this, and had
their plan arranged to storm it down, and to force the President to
repulse the British offer of 49, if now it should be made, as he had
been stormed into a withdrawal of his own offer of that line by his
own newspapers and party in the recess of Congress. This task fell
upon Mr. Hannegan of Indiana, and Mr. William Allen of Ohio, whose
temperaments were better adapted to the work than that of their
chief, Mr. Cass. Mr. Hannegan began:
"I must apologize to the Senate for obtruding myself upon your
attention at this advanced period of the day, particularly as
I have already occupied your attention on several occasions in
the course of this debate. My remarks now, however, will be
very brief. Before I proceed to make any reply to the speech of
the senator from North Carolina--the most extraordinary speech
which I have ever listened to in the whole course of my life--I
desire, through the Vice President, to put a question to him,
which I have committed to writing. It is this: I ask him if he
has the authority of the President, directly or indirectly, for
saying to the Senate that it is his (the President's) wish to
terminate the Oregon question by compromising with Great Britain
on the 49th degree of north latitude?"
To this categorical demand, Mr. Haywood replied that it would be
unwise and impolitic for the President to authorize any senator
to make such a declaration as that implied in the question of Mr.
Hannegan. Mr. Allen, of Ohio, then took up the demand for the
answer, and said:
"I put the question, and demand an answer to it as a public
right. The senator here has assumed to speak for the President.
His speech goes to the world; and I demand, as a public right,
that he answer the question; and if he won't answer it, I stand
ready to deny that he has expressed the views of the President."
Mr. Westcott of Florida, called Mr. Allen to order for asking for
the opinions of the President through a senator. The President could
only communicate his opinions to the Senate responsibly, by message.
It would be a breach of privilege for any senator to undertake to
report such opinions, and consequently a breach of order for any
senator to call for them. In this Mr. Westcott was right, but the
call to order did not prevent Mr. Allen from renewing his demand:
"I do not demand an answer as any personal right at all. I
demand it as a public right. When a senator assumes to speak
for the President, every senator possesses a public right to
demand his authority for so doing. An avowal has been made that
he is the exponent of the views of the President, upon a great
national question. He has assumed to be that exponent. And I
ask him whether he has the authority of the President for the
assumption?"
Mr. Westcott renewed his call to order, but no question was taken
upon the call, which must have been decided against Mr. Allen. Mr.
Haywood said, he denied the right of any senator to put questions
to him in that way, and said he had not assumed to speak by the
authority of the President. Then, said Mr. Allen, the senator takes
back his speech. Mr. Haywood: "Not at all; but I am glad to see my
speech _takes_." Mr. Allen: "With the British." Mr. Hannegan then
resumed:
"I do not deem it material whether the senator from North
Carolina gives a direct answer to my question or not. It is
entirely immaterial. He assumes--no, he says there is no
assumption about it--that there is no meaning in language, no
truth in man, if the President any where commits himself to
54° 40', as his flattering friends assume for him. Now, sir,
there is no truth in man, there is no meaning in language, if
the President is not committed to 54° 40' in as strong language
as that which makes up the Holy Book. From a period antecedent
to that in which he became the nominee of the Baltimore
convention, down to this moment, to all the world he stands
committed for 54° 40'. I go back to his declaration made in
1844, to a committee of citizens of Cincinnati, who addressed
him in relation to the annexation of Texas, and he there uses
this language being then before the country as the democratic
candidate for the chair which he now fills.
"Mr. CRITTENDEN. What is the date?
"Mr. HANNEGAN. It is dated the 23d of April.
[Mr. H. here read an extract from Mr. Polk's letter to the
committee of the citizens of Cincinnati.]"
Mr. Hannegan then went on to quote from the President's message--the
annual message at the commencement of the session--to show that, in
withdrawing his proposition for a boundary on the 49th parallel,
he had taken a position against ever resuming it. He read this
paragraph:
"The extraordinary and wholly inadmissible demands of the
British Government, and the rejection of the proposition made in
deference alone to what had been done by my predecessors, and
the implied obligation which their acts seemed to impose, afford
satisfactory evidence that no compromise which the United States
ought to accept can be effected. With this conviction, the
proposition of compromise which had been made and rejected was,
by my direction, subsequently withdrawn, and our title to the
whole Oregon Territory asserted, and, as is believed, maintained
by irrefragable facts and arguments."
Having read this paragraph, Mr. Hannegan proceeded to reply to it;
and exclaimed--
"What does the President here claim? Up to 54° 40'--every inch
of it. He has asserted that claim, and is, as he says, sustained
by 'irrefragable facts and arguments.' But this is not all: I
hold that the language of the Secretary of State is the language
of the President of the United States; and has not Mr. Buchanan,
in his last communication to Mr. Pakenham, named 54° 40' in so
many words? He has. The President adopts this language as his
own. He plants himself on 54° 40'."
Mr. Hannegan then proceeded to plant the whole democratic party
upon the line of 54-40, and to show that Oregon to that extent, and
Texas to her whole extent, were the watchwords of the party in the
presidential election--that both were to be carried together; and
Texas having been gained, Oregon, without treachery, could not be
abandoned.
"The democratic party is thus bound to the whole of
Oregon--every foot of it; and let the senator rise in his
place who will tell me in what quarter of this Union--in what
assembly of democrats in this Union, pending the presidential
election, the names of Texas and Oregon did not fly together,
side by side, on the democratic banners. Every where they were
twins--every where they were united. Does the senator from North
Carolina suppose that he, with his appeals to the democracy,
can blind our eyes, as he thinks he tickled our ears? He is
mistaken. 'Texas and Oregon' cannot be divided; they dwell
together in the American heart. Even in Texas, I have been
told the flag of the lone star had inscribed on it the name of
Oregon. Then, it was all Oregon. Now, when you have got Texas,
it means just so much of Oregon as you in your kindness and
condescension think proper to give us. You little know us, if
you think the mighty West will be trodden on in this way."
Mr. Hannegan then undertook to disclaim for the President the
sentiments attributed to him by Mr. Haywood, and to pronounce an
anathema upon him if the attribution was right.
"The senator in his defence of the President, put language
into his mouth which I undertake to say the President will
repudiate, and I am not the President's champion. I wish not
to be his champion. I would not be the champion of power. I
defend the right, and the right only. But, for the President,
I deny the intentions which the senator from North Carolina
attributes to him--intentions, which, if really entertained
by him, would make him an infamous man--ay, an infamous man.
He [Mr. Haywood] told the Senate yesterday--unless I grossly
misunderstood him, along with several friends around me--'that
the President had occasionally stickings-in, parenthetically,
to gratify--what?--the ultraisms of the country and of party;
whilst he reposed in the White House with no intentions of
carrying out these parenthetical stickings-in.' In plain words,
he represents the President as parenthetically sticking in a
few hollow and false words to cajole the 'ultraisms of the
country?' What is this, need I ask, but charging upon the
President conduct the most vile and infamous? If this allegation
be true, these intentions of the President must sooner or later
come to light, and when brought to light, what must follow but
irretrievable disgrace? So long as one human eye remains to
linger on the page of history, the story of his abasement will
be read, sending him and his name together to an infamy so
profound, a damnation so deep, that the hand of resurrection
will never be able to drag him forth."
Mr. Mangum called Mr. Hannegan to order: Mr. Haywood desired that
he might be permitted to proceed, which he did, disclaiming all
disrespect to Mr. Haywood, and concluded with saying; that, "so
far as the whole tone, spirit, and meaning of the remarks of the
senator from North Carolina is concerned, if they speak the language
of James K. Polk, then James K. Polk has spoken words of falsehood
with the tongue of a serpent."
Mr. Reverdy Johnson came to the relief of the President and Mr.
Haywood in a temperate and well-considered speech, in which he
showed he had had great apprehension of war--that this apprehension
was becoming less, and that he deemed it probable, and right and
honorable in itself, that the President should meet the British on
the line of 49 if they should come to it; and that line would save
the territorial rights of the United States, and the peace and honor
of the country.
"It is with unaffected embarrassment I rise to address the
Senate on the subject now under consideration; but its great
importance and the momentous issues involved in its final
settlement are such as compel me, notwithstanding my distrust of
my own ability to be useful to my country, to make the attempt.
We have all felt that, at one time at least (I trust that time
is now past), we were in imminent danger of war. From the moment
the President of the United States deemed it right and becoming,
in the outset of his official career, to announce to the world
that our title to Oregon was clear and unquestionable, down to
the period of his message to Congress in December last, when he
reiterated the declaration, I could not see how it was possible
that war should be averted. That apprehension was rendered much
more intense from the character of the debates elsewhere, as
well as from the speeches of some of the President's political
friends within this chamber. I could not but listen with
alarm and dismay to what fell from the very distinguished and
experienced senator from Michigan (Mr. Cass) at an early period
of this debate; to what I heard from the senator from Indiana
(Mr. Hannegan); and, above all, to what was said by the senator
from Ohio (Mr. Allen), the chairman of the Committee on Foreign
Relations, who, in my simplicity, I supposed must necessarily be
apprised of the views of the government in regard to the foreign
concerns of the country. Supposing the condition of the country
to be what it was represented to be by each and all of the three
senators, I could not imagine how it could be possible that the
most direful of all human calamities, war, was to be avoided;
and I was accordingly prepared to say, on the hypothesis of
the fact assumed by the senator from Michigan, that war was
inevitable;--to use his own paraphrase of his own term, which,
it would appear, has got out of favor with himself--'war must
come.'
"What did they represent to be the condition of the nation?
I speak now more particularly of the last two senators, from
Indiana and Ohio. They told us that negotiation was at an end;
that we were now thrown back on our original rights; that, by
these original rights, as had been officially announced, our
title to the whole country was beyond all question: and that
the national honor must be forfeited, if that title should not
be maintained by force of arms. I felt that he must have been a
careless and a profitless reader of English history who could
indulge the hope that, if such was to be the course and conduct
of this country, war was not inevitable. Then, in addition
to my own opinion, when I heard it admitted by the honorable
senator from Michigan, with that perfect candor which always
distinguishes him on this floor, that, in his opinion, England
would never recede, I felt that war was inevitable.
"I now rejoice in hoping and believing, from what I have
subsequently heard, that the fears of the Senate, as well as
my own apprehensions, were, as I think, unfounded. Since then,
the statesmanlike view taken by the senator from New York who
first addressed us (Mr. Dix), and by the senator from Missouri
(Mr. Benton), to whom this whole question is as familiar as a
household term--and the spirit of peace which breathed in their
every word--have fully satisfied me that, so far as depends upon
them, a fair and liberal compromise of our difficulties would
not be in want of willing and zealous advocates.
"And this hope has been yet more strengthened by the recent
speech of the senator from North Carolina (Mr. Haywood), not
now in his place. Knowing, as I thought I did, the intimate
relations, both personal and political, which that senator bore
to the Chief Magistrate--knowing, too, that, as chairman of
the Committee on Commerce, it was his special duty to become
informed in regard to all matters having a bearing on the
foreign relations of the country; I did not doubt, and I do not
now doubt, that in every thing he said as to the determination
of the President to accept, if offered by the British
government, the same terms which he had himself proposed in
July last, the reasonable inference was, that such an offer, if
made, would be accepted. I do not mean to say, because I did not
so understand the senator, that, in addressing this body with
regard to the opinions or purposes of the President, he spoke
by any express or delegated authority. But I do mean to say,
that I have no doubt, from his knowledge of the general views of
the President, as expressed in his message, taken in connection
with certain omissions on the part of the Executive, that when
he announced to us that the President would feel himself in
honor bound to accept his own offer, if now reciprocated by
Great Britain, he spoke that which he knew to be true. And
this opinion was yet more strengthened and confirmed by what I
found to be the effect of his speech on the two senators I have
named--the leaders, if they will permit me to call them so, of
the ultraists on this subject--I mean the senator from Indiana
(Mr. Hannegan), and the senator from Ohio (Mr. Allen). He was
an undiscerning witness of the scene which took place in this
chamber immediately after the speech of the senator from North
Carolina (Mr. Haywood), who must not have seen that those two
senators had consulted together with the view of ascertaining
how far the senator from North Carolina spoke by authority, and
that the result of their consultation was a determination to
catechise that senator; and the better to avoid all mistake,
that they reduced their interrogatory to writing, in order that
it might be propounded to him by the senator from Indiana (Mr.
Hannegan); and if it was not answered, that it was then to be
held as constructively answered by the senator from Ohio (Mr.
Allen). What the result of the manoeuvre was I leave it to the
Senate to decide; but this I will venture to say, that in the
keen encounter of wits, to which their colloquy led, the two
senators who commenced it got rather the worst of the contest.
My hope and belief has been yet further strengthened by what has
NOT since happened; I mean my belief in the pacific views of the
Chief Magistrate. The speech of the senator from North Carolina
was made on Thursday, and though a week has nearly elapsed since
that time, notwithstanding the anxious solicitude of both those
senators, and their evident desire to set the public right on
that subject, we have, from that day to this, heard from neither
of the gentlemen the slightest intimation that the construction
given to the message by the senator from North Carolina was not
a true one."
Mr. Johnson continued his speech on the merits of the question--the
true line which should divide the British and American possessions
beyond the Rocky Mountains; and placed it on the parallel of 49°
according to the treaty of Utrecht, and in conformity with the
opinions and diplomatic instructions of Mr. Jefferson, who had
acquired Louisiana and sent an expedition of discovery to the
Pacific Ocean, and had well studied the whole question of our
territorial rights in that quarter. Mr. Benton did not speak in
this incidental debate, but he knew that Mr. Haywood spoke with
a knowledge of the President's sentiments, and according to his
wishes, and to prepare the country for a treaty upon 49°. He knew
this, because he was in consultation with the President, and was
to speak for the same purpose, and was urged by him to speak
immediately in consequence of the attempt to crush Mr. Haywood--the
first of his friends who had given any intimation of his views. Mr.
Benton, therefore, at an early day, spoke at large upon the question
when it took another form--that of a bill to establish a territorial
government for Oregon; some extracts from which constitute the next
chapter.
CHAPTER CLVIII.
OREGON TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENT: BOUNDARIES AND HISTORY OF THE
COUNTRY: FRAZER'S RIVER: TREATY OF UTRECHT: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH:
EXTRACTS.
Mr. Benton then addressed the Senate. Mr. President, the bill before
the Senate proposes to extend the sovereignty and jurisdiction
of the United States over all our territories west of the Rocky
Mountains, without saying what is the extent and what are the limits
of this territory. This is wrong, in my opinion. We ought to define
the limits within which our agents are to do such acts as this bill
contemplates, otherwise we commit to them the solution of questions
which we find too hard for ourselves. This indefinite extension of
authority, in a case which requires the utmost precision, forces
me to speak, and to give my opinion of the true extent of our
territories beyond the Rocky Mountains. I have delayed doing this
during the whole session, not from any desire to conceal my opinions
(which, in fact, were told to all that asked for them), but because
I thought it the business of negotiation, not of legislation, to
settle these boundaries. I waited for negotiation: but negotiation
lags, while events go forward; and now we are in the process of
acting upon measures, upon the adoption of which it may no longer
be in the power either of negotiation or of legislation to control
the events to which they may give rise. The bill before us is
without definition of the territory to be occupied. And why this
vagueness in a case requiring the utmost precision? Why not define
the boundaries of these territories? Precisely because we do not
know them! And this presents a case which requires me to wait no
longer for negotiation, but to come forward with my own opinions,
and to do what I can to prevent the evils of vague and indefinite
legislation. My object will be to show, if I can, the true extent
and nature of our territorial claims beyond the Rocky Mountains,
with a view to just and wise decisions; and, in doing so, I shall
endeavor to act upon the great maxim, "Ask nothing but what is
right--submit to nothing that is wrong."
It is my ungracious task, in attempting to act upon this maxim, to
commence by exposing error at home, and endeavoring to clear up some
great mistakes under which the public mind has labored.
It has been assumed for two years, and the assumption has been made
the cause of all the Oregon excitement of the country, that we have
a dividing line with Russia, made so by the convention of 1824,
along the parallel of 54° 40', from the sea to the Rocky Mountains,
up to which our title is good. This is a great mistake. No such line
was ever established; and so far as proposed and discussed, it was
proposed and discussed as a northern British, and not as a northern
American line. The public treaties will prove there is no such line;
documents will prove that, so far as 54° 40', from the sea to the
mountains, was ever proposed as a northern boundary for any power,
it was proposed by us for the British, and not for ourselves.
To make myself intelligible in what I shall say on this point, it is
necessary to go back to the epoch of the Russian convention of 1824,
and to recall the recollection of the circumstances out of which
that convention grew. The circumstances were these: In the year 1821
the Emperor Alexander, acting upon a leading idea of Russian policy
(in relation to the North Pacific Ocean) from the time of Peter the
Great, undertook to treat that ocean as a close sea, and to exercise
municipal authority over a great extent of its shores and waters. In
September of that year, the emperor issued a decree, bottomed upon
this pretension, assuming exclusive sovereignty and jurisdiction
over both shores of the North Pacific Ocean, and over the high
seas, in front of each coast, to the extent of one hundred Italian
miles, from Behring's Straits down to latitude fifty-one, on the
American coast, and to forty-five on the Asiatic; and denouncing the
penalties of confiscation upon all ships, of whatsoever nation that
should approach the coasts within the interdicted distances. This
was a very startling decree. Coming from a feeble nation, it would
have been smiled at; coming from Russia, it gave uneasiness to all
nations.
Great Britain and the United States, as having the largest commerce
in the North Pacific Ocean, and as having large territorial claims
on the north-west coast of America, were the first to take the
alarm, and to send remonstrances to St. Petersburg against the
formidable ukase. They found themselves suddenly thrown together,
and standing side by side in this new and portentous contest with
Russia. They remonstrated in concert, and here the wise and pacific
conduct of the Emperor Alexander displayed itself in the most prompt
and honorable manner. He immediately suspended the ukase (which, in
fact, had remained without execution), and invited the United States
and Great Britain to unite with Russia in a convention to settle
amicably, and in a spirit of mutual convenience, all the questions
between them, and especially their respective territorial claims
on the north-west coast of America. This magnanimous proposition
was immediately met by the two powers in a corresponding spirit;
and, the ukase being voluntarily relinquished by the emperor, a
convention was quickly signed by Russia with each power, settling,
so far as Russia was concerned, with each, all their territorial
claims in North-west America. The Emperor Alexander had proposed
that it should be a joint convention of the three powers--a
tripartite convention--settling the claims of each and of all at
the same time; and if this wise suggestion had been followed,
all the subsequent and all the present difficulties between the
United States and Great Britain, with respect to this territory,
would have been entirely avoided. But it was not followed: an act
of our own prevented it. After Great Britain had consented, the
non-colonization principle--the principle of non-colonization in
America by any European power--was promulgated by our government,
and for that reason Great Britain chose to treat separately with
each power, and so it was done.
Great Britain and the United States treated separately with Russia,
and with each other; and each came to agreements with Russia, but to
none among themselves. The agreements with Russia were contained in
two conventions signed nearly at the same time, and nearly in the
same words, limiting the territorial claim of Russia to 54° 40',
confining her to the coasts and islands, and leaving the continent,
out to the Rocky Mountains, to be divided between the United States
and Great Britain, by an agreement between themselves. The emperor
finished up his own business and quit the concern. In fact, it would
seem, from the promptitude, moderation, and fairness with which
he adjusted all differences both with the United States and Great
Britain, that his only object of issuing the alarming ukase of 1821
was to bring those powers to a settlement; acting upon the homely,
but wise maxim, that short settlements make long friends.
Well, there is no such line as 54° 40'; and that would seem to be
enough to quiet the excitement which has been got up about it.
But there is more to come. I set out with saying, that although
this fifty-four forty was never established as a northern boundary
for the United States, yet it was proposed to be established as
a northern boundary, not for us, but for Great Britain--and that
proposal was made to Great Britain by ourselves. This must sound
like a strange statement in the ears of the fifty-four forties; but
it is no more strange than true; and after stating the facts, I mean
to prove them. The plan of the United States at that time was this:
That each of the three powers (Great Britain, Russia, and the United
States) having claims on the north-west coast of America, should
divide the country between them, each taking a third. In this plan
of partition, each was to receive a share of the continent from
the sea to the Rocky Mountains, Russia taking the northern slice,
the United States the southern, and Great Britain the centre, with
fifty-four forty for her northern boundary, and forty-nine for her
southern. The document from which I now read will say fifty-one; but
that was the first offer--forty-nine was the real one, as I will
hereafter show. This was our plan. The moderation of Russia defeated
it. That power had no settlements on that part of the continent, and
rejected the continental share which we offered her. She limited
herself to the coasts and islands where she had settlements, and
left Great Britain and the United States to share the continent
between themselves. But before this was known, we had proposed
to her fifty-four forty for the Russian southern boundary, and to
Great Britain the same for her northern boundary. I say fifty-four
forty; for, although the word in the proposition was fifty-five,
yet it was on the principle which gave fifty-four forty--namely,
running from the south end of Prince of Wales' Island, supposed to
be in fifty-five, but found to have a point to it running down to
fifty-four forty. We proposed this to Great Britain. She refused
it, saying she would establish her northern boundary with Russia,
who was on her north, and not with the United States, who was on
her south. This seemed reasonable; and the United States then, and
not until then, relinquished the business of pressing fifty-four
forty upon Great Britain for her northern boundary. The proof is in
the executive documents. Here it is--a despatch from Mr. Rush, our
minister in London, to Mr. Adams, Secretary of State, dated December
19, 1823.
(The despatch read.)
Here is the offer, in the most explicit terms, in 1823, to make
fifty-five, which was in fact fifty-four forty, the northern
boundary of Great Britain; and here is her answer to that
proposition. It is the next paragraph in the same despatch from
Mr. Rush to Mr. Adams.
(The answer read.)
This was her answer, refusing to take, in 1823, as a northern
boundary coming south for quantity, what is now prescribed to
her, at the peril of war, for a southern boundary, with nothing
north!--for, although the fact happens to be that Russia is not
there, bounding us on the north, yet that makes no difference in
the philosophy of our Fifty-four-Forties, who believe it to be
so; and, on that belief, are ready to fight. Their notion is,
that we go jam up to 54° 40', and the Russians come jam down to
the same, leaving no place for the British lion to put down a
paw, although that paw should be no bigger than the sole of the
dove's foot which sought a resting-place from Noah's ark. This
must seem a little strange to British statesmen, who do not grow
so fast as to leave all knowledge behind them. They remember
that Mr. Monroe and his cabinet--the President and cabinet who
acquired the Spanish title under which we now propose to squeeze
them out of the continent--actually offered them six degrees
of latitude in that very place; and they will certainly want
reasons for this so much compression now, where we offered them
so much expansion then. These reasons cannot be given. There
is no boundary at 54° 40'; and so far as we proposed to make
it one, it was for the British and not for ourselves; and so
ends this redoubtable line, up to which all true patriots were
to march! and marching, fight! and fighting, die! if need be!
singing all the while, with Horace--
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."
I come to the line of Utrecht, the existence of which is denied
upon this floor by senators whose fate it seems to be to assert
the existence of a line that is not, and to deny the existence
of one that is. A clerk in the Department of State has compiled
a volume of voyages and of treaties, and, undertaking to set the
world right, has denied that commissioners ever met under the treaty
of Utrecht, and fixed boundaries between the British northern and
French Canadian possessions in North America. That denial has been
produced and accredited on this floor by a senator in his place
(Mr. Cass); and this production of a blundering book, with this
senatorial endorsement of its blunder, lays me under the necessity
of correcting a third error which the "fifty-four-forties" hug to
their bosom, and the correction of which becomes necessary for the
vindication of history, the establishment of a political right, and
the protection of the Senate from the suspicion of ignorance. I
affirm that the line was established; that the commissioners met and
did their work; and that what they did has been acquiesced in by all
the powers interested from the year 1713 down to the present time.
In the year 1805, being the second year after the acquisition of
Louisiana, President Jefferson sent ministers to Madrid (Messrs.
Monroe and Charles Pinckney) to adjust the southern and southwestern
boundaries with her; and, in doing so, the principles which had
governed the settlement of the northern boundary of the same
province became a proper illustration of their ideas. They quoted
these principles, and gave the line of Utrecht as the example; and
this to Don Pedro Cevallos, one of the most accomplished statesmen
of Europe. They say to him:
"It is believed that this principle has been admitted and
acted on invariably since the discovery of America, in respect
to their possessions there, by all the European powers. It
is particularly illustrated by the stipulations of their
most important treaties concerning those possessions and the
practice under them, viz., the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, and
that of Paris in 1763. In conformity with the 10th article of
the first-mentioned treaty, the boundary between Canada and
Louisiana on the one side, and the Hudson Bay and Northwestern
Companies on the other, was established by commissioners, by a
line to commence at a cape or promontory on the ocean, in 58°
31' north latitude; to run thence, southwestwardly, to latitude
49° north from the equator; and along that line indefinitely
westward. Since that time, no attempt has been made to extend
the limits of Louisiana or Canada to the _north_ of that line,
or of those companies to the _south_ of it, by purchase,
conquest, or grants from the Indians."
This is what Messrs. Monroe and Charles Pinckney said to Don Pedro
Cevallos--a minister who must be supposed to be as well acquainted
with the treaties which settled the boundaries of the late Spanish
province of Louisiana as we are with the treaties which settle the
boundaries of the United States. The line of Utrecht, and in the
very words which carry it from the Lake of the Woods to the Pacific
Ocean, and which confine the British to the north, and the French
and Spanish to the south of that line, are quoted to Mr. Cevallos
as a fact which he and all the world knew. He received it as such;
and thus Spanish authority comes in aid of British, French, and
American, to vindicate our rights and the truth of history.
(The letter was read.)
Another contribution, which I have pleasure to acknowledge, is from
a gentleman of Baltimore, formerly of the House of Representatives
(Mr. Kennedy), who gives me an extract from the Journal of the
British House of Commons, March 5th, 1714, directing a writ to be
issued for electing a burgess in the place of Frederick Herne,
Esq., who, since his election, hath accepted, as the Journal says,
the office of one of his Majesty's commissioners for treating with
commissioners on the part of France for settling the trade between
Great Britain and France. The same entry occurs at the same time
with respect to James Murray, Esq., and Sir Joseph Martyn. The tenth
article of the treaty of Utrecht applies to limits in North America,
the eleventh and fifteenth to commerce; and these commissioners
were appointed under some or all of these articles. Others might
have been appointed by the king, and not mentioned in the journals,
as not being members of Parliament whose vacated seats were to
be filled. All three of the articles of the treaty were equally
obligatory for the appointment of commissioners; and here is proof
that three were appointed under the commercial articles.
One more piece of testimony, and I have done. And, first, a little
statement to introduce it. We all know that in one of the debates
which took place in the British House of Commons on the Ashburton
treaty, and after that treaty was ratified and past recall, mention
was made of a certain map called the King's map, which had belonged
to the late King (George III.), and hung in his library during his
lifetime, and afterwards in the Foreign Office, from which said
office the said map silently disappeared about the time of the
Ashburton treaty, and which certainly was not before our Senate at
the time of the ratification of that treaty. Well, the member who
mentioned it in Parliament said there was a strong red line upon
it, about the tenth of an inch wide, running all along where the
Americans said the true boundary was, with these words written along
it in four places in King George's handwriting: "_This is Oswald's
line_;" meaning, it is the line of the treaty of peace negotiated by
Mr. Oswald on the British side, and therefore called _Oswald's line_.
Now, what I have to say is this: That whenever this royal map
shall emerge from its retreat and resume its place in the Foreign
Office, on it will be found another strong red line about the
tenth of an inch wide, in another place, with these words written
on it: Boundaries between the British and French possessions in
America "_as fixed by the treaty of Utrecht_." To complete this
last and crowning piece of testimony, I have to add that the
evidence of it is in the Department of State, as is nearly the whole
of the evidence which I have used in crushing this _pie-poudre_
insurrection--"_this puddle-lane rebellion_"--against the truth and
majesty of history, which, beginning with a clerk in the Department
of State, spread to all the organs, big and little; then reached the
Senate of the United States, held divided empire in this chamber
for four months, and now dies the death of the ridiculous.[9]
[9] Since the delivery of this speech a copy of a paragraph of a
despatch from Mr. Edward Everett, United States minister in London,
dated 31st March, 1843, has been obtained, giving an account of this
map as shown to him by Lord Aberdeen, containing the two red lines
upon it, one for our northeast boundary, called "Oswald's line," the
other for the northwest, called the line of the "treaty of Utrecht."
The paragraph is in these words:
"The above was chiefly written before I had seen Mr. Oswald's
map, which I have since by the kindness of Sir Robert Peel and
Lord Aberdeen, been permitted to do. It is a copy of Mitchell in
fine preservation. The boundaries between the British and French
possessions in America, 'as fixed by the treaty of Utrecht,'
are marked upon it in a very full distinct line, at least a
tenth of an inch broad, and those words written in several
places. In like manner the line giving our boundary as we have
always claimed it, that is, carrying the northeastern angle of
Nova Scotia far to the north of the St. Johns, is drawn very
carefully in a bold red line, full a tenth of an inch broad: and
in four different places along the line distinctly written 'the
boundary described by Mr. Oswald.' What is very noticeable is,
that a line narrower, but drawn with care with an instrument,
from the lower end of Lake Nipissing to the source of the
Mississippi, as far as the map permits such a line to run, had
once been drawn on the map, and has since been partially erased,
though still distinctly visible."
We must now introduce the gentlemen of 54-40 to Frazer's River,
an acquaintance which they will be obliged to make before they
arrive at their inexorable line; for it lies in their course,
and must be crossed--both itself and the British province of New
Caledonia, which it waters. This, then, is the introduction to
that inevitable acquaintance, hitherto ignored. It is a river of
about a thousand miles in length (following its windings), rising
in the Rocky Mountains, opposite the head of the Unjigah, or Peace
River, which flows into the Frozen Ocean in latitude about 70. The
course of this river is nearly north and south, rising in latitude
55, flowing south to near latitude 49, and along that parallel,
and just north of it, to the Gulf of Georgia, into which it falls
behind Vancouver's Island. The upper part of this river is good for
navigation; the lower half, plunging through volcanic chasms in
mountains of rock, is wholly unnavigable for any species of craft.
This river was discovered by Sir Alexander Mackenzie in 1793, was
settled by the Northwest Company in 1806, and soon covered by their
establishments from head to mouth. No American or Spaniard had ever
left a track upon this river or its valley. Our claim to it, as far
as I can see, rested wholly upon the treaty with Spain of 1819; and
her claim rested wholly upon those discoveries among the islands,
the value of which, as conferring claims upon the continent, it has
been my province to show in our negotiations with Russia in 1824.
At the time that we acquired this Spanish claim to Frazer's River,
it had already been discovered twenty-six years by the British;
had been settled by them for twelve years; was known by a British
name; and no Spaniard had ever made a track on its banks. New
Caledonia, or Western Caledonia, was the name which it then bore;
and it so happens that an American citizen, a native of Vermont,
respectably known to the senators now present from that State, and
who had spent twenty years of his life in the hyperborean regions
of Northwest America, in publishing an account of his travels and
sojournings in that quarter, actually published a description of
this New Caledonia, as a British province, at the very moment that
we were getting it from Spain, and without the least suspicion
that it belonged to Spain! I speak of Mr. David Harmon, whose
Journal of Nineteen Years' Residence between latitudes 47 and 58
in Northwestern America, was published at Andover, in his native
State, in the year 1820, the precise year after we had purchased
this New Caledonia from the Spaniards. I read, not from the volume
itself, which is not in the library of Congress, but from the London
Quarterly Review January No., 1822, as reprinted in Boston; article,
WESTERN CALEDONIA.
(The extract.)
This is the account given by Mr. Harmon of New Caledonia, and
given of it by him at the exact moment that we were purchasing the
Spanish title to it! Of this Spanish title, of which the Spaniards
never heard, the narrator seems to have been as profoundly ignorant
as the Spaniards were themselves; and made his description of New
Caledonia as of a British possession, without any more reference to
an adverse title than if he had been speaking of Canada. So much
for the written description: now let us look at the map, and see
how it stands there. Here is a map--a 54° 40' map--which will show
us the features of the country, and the names of the settlements
upon it. Here is Frazer's River, running from 55° to 49° and here
is a line of British posts upon it, from Fort McLeod, at its head,
to Fort Langley, at its mouth, and from Thompson's Fork, on one
side, to Stuart's Fork on the other. And here are clusters of
British names, imposed by the British, visible every where--Forts
George, St. James, Simpson, Thompson, Frazer, McLeod, Langley,
and others: rivers and lakes with the same names, and others: and
here is Deserter's Creek, so named by Mackenzie, because his guide
deserted him there in July, 1793; and here is an Indian village
which he named Friendly, because the people were the most friendly
to strangers that he had ever seen; and here another called Rascals'
village, so named by Mackenzie fifty-three years ago, because its
inhabitants were the most rascally Indians he had ever seen; and
here is the representation of that famous boundary line 54° 40',
which is supposed to be the exact boundary of American territorial
rights in that quarter, and which happens to include the whole of
New Caledonia, except McLeod's fort, and the whole of Stuart's
lake, and a spring, which is left to the British, while we take
the branch which flows from it. This line takes all in--river,
lakes, forts, villages. See how it goes! Starting at the sea, it
gives us, by a quarter of an inch on the map, Fort Simpson, so
named after the British Governor Simpson, and founded by the Hudson
Bay Company. Upon what principle we take this British fort I know
not--except it be on the assumption that our sacred right and title
being adjusted to a minute, by the aid of these 40 minutes, so
appositely determined by the Emperor Paul's charter to a fur company
in 1799, to be on this straight line, the bad example of even a
slight deviation from it at the start should not be allowed even to
spare a British fort away up at Point McIntyre, in Chatham Sound.
On this principle we can understand the inclusion, by a quarter of
an inch on the map, of this remote and isolated British post. The
cutting in two of Stuart's lake, which the line does as it runs, is
quite intelligible: it must be on the principle stated in one of
the fifty-four-forty papers, that Great Britain should not have one
drop of our water; therefore we divide the lake, each taking their
own share of its drops. The fate of the two forts, McLeod and St.
James, so near each other and so far off from us, united all their
lives, and now so unexpectedly divided from each other by this line,
is less comprehensible; and I cannot account for the difference of
their fates, unless it is upon the law of the day of judgment, when,
of two men in the field, one shall be taken and the other left,
and no man be able to tell the reason why. All the rest of the
inclusions of British establishments which the line makes, from head
to mouth of Frazer's River, are intelligible enough: they turn upon
the principle of all or none!--upon the principle that every acre
and every inch, every grain of sand, drop of water, and blade of
grass in all Oregon, up to fifty-four forty, is ours! and have it we
will.
This is the country which geography and history five-and-twenty
years ago called New Caledonia, and treated as a British possession;
and it is the country which an _organized_ party among ourselves
of the present day call "_the whole of Oregon or none_," and every
inch of which they say belongs to us. Well, let us proceed a little
further with the documents of 1823, and see what the men of that
day--President Monroe and his cabinet--the men who made the treaty
with Spain by which we became the masters of this large domain: let
us proceed a little further, and see what they thought of our title
up to fifty-four forty. I read from the same document of 1823:
_Mr. Adams to Mr. Middleton, July, 22, 1823._
"The right of the United States, from the forty-second to
the forty-ninth parallel of latitude on the Pacific Ocean
we consider as unquestionable, being founded, first, on the
acquisition by the treaty of 22d February, 1819, of all the
rights of Spain; second, by the discovery of the Columbia River,
first from the sea at its mouth, and then by land, by Lewis and
Clarke; and, third, by the settlement at its mouth in 1811. This
territory is to the United States of an importance which no
possession in North America can be of to any European nation,
not only as it is but the continuity of their possessions
from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, but as it offers
their inhabitants the means of establishing hereafter water
communications from the one to the other."
From 42° to 49° is here laid down by Mr. Monroe and his cabinet as
the extent of our unquestionable title, and on these boundaries
they were ready to settle the question. Five other despatches the
same year from Mr. Adams to Mr. Rush, our minister in London, offer
the same thing. They all claim the valley of the Columbia River,
and nothing more. They claim the land drained by its waters, and no
more; but as the Columbia had a northern prong, drawing water just
under the mountains from as far north as 51°--yes! 51--not 54-40,
they offered to cut off the head of that prong, and take the line
of 49, which included all that was worth having of the waters of the
Columbia, and left out, but barely left out, Frazer's River--coming
within three miles of it at its mouth.
On Friday, Mr. President, I read one passage from the documents of
1823, to let you see that fifty-four forty (for that is the true
reading of fifty-five) had been offered to Great Britain for her
northern boundary: to-day I read you six PASSAGES from the same
documents, to show the same thing. And let me remark once more--the
remark will bear eternal repetition--these offers were made by the
men who had acquired the Spanish title to Oregon! and who must be
presumed to know as much about it as those whose acquaintance with
Oregon dates from the epoch of the Baltimore convention--whose
love for it dates from the era of its promulgation as a party
watchword--whose knowledge of it extends to the luminous pages of
Mr. Greenhow's horn-book!
Six times Mr. Monroe and his cabinet renounced Frazer's River
and its valley, and left it to the British! They did so on the
intelligible principle that the British had discovered it, and
settled it, and were in the actual possession of it when we got the
Spanish claim; which claim Spain never made! Upon this principle,
New Caledonia was left to the British in 1823. Upon what _principle_
is it claimed now?
This is what Mr. Monroe and his cabinet thought of our title to the
whole of Oregon or none, in the year 1823. They took neither branch
of this proposition. They did not go for all or none, but for some!
They took some, and left some; and they divided by a line right in
itself, and convenient in itself, and mutually suitable to each
party. That President and his cabinet carry their "unquestionable
right" to Oregon as far as 49°, and no further. This is exactly
what was done six years before. Mr. Gallatin and Mr. Rush offered
the same line, as being a continuation of the line of Utrecht
(describing it by that name in their despatch of October 20th,
1818), and as covering the valley of the Columbia River, to which
they alleged our title to be indisputable. Mr. Jefferson had offered
the same line in 1807. All these offers leave Frazer's River and
its valley to the British, because they discovered and settled it.
All these offers hold on to the Columbia River and its valley,
because we discovered and settled it; and all these offers let the
principle of contiguity or continuity work equally on the British as
on the American side of the line of Utrecht.
This is what the statesmen did who made the acquisition of the
Spanish claim to Oregon in 1819. In four years afterwards they had
freely offered all north of 49 to Great Britain; and no one ever
thought of arraigning them for it. Most of these statesmen have
gone through fiery trials since, and been fiercely assailed on all
the deeds of their lives; but I never heard of one of them being
called to account, much less lose an election, for the part he acted
in offering 49 to Great Britain in 1823, or at any other time. For
my part, I thought they were right then, and I think so now; I was
senator then, as I am now. I thought with them that New Caledonia
belonged to the British; and thinking so still, and acting upon the
first half of the great maxim--Ask nothing but what is right--I
shall not ask them for it, much less fight them for it now.
CHAPTER CLIX.
OREGON JOINT OCCUPATION: NOTICE AUTHORIZED FOR TERMINATING
IT: BRITISH GOVERNMENT OFFERS THE LINE OF 49: QUANDARY OF THE
ADMINISTRATION: DEVICE: SENATE CONSULTED: TREATY MADE AND RATIFIED.
The abrogation of the article in the conventions of 1818 and
1828, for the joint occupation of the Columbia, was a measure
right in itself, indispensable in the actual condition of the
territory--colonies from two nations planting themselves upon it
together--and necessary to stimulate the conclusion of the treaty
which was to separate the possessions of the two countries. Every
consideration required the notice to be given, and Congress finally
voted it; but not without a struggle in each House, longer and more
determined than the disparity of the vote would indicate. In the
House of Representatives, the vote in its favor was 154--headed by
Mr. John Quincy Adams: the nays were 54. The resolution as adopted
by the House, then went to the Senate for its concurrence, where,
on the motion of Mr. Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, it underwent a
very material alteration in form, without impairing its effect,
adopting a preamble containing the motives for the notice, and of
which the leading were to show that amicable settlement of the title
by negotiation was an object in view, and intended to be promoted
by a separation of interests between the parties. Thus amended, the
resolution was passed by a good majority--40 to 14. The yeas and
nays were:
Messrs. Archer, Ashley, Atherton, Bagby, Barrow, Benton,
Berrien, Calhoun, Cameron, Chalmers, John M. Clayton, Corwin,
Crittenden, Davis, Dayton, Dix, Greene, Haywood, Houston,
Huntington, Jarnagin, Johnson of Maryland, Johnson of Louisiana,
Lewis, McDuffie, Mangum, Miller, Morehead, Niles, Pearce,
Pennybacker, Phelps, Rusk, Sevier, Simmons, Speight, Turney,
Upham, Webster, Woodbridge.
The nays were:
Messrs. Allen, Atchison, Breese, Bright, Cass, Thomas Clayton,
Dickinson, Evans, Fairfield, Hannegan, Jenness, Semple,
Sturgeon, Westcott.
These nays were not all opposed to the notice itself, but to the
form it had adopted, and to the clause which left it discretional
with the President to give it when he should think proper. They
constituted the body of the extreme friends of Oregon, standing on
the Baltimore platform--"the whole of Oregon or none"--looking to
war as inevitable, and who certainly would have made it if their
course had been followed. In the House the Senate's amendment
was substantially adopted, and by an increased vote; and the
authority for terminating the joint occupancy--a great political
blunder in itself, and fraught with dangerous consequences--was
eventually given, but after the lapse of a quarter of a century,
and after bringing the two countries to the brink of hostilities.
The President acted at once upon the discretion which was given
him--caused the notice for the abrogation of the joint occupant
article to be immediately given to the British government--and
urged Congress to the adoption of the measures which were necessary
for the protection of the American citizens who had gone to the
territory.
The news of the broken off negotiations was received with regret in
Great Britain. Sir Robert Peel, with the frankness and integrity
which constitute the patriotic statesman, openly expressed his
regret in Parliament that the offer of 49, when made by the American
government, had not been accepted by the British government; and
it was evident that negotiations would be renewed. They were so:
and in a way to induce a speedy conclusion of the question--being
no less than a fair and open offer on the side of the British to
accept the line we had offered. The administration was in a quandary
(qu'en dirai-je? what shall I say to it?), at this unexpected offer.
They felt that it was just, and that it ought to be accepted: at
the same time they had stood upon the platform of the Baltimore
convention--had helped to make it--had had the benefit of it in
the election; and were loth to show themselves inconsistent, or
ignorant. Besides the fifty-four forties were in commotion against
it. A specimen of their temper has been shown in Mr. Hannegan's
denunciation of the President. All the government newspapers--the
official organ at Washington City, and the five hundred democratic
papers throughout the Union which followed its lead, were all
vehement against it. Underhandedly they did what they could to allay
the storm which was raging--encouraging Mr. Haywood, Mr. Benton,
and others to speak; but the pride of consistency, and the fear of
reproach, kept them in the background, and even ostensibly in favor
of 54-40, while encouraging the events which would enable them
to settle on 49. Mr. Pakenham made his offer: it was not a case
for delay: and acceptance or rejection became inevitable. It was
accepted; and nothing remained but to put the treaty into form. A
device was necessary, and it was found in the early practice of the
government--that of the President asking the advice of the Senate
upon the articles of a treaty before the negotiation. Mr. Benton
proposed this course to Mr. Polk. He was pleased with it, but feared
its feasibility. The advice of the Senate would be his sufficient
shield: but could it be obtained? The chances seemed to be against
it. It was an up-hill business, requiring a vote of two-thirds:
it was a novelty, not practised since the time of Washington:
it was a submission to the whigs, with the risk of defeat; for
unless they stood by the President against the dominant division
of his own friends, the advice desired would not be given; and the
embarrassment of the administration would be greater than ever. In
this uneasy and uncertain state of mind, the President had many
conferences with Mr. Benton, the point of which was to know, beyond
the chance of mistake, how far he could rely upon the whig senators.
Mr. Benton talked with them all--with Webster, Archer, Berrien,
John M. Clayton, Crittenden, Corwin, Davis of Massachusetts,
Dayton, Greene of Rhode Island, Huntington of Connecticut, Reverdy
Johnson, Henry Johnson of Louisiana, Miller of New Jersey, Phelps,
Simmons, Upham, Woodbridge,--and saw fully that they intended to
act for their country, and not for their party: and reported to the
President that he would be safe in trusting to them--that their
united voice would be in favor of the advice, which, added to the
minority of the democracy, would make the two-thirds which were
requisite. The most auspicious mode of applying for this advice was
deemed to be the submission of a _projet_ of a treaty, presented by
the British minister, and to be laid before the Senate for their
opinion upon its acceptance. The _projet_ was accordingly received
by Mr. Buchanan, a message drawn up, and the desired advice was to
be asked the next day, 10th of June. A prey to anxiety as to the
conduct of the whigs, the mere absence of part of whom would defeat
the measure, the President sent for Mr. Benton the night before,
to get himself re-assured on that point. Mr. Benton was clear and
positive that they would be in their places, and would vote the
advice, and that the measure would be carried. The next day the
_projet_ of the treaty was sent in, and with it a message from the
President, asking the advice which he desired. It stated:--
"In the early periods of the government, the opinion and advice
of the Senate were often taken in advance upon important
questions of our foreign policy. General Washington repeatedly
consulted the Senate, and asked their previous advice upon
pending negotiations with foreign powers; and the Senate in
every instance responded to his call by giving their advice,
to which he always conformed his action. This practice, though
rarely resorted to in later times, was, in my judgment,
eminently wise, and may, on occasions of great importance, be
properly revived. The Senate are a branch of the treaty-making
power; and, by consulting them in advance of his own action
upon important measures of foreign policy which may ultimately
come before them for their consideration, the President secures
harmony of action between that body and himself. The Senate
are, moreover, a branch of the war-making power, and it may
be eminently proper for the Executive to take the opinion and
advice of that body in advance upon any great question which
may involve in its decision the issue of peace or war. On the
present occasion, the magnitude of the subject would induce me,
under any circumstances, to desire the previous advice of the
Senate; and that desire is increased by the recent debates and
proceedings in Congress, which render it, in my judgment, not
only respectful to the Senate, but necessary and proper, if not
indispensable, to insure harmonious action between that body and
the Executive. In conferring on the Executive the authority to
give the notice for the abrogation of the convention of 1827,
the Senate acted publicly so large a part, that a decision on
the proposal now made by the British government, without a
definite knowledge of the views of that body in reference to it,
might render the question still more complicated and difficult
of adjustment. For these reasons I invite the consideration of
the Senate to the proposal of the British government for the
settlement of the Oregon question, and ask their advice on the
subject."
This statement and expression of opinion were conformable to the
early practice of the government and the theory of the constitution,
which, in requiring the President to take the advice of the Senate
in the formation of treaties, would certainly imply a consultation
before they were made; and this interpretation had often been
asserted by members of the Senate. As an interpretation deemed right
in itself, and being deferential to the Senate, and being of good
example for the future, and of great immediate practical good in
taking the question of peace or war with Great Britain out of the
hands of an administration standing upon the creed of the Baltimore
convention, and putting it into the hands of the whigs to whom it
did not apply, and that part of the democracy which disregarded
it, this application of the President was most favorably received.
Still, however, dominated by the idea of consistency, the President
added a salvo for that sensitive point in the shape of a reservation
in behalf of his previous opinions, thus:
"My opinions and my action on the Oregon question were fully
made known to Congress in my annual message of the second
of December last; and the opinions therein expressed remain
unchanged."
With this reservation, and with a complete devolution of the
responsibility of the act upon the Senate, he proceeded to ask their
advice in these terms:
"Should the Senate, by the constitutional majority required for
the ratification of treaties, advise the acceptance of this
proposition, or advise it with such modifications as they may,
upon full deliberation, deem proper, I shall conform my action
to their advice. Should the Senate, however, decline by such
constitutional majority to give such advice, or to express an
opinion on the subject, I shall consider it my duty to reject
the offer."
It was clear, then, that the fact of treaty or no treaty depended
upon the Senate--that the whole responsibility was placed upon
it--that the issue of peace or war depended upon that body. Far from
shunning this responsibility, that body was glad to take it, and
gave the President a faithful support against himself, against his
cabinet, and against his peculiar friends. These friends struggled
hard, and exhausted parliamentary tactics to defeat the application,
and though a small minority, were formidable in a vote where each
one counted two against the opposite side. The first motion was
to refer the message to the Committee on Foreign Relations, where
the fifty-four forties were in the majority, and from whose action
delay and embarrassment might ensue. Failing in that motion, it was
moved to lay the message on the table. Failing again, it was moved
to postpone the consideration of the subject to the next week.
That motion being rejected, the consideration of the message was
commenced, and then succeeded a series of motions to amend and alter
the terms of the proposition as submitted. All these failed, and at
the end of two days the vote was taken and the advice given. The
yeas were:
"Messrs. Archer, Ashley, Bagby, Benton, Berrien, Calhoun,
Chalmers, Thomas Clayton, John M. Clayton, Colquitt, Davis,
Dayton, Dix, Evans, Greene, Haywood, Houston, Huntington,
Johnson of Maryland, Johnson of Louisiana, Lewis, McDuffie,
Mangum, Miller, Morehead, Niles, Pearce, Pennybacker, Phelps,
Rusk, Sevier, Simmons, Speight, Turney, Upham, Webster,
Woodbridge, Yulee."--38.
The nays:
"Messrs. Allen, Atherton, Breese, Cameron, Cass, Dickinson,
Fairfield, Hannegan, Jarnagin, Jenness, Semple, Sturgeon."--12.
The advice was in these words:
"_Resolved_ (two-thirds of the Senators present concurring),
That the President of the United States be, and he is hereby,
advised to accept the proposal of the British government,
accompanying his message to the Senate dated 10th June, 1846,
for a convention to settle boundaries, &c., between the United
States and Great Britain west of the Rocky or Stony mountains.
"_Ordered_, That the Secretary lay the said resolution before
the President of the United States."
Four days afterwards the treaty was sent in in due form, accompanied
by a message which still left its responsibility on the advising
Senate, thus:
"In accordance with the resolution of the Senate of the 12th
instant, that 'the President of the United States be, and
he is hereby, advised to accept the proposal of the British
government, accompanying his message to the Senate dated 10th
June, 1846, for a convention to settle boundaries, &c., between
the United States and Great Britain west of the Rocky or Stony
mountains,' a convention was concluded and signed on the 15th
instant, by the Secretary of State on the part of the United
States, and the envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary
of her Britannic Majesty on the part of Great Britain. This
convention I now lay before the Senate for their consideration,
with a view to its ratification."
Two days more were consumed in efforts to amend or alter the treaty
in various of its provisions, all of which failing, the final vote
on its ratification was taken, and carried by an increased vote on
each side--41 to 14.
YEAS.--"Messrs. Archer, Ashley, Bagby, Barrow, Benton, Berrien,
Calhoun, Chalmers, Thomas Clayton, John M. Clayton, Colquitt,
Corwin, Crittenden, Davis, Dayton, Dix, Evans, Greene, Haywood,
Houston, Huntington, Johnson of Maryland, Henry Johnson of
Louisiana, Lewis, McDuffie, Mangum, Miller, Morehead, Niles,
Pearce, Pennybacker, Phelps, Rusk, Sevier, Simmons, Speight,
Turney, Upham, Webster, Woodbridge, Yulee.
NAYS.--"Messrs. Allen, Atchison, Atherton, Breese, Bright,
Cameron, Cass, Dickinson, Fairfield, Hannegan, Jenness, Semple,
Sturgeon, Westcott."
An anomaly was presented in the progress of this question--that of
the daily attack, by all the government papers, upon the senators
who were accomplishing the wishes of the President. The organ at
Washington, conducted by Mr. Ritchie, was incessant and unmeasured
in these attacks, especially on Mr. Benton, whose place in the
party, and his geographical position in the West, gave him the
privilege of being considered the leader of the forty-nines, and
therefore the most obnoxious. It was a new thing under the sun
to see the senator daily assailed, in the government papers, for
carrying into effect the wishes of the government--to see him
attacked in the morning for what the President was hurrying him
to do the night before. His course was equally independent of the
wishes of the government, and the abuse of its papers. He had
studied the Oregon question for twenty-five years--had his mind
made up upon it--and should have acted according to his convictions
without regard to support or resistance from any quarter.--The issue
was an instructive commentary upon the improvidence of these party
platforms, adopted for an electioneering campaign, made into a party
watch-word, often fraught with great mischief to the country, and
often founded in ignorance or disregard of the public welfare. This
Oregon platform was eminently of that character. It was a party
platform for the campaign: its architects knew but little of the
geography of the north-west coast, or of its diplomatic history.
They had never heard of the line of the treaty of Utrecht, and
denied its existence: they had never heard of the multiplied offers
of our government to settle upon that line, and treated the offer
now as a novelty and an abandonment of our rights: they had never
heard that their 54-40 was no line on the continent, but only a
point on an island on the coast, fixed by the Emperor Paul as the
southern limit of the charter granted by him to the Russian Fur
Company: had never heard of Frazer's River and New Caledonia, which
lay between Oregon and their indisputable line, and ignored the
existence of that river and province. The pride of consistency made
them adhere to these errors; and a desire to destroy Mr. Benton
for not joining in the _hurrahs_ for the "whole of Oregon, or
none," and for the "immediate annexation of Texas without regard to
consequences," lent additional force to the attacks upon him. The
conduct of the whigs was patriotic in preferring their country to
their party--in preventing a war with Great Britain--and in saving
the administration from itself and its friends. Great Britain acted
magnanimously, and was worthily represented by her minister,
Mr. (now Sir Richard) Pakenham. Her adoption and renewal of our
own offer, settled the last remaining controversy between the
countries--left them in a condition which they had not seen since
the peace of 1783--without any thing to quarrel about, and with a
mutuality of interest in the preservation of peace which promised a
long continuance of peace. But, alas, Great Britain is to the United
States now what Spain was for centuries to her--the raw-head and
bloody-bones which inspires terror and rage. During these centuries
a ministry, or a public man that was losing ground at home, had only
to raise a cry of some insult, aggression, or evil design on the
part of Spain to have Great Britain in arms against her. And so it
is in the United States at present, putting Great Britain in the
place of Spain, and ourselves in hers. We have periodical returns
of complaints against her, each to perish when it has served its
turn, and to be succeeded by another, evanescent as itself. Thus
far, no war has been made; but politicians have gained reputations;
newspapers have taken fire; stocks have vacillated, to the profit
of jobbers; great expense incurred for national defence in ships
and forts, when there is nothing to defend against: and if there
was, the electric telegraph and the steam car would do the work with
little expense either of time or money.
CHAPTER CLX.
MEETING OF THE SECOND SESSION OF THE 29TH CONGRESS: PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE:
VIGOROUS PROSECUTION OF THE WAR RECOMMENDED: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL
PROPOSED TO BE CREATED.
Congress met at the regular annual period, the first Monday in
December; and being the second session of the same body, there was
nothing to be done, after the assembling of a quorum, before the
commencement of business, but to receive the President's message. It
was immediately communicated, and, of course, was greatly occupied
with the Mexican war. The success of our arms, under the command
of General Taylor, was a theme of exultation; and after that, an
elaborate argument to throw the blame of the war on Mexico. The war
was assumed, and argued to have been made by her, and its existence
only recognized by us after "American blood had been spilled upon
American soil." History is bound to pronounce her judgment upon
these assumptions, and to say that they are unfounded. In the first
place, the legal state of war, the _status belli_, was produced by
the incorporation of Texas, with which Mexico was at war. In the
next place, the United States' government understood that act to
be the assumption of the war in fact, as well as in law, by the
immediate advance of the army to the frontier of Texas, and of
the navy to the Gulf of Mexico, to take the war off the hands of
the Texians. In the third place, the actual collision of arms was
brought on by the further advance of the American troops to the left
bank of the Lower Rio Grande, then and always in the possession
of Mexico, and erecting field works on the bank of the river, and
pointing cannon at the town of Matamoras on the opposite side, the
seat of a Mexican population, and the head-quarters of their army
of observation. It was under these circumstances that the Mexican
troops crossed the river, and commenced the attack. And this is
what is called spilling American blood on American soil. The laws
of nations and the law of self-defence, justify that spilling of
blood; and such will be the judgment of history. The paragraph in
the original message asking for a provisional territorial government
to be established by Congress for the conquered provinces was
superseded, and replaced by one asserting the right of the United
States to govern them under the law of nations, according to the
recommendation of Mr. Benton, and expressed in these words:
"By the laws of nations a conquered territory is subject to be
governed by the conqueror during his military possession, and
until there is either a treaty of peace, or he shall voluntarily
withdraw from it. The old civil government being necessarily
superseded, it is the right and duty of the conqueror to secure
his conquest, and provide for the maintenance of civil order and
the rights of the inhabitants. This right has been exercised and
this duty performed by our military and naval commanders, by the
establishment of temporary governments in some of the conquered
provinces in Mexico, assimilating them as far as practicable
to the free institutions of our country. In the provinces of
New Mexico and of the Californias, little, if any further
resistance is apprehended from the inhabitants of the temporary
governments which have thus, from the necessity of the case,
and according to the laws of war, been established. It may be
proper to provide for the security of these important conquests,
by making an adequate appropriation for the purpose of erecting
fortifications, and defraying the expenses necessarily incident
to the maintenance of our possession and authority over them."
Having abandoned the idea of conquering by "a masterly inactivity,"
and adopted the idea of a vigorous prosecution of the war, the
President also adopted Mr. Benton's plan for prosecuting it, which
was to carry the war straight to the city of Mexico--General Taylor,
for that purpose, to be supplied with 25,000 men, that, advancing
along the table land by San Luis de Potosi, and overcoming all the
obstacles in his way, and leaving some garrisons, he might arrive
at the capital with some 10,000 men:--General Scott to be supplied
with 15,000, that, landing at Vera Cruz, and leaving some battalions
to invest (with the seamen) that town, he might run up the road to
Mexico, arriving there (after all casualties) with 10,000 men. Thus
20,000 men were expected to arrive at the capital, but 10,000 were
deemed enough to master any Mexican force which could meet it--no
matter how numerous. This plan (and that without any reference to
dissensions among generals) required a higher rank than that of
major-general. A lieutenant-general, representing the constitutional
commander-in-chief, was the proper commander in the field: and as
such, was a part of Colonel Benton's plan; to which negotiation
was to be added, and much relied on, as it was known that the old
republican party--that which had framed a constitution on the model
of that of the United States, and sought its friendship--were all
in favor of peace. All this plan was given to the President in
writing, and having adopted all that part of it which depended on
his own authority, he applied to Congress to give him authority to
do what he could not without it, namely, to make the appointment of
a lieutenant-general--the appointment, it being well known, intended
for Senator Benton, who had been a colonel in the army before either
of the present generals held that rank. The bill for the creation of
this office readily passed the House of Representatives, but was
undermined and defeated in the Senate by three of the President's
cabinet ministers, Messrs. Marcy, Walker, and Buchanan--done
covertly, of course, for reasons unconnected with the public
service. The plan went on, and was consummated, although the office
of lieutenant-general was not created. A major-general, in right
of seniority, had to command other major-generals; while every one
accustomed to military, or naval service, knows that it is rank,
and not seniority, which is essential to harmonious and efficient
command.
CHAPTER CLXI.
WAR WITH MEXICO: THE WAR DECLARED, AND AN INTRIGUE FOR PEACE
COMMENCED THE SAME DAY.
The state of war had been produced between the United States and
Mexico by the incorporation of Texas: hostilities between the two
countries were brought on by the advance of the American troops to
the left bank of the Lower Rio Grande--the Mexican troops being
on the opposite side. The left bank of the river being disputed
territory, and always in her possession, the Mexican government had
a right to consider this advance an aggression--and the more so
as field-works were thrown up, and cannon pointed at the Mexican
town of Matamoros on the opposite side of the river. The armies
being thus in presence, with anger in their bosoms and arms in
their hands, that took place which every body foresaw must take
place: collisions and hostilities. They did so; and early in May
the President sent in a message to the two Houses of Congress,
informing them that American blood had been spilt upon American
soil; and requesting Congress to recognize the existence of war,
as a fact, and to provide for its prosecution. It was, however, an
event determined upon before the spilling of that blood, and the
advance of the troops was a way of bringing it on. The President in
his message at the commencement of the session, after an enumeration
of Mexican wrongs, had distinctly intimated that he should have
recommended measures of redress if a minister had not been sent
to effect a peaceable settlement; but the minister having gone,
and not yet been heard from, "he should forbear recommending to
Congress such ulterior measures of redress for the wrongs and
injuries we have so long borne, as it would have been proper to
make had no such negotiation been instituted." This was a declared
postponement of war measures for a contingency which might quickly
happen; and did. Mr. Slidell, the minister, returned without having
been received, and denouncing war in his retiring despatch. The
contingency had therefore occurred on which the forbearance of the
President was to cease, and the ulterior measures to be recommended
which he had intimated. All this was independent of the spilt blood;
but that event producing a state of hostilities in fact, fired
the American blood, both in and out of Congress, and inflamed the
country for immediate war. Without that event it would have been
difficult--perhaps impossible--to have got Congress to vote it:
with it, the vote was almost unanimous. Duresse was plead by many
members--duresse in the necessity of aiding our own troops. In the
Senate only two senators voted against the measure, Mr. Thomas
Clayton of Delaware, and Mr. John Davis of Massachusetts. In the
House there were 14 negative votes: Messrs. John Quincy Adams,
George Ashmun, Henry Y. Cranston, Erastus D. Culver, Columbus
Delano, Joshua R. Giddings, Joseph Grinnell, Charles Hudson, Daniel
P. King, Joseph M. Root, Luther Severance, John Strohm, Daniel R.
Tilden and Joseph Vance. Mr. Calhoun spoke against the bill, but
did not vote upon it. He was sincerely opposed to the war, although
his conduct had produced it--always deluding himself, even while
creating the _status belli_, with the belief that money, and her
own weakness, would induce Mexico to submit, and yield to the
incorporation of Texas without forcible resistance: which would
certainly have been the case if the United States had proceeded
gently by negotiation. He had despatched a messenger, to offer a
douceur of ten millions of dollars at the time of signing the treaty
of annexation two years before, and he expected the means, repulsed
then, to be successful now when the incorporation should be effected
under an act of Congress. Had he remained in the cabinet to do which
he had not concealed his wish, his labors would have been earnestly
directed to that end; but his associates who had co-operated with
him in getting up the Texas question for the presidential election,
and to defeat Mr. Van Buren and Mr. Clay, had war in view as an
object within itself from the beginning: and these associates were
now in the cabinet, and he not--their power increased: his gone.
Claims upon Mexico, and speculations in Texas land and scrip, were
with them (the active managing part of the cabinet) an additional
motive, and required a war, or a treaty under the menace of war, or
at the end of war, to make these claims and speculations available.
Mr. Robert J. Walker had the reputation of being at the head of this
class.
Many members of Congress, of the same party with the administration,
were extremely averse to this war, and had interviews with the
administration, to see if it was inevitable, before it was declared.
They were found united for it, and also under the confident belief
that there would be no war--not another gun fired: and that in
"ninety" or "one hundred and twenty days," peace would be signed,
and all the objects gained. This was laid down as a certainty, and
the President himself declared that Congress would be "responsible
if they did not vote the declaration." Mr. Benton was struck with
this confident calculation, without knowing its basis; and with
these 90 and 120 days, the usual run of a country bill of exchange;
and which was now to become the run of the war. It was enigmatical,
and unintelligible, but eventually became comprehensible. Truth
was, an intrigue was laid for a peace before the war was declared!
and this intrigue was even part of the scheme for making the war.
It is impossible to conceive of an administration less warlike, or
more intriguing, than that of Mr. Polk. They were men of peace,
with objects to be accomplished by means of war; so that war was a
necessity and an indispensability to their purpose; but they wanted
no more of it than would answer their purposes. They wanted a small
war, just large enough to require a treaty of peace, and not large
enough to make military reputations, dangerous for the presidency.
Never were men at the head of a government less imbued with military
spirit, or more addicted to intrigue. How to manage the war was
the puzzle. Defeat would be ruin: to conquer vicariously, would
be dangerous. Another mode must be fallen upon; and that seemed
to have been devised before the declaration was resolved upon,
and to have been relied upon for its immediate termination--for
its conclusion within the 90 and the 120 days which had been so
confidently fixed for its term. This was nothing less than the
restoration of the exiled Santa Anna to power, and the purchase of
a peace from him. The date of the conception of this plan is not
known: the execution of it commenced on the day of the declaration
of war. It was intended to be secret, both for the honor of the
United States, the success of the movement, and the safety of Santa
Anna; but it leaked out: and the ostentation of Captain Slidell
Mackenzie in giving all possible _eclat_ to his secret mission,
put the report on the winds, and sent it flying over the country.
At first it was denied, and early in July the Daily Union (the
government paper) gave it a formal and authoritative contradiction.
Referring to the current reports that paper said:
"We deem it our duty to state in the most positive terms,
that our government has no sort of connection with any scheme
of Santa Anna for the revolution of Mexico, or for any sort
of purpose. Some three months ago some adventurer was in
Washington, who wished to obtain their countenance and aid in
some scheme or other connected with Santa Anna. They declined
all sort of connection, co-operation, or participation in any
effort for the purpose. The government of this country declines
all such intrigues or bargains. They have made war openly in
the face of the world. They mean to prosecute it with all their
vigor. They mean to force Mexico to do us justice at the point
of the sword. This, then, is their design--this is their plan;
and it is worthy of a bold, high-minded, and energetic people."
The only part of this publication that retains a surviving interest,
is that which states that, some three months before that time
(which would have been a month before the war was declared), some
adventurer was in Washington who wished to obtain the government
countenance to some scheme connected with Santa Anna. As for the
rest, and all the denial, it was soon superseded by events--by the
actual return of Santa Anna through our fleet, and upon an American
passport! and open landing at Vera Cruz. Further denial became
impossible: justification was the only course: and the President
essayed it in his next annual message. Thus:
"Before that time (the day of the declaration of the war) there
were symptoms of a revolution in Mexico, favored, as it was
understood to be, by the more liberal party, and especially
by those who were opposed to foreign interference and to the
monarchical government. Santa Anna was then in exile in Havana,
having been expelled from power and banished from his country
by a revolution which occurred in December, 1844; but it was
known that he had still a considerable party in his favor in
Mexico. It was also equally well known, that no vigilance which
could be exerted by our squadron would, in all probability,
have prevented him from effecting a landing somewhere on the
extensive gulf coast of Mexico, if he desired to return to his
county. He had openly professed an entire change of policy;
had expressed his regret that he had subverted the federal
constitution of 1824, and avowed that he was now in favor of
its restoration. He had publicly declared his hostility, in the
strongest terms, to the establishment of a monarchy, and to
European interference in the affairs of his country. Information
to this effect had been received, from sources believed to be
reliable, at the date of the recognition of the existence of
the war by Congress, and was afterwards fully confirmed by the
receipt of the despatch of our consul in the city of Mexico,
with the accompanying documents, which are herewith transmitted.
Besides, it was reasonable to suppose that he must see the
ruinous consequences to Mexico of a war with the United States,
and that it would be his interest to favor peace. It was under
these circumstances and upon these considerations that it was
deemed expedient not to obstruct his return to Mexico, should
he attempt to do so. Our object was the restoration of peace;
and with that view, no reason was perceived why we should take
part with Paredes, and aid him, by means of our blockade, in
preventing the return of his rival to Mexico. On the contrary,
it was believed that the intestine divisions which ordinary
sagacity could not but anticipate as the fruit of Santa Anna's
return to Mexico, and his contest with Paredes, might strongly
tend to produce a disposition with both parties to restore and
preserve peace with the United States. Paredes was a soldier by
profession, and a monarchist in principle. He had but recently
before been successful in a military revolution, by which he had
obtained power. He was the sworn enemy of the United States,
with which he had involved his country in the existing war.
Santa Anna had been expelled from power by the army, was known
to be in open hostility to Paredes, and publicly pledged against
foreign intervention and the restoration of monarchy in Mexico.
In view of these facts and circumstances, it was, that, when
orders were issued to the commander of our naval forces in the
Gulf, on the thirteenth day of May last, the day on which the
existence of the war was recognized by Congress, to place the
coasts of Mexico under blockade, he was directed not to obstruct
the passage of Santa Anna to Mexico, should he attempt to
return."
So that the return of Santa Anna, and his restoration to power, and
his expected friendship, were part of the means relied upon for
obtaining peace from the beginning--from the day of the declaration
of war, and consequently before the declaration, and obviously as
an inducement to it. This knowledge, subsequently obtained, enabled
Mr. Benton (to whom the words had been spoken) to comprehend the
reliance which was placed on the termination of the war in ninety
or one hundred and twenty days. It was the arrangement with Santa
Anna! we to put him back in Mexico, and he to make peace with us;
of course an agreeable peace. But Santa Anna was not a man to
promise any thing, whether intending to fulfill it or not, without
receiving a consideration; and in this case some million of dollars
was the sum required--not for himself, of course, but to enable him
to promote the peace at home. This explains the application made
to Congress by the President before the end of its session--before
the adjournment of the body which had declared the war--for an
appropriation of two millions as a means of terminating it. On the
4th of August a confidential message was communicated to the Senate,
informing them that he had made fresh overtures to Mexico for
negotiation of a treaty of peace, and asking for an appropriation
of two millions to enable him to treat with the better prospect
of success, and even to pay the money when the treaty should be
ratified in Mexico, without waiting for its ratification by our own
Senate. After stating the overture, and the object, the message went
on to say:
"Under these circumstances, and considering the exhausted and
distracted condition of the Mexican republic, it might become
necessary, in order to restore peace, that I should have it in
my power to advance a portion of the consideration money for any
cession of territory which may be made. The Mexican government
might not be willing to wait for the payment of the whole until
the treaty could be ratified by the Senate, and an appropriation
to carry it into effect be made by Congress; and the necessity
for such a delay might defeat the object altogether. I would,
therefore, suggest whether it might not be wise for Congress
to appropriate a sum such as they might consider adequate for
this purpose, to be paid, if necessary, immediately upon the
ratification of the treaty by Mexico."
A similar communication was made to the House on the 8th day of
the month (August), and the dates become material, as connecting
the requested appropriation with the return of Santa Anna, and his
restoration to power. The dates are all in a cluster--Santa Anna
landing at Vera Cruz on the 8th of August, and arriving at the
capital on the 15th--the President's messages informing the Senate
that he had made overtures for peace, and asking the appropriations
to promote it, being dated on the 4th and the 8th of the same month.
The fact was, it was known at what time Santa Anna was to leave
Havana for Mexico, and the overture was made, and the appropriations
asked, just at the proper time to meet him. The appropriation was
not voted by Congress, and at the next session the application for
it was renewed, increased to three millions--the same to which Mr.
Wilmot offered that _proviso_ which Mr. Calhoun privately hugged to
his bosom as a fortunate event for the South, while publicly holding
it up as the greatest of outrages, and just cause for a separation
of the slave and the free States.
An intrigue for peace, through the restored Santa Anna, was then
a part of the war with Mexico from the beginning. They were
simultaneous concoctions. They were twins. The war was made to get
the peace. Ninety to one-hundred and twenty days was to be the limit
of the life of the war, and that pacifically all the while, and to
be terminated by a good treaty of indemnities and acquisitions. It
is probably the first time in the history of nations that a secret
intrigue for peace was part and parcel of an open declaration of
war! the first time that a war was commenced upon an agreement to
finish it in so many days! and that the terms of its conclusion were
settled before its commencement. It was certainly a most unmilitary
conception: and infinitely silly, as the event proved. Santa Anna,
restored by our means, and again in power, only thought of himself,
and how to make Mexico his own, after getting back. He took the
high military road. He roused the war spirit of the country,
raised armies, placed himself at their head, issued animating
proclamations; and displayed the most exaggerated hatred to the
United States--the more so, perhaps, to cover up the secret of his
return. He gave the United States a year of bloody and costly work!
many thousands killed--many more dead of disease--many ten millions
of money expended. Buena Vista, Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Churubusco,
Chepultepec, were the fruit of his return! honorable to the American
arms, but costly in blood and money. To the Mexicans his return was
not less inauspicious: for, true to his old instincts, he became the
tyrant of his country--ruled by fraud, force, and bribes--crushed
the liberal party--exiled or shot liberal men--became intolerable--and
put the nation to the horrors of another civil war to expel him
again, and again: but not finally until he had got another milking
from the best cow that ever was in his pen--more money from the
United States. It was all the natural consequence of trusting such
a man: the natural consequence of beginning war upon an intrigue
with him. But what must history say of the policy and morality of
such doings? The butcher of the American prisoners at Goliad, San
Patricio, the Old Mission and the Alamo; the destroyer of republican
government at home; the military dictator aspiring to permanent
supreme power: this man to be restored to power by the United
States, for the purpose of fulfilling speculating and indemnity
calculations on which a war was begun.
CHAPTER CLXII.
BLOODLESS CONQUEST OF NEW MEXICO: HOW IT WAS DONE: SUBSEQUENT BLOODY
INSURRECTION, AND ITS CAUSE.
General Kearney was directed to lead an expedition to New Mexico,
setting out from the western frontier of Missouri, and mainly
composed of volunteers from that State; and to conquer the province.
He did so, without firing a gun, and the only inquiry is, how it was
done? how a province nine hundred miles distant, covered by a long
range of mountain which could not well be turned, penetrable only
by a defile which could not be forced, and defended by a numerous
militia--could so easily be taken? This work does not write of
military events, open to public history, but only of things less
known, and to show how they were done: and in this point of view the
easy and bloodless conquest of New Mexico, against such formidable
obstacles, becomes an exception, and presents a proper problem for
intimate historical solution. That solution is this: At the time of
the fitting out that expedition there was a citizen of the United
States, long resident in New Mexico, on a visit of business at
Washington City--his name James Magoffin;--a man of mind, of will,
of generous temper, patriotic, and rich. He knew every man in New
Mexico and his character, and all the localities, and could be of
infinite service to the invading force. Mr. Benton proposed to him
to go with it: he agreed. Mr. Benton took him to the President and
Secretary at War, who gladly availed themselves of his agreement
to go with General Kearney. He went: and approaching New Mexico,
was sent ahead, with a staff officer--the officer charged with a
mission, himself charged with his own plan: which was to operate
upon Governor Armijo, and prevent his resistance to the entrance
of the American troops. That was easily done. Armijo promised not
to make a stand at the defile, after which the invaders would
have no difficulty. But his second in command, Col. Archuletti,
was determined to fight, and to defend that pass; and if he did,
Armijo would have to do the same. It became indispensable to quiet
Archuletti. He was of different mould from the governor, and only
accessible to a different class of considerations--those which
addressed themselves to ambition. Magoffin knew the side on which
to approach him. It so happened that General Kearney had set out
to take the left bank of the Upper Del Norte--the eastern half of
New Mexico--as part of Texas, leaving the western part untouched.
Magoffin explained this to Archuletti, pointed to the western half
of New Mexico as a derelict, not seized by the United States,
and too far off to be protected by the central government: and
recommended him to make a _pronunciamiento_, and take that half
to himself. The idea suited the temper of Archuletti. He agreed
not to fight, and General Kearney was informed there would be no
resistance at the defile: and there was none. Some thousands of
militia collected there (and which could have stopped a large
army), retired without firing a gun, and without knowing why. Armijo
fled, and General Kearney occupied his capital: and the conquest
was complete and bloodless: and this was the secret of that facile
success--heralded in the newspapers as a masterpiece of generalship,
but not so reported by the general.
But there was an after-clap, to make blood flow for the recovery of
a province which had been yielded without resistance. Mr. Magoffin
was sincere and veracious in what he said to Col. Archuletti;
but General Kearney soon (or before) had other orders, and took
possession of the whole country! and Archuletti, deeming himself
cheated, determined on a revolt. Events soon became favorable to
him. General Kearney proceeded to California, leaving General
Sterling Price in command, with some Missouri volunteers. Archuletti
prepared his insurrection, and having got the upper country above
Santa Fé ready, went below to prepare the lower part. While absent,
the plot was detected and broke out, and led to bloody scenes in
which there was severe fighting, and many deaths on both sides. It
was in this insurrection that Governor Charles Bent, of New Mexico,
and Captain Burgwin of the United States army, and many others were
killed. The insurgents fought with courage and desperation; but,
without their leader, without combination, without resources, they
were soon suppressed; many being killed in action, and others hung
for high treason--being tried by some sort of a court which had no
jurisdiction of treason. All that were condemned were hanged except
one, and he recommended to the President of the United States for
pardon. Here was a dilemma for the administration. To pardon the
man would be to admit the legality of the condemnation: not to
pardon was to subject him to murder. A middle course was taken: the
officers were directed to turn loose the condemned, and let him run.
And this was the cause of the insurrection, and its upshot.
Mr. Magoffin having prepared the way for the entrance of General
Kearney into Santa Fé, proceeded to the execution of the remaining
part of his mission, which was to do the same by Chihuahua for
General Wool, then advancing upon that ancient capital of the
Western Internal Provinces on a lower line. He arrived in that
city--became suspected--was arrested--and confined. He was a
social, generous-tempered man, a son of Erin: loved company, spoke
Spanish fluently, entertained freely, and where it was some cost
to entertain--claret $36 00 a-dozen, champagne $50 00. He became a
great favorite with the Mexican officers. One day the military judge
advocate entered his quarters, and told him that Dr. Connolly, an
American, coming from Santa Fé, had been captured near El Paso del
Norte, his papers taken, and forwarded to Chihuahua, and placed
in his hands, to see if there were any that needed government
attention: and that he had found among the papers a letter addressed
to him (Mr. Magoffin). He had the letter unopened, and said he did
not know what it might be; but being just ordered to join Santa
Anna at San Luis Potosi, and being unwilling that any thing should
happen after he was gone to a gentleman who had been so agreeable
to him, he had brought it to him, that he might destroy it if
there was any thing in it to commit him. Magoffin glanced his eyes
over the letter. It was an attestation from General Kearney of his
services in New Mexico, recommending him to the acknowledgments of
the American government in that invasion!--that is to say, it was
his death warrant, if seen by the Mexican authorities. A look was
exchanged: the letter went into the fire: and Magoffin escaped being
shot.
But he did not escape suspicion. He remained confined until the
approach of Doniphan's expedition, and was then sent off to Durango,
where he remained a prisoner to the end of the war. Returning to
the United States after the peace, he came to Washington in the
last days of Mr. Polk's administration, and expected remuneration.
He had made no terms, asked nothing, and received nothing, and had
expended his own money, and that freely, for the public service. The
administration had no money applicable to the object. Mr. Benton
stated his case in secret session in the Senate, and obtained an
appropriation, couched in general terms, of fifty thousand dollars
for secret services rendered during the war. The appropriation,
granted in the last night of the expiring administration, remained
to be applied by the new one--to which the business was unknown,
and had to be presented unsupported by a line of writing. Mr.
Benton went with Magoffin to President Taylor, who, hearing
what he had done, and what information he had gained for General
Kearney, instantly expressed the wish that he had had some person
to do the same for him--observing that he got no information but
what he obtained at the point of the bayonet. He gave orders to
the Secretary at War to attend to the case as if there had been
no change in the administration. The secretary (Mr. Crawford, of
Georgia), higgled, required statements to be filed, almost in
the nature of an account; and, finally, proposed thirty thousand
dollars. It barely covered expenses and losses; but, having
undertaken the service patriotically, Magoffin would not lower its
character by standing out for more. The paper which he filed in the
war office may furnish some material for history--some insight into
the way of making conquests--if ever examined. This is the secret
history of General Kearney's expedition, and of the insurrection,
given because it would not be found in the documents. The history
of Doniphan's expedition will be given for the same reason, and
to show that a regiment of citizen volunteers, without a regular
officer among them, almost without expense, and hardly with the
knowledge of their government, performed actions as brilliant as
any that illustrated the American arms in Mexico; and made a march
in the enemy's country longer than that of the ten thousand under
Xenophon. This history will constitute the next chapter, and will
consist of the salutatory address with which the heroic volunteers
were saluted, when, arriving at St. Louis, they were greeted with a
public reception, and the Senator of Thirty Years required to be the
organ of the exulting feelings of their countrymen.
CHAPTER CLXIII.
MEXICAN WAR: DONIPHAN'S EXPEDITION: MR. BENTON'S SALUTATORY ADDRESS,
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI.
COLONEL DONIPHAN AND OFFICERS AND MEN:--I have been appointed
to an honorable and a pleasant duty--that of making you the
congratulations of your fellow-citizens of St. Louis, on your happy
return from your long, and almost fabulous expedition. You have,
indeed, marched far, and done much, and suffered much, and well
entitled yourselves to the applauses of your fellow-citizens, as
well as to the rewards and thanks of your government. A year ago
you left home. Going out from the western border of your State, you
re-enter it on the east, having made a circuit equal to the fourth
of the circumference of the globe, providing for yourselves as you
went, and returning with trophies taken from fields, the names of
which were unknown to yourselves and your country, until revealed
by your enterprise, illustrated by your valor, and immortalized by
your deeds. History has but few such expeditions to record; and when
they occur, it is as honorable and useful as it is just and wise, to
celebrate and commemorate the events which entitle them to renown.
Your march and exploits have been among the most wonderful of the
age. At the call of your country you marched a thousand miles to the
conquest of New Mexico, as part of the force under General Kearney,
and achieved that conquest, without the loss of a man, or the fire
of a gun. That work finished, and New Mexico, itself so distant,
and so lately the ultima thule--the outside boundary of speculation
and enterprise--so lately a distant point to be attained, becomes
itself a point of departure--a beginning point, for new and far more
extended expeditions. You look across the long and lofty chain--the
Cordilleras of North America--which divide the Atlantic from the
Pacific waters; and you see beyond that ridge, a savage tribe
which had been long in the habit of depredations upon the province
which had just become an American conquest. You, a part only of
the subsequent Chihuahua column, under Jackson and Gilpin, march
upon them--bring them to terms--and they sign a treaty with Colonel
Doniphan, in which they bind themselves to cease their depredations
on the Mexicans, and to become the friends of the United States. A
novel treaty, that! signed on the western confines of New Mexico,
between parties who had hardly ever heard each other's names before,
and to give peace and protection to Mexicans who were hostile to
both. This was the meeting, and this the parting of the Missouri
volunteers, with the numerous and savage tribe of the Navaho
Indians living on the waters of the Gulf of California, and so long
the terror and scourge of Sonora, Sinaloa, and New Mexico.
This object accomplished, and impatient of inactivity, and without
orders (General Kearney having departed for California), you cast
about to carve out some new work for yourselves. Chihuahua, a
rich and populous city of near thirty thousand souls, the seat of
government of the State of that name, and formerly the residence
of the captains-general of the Internal Provinces under the
vice-regal government of New Spain, was the captivating object
which fixed your attention. It was a far distant city--about as
far from St. Louis as Moscow is from Paris; and towns and enemies,
and a large river, and defiles and mountains, and the desert whose
ominous name, portending death to travellers--_el jornada de los
muertos_--the journey of the dead--all lay between you. It was a
perilous enterprise, and a discouraging one, for a thousand men,
badly equipped, to contemplate. No matter. Danger and hardship
lent it a charm, and the adventurous march was resolved on, and
the execution commenced. First, the ominous desert was passed, its
character vindicating its title to its mournful appellation--an
arid plain of ninety miles, strewed with the bones of animals
perished of hunger and thirst--little hillocks of stone, and the
solitary cross, erected by pious hands, marking the spot where some
Christian had fallen, victim of the savage, of the robber, or of
the desert itself--no water--no animal life--no sign of habitation.
There the Texian prisoners, driven by the cruel Salazar, had met
their direst sufferings, unrelieved, as in other parts of their
march in the settled parts of the country, by the compassionate
ministrations (for where is it that _woman_ is not compassionate?)
of the pitying women. The desert was passed, and the place for
crossing the river approached. A little arm of the river, Bracito
(in Spanish), made out from its side. There the enemy, in superior
numbers, and confident in cavalry and artillery, undertook to bar
the way. Vain pretension! Their discovery, attack, and rout, were
about simultaneous operations. A few minutes did the work! And in
this way our Missouri volunteers of the Chihuahua column spent their
Christmas day of the year 1846.
The victory of the Bracito opened the way to the crossing of the
river Del Norte, and to admission into the beautiful little town of
the Paso del Norte, where a neat cultivation, a comfortable people,
fields, orchards, and vineyards, and a hospitable reception, offered
the rest and refreshment which toils and dangers, and victory had
won. You rested there till artillery was brought down from Sante Fé;
but the pretty town of the Paso del Norte, with all its enjoyments,
and they were many, and the greater for the place in which they were
found, was not a Capua to the men of Missouri. You moved forward
in February, and the battle of the Sacramento, one of the military
marvels of the age, cleared the road to Chihuahua; which was
entered without further resistance. It had been entered once before
by a detachment of American troops; but under circumstances how
different! In the year 1807, Lieutenant Pike and his thirty brave
men, taken prisoners on the head of the Rio del Norte, had been
marched captives into Chihuahua: in the year 1847, Doniphan and his
men enter it as conquerors. The paltry triumph of a captain-general
over a lieutenant, was effaced in the triumphal entrance of a
thousand Missourians into the grand and ancient capital of all the
Internal Provinces! and old men, still alive, could remark the
grandeur of the American spirit under both events--the proud and
lofty bearing of the captive thirty--the mildness and moderation of
the conquering thousand.
Chihuahua was taken, and responsible duties, more delicate than
those of arms, were to be performed. Many American citizens were
there, engaged in trade; much American property was there. All
this was to be protected, both life and property, and by peaceful
arrangement; for the command was too small to admit of division, and
of leaving a garrison. Conciliation, and negotiation were resorted
to, and successfully. Every American interest was provided for,
and placed under the safeguard, first, of good will, and next, of
guarantees not to be violated with impunity.
Chihuahua gained, it became, like Santa Fé, not the terminating
point of a long expedition, but the beginning point of a new one.
General Taylor was somewhere--no one knew where--but some seven or
eight hundred miles towards the other side of Mexico. You had heard
that he had been defeated, that Buena Vista had not been a _good
prospect_ to him. Like good Americans, you did not believe a word
of it; but, like good soldiers, you thought it best to go and see.
A volunteer party of fourteen, headed by Collins, of Boonville,
undertake to penetrate to Saltillo, and to bring you information
of his condition. They set out. Amidst innumerable dangers they
accomplish their purpose, and return. Taylor is conqueror; but will
be glad to see you. You march. A vanguard of one hundred men, led by
Lieutenant-colonel Mitchell, led the way. Then came the main body
(if the name is not a burlesque on such a handful), commanded by
Colonel Doniphan himself.
The whole table land of Mexico, in all its breadth, from west to
east, was to be traversed. A numerous and hostile population in
towns--treacherous Camanches in the mountains--were to be passed.
Every thing was to be self-provided--provisions, transportation,
fresh horses for remounts, and even the means of victory--and all
without a military chest, or even an empty box, in which government
gold had ever reposed. All was accomplished. Mexican towns were
passed, in order and quiet: plundering Camanches were punished:
means were obtained from traders to liquidate indispensable
contributions: and the wants that could not be supplied, were
endured like soldiers of veteran service.
The long march from Chihuahua to Monterey, was made more in the
character of protection and deliverance than of conquest and
invasion. Armed enemies were not met, and peaceful people were not
disturbed. You arrived in the month of May in General Taylor's camp,
and about in a condition to vindicate, each of you for himself,
your lawful title to the double _sobriquet_ of the general, with
the addition to it which the colonel commanding the expedition has
supplied--ragged--as well as rough and ready. No doubt you all
showed title, at that time, to that third _sobriquet_; but to see
you now, so gayly attired, so sprucely equipped, one might suppose
that you had never, for a day, been strangers to the virtues of
soap and water, or the magic ministrations of the _blanchisseuse_,
and the elegant transformations of the fashionable tailor. Thanks
perhaps to the difference between pay in the lump at the end of the
service, and driblets along in the course of it.
You arrived in General Taylor's camp ragged and rough, as we can
well conceive, and ready, as I can quickly show. You arrived: you
reported for duty: you asked for service--such as a march upon San
Luis de Potosi, Zacatecas, or the "halls of the Montezumas;" or any
thing in that way that the general should have a mind to. If he was
going upon any excursion of that kind, all right. No matter about
fatigues that were passed, or expirations of service that might
accrue: you came to go, and only asked the privilege. That is what
I call ready. Unhappily the conqueror of Palo Alto, Resaca de la
Palma, Monterey, and Buena Vista, was not exactly in the condition
that the lieutenant-general, that might have been, intended him
to be. He was not at the head of twenty thousand men! he was not
at the head of any thousands that would enable him to march! and
had to decline the proffered service. Thus the long-marched and
well-fought volunteers--the rough, the ready, and the ragged--had
to turn their faces towards home, still more than two thousand
miles distant. But this being mostly by water, you hardly count it
in the recital of your march. But this is an unjust omission, and
against the precedents as well as unjust. "The ten thousand" counted
the voyage on the Black Sea as well as the march from Babylon; and
twenty centuries admit the validity of the count. The present age,
and posterity, will include in "the going out and coming in" of the
Missouri-Chihuahua volunteers, the water voyage as well as the land
march; and then the expedition of the one thousand will exceed that
of the ten by some two thousand miles.
The last nine hundred miles of your land march, from Chihuahua to
Matamoros, you made in forty-five days, bringing seventeen pieces
of artillery, eleven of which were taken from the Sacramento and
Bracito. Your horses, travelling the whole distance without United
States provender, were astonished to find themselves regaled, on
their arrival on the Rio Grande frontier, with hay, corn, and oats
from the States. You marched further than the farthest, fought as
well as the best, left order and quiet in your train; and cost less
money than any.
You arrive here to-day, absent one year, marching and fighting all
the time, bringing trophies of cannon and standards from fields
whose names were unknown to you before you set out, and only
grieving that you could not have gone further. Ten pieces of cannon,
rolled out of Chihuahua to arrest your march, now roll through
the streets of St. Louis, to grace your triumphal return. Many
standards, all pierced with bullets while waving over the heads of
the enemy at the Sacramento, now wave at the head of your column.
The black flag, brought to the Bracito, to indicate the refusal of
that quarter which its bearers so soon needed and received, now
takes its place among your trophies, and hangs drooping in their
nobler presence. To crown the whole--to make public and private
happiness go together--to spare the cypress where the laurel hangs
in clusters--this long, perilous march, with all its accidents of
field and camp, presents an incredibly small list of comrades lost.
Almost all return: and the joy of families resounds, intermingled
with the applause of the State.
I have said that you made your long expedition without government
orders: and so, indeed, you did. You received no orders from your
government, but, without knowing it, you were fulfilling its
orders--orders which, though issued for you, never reached you.
Happy the soldier who executes the command of his government:
happier still he who anticipates command, and does what is wanted
before he is bid. This is your case. You did the right thing, at
the right time, and what your government intended you to do, and
without knowing its intentions. The facts are these: Early in the
month of November last, the President asked my opinion on the manner
of conducting the war. I submitted a plan to him, which, in addition
to other things, required all the disposable troops in New Mexico,
and all the American citizens in that quarter who could be engaged
for a dashing expedition, to move down through Chihuahua, and the
State of Durango, and, if necessary, to Zacatecas, and get into
communication with General Taylor's right as early as possible in
the month of March. In fact, the disposable forces in New Mexico
were to form one of three columns destined for a combined movement
on the city of Mexico, all to be on the table-land and ready for
a combined movement in the month of March. The President approved
the plan, and the Missourians being most distant, orders were
despatched to New Mexico to put them in motion. Mr. Solomon Sublette
carried the order, and delivered it to the commanding officer at
Santa Fé, General Price, on the 22d day of February--just five
days before you fought the marvellous action of Sacramento. I well
remember what passed between the President and myself at the time
he resolved to give this order. It awakened his solicitude for
your safety. It was to send a small body of men a great distance,
into the heart of a hostile country, and upon the contingency of
uniting in a combined movement, the means for which had not yet
been obtained from Congress. The President made it a question, and
very properly, whether it was safe or prudent to start the small
Missouri column, before the movement of the left and the centre
was assured: I answered that my own rule in public affairs was to
do what I thought was right, and leave it to others to do what
they thought was right; and that I believed it the proper course
for him to follow on the present occasion. On this view he acted.
He gave the order to go, without waiting to see whether Congress
would supply the means of executing the combined plan; and for his
consolation I undertook to guarantee your safety. Let the worst come
to the worst, I promised him that you would take care of yourselves.
Though the other parts of the plan should fail--though you should
become far involved in the advance, and deeply compromised in
the enemy's country, and without support--still I relied on your
courage, skill, and enterprise to extricate yourselves from every
danger--to make daylight through all the Mexicans that should stand
before you--cut your way out--and make good your retreat to Taylor's
camp. This is what I promised the President in November last; and
what I promised him you have done. Nobly and manfully you have made
one of the most remarkable expeditions in history, worthy to be
studied by statesmen, and showing what citizen volunteers can do;
for the crowning characteristic is that you were all citizens--all
volunteers--not a regular bred officer among you: and if there had
been, with power to control you, you could never have done what you
did.
CHAPTER CLXIV.
FREMONT'S THIRD EXPEDITION, AND ACQUISITION OF CALIFORNIA.
In the month of May 1845, Mr. Frémont, then a brevet captain of
engineers (appointed a lieutenant-colonel of Rifles before he
returned), set out on his third expedition of geographical and
scientific exploration in the Great West. Hostilities had not
broken out between the United States and Mexico; but Texas had
been incorporated; the preservation of peace was precarious, and
Mr. Frémont was determined, by no act of his, to increase the
difficulties, or to give any just cause of complaint to the Mexican
government. His line of observation would lead him to the Pacific
Ocean, through a Mexican province--through the desert parts first,
and the settled part afterwards of the Alta California. Approaching
the settled parts of the province at the commencement of winter,
he left his equipment of 60 men and 200 horses on the frontier,
and proceeded alone to Monterey, to make known to the governor
the object of his coming, and his desire to pass the winter (for
the refreshment of his men and horses) in the uninhabited parts
of the valley of the San Joaquin. The permission was granted; but
soon revoked, under the pretext that Mr. Frémont had come into
California, not to pursue science, but to excite the American
settlers to revolt against the Mexican government. Upon this pretext
troops were raised, and marched to attack him. Having notice of
their approach, he took a position on the mountain, hoisted the flag
of the United States, and determined, with his sixty brave men,
to defend himself to the last extremity--never surrendering; and
dying, if need be, to the last man. A messenger came into his camp,
bringing a letter from the American consul at Monterey, to apprise
him of his danger: that messenger, returning, reported that 2,000
men could not force the American position: and that information
had its effect upon the Mexican commander. Waiting four days in
his mountain camp, and not being attacked, he quit his position,
descended from the mountain, and set out for Oregon, that he might
give no further pretext for complaint, by remaining in California.
Turning his back on the Mexican possessions, and looking to Oregon
as the field of his future labors, Mr. Frémont determined to explore
a new route to the Wah-lah-math settlements and the tide-water
region of the Columbia, through the wild and elevated region of the
Tla-math lakes. A romantic interest attached to this region from the
grandeur of its features, its lofty mountains, and snow-clad peaks,
and from the formidable character of its warlike inhabitants. In the
first week of May, he was at the north end of the Great Tla-math
lake, and in Oregon--the lake being cut near its south end by the
parallel of 42 degrees north latitude. On the 8th day of that month,
a strange sight presented itself--almost a startling apparition--two
men riding up, and penetrating a region which few ever approached
without paying toll of life or blood. They proved to be two of Mr.
Frémont's old _voyageurs_, and quickly told their story. They were
part of a guard of six men conducting a United States officer,
who was on his trail with despatches from Washington, and whom
they had left two days back, while they came on to give notice of
his approach, and to ask that assistance might be sent him. They
themselves had only escaped the Indians by the swiftness of their
horses. It was a case in which no time was to be lost, or a mistake
made. Mr. Frémont determined to go himself; and taking ten picked
men, four of them Delaware Indians, he took down the western shore
of the lake on the morning of the 9th (the direction the officer
was to come), and made a ride of sixty miles without a halt. But
to meet men, and not to miss them, was the difficult point in this
trackless region. It was not the case of a high road, where all
travellers must meet in passing each other: at intervals there
were places--defiles, or camping grounds--where both parties must
pass; and watching for these, he came to one in the afternoon, and
decided that, if the party was not killed, it must be there that
night. He halted and encamped; and, as the sun was going down, had
the inexpressible satisfaction to see the four men approaching. The
officer proved to be a lieutenant of the United States marines, who
had been despatched from Washington the November previous, to make
his way by Vera Cruz, the City of Mexico, and Mazatlan to Monterey,
in Upper California, deliver despatches to the United States'
consul there; and then find Mr. Frémont, wherever he should be.
His despatches for Mr. Frémont were only a letter of introduction
from the Secretary of State (Mr. Buchanan), and some letters and
slips of newspapers from Senator Benton and his family, and some
verbal communications from the Secretary of State. The verbal
communications were that Mr. Frémont should watch and counteract any
foreign scheme on California, and conciliate the good will of the
inhabitants towards the United States. Upon this intimation of the
government's wishes, Mr. Frémont turned back from Oregon, in the
edge of which he then was, and returned to California. The letter of
introduction was in the common form, that it might tell nothing if
it fell into the hands of foes, and signified nothing of itself; but
it accredited the bearer, and gave the stamp of authority to what he
communicated; and upon this Mr. Frémont acted: for it was not to be
supposed that Lieutenant Gillespie had been sent so far, and through
so many dangers, merely to deliver a common letter of introduction
on the shores of the Tlamath lake.
The events of some days on the shores of this wild lake, sketched
with the brevity which the occasion requires, may give a glimpse of
the hardships and dangers through which Mr. Frémont pursued science,
and encountered and conquered perils and toils. The night he met Mr.
Gillespie presented one of those scenes to which he was so often
exposed, and which nothing but the highest degree of vigilance and
courage could prevent from being fatal. The camping ground was on
the western side of the lake, the horses picketed with long halters
on the shore, to feed on the grass; and the men (fourteen in number)
sleeping by threes at different fires, disposed in a square; for
danger required them so to sleep as to be ready for an attack; and,
though in the month of May, the elevation of the place, and the
proximity of snow-clad mountains, made the night intensely cold.
His feelings joyfully excited by hearing from home (the first word
of intelligence he had received since leaving the U. S. a year
before), Mr. Frémont sat up by a large fire, reading his letters
and papers, and watching himself over the safety of the camp,
while the men slept. Towards midnight, he heard a movement among
the horses, indicative of alarm and danger. Horses, and especially
mules, become sensitive to danger under long travelling and camping
in the wilderness, and manifest their alarm at the approach of any
thing strange. Taking a six-barrelled pistol in his hand, first
making sure of their ready fire, and, without waking the camp, he
went down among the disturbed animals. The moon shone brightly:
he could see well, but could discover nothing. Encouraged by his
presence, the horses became quiet--poor dumb creatures that could
see the danger, but not tell what they had seen; and he returned to
the camp, supposing it was only some beast of the forest--a bear or
wolf--prowling for food, that had disturbed them. He returned to
the camp fire. Lieutenant Gillespie woke up, and talked with him
awhile, and then lay down again. Finally nature had her course with
Mr. Frémont himself. Excited spirits gave way to exhausted strength.
The day's ride, and the night's excitement demanded the reparation
of repose. He lay down to sleep, and without waking up a man to
watch--relying on the loneliness of the place, and the long ride of
the day, as a security against the proximity of danger. It was the
second time in his twenty thousand miles of wilderness explorations
that his camp had slept without a guard: the first was in his second
expedition, and on an island in the Great Salt Lake, and when the
surrounding water of the lake itself constituted a guard. The whole
camp was then asleep. A cry from Carson roused it. In his sleep he
heard a groan: it was the groan of a man receiving the tomahawk in
his brains. All sprung to their feet. The savages were in the camp:
the hatchet and the winged arrow were at work. Basil Lajeunesse,
a brave and faithful young Frenchman, the follower of Frémont in
all his expeditions, was dead: an Iowa was dead: a brave Delaware
Indian, one of those who had accompanied Frémont from Missouri, was
dying: it was his groan that awoke Carson. Another of the Delawares
was a target for arrows, from which no rifle could save him--only
avenge him. The savages had waited till the moon was in the trees,
casting long shadows over the sleeping camp: then approaching from
the dark side, with their objects between themselves and the fading
light, they used only the hatchet and the formidable bow, whose
arrow went to its mark without a flash or a sound to show whence
it came. All advantages were on the side of the savages: but the
camp was saved! the wounded protected from massacre, and the dead
from mutilation. The men, springing to their feet, with their arms
in their hands, fought with skill and courage. In the morning,
Lieutenant Gillespie recognized, in the person of one of the slain
assailants, the Tlamath chief who the morning before had given him
a salmon, in token of friendship, and who had followed him all day
to kill and rob his party at night--a design in which he would
certainly have been successful had it not been for the promptitude
and precision of Mr. Frémont's movement. Mr. Frémont himself would
have been killed, when he went to the horses, had it not been that
the savages counted upon the destruction of the whole camp, and
feared to alarm it by killing one, before the general massacre.
It was on the 9th of May--a day immortalized by American arms at
Resaca de la Palma--that this fierce and bloody work was done in the
far distant region of the Tlamath lakes.
The morning of the 10th of May was one of gloom in the camp. The
evening sun of the 9th had set upon it full of life and joy at a
happy meeting: the same sun rose upon it the next morning, stained
with blood, ghastly with the dead and wounded, and imposing mournful
duties on the survivors. The wounded were to be carried--the dead
to be buried; and so buried as to be hid and secured from discovery
and violation. They were carried ten miles, and every precaution
taken to secure the remains from the wolf and the savage: for men,
in these remote and solitary dangers, become brothers, and defend
each other living and dead. The return route lay along the shore
of the lake, and during the day the distant canoes of the savages
could be seen upon it, evidently watching the progress of the party,
and meditating a night attack upon it. All precautions, at the
night encampment, were taken for security--horses and men enclosed
in a breastwork of great trees, cut down for the purpose, and half
the men constantly on the watch. At leaving in the morning, an
ambuscade was planted--and two of the Tlamaths were killed by the
men in ambush--a successful return of their own mode of warfare. At
night the main camp, at the north end of the lake, was reached. It
was strongly intrenched, and could not be attacked; but the whole
neighborhood was infested, and scouts and patrols were necessary to
protect every movement. In one of these excursions the Californian
horse, so noted for spirit and docility, showed what he would do
at the bid of his master. Carson's rifle had missed fire, at ten
feet distance. The Tlamath long bow, arrow on the string, was
bending to the pull. All the rifles in the party could not have
saved him. A horse and his rider did it. Mr. Frémont touched his
horse; he sprang upon the savage! and the hatchet of a Delaware
completed the deliverance of Carson. It was a noble horse, an iron
gray, with a most formidable name--el Toro del Sacramento: and
which vindicated his title to the name in all the trials of travel,
courage, and performance to which he was subjected. It was in the
midst of such dangers as these, that science was pursued by Mr.
Frémont; that the telescope was carried to read the heavens; the
barometer to measure the elevations of the earth; the thermometer
to gauge the temperature of the air; the pencil to sketch the
grandeur of mountains, and to paint the beauty of flowers; the pen
to write down whatever was new, or strange, or useful in the works
of nature. It was in the midst of such dangers, and such occupations
as these, and in the wildest regions of the Farthest West, that Mr.
Frémont was pursuing science and shunning war, when the arrival
of Lieutenant Gillespie, and his communications from Washington,
suddenly changed all his plans, turned him back from Oregon, and
opened a new and splendid field of operations in California itself.
He arrived in the valley of the Sacramento in the month of May,
1846, and found the country alarmingly, and critically situated.
Three great operations, fatal to American interests, were then going
on, and without remedy, if not arrested at once. These were: 1. The
massacre of the Americans, and the destruction of their settlements,
in the valley of the Sacramento. 2. The subjection of California to
British protection. 3. The transfer of the public domain to British
subjects. And all this with a view to anticipate the events of a
Mexican war, and to shelter California from the arms of the United
States.
The American settlers sent a deputation to the camp of Mr. Frémont,
in the valley of the Sacramento, laid all these dangers before him,
and implored him to place himself at their head and save them
from destruction. General Castro was then in march upon them: the
Indians were incited to attack their families, and burn their wheat
fields, and were only waiting for the dry season to apply the torch.
Juntas were in session to transfer the country to Great Britain:
the public domain was passing away in large grants to British
subjects: a British fleet was expected on the coast: the British
vice consul, Forbes, and the emissary priest, Macnamara, ruling
and conducting every thing: and all their plans so far advanced
as to render the least delay fatal. It was then the beginning of
June. War had broken out between the United States and Mexico,
but that was unknown in California. Mr. Frémont had left the two
countries at peace when he set out upon his expedition, and was
determined to do nothing to disturb their relations: he had even
left California to avoid giving offence; and to return and take up
arms in so short a time was apparently to discredit his own previous
conduct as well as to implicate his government. He felt all the
responsibilities of his position; but the actual approach of Castro,
and the immediate danger of the settlers, left him no alternative.
He determined to put himself at the head of the people, and to save
the country. To repulse Castro was not sufficient: to overturn the
Mexican government in California, and to establish Californian
Independence, was the bold resolve, and the only measure adequate to
the emergency. That resolve was taken, and executed with a celerity
that gave it a romantic success. The American settlers rushed to
his camp--brought their arms, horses and ammunition--were formed
into a battalion; and obeyed with zeal and alacrity the orders they
received. In thirty days all the northern part of California was
freed from Mexican authority--Independence proclaimed--the flag
of Independence raised--Castro flying to the south--the American
settlers saved from destruction; and the British party in California
counteracted and broken up in all their schemes.
This movement for Independence was the salvation of California, and
snatched it out of the hands of the British at the moment they were
ready to clutch it. For two hundred years--from the time of the
navigator Drake, who almost claimed it as a discovery, and placed
the English name of New Albion upon it--the eye of England has
been upon California; and the magnificent bay of San Francisco,
the great seaport of the North Pacific Ocean, has been surveyed as
her own. The approaching war between Mexico and the United States
was the crisis in which she expected to realize the long-deferred
wish for its acquisition; and carefully she took her measures
accordingly. She sent two squadrons to the Pacific as soon as Texas
was incorporated--well seeing the actual war which was to grow
out of that event--a small one into the mouth of the Columbia,
an imposing one to Mazatlan, on the Mexican coast, to watch the
United States squadron there, and to anticipate its movements upon
California. Commodore Sloat commanding the squadron at Mazatlan,
saw that he was watched, and pursued, by Admiral Seymour, who
lay alongside of him, and he determined to deceive him. He stood
out to sea, and was followed by the British Admiral. During the
day he bore west, across the ocean, as if going to the Sandwich
Islands: Admiral Seymour followed. In the night the American
commodore tacked, and ran up the coast towards California: the
British admiral, not seeing the tack, continued on his course, and
went entirely to the Sandwich Islands before he was undeceived.
Commodore Sloat arrived before Monterey on the second of July,
entering the port amicably, and offering to salute the town, which
the authorities declined on the pretext that they had no powder
to return it--in reality because they momentarily expected the
British fleet. Commodore Sloat remained five days before the town,
and until he heard of Frémont's operations: then believing that
Frémont had orders from his government to take California, he having
none himself, he determined to act himself. He received the news
of Frémont's successes on the 6th day of July: on the 7th he took
the town of Monterey, and sent a despatch to Frémont. This latter
came to him in all speed, at the head of his mounted force. Going
immediately on board the commodore's vessel, an explanation took
place. The commodore learnt with astonishment that Frémont had no
orders from his government to commence hostilities--that he had
acted entirely on his own responsibility. This left the commodore
without authority for having taken Monterey; for still at this time,
the commencement of the war with Mexico was unknown. Uneasiness came
upon the commodore. He remembered the fate of Captain Jones in
making the mistake of seizing the town once before in time of peace.
He resolved to return to the United States, which he did--turning
over the command of the squadron to Commodore Stockton, who had
arrived on the 15th. The next day (16th) Admiral Seymour arrived;
his flagship the Collingwood, of 80 guns, and his squadron the
largest British fleet ever seen in the Pacific. To his astonishment
he beheld the American flag flying over Monterey, the American
squadron in its harbor, and Frémont's mounted riflemen encamped
over the town. His mission was at an end. The prize had escaped
him. He attempted nothing further, and Frémont and Stockton rapidly
pressed the conquest of California to its conclusion. The subsequent
military events can be traced by any history: they were the natural
sequence of the great measure conceived and executed by Frémont
before any squadron had arrived upon the coast, before he knew of
any war with Mexico, and without any authority from his government,
except the equivocal and enigmatical visit of Mr. Gillespie. Before
the junction of Mr. Frémont with Commodore Sloat and Stockton, his
operations had been carried on under the flag of Independence--the
Bear Flag, as it was called--the device of the bear being adopted
on account of the courageous qualities of that animal (the white
bear), which never gives the road to men,--which attacks any
number,--and fights to the last with increasing ferocity, with
amazing strength of muscle, and with an incredible tenacity of the
vital principle--never more formidable and dangerous than when
mortally wounded. The Independents took the device of this bear for
their flag, and established the independence of California under it:
and in joining the United States forces, hauled down this flag, and
hoisted the flag of the United States. And the fate of California
would have been the same whether the United States squadrons had
arrived, or not; and whether the Mexican war had happened, or
not. California was in a revolutionary state, already divided
from Mexico politically as it had always been geographically. The
last governor-general from Mexico, Don Michel Toreno, had been
resisted--fought--captured--and shipped back to Mexico, with his
300 cut-throat soldiers. An insurgent government was in operation,
determined to be free of Mexico, sensible of inability to stand
alone, and looking, part to the United States, part to Great
Britain, for the support which they needed. All the American
settlers were for the United States protection, and joined Frémont.
The leading Californians were also joining him. His conciliatory
course drew them rapidly to him. The Picos, who were the leading
men of the revolt (Don Pico, Don Andres, and Don Jesus), became his
friends. California, become independent of Mexico by the revolt of
the Picos, and independent of them by the revolt of the American
settlers, had its destiny to fulfil--which was, to be handed over
to the United States. So that its incorporation with the American
Republic was equally sure in any, and every event.
CHAPTER CLXV.
PAUSE IN THE WAR: SEDENTARY TACTICS: "MASTERLY INACTIVITY."
Arriving at Washington before the commencement of the session
of '46-'47, Mr. Benton was requested by the President to look
over the draught of his proposed message to Congress (then in
manuscript), and to make the remarks upon it which he might think
it required; and in writing. Mr. Benton did so, and found a part
to which he objected, and thought ought to be omitted. It was a
recommendation to Congress to cease the active prosecution of the
war, to occupy the conquered part of the country (General Taylor
had then taken Monterey) with troops in forts and stations, and to
pass an act establishing a temporary government in the occupied
part; and to retain the possession until the peace was made. This
recommendation, and the argument in support of it, spread over
four pages of the message--from 101 to 105. Mr. Benton objected to
the whole plan, and answered to it in an equal, or greater number
of pages, and to the entire conviction and satisfaction of the
President. 1. The sedentary occupation was objected to as being
entirely contrary to the temper of the American people, which was
active, and required continual "going ahead" until their work was
finished. 2. It was a mode of warfare suited to the Spanish temper,
which loved procrastination, and could beat the world at it, and
had sat-out the Moors seven hundred years in the South of Spain
and the Visigoths three hundred years in the north of it; and
would certainly out-sit us in Mexico. 3. That he could govern the
conquered country under the laws of nations, without applying to
Congress, to be worried upon the details of the act, and rousing the
question of annexation by conquest, and that beyond the Rio Grande;
for the proposed line was to cover Monterey, and to run east and
west entirely across the country. These objections, pursued through
their illustrations, were entirely convincing to the President, and
he frankly gave up the sedentary project.
But it was a project which had been passed upon in the cabinet, and
not only adopted but began to be executed. The Secretary at War,
Mr. Marcy, had officially refused to accept proffered volunteers
from the governors of several States, saying to them--"_A sufficient
amount of force for the prosecution of the war had already been
called into service:_" and a premium of two dollars a head had been
offered to all persons who could bring in a recruit to the regular
army--the regulars being the reliance for the sedentary occupation.
The cabinet adhered to their policy. The President convoked them
again, and had Mr. Benton present to enforce his objections; but
without much effect. The abandonment of the sedentary policy
required the adoption of an active one, and for that purpose the
immediate calling out of ten regiments of volunteers had been
recommended by Mr. Benton; and this call would result at once
from the abandonment of the sedentary scheme. Here the pride of
consistency came in to play its part. The Secretary at War said he
had just refused to accept any more volunteers, and informed the
governors of two States that the government had troops enough to
prosecute the war; and urged that it would be contradictory now to
call out ten regiments. The majority of the cabinet sided with him;
but the President retained Mr. Benton to a private interview--talked
the subject all over--and finally came to the resolution to act
for himself, regardless of the opposition of the major part of his
cabinet. It was then in the night, and the President said he would
send the order to the Secretary at War in the morning to call out
the ten regiments--which he did: but the Secretary, higgling to the
last, got one regiment abated: so that nine instead of ten were
called out: but these nine were enough. They enabled Scott to go to
Mexico, and Taylor to conquer at Buena Vista, and to finish the war
victoriously.
A comic mistake grew out of this change in the President's message,
which caused the ridicule of the sedentary line to be fastened on
Mr. Calhoun--who in fact had counselled it. When the message was
read in the Senate, Mr. Westcott, of Florida, believing it remained
as it had been drawn up, and induced by Mr. Calhoun, with whose
views he was acquainted, made some motion upon it, significant of
approbatory action. Mr. Benton asked for the reading of the part
of the message referred to. Mr. Westcott searched, but could not
find it: Mr. Calhoun did the same. Neither could find the passage.
Inquiring and despairing looks were exchanged: and the search for
the present was adjourned. Of course it was never found. Afterwards
Mr. Westcott said to Mr. Benton that the President had deceived
Mr. Calhoun--had told him that the sedentary line was recommended
in the message, when it was not. Mr. Benton told him there was no
deception--that the recommendation was in the message when he said
so, but had been taken out (and he explained how) and replaced by
an urgent recommendation for a vigorous prosecution of the war.
But the secret was kept for the time. The administration stood
before the country vehement for war, and loaded with applause for
their spirit. Mr. Calhoun remained mystified, and adhered to the
line, and incurred the censure of opposing the administration
which he professed to support. He brought forward his plan in all
its detail--the line marked out--the number of forts and stations
necessary--and the number of troops necessary to garrison them:
and spoke often, and earnestly in its support: but to no purpose.
His plan was entirely rejected, nor did I ever hear of any one
of the cabinet offering to share with him in the ridicule which
he brought upon himself for advocating a plan so preposterous in
itself, and so utterly unsuited to the temper of our people. It was
in this debate, and in support of this sedentary occupation that
Mr. Calhoun characterized that proposed inaction as "_a masterly
inactivity_:" a fine expression of the Earl of Chatham--and which
Mr. Calhoun had previously used in the Oregon debate in recommending
us to do nothing there, and leave it to time to perfect our title.
Seven years afterwards the establishment of a boundary between the
United States and Mexico was attempted by treaty in the latitude
of this proposed line of occupation--a circumstance,--one of the
circumstances,--which proves that Mr. Calhoun's plans and spirit
survive him.
In all that passed between the President and Mr. Benton about this
line, there was no suspicion on the part of either of any design
to make it permanent; nor did any thing to that effect appear in
Mr. Calhoun's speeches in favor of it; but the design was developed
at the time of the ratification of the treaty of peace, and has
since been attempted by treaty; and is a design which evidently
connects itself with, what is called, _preserving the equilibrium
of the States_ (free and slave) by adding on territory for slave
States--and to increase the Southern margin for the "UNITED STATES
SOUTH," in the event of a separation of the two classes of States.
CHAPTER CLXVI.
THE WILMOT PROVISO; OR, PROHIBITION OF SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES:
ITS INUTILITY AND MISCHIEF.
Scarcely was the war with Mexico commenced when means, different
from those of arms, were put in operation to finish it. One of these
was the return of the exiled Santa Anna (as has been shown) to his
country, and his restoration to power, under the belief that he
was favorable to peace, and for which purpose arrangements began
to be made from the day of the declaration of the war--or before.
In the same session another move was made in the same direction,
that of getting peace by peaceable means, in an application made to
Congress by the President, to place three millions of dollars at
his disposal, to be used in negotiating for a boundary which should
give us additional territory: and that recommendation not having
been acted upon at the war session, was renewed at the commencement
of the next one. It was recommended as an "important measure for
securing a speedy peace;" and as an argument in favor of granting
it, a sum of two millions similarly placed at the disposition of Mr.
Jefferson when about to negotiate for Florida (which ended in the
acquisition of Louisiana), was plead as a precedent; and justly.
Congress, at this second application, granted the appropriation;
but while it was depending, Mr. Wilmot, a member of Congress, from
Pennsylvania, moved a proviso, _that no part of the territory to
be acquired should be open to the introduction of slavery_. It was
a proposition not necessary for the purpose of excluding slavery,
as the only territory to be acquired was that of New Mexico and
California, where slavery was already prohibited by the Mexican laws
and constitution; and where it could not be carried until those
laws should be repealed, and a law for slavery passed. The proviso
was nugatory, and could answer no purpose but that of bringing on
a slavery agitation in the United States; for which purpose it
was immediately seized upon by Mr. Calhoun and his friends, and
treated as the greatest possible outrage and injury to the slave
States. Congress was occupied with this proviso for two sessions,
became excessively heated on the subject, and communicated its
heat to the legislatures of the slave States--by several of which
conditional disunion resolutions were passed. Every where, in the
slave States, the Wilmot Proviso became a Gorgon's head--a chimera
dire--a watchword of party, and the synonyme of civil war and the
dissolution of the Union. Many patriotic members were employed in
resisting the proviso as a _bona fide_ cause of breaking up the
Union, if adopted; many amiable and gentle-tempered members were
employed in devising modes of adjusting and compromising it; a few,
of whom Mr. Benton was one, produced the laws and the constitution
of Mexico to show that New Mexico and California were free from
slavery; and argued that neither party had any thing to fear, or to
hope--the free soil party nothing to fear, because the soil was now
free; the slave soil party nothing to hope, because they could not
take a step to make it slave soil, having just invented the dogma
of "No power in Congress to legislate upon slavery in territories."
Never were two parties so completely at loggerheads about nothing:
never did two parties contend more furiously against the greatest
possible evil. Close observers, who had been watching the progress
of the slavery agitation since its inauguration in Congress in 1835,
knew it to be a game played by the abolitionists on one side and
the disunionists on the other, to accomplish their own purposes.
Many courageous men denounced it as such--as a game to be kept up
for the political benefit of the players; and deplored the blindness
which could not see their determination to keep it agoing to the
last possible moment, and to the production of the greatest possible
degree of national and sectional exasperation. It was while this
contention was thus raging, that Mr. Calhoun wrote a confidential
letter to a member of the Alabama legislature, hugging this
proviso to his bosom as a fortunate event--as a means of "_forcing
the issue_" between the North and the South; and deprecating
any adjustment, compromise, or defeat of it, as a misfortune to
the South: and which letter has since come to light. Gentle and
credulous people, who believed him to be in earnest when he was
sounding the _tocsin_ to rouse the States, instigating them to pass
disunion resolutions, and stirring up both national and village
orators to attack the proviso unto death: such persons must be
amazed to read in that exhumed letter, written during the fiercest
of the strife, these ominous words:
"_With this impression I would regard any compromise or
adjustment of the proviso, or even its defeat, without meeting
the danger in its whole length and breadth, as very unfortunate
for us. It would lull us to sleep again, without removing the
danger, or materially diminishing it._"
This issue to be forced was a separation of the slave and the free
States; the means, a commercial non-intercourse, in shutting the
slave State seaports against the vessels of the free States; the
danger to be met, was in the trial of this issue, by the means
indicated; which were simply high treason when pursued to the
overt act. Mr. Calhoun had flinched from that act in the time
of Jackson, but he being dead, and no more Jacksons at the head
of the government, he rejoiced in another chance of meeting the
danger--meeting it in all its length and breadth; and deprecated the
loss of the proviso as the loss of this chance.
Truly the abolitionists and the nullifiers were necessary to
each other--the two halves of a pair of shears, neither of which
could cut until joined together. Then the map of the Union was in
danger; for in their conjunction, that map was cloth between the
edges of the shears. And this was that Wilmot Proviso, which for
two years convulsed the Union, and prostrated men of firmness
and patriotism--a thing of nothing in itself, but magnified into
a hideous reality, and seized upon to conflagrate the States and
dissolve the Union. The Wilmot Proviso was not passed: that chance
of forcing the issue was lost: another had to be found, or made.
CHAPTER CLXVII.
MR. CALHOUN'S SLAVERY RESOLUTIONS, AND DENIAL OF THE RIGHT OF
CONGRESS TO PROHIBIT SLAVERY IN A TERRITORY.
On Friday, the 19th of February, Mr. Calhoun introduced into the
Senate his new slavery resolutions, prefaced by an elaborate speech,
and requiring an immediate vote upon them. They were in these words:
"_Resolved_, That the territories of the United States belong to
the several States composing this Union, and are held by them as
their joint and common property.
"_Resolved_, That Congress, as the joint agent and
representative of the States of this Union, has no right to make
any law, or do any act whatever, that shall directly, or by its
effects, make any discrimination between the States of this
Union, by which any of them shall be deprived of its full and
equal right in any territory of the United States acquired or to
be acquired.
"_Resolved_, That the enactment of any law which should
directly, or by its effects, deprive the citizens of any of
the States of this Union from emigrating, with their property,
into any of the territories of the United States, will make
such discrimination, and would, therefore, be a violation of
the constitution, and the rights of the States from which such
citizens emigrated, and in derogation of that perfect equality
which belongs to them as members of this Union, and would tend
directly to subvert the Union itself.
"_Resolved_, That it is a fundamental principle in our
political creed, that a people, in forming a constitution,
have the unconditional right to form and adopt the government
which they may think best calculated to secure their liberty,
prosperity, and happiness; and that, in conformity thereto,
no other condition is imposed by the federal constitution on
a State, in order to be admitted into this Union, except that
its constitution shall be republican; and that the imposition
of any other by Congress would not only be in violation of the
constitution, but in direct conflict with the principle on which
our political system rests."
These resolutions, although the sense is involved in circumlocutory
phrases, are intelligible to the point, that Congress has no power
to prohibit slavery in a territory, and that the exercise of such
a power would be a breach of the constitution, and leading to the
subversion of the Union. Ostensibly the complaint was, that the
emigrant from the slave State was not allowed to carry his slave
with him: in reality it was that he was not allowed to carry the
State law along with him to protect his slave. Placed in that
light, which is the true one, the complaint is absurd: presented as
applying to a piece of property instead of the law of the State,
it becomes specious--has deluded whole communities; and has led to
rage and resentment, and hatred of the Union. In support of these
resolutions the mover made a speech in which he showed a readiness
to carry out in action, to their extreme results, the doctrines
they contained, and to appeal to the slave-holding States for their
action, in the event that the Senate should not sustain them. This
was the concluding part of his speech:
"Well, sir, what if the decision of this body shall deny to
us this high constitutional right, not the less clear because
deduced from the whole body of the instrument and the nature of
the subject to which it relates? What, then, is the question?
I will not undertake to decide. It is a question for our
constituents--the slave-holding States. A solemn and a great
question. If the decision should be adverse, I trust and do
believe that they will take under solemn consideration what
they ought to do. I give no advice. It would be hazardous and
dangerous for me to do so. But I may speak as an individual
member of that section of the Union. There I drew my first
breath. There are all my hopes. There is my family and
connections. I am a planter--a cotton planter. I am a Southern
man, and a slave-holder; a kind and a merciful one, I trust--and
none the worse for being a slave-holder. I say, for one, I would
rather meet any extremity upon earth than give up one inch of
our equality--one inch of what belongs to us as members of this
great republic. What, acknowledge inferiority! The surrender of
life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledged inferiority.
"I have examined this subject largely--widely. I think I see the
future if we do not stand up as we ought. In my humble opinion,
in that case, the condition of Ireland is prosperous and
happy--the condition of Hindostan is prosperous and happy--the
condition of Jamaica is prosperous and happy, to what the
Southern States will be if they should not now stand up manfully
in defence of their rights".
When these resolutions were read, Mr. Benton rose in his place,
and called them "firebrand." Mr. Calhoun said he had expected the
support of Mr. Benton "as the representative of a slave-holding
State." Mr. Benton answered that it was impossible that he could
have expected such a thing. Then, said Mr. Calhoun, I shall know
where to find the gentleman. To which Mr. Benton: "I shall be found
in the right place--on the side of my country and the Union." This
answer, given on that day, and on the spot, is one of the incidents
of his life which Mr. Benton will wish posterity to remember.
Mr. Calhoun demanded the prompt consideration of his resolutions,
giving notice that he would call them up the next day, and press
them to a speedy and final vote. He did call them up, but never
called for the vote, nor was any ever had: nor would a vote have any
practical consequence, one way or the other. The resolutions were
abstractions, without application. They asserted a constitutional
principle, which could not be decided, one way or the other, by
the separate action of the Senate; not even in a bill, much less
in a single and barren set of resolves. No vote was had upon them.
The condition had not happened on which they were to be taken up
by the slave States; but they were sent out to all such States,
and adopted by some of them; and there commenced the great slavery
agitation, founded upon the dogma of "_no power in Congress to
legislate upon slavery in the territories_," which has led to the
abrogation of the Missouri compromise line--which has filled the
Union with distraction--and which is threatening to bring all
federal legislation, and all federal elections, to a mere sectional
struggle, in which, one-half of the States is to be arrayed against
the other. The resolves were evidently introduced for the mere
purpose of carrying a question to the slave States on which they
could be formed into a unit against the free States; and they
answered that purpose as well on rejection by the Senate as with it;
and were accordingly used in conformity to their design without any
such rejection, which--it cannot be repeated too often--could in no
way have decided the constitutional question which they presented.
These were new resolutions--the first of their kind in the (almost)
sixty years' existence of the federal government--contrary to
its practice during that time--contrary to Mr. Calhoun's slavery
resolutions of 1838--contrary to his early and long support of the
Missouri compromise--and contrary to the re-enactment of that line
by the authors of the Texas annexation law. That re-enactment had
taken place only two years before, and was in the very words of
the anti-slavery ordinance of '87, and of the Missouri compromise
prohibition of 1820; and was voted for by the whole body of the
annexationists, and was not only conceived and supported by Mr.
Calhoun, then Secretary of State, but carried into effect by him
in the despatch of that messenger to Texas in the expiring moments
of his power. The words of the re-enactment were: "_And in such
State, or States as shall be formed out of said territory north
of the said Missouri compromise line, slavery or involuntary
servitude (except for crime) shall be prohibited._" This clause
re-established that compromise line in all that long extent of it
which was ceded to Spain by the treaty of 1819, which became Texian
by her separation from Mexico, and which became slave soil under
her laws and constitution. So that, up to the third day of March,
in the year 1845--not quite two years before the date of these
resolutions--Mr. Calhoun by authentic acts, and the two Houses of
Congress by recorded votes, and President Tyler by his approving
signature, acknowledged the power of Congress to prohibit slavery in
a territory! and not only acknowledged the power, but exerted it!
and actually prohibited slavery in a long slip of country, enough
to make a "State or States," where it then legally existed. This
fact was formally brought out in the chapter of this volume which
treats of the legislative annexation of Texas; and those who wish to
see the proceeding in detail may find it in the journals of the two
Houses of Congress, and in the congressional history of the time.
These resolutions of 1847, called fire-brand at the time, were
further characterized as nullification a few days afterwards, when
Mr. Benton said of them, that, "_as Sylla saw in the young Cæsar
many Mariuses, so did he see in them many nullifications_."
CHAPTER CLXVIII.
THE SLAVERY AGITATION: DISUNION: KEY TO MR. CALHOUN'S POLICY:
FORCING THE ISSUE: MODE OF FORCING IT.
In the course of this year, and some months after the submission
of his resolutions in the Senate denying the right of Congress to
abolish slavery in a territory, Mr. Calhoun wrote a letter to a
member of the Alabama Legislature, which furnishes the key to unlock
his whole system of policy in relation to the slavery agitation,
and its designs, from his first taking up the business in Congress
in the year 1835, down to the date of the letter; and thereafter.
The letter was in reply to one asking his opinion "_as to the
steps which should be taken_" to guard the rights of the South;
and was written in a feeling of personal confidence to a person
in a condition to take steps; and which he has since published to
counteract the belief that Mr. Calhoun was seeking the dissolution
of the Union. The letter disavows such a design, and at the same
time proves it--recommends forcing the issue between the North and
the South, and lays down the manner in which it should be done. It
opens with this paragraph:
"I am much gratified with the tone and views of your letter,
and concur entirely in the opinion you express, that instead
of shunning, we ought to court the issue with the North on the
slavery question. I would even go one step further, and add
that it is our duty--due to ourselves, to the Union, and our
political institutions, to _force_ the issue on the North.
We are now stronger relatively than we shall be hereafter,
politically and morally. Unless we bring on the issue, delay
to us will be dangerous indeed. It is the true policy of those
enemies who seek our destruction. Its effects are, and have
been, and will be to weaken us politically and morally, and to
strengthen them. Such has been my opinion from the first. Had
the South, or even my own State backed me, I would have _forced_
the issue on the North in 1835, when the spirit of abolitionism
first developed itself to any considerable extent. It is a true
maxim, to meet danger on the frontier, in politics as well as
war. Thus thinking, I am of the impression, that if the South
act as it ought, the Wilmot Proviso, instead of proving to
be the means of successfully assailing us and our peculiar
institution, may be made the occasion of successfully asserting
our equality and rights, by enabling us to _force_ the issue on
the North. Something of the kind was indispensable to rouse and
unite the South. On the contrary, if we should not meet it as we
ought, I fear, greatly fear, our doom will be fixed. It would
prove that we either have not the sense or spirit to defend
ourselves and our institutions."
The phrase "forcing the issue" is here used too often, and for a
purpose too obvious, to need remark. The reference to his movement
in 1835 confirms all that was said of that movement at the time
by senators from both sections of the Union, and which has been
related in chapter 131 of the first volume of this View. At that
time Mr. Calhoun characterized his movement as defensive--as done in
a spirit of self-defence: it was then characterized by senators as
aggressive and offensive: and it is now declared in this letter to
have been so. He was then openly told that he was playing into the
hands of the abolitionists, and giving them a champion to contend
with, and the elevated theatre of the American Senate for the
dissemination of their doctrines, and the production of agitation
and sectional division. All that is now admitted, with a lamentation
that the South, and not even his own State, would stand by him then
in forcing the issue. So that chance was lost. Another was now
presented. The Wilmot Proviso, so much deprecated in public, is
privately saluted as a fortunate event, giving another chance for
forcing the issue. The letter proceeds:
"But in making up the issue, we must look far beyond the
proviso. It is but one of many acts of aggression, and, in my
opinion, by no means the most dangerous or degrading, though
more striking and palpable."
In looking beyond the proviso (the nature of which has been
explained in a preceding chapter) Mr. Calhoun took up the recent
act of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, repealing the slave
sojournment law within her limits, and obstructing the recovery of
fugitive slaves--saying:
"I regard the recent act of Pennsylvania, and laws of that
description, passed by other States, intended to prevent or
embarrass the reclamation of fugitive slaves, or to liberate
our domestics when travelling with them in non-slaveholding
States, as unconstitutional. Insulting as it is, it is even
more dangerous. I go further, and hold that if we have a right
to hold our slaves, we have a right to hold them in peace and
quiet, and that the toleration, in the non-slaveholding States,
of the establishment of societies and presses, and the delivery
of lectures, with the express intention of calling in question
our right to our slaves, and of seducing and abducting them
from the service of their masters, and finally overthrowing the
institution itself, as not only a violation of international
laws, but also of the Federal compact. I hold, also, that we
cannot acquiesce in such wrongs, without the certain destruction
of the relation of master and slave, and without the ruin of the
South."
The acts of Pennsylvania here referred to are justly complained
of, but with the omission to tell that these injurious acts were
the fruit of his own agitation policy, and in his own line of
forcing issues; and that the repeal of the sojournment law, which
had subsisted since the year 1780, and the obstruction of the
fugitive slave act, which had been enforced since 1793, only took
place twelve years after he had commenced slavery agitation in the
South, and were legitimate consequences of that agitation, and of
the design to force the issue with the North. The next sentence
of the letter reverts to the Wilmot Proviso, and is of momentous
consequence as showing that Mr. Calhoun, with all his public
professions in favor of compromise and conciliation, was secretly
opposed to any compromise or adjustment, and actually considered the
defeat of the proviso as a misfortune to the South. Thus:
"With this impression, I would regard any compromise or
adjustment of the proviso, or even its defeat, without meeting
the danger in its whole length and breadth, as very unfortunate
for us. It would lull us to sleep again, without removing the
danger, or materially diminishing it."
So that, while this proviso was, publicly, the Pandora's box which
filled the Union with evil, and while it was to Mr. Calhoun and his
friends the theme of endless deprecation, it was secretly cherished
as a means of keeping up discord, and forcing the issue between
the North and the South. Mr. Calhoun then proceeds to the serious
question of disunion, and of the manner in which the issue could be
forced.
"This brings up the question, how can it be so met, _without
resorting to the dissolution of the Union_? I say without its
dissolution, for, in my opinion, a high and sacred regard for
the constitution, as well as the dictates of wisdom, make it
our duty in this case, as well as all others, not to resort to,
or even to look to that extreme remedy, until all others have
failed, and then only in defence of our liberty and safety.
There is, in my opinion, but one way in which it can be met; and
that is the one indicated in my letter to Mr. ----, and to which
you allude in yours to me, viz., by retaliation. Why I think so,
I shall now proceed to explain."
Then follows an argument to justify retaliation, by representing the
constitution as containing provisions, he calls them stipulations,
some in favor of the slaveholding, and some in favor of the
non-slaveholding States, and the breach of any of which, on one
side, authorizes a retaliation on the other; and then declaring that
Pennsylvania, and other States, have violated the provision in favor
of the slave States in obstructing the recovery of fugitive slaves,
he proceeds to explain his remedy--saying:
"There is and can be but one remedy short of disunion, and
that is to retaliate on our part, by refusing to fulfil the
stipulations in their favor, or such as we may select, as
the most efficient. Among these, the right of their ships
and commerce to enter and depart from our ports is the most
effectual, and can be enforced. That the refusal on their part
would justify us to refuse to fulfil on our part those in their
favor, is too clear to admit of argument. That it would be
effectual in compelling them to fulfil those in our favor can
hardly be doubted, when the immense profit they make by trade
and navigation out of us is regarded; and also the advantages we
would derive from the direct trade it would establish between
the rest of the world and our ports."
Retaliation by closing the ports of the State against the commerce
of the offending State: and this called a constitutional remedy,
and a remedy short of disunion. It is, on the contrary, a flagrant
breach of the constitution, and disunion itself, and that at the
very point which caused the Union to be formed. Every one acquainted
with the history of the formation of the federal constitution, knows
that it grew out of the single question of commerce--the necessity
of its regulation between the States to prevent them from harassing
each other, and with foreign nations to prevent State rivalries
for foreign trade. To stop the trade with any State is, therefore,
to break the Union with that State; and to give any advantage to
a foreign nation over a State, would be to break the constitution
again in the fundamental article of its formation; and this is what
the retaliatory remedy of commercial non-intercourse arrives at--a
double breach of the constitution--one to the prejudice of sister
States, the other in favor of foreign nations. For immediately
upon this retaliation upon a State, and as a consequence of it, a
great foreign trade is to grow up with all the world. The letter
proceeds with further instructions upon the manner of executing the
retaliation:
"My impression is, that it should be restricted to _sea-going_
vessels, which would leave open the trade of the valley of the
Mississippi to New Orleans by river, and to the other Southern
cities by railroad; and tend thereby to detach the North-western
from the North-eastern States."
This discloses a further feature in the plan of forcing the issue.
The North-eastern States were to be excluded from Southern maritime
commerce: the North-western States were to be admitted to it by
railroad, and also allowed to reach New Orleans by the Mississippi
River. And this discrimination in favor of the North-western States
was for the purpose of detaching them from the North-east. Detach is
the word. And that word signifies to separate, disengage, disunite,
part from: so that the scheme of disunion contemplated the inclusion
of the North-western States in the Southern division. The State of
Missouri was one of the principal of these States, and great efforts
were made to gain her over, and to beat down Senator Benton who was
an obstacle to that design. The letter concludes by pointing out the
only difficulty in the execution of this plan, and showing how to
surmount it.
"There is but one practical difficulty in the way; and that
is, to give it force, it will require the co-operation of all
the slave-holding States lying on the Atlantic Gulf. Without
that, it would be ineffective. To get that is the great point,
and for that purpose a convention of the Southern States is
indispensable. Let that be called, and let it adopt measures
to bring about the co-operation, and I would underwrite for
the rest. The non-slaveholding States would be compelled to
observe the stipulations of the constitution in our favor, or
abandon their trade with us, or to take measures to coerce us,
which would throw on them the responsibility of dissolving
the Union. Which they would choose, I do not think doubtful.
Their unbounded avarice would, in the end, control them. Let
a convention be called--let it recommend to the slaveholding
States to take the course advised, giving, say one year's
notice, before the acts of the several States should go into
effect, and the issue would fairly be made up, and our safety
and triumph certain."
This the only difficulty--the want of a co-operation of all the
Southern Atlantic States; and to surmount that, the indispensability
of a convention of the Southern States is fully declared. This
was going back to the starting point--to the year 1835--when Mr.
Calhoun first took up the slavery agitation in the Senate, and when
a convention of the slaveholding States was as much demanded then as
now, and that twelve years before the Wilmot Proviso--twelve years
before the Pennsylvania unfriendly legislation--twelve years before
the insult and outrage to the South, in not permitting them to carry
their local laws with them to the territories, for the protection of
their slave property. A call of a Southern convention was as much
demanded then as now; and such conventions often actually attained:
but without accomplishing the object of the prime mover. No step
could be got to be taken in those conventions towards dividing and
sectionalizing the States, and after a vain reliance upon them
for seventeen years, a new method has been fallen upon: and this
confidential letter from Mr. Calhoun to a member of the Alabama
legislature of 1847, has come to light, to furnish the key which
unlocks his whole system of slavery agitation which he commenced
in the year 1835. That system was to force issues upon the North
under the pretext of self-defence, and to sectionalize the South,
preparatory to disunion, through the instrumentality of sectional
conventions, composed wholly of delegates from the slaveholding
States. Failing in that scheme of accomplishing the purpose, a new
one was fallen upon, which will disclose itself in its proper place.
CHAPTER CLXIX.
DEATH OF SILAS WRIGHT, EX-SENATOR AND EX-GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK.
He died suddenly, at the early age of fifty-two, and without the
sufferings and premonitions which usually accompany the mortal
transit from time to eternity. A letter that he was reading, was
seen to fall from his hand: a physician was called: in two hours
he was dead--apoplexy the cause. Though dying at the age deemed
young in a statesman, he had attained all that long life could
give--high office, national fame, fixed character, and universal
esteem. He had run the career of honors in the State of New
York--been representative and senator in Congress--and had refused
more offices, and higher, than he ever accepted. He refused cabinet
appointments under his fast friend, Mr. Van Buren, and under Mr.
Polk, whom he may be said to have elected: he refused a seat on
the bench of the federal Supreme Court; he rejected instantly the
nomination of 1844 for Vice-President of the United States, when
that nomination was the election. He refused to be put in nomination
for the presidency. He refused to accept foreign missions. He spent
that time in declining office which others did in winning it; and of
those he did accept, it might well be said they were "_thrust_" upon
him. Office, not greatness, was thrust upon him. He was born great,
and above office, and unwillingly descended to it; and only took it
for its burthens, and to satisfy an importunate public demand. Mind,
manners, morals, temper, habits, united in him to form the character
that was perfect, both in public and private life, and to give the
example of a patriot citizen--of a farmer statesman--of which we
have read in Cincinnatus and Cato, and seen in Mr. Macon, and some
others of their stamp--created by nature--formed in no school: and
of which the instances are so rare and long between.
His mind was clear and strong, his judgment solid, his elocution
smooth and equable, his speaking always addressed to the
understanding, and always enchaining the attention of those who had
minds to understand. Grave reasoning was his forte. Argumentation
was always the line of his speech. He spoke to the head, not to
the passions; and would have been disconcerted to have seen any
body laugh, or cry, at any thing he said. His thoughts evolved
spontaneously, in natural and proper order, clothed in language of
force and clearness; all so naturally and easily conceived that an
extemporaneous speech, or the first draught of an intricate report,
had all the correctness of a finished composition. His manuscript
had no blots--a proof that his mind had none; and he wrote a neat,
compact hand, suitable to a clear and solid mind. He came into
the Senate, in the beginning of General Jackson's administration,
and remained during that of Mr. Van Buren; and took a ready and
active part in all the great debates of those eventful times.
The ablest speakers of the opposition always had to answer him;
and when he answered them, they showed by their anxious concern,
that the adversary was upon them whose force they dreaded most.
Though taking his full part upon all subjects, yet finance was his
particular department, always chairman of that committee, when his
party was in power, and by the lucidity of his statements making
plain the most intricate moneyed details. He had a just conception
of the difference between the functions of the finance committee of
the Senate, and the committee of ways and means of the House--so
little understood in these latter times: those of the latter founded
in the prerogative of the House to originate all revenue bills;
those of the former to act upon the propositions from the House,
without originating measures which might affect the revenue, so as
to coerce either its increase or prevent its reduction. In 1844 he
left the Senate, to stand for the governorship of New York; and
never did his self-sacrificing temper undergo a stronger trial, or
submit to a greater sacrifice. He liked the Senate: he disliked the
governorship, even to absolute repugnance. But it was said to him
(and truly, as then believed, and afterwards proved) that the State
would be lost to Mr. Polk, unless Mr. Wright was associated with
him in the canvass: and to this argument he yielded. He stood the
canvass for the governorship--carried it--and Mr. Polk with him; and
saved the presidential election of that year.
Judgment was the character of Mr. Wright's mind: purity the quality
of the heart. Though valuable in the field of debate, he was still
more valued at the council table, where sense and honesty are most
demanded. General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren relied upon him as
one of their safest counsellors. A candor which knew no guile--an
integrity which knew no deviation--which worked right on, like a
machine governed by a law of which it was unconscious--were the
inexorable conditions of his nature, ruling his conduct in every
act, public and private. No foul legislation ever emanated from
him. The jobber, the speculator, the dealer in false claims, the
plunderer, whose scheme required an act of Congress; all these
found in his vigilance and perspicacity a detective police, which
discovered their designs, and in his integrity a scorn of corruption
which kept them at a distance from the purity of his atmosphere.
His temper was gentle--his manners simple--his intercourse
kindly--his habits laborious--and rich upon a freehold of thirty
acres, in much part cultivated by his own hand. In the intervals
of senatorial duties this man, who refused cabinet appointments
and presidential honors, and a seat upon the Supreme Bench--who
measured strength with Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, and on whose
accents admiring Senates hung: this man, his neat suit of broadcloth
and fine linen exchanged for the laborer's dress, might be seen
in the harvest field, or meadow, carrying the foremost row, and
doing the cleanest work: and this not as recreation or pastime, or
encouragement to others, but as work, which was to count in the
annual cultivation, and labor to be felt in the production of the
needed crop. His principles were democratic, and innate, founded
in a feeling, still more than a conviction, that the masses were
generally right in their sentiments, though sometimes wrong in their
action; and that there was less injury to the country from the
honest mistakes of the people, than from the interested schemes of
corrupt and intriguing politicians. He was born in Massachusetts,
came to man's estate in New York, received from that State the only
honors he would accept; and in choosing his place of residence in it
gave proof of his modest, retiring, unpretending nature. Instead of
following his profession in the commercial or political capital of
his State, where there would be demand and reward for his talent, he
constituted himself a village lawyer where there was neither, and
pertinaciously refused to change his locality. In an outside county,
on the extreme border of the State, taking its name of St. Lawrence
from the river which washed its northern side, and divided the
United States from British America--and in one of the smallest towns
of that county, and in one of the least ambitious houses of that
modest town, lived and died this patriot statesman--a good husband
(he had no children)--a good neighbor--a kind relative--a fast
friend--exact and punctual in every duty, and the exemplification of
every social and civic virtue.
CHAPTER CLXX.
THIRTIETH CONGRESS: FIRST SESSION: LIST OF MEMBERS: PRESIDENT'S
MESSAGE.
_Senate._
MAINE.--Hannibal Hamlin, J. W. Bradbury.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.--Charles G. Atherton, John P. Hale.
VERMONT.--William Upham, Samuel S. Phelps.
MASSACHUSETTS.--Daniel Webster, John Davis.
RHODE ISLAND.--Albert C. Greene, John H. Clarke.
CONNECTICUT.--John M. Niles, Roger S. Baldwin.
NEW YORK.--John A. Dix, Daniel S. Dickinson.
NEW JERSEY.--William L. Dayton, Jacob W. Miller.
PENNSYLVANIA.--Simon Cameron, Daniel Sturgeon.
DELAWARE.--John M. Clayton, Presley Spruance.
MARYLAND.--James A. Pearce, Reverdy Johnson.
VIRGINIA.--James M. Mason, R. M. T. Hunter.
NORTH CAROLINA.--George. E. Badger, Willie P. Mangum.
SOUTH CAROLINA.--A. P. Butler, John C. Calhoun.
GEORGIA.--Herschell V. Johnson, John M. Berrien.
ALABAMA.--William R. King, Arthur P. Bagley.
MISSISSIPPI.--Jefferson Davis, Henry Stuart Foote.
LOUISIANA.--Henry Johnson, S. U. Downs.
TENNESSEE.--Hopkins L. Turney, John Bell.
KENTUCKY.--Thomas Metcalfe, Joseph R. Underwood.
OHIO.--William Allen, Thomas Corwin.
INDIANA.--Edward A. Hannegan, Jesse D. Bright.
ILLINOIS.--Sidney Breese, Stephen A. Douglass.
MISSOURI.--David R. Atchison, Thomas H. Benton.
ARKANSAS.--Solon Borland, William K. Sebastian.
MICHIGAN.--Thomas Fitzgerald, Alpheus Felch.
FLORIDA.--J. D. Westcott, Jr., David Yulee.
TEXAS.--Thomas J. Rusk, Samuel Houston.
IOWA.--Augustus C. Dodge, George W. Jones.
WISCONSIN.--Henry Dodge, I. P. Walker.
_House of Representatives._
MAINE.--David Hammonds, Asa W. H. Clapp, Hiram Belcher, Franklin
Clark, E. K. Smart, James S. Wiley, Hezekiah Williams.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.--Amos Tuck, Charles H. Peaslee, James Wilson, James
H. Johnson.
MASSACHUSETTS.--Rob't C. Winthrop, Daniel P. King, Amos Abbott, John
G. Palfrey, Chas. Hudson, George Ashmun, Julius Rockwell, Horace
Mann, Artemas Hale, Joseph Grinnell.
RHODE ISLAND.--R. B. Cranston, B. B. Thurston.
CONNECTICUT.--James Dixon, S. D. Hilliard, J. A. Rockwell, Truman
Smith.
VERMONT.--William Henry, Jacob Collamer, George P. Marsh, Lucius B.
Peck.
NEW YORK.--Frederick W. Lloyd, H. C. Murphy, Henry Nicoll, W. B.
Maclay, Horace Greeley, William Nelson, Cornelius Warren, Daniel B.
St. John, Eliakim Sherrill, P. H. Sylvester, Gideon Reynolds, J.
I. Slingerland, Orlando Kellogg, S. Lawrence, Hugh White, George
Petrie, Joseph Mullin, William Collins, Timothy Jenkins, G. A.
Starkweather, Ausburn Birdsall, William Duer, Daniel Gott, Harmon S.
Conger, William T. Lawrence, Ebon Blackman, Elias B. Holmes, Robert
L. Rose, David Ramsay, Dudly Marvin, Nathan K. Hall, Harvey Putnam,
Washington Hunt.
NEW JERSEY.--James G. Hampton, William A. Newell, Joseph Edsall, J.
Van Dyke, D. S. Gregory.
PENNSYLVANIA.--Lewis C. Levin, J. R. Ingersoll, Charles Brown, C. J.
Ingersoll, John Freedly, Samuel A. Bridges, A. R. McIlvaine, John
Strohm, William Strong, R. Brodhead, Chester Butler, David Wilmot,
James Pollock, George N. Eckert, Henry Nes, Jasper E. Brady, John
Blanchard, Andrew Stewart, Job Mann, John Dickey, Moses Hampton, J.
W. Farrelly, James Thompson, Alexander Irvine.
DELAWARE.--John W. Houston.
MARYLAND.--J. G. Chapman, J. Dixon Roman, T. Watkins Ligon, R. M.
McLane, Alexander Evans, John W. Crisfield.
VIRGINIA.--Archibald Atkinson, Richard K. Meade, Thomas S. Flournoy,
Thomas S. Bocock, William L. Goggin, John M. Botts, Thomas H. Bayly,
R. T. L. Beale, J. S. Pendleton, Henry Bedinger, James McDowell,
William B. Preston, Andrew S. Fulton, R. A. Thompson, William G.
Brown.
NORTH CAROLINA.--Thomas S. Clingman, Nathaniel Boyden, D. M.
Berringer, Aug. H. Shepherd, Abm. W. Venable, James J. McKay, J. R.
J. Daniel, Richard S. Donnell, David Outlaw.
SOUTH CAROLINA.--Daniel Wallace, Richard F. Simpson, J. A. Woodward,
Artemas Burt, Isaac E. Holmes, R. Barnwell Rhett.
GEORGIA.--T. Butler King, Alfred Iverson, John W. Jones, H. A.
Harralson, J. A. Lumpkin, Howell Cobb, A. H. Stephens, Robert
Toombs.
ALABAMA.--John Gayle, H. W. Hilliard, S. W. Harris, William M. Inge,
G. S. Houston, W. R. W. Cobb, F. W. Bowdon.
MISSISSIPPI.--Jacob Thompson, W. S. Featherston, Patrick W.
Tompkins, Albert G. Brown.
LOUISIANA.--Emile La Sere, B. G. Thibodeaux, J. M. Harmansan, Isaac
E. Morse.
FLORIDA.--Edward C. Cabell.
OHIO.--James J. Faran, David Fisher, Robert C. Schenck, Richard
S. Canby, William Sawyer, R. Dickinson, Jonathan D. Morris, J. L.
Taylor, T. O. Edwards, Daniel Duncan, John K. Miller, Samuel F.
Vinton, Thomas Richey, Nathan Evans, William Kennon, Jr., J. D.
Cummins, George Fries, Samuel Lahm, John Crowell, J. R. Giddings,
Joseph M. Root.
INDIANA.--Elisha Embree, Thomas J. Henley, J. L. Robinson, Caleb B.
Smith, William W. Wick, George G. Dunn, R. W. Thompson, John Pettit,
C. W. Cathcart, William Rockhill.
MICHIGAN.--R. McClelland, Cha's E. Stewart, Kinsley S. Bingham.
ILLINOIS.--Robert Smith, J. A. McClernand, O. B. Ficklin, John
Wentworth, W. A. Richardson, Thomas J. Turner, A. Lincoln.
IOWA.--William Thompson, Shepherd Leffler.
KENTUCKY.--Linn Boyd, Samuel O. Peyton, B. L. Clark, Aylett Buckner,
J. B. Thompson, Green Adams, Garnett Duncan, Charles S. Morehead,
Richard French, John P. Gaines.
TENNESSEE.--Andrew Johnson, William M. Cocke, John H. Crozier, H.
L. W. Hill, George W. Jones, James H. Thomas, Meredith P. Gentry,
Washington Barrow, Lucien B. Chase, Frederick P. Stanton, William T.
Haskell.
MISSOURI.--James B. Bowlin, John Jamieson, James S. Green, Willard
P. Hall, John S. Phelps.
ARKANSAS.--Robert W. Johnson.
TEXAS.--David S. Kaufman, Timothy Pillsbury.
WISCONSIN.--Mason C. Darling, William Pitt Lynde.
Robert C. Winthrop, Esq., of Massachusetts, was elected Speaker of
the House, and Benjamin B. French, Esq., clerk, and soon after the
President's message was delivered, a quorum of the Senate having
appeared the first day. The election of Speaker had decided the
question of the political character of the House, and showed the
administration to be in a minority:--a bad omen for the popularity
of the Mexican war. The President had gratifying events to
communicate to Congress--the victories of Cerro Gordo, Contreras
and Churubusco, the storming of Chepultepec, and the capture of the
City of Mexico: and exulted over these exploits with the pride of
an American, although all these advantages had to be gained over the
man whom he handed back into Mexico under the belief that he was to
make peace. He also informed Congress that a commissioner had been
sent to the head-quarters of the American army to take advantage
of events to treat for peace; and that he had carried out with him
the draught of the treaty, already prepared, which contained the
terms on which alone the war was to be terminated. This commissioner
was Nicholas P. Trist, Esq., principal clerk in the Department
of State, a man of mind and integrity, well acquainted with the
state of parties in Mexico, subject to none at home, and anxious
to establish peace between the countries. Upon the capture of the
city, and the downfall of Santa Anna, commissioners were appointed
to meet Mr. Trist; but the Mexican government, far from accepting
the treaty as drawn up and sent to them, submitted other terms still
more objectionable to us than ours to them; and the two parties
remained without prospect of agreement. The American commissioner
was recalled, "_under the belief_," said the message, "_that his
continued presence with the army could do no good_." This recall was
despatched from the United States the 6th of October, immediately
after information had been received of the failure of the attempted
negotiations; but, as will be seen hereafter, the notice of the
recall arriving when negotiations had been resumed with good
prospect of success, Mr. Trist remained at his post to finish his
work.
In the course of the summer a "_female_," fresh from Mexico,
and with a masculine stomach for war and politics, arrived at
Washington, had interviews with members of the administration, and
infected some of them with the contagion of a large project--nothing
less than the absorption into our Union of all Mexico, and the
assumption of all her debts (many tens of millions _in esse_, and
more _in posse_), and all to be assumed at par, though the best were
at 25 cents in the dollar, and the mass ranging down to five cents.
This project was given out, and greatly applauded in some of the
administration papers--condemned by the public feeling, and greatly
denounced in a large opposition meeting in Lexington, Kentucky, at
which Mr. Clay came forth from his retirement to speak wisely and
patriotically against it. The "_female_" had gone back to Mexico,
with high letters from some members of the cabinet to the commanding
general, and to the plenipotentiary negotiator; both of whom,
however, eschewed the proffered aid. A party in Mexico developed
itself for this total absorption, and total assumption of debts, and
the scheme acquired so much notoriety, and gained such consistency
of detail, and stuck so close to some members of the administration,
that the President deemed it necessary to clear himself from the
suspicion; which he did in a decisive paragraph of his message:
"It has never been contemplated by me, as an object of the
war, to make a permanent conquest of the republic of Mexico,
or to annihilate her separate existence as an independent
nation. On the contrary, it has ever been my desire that she
should maintain her nationality, and, under a good government
adapted to her condition, be a free, independent, and prosperous
republic. The United States were the first among the nations
to recognize her independence, and have always desired to be
on terms of amity and good neighborhood with her. This she
would not suffer. By her own conduct we have been compelled
to engage in the present war. In its prosecution, we seek not
her overthrow as a nation, but, in vindicating our national
honor, we seek to obtain redress for the wrongs she has done us,
and indemnity for our just demands against her. We demand an
honorable peace; and that peace must bring with it indemnity for
the past, and security for the future."
While some were for total absorption, others were for half; and for
taking a line (provisionally during the war), preparatory to its
becoming permanent at its close, and giving to the United States
the northern States of Mexico from gulf to gulf. This project the
President also repulsed in a paragraph of his message:
"To retire to a line, and simply hold and defend it, would not
terminate the war. On the contrary, it would encourage Mexico to
persevere, and tend to protract it indefinitely. It is not to be
expected that Mexico, after refusing to establish such a line as
a permanent boundary when our victorious army are in possession
of her capital, and in the heart of her country, would permit us
to hold it without resistance. That she would continue the war,
and in the most harassing and annoying forms, there can be no
doubt. A border warfare of the most savage character, extending
over a long line, would be unceasingly waged. It would require
a large army to be kept constantly in the field stationed at
posts and garrisons along such a line, to protect and defend
it. The enemy, relieved from the pressure of our arms on his
coasts and in the populous parts of the interior, would direct
his attention to this line, and selecting an isolated post for
attack, would concentrate his forces upon it. This would be a
condition of affairs which the Mexicans, pursuing their favorite
system of guerilla warfare, would probably prefer to any other.
Were we to assume a defensive attitude on such a line, all the
advantages of such a state of war would be on the side of the
enemy. We could levy no contributions upon him, or in any other
way make him feel the pressure of the war; but must remain
inactive, and wait his approach, being in constant uncertainty
at what point on the line, or at what time, he might make an
assault. He may assemble and organize an overwhelming force
in the interior, on his own side of the line, and, concealing
his purpose, make a sudden assault on some one of our posts so
distant from any other as to prevent the possibility of timely
succor or reinforcements; and in this way our gallant army would
be exposed to the danger of being cut off in detail; or if by
their unequalled bravery and prowess every where exhibited
during this war, they should repulse the enemy, their number
stationed at any one post may be too small to pursue him. If the
enemy be repulsed in one attack, he would have nothing to do but
to retreat to his own side of the line, and being in no fear of
a pursuing army, may reinforce himself at leisure, for another
attack on the same or some other post. He may, too, cross the
line between our posts, make rapid incursions into the country
which we hold, murder the inhabitants, commit depredations on
them, and then retreat to the interior before a sufficient
force can be concentrated to pursue him. Such would probably be
the harassing character of a mere defensive war on our part.
If our forces, when attacked, or threatened with attack, be
permitted to cross the line, drive back the enemy, and conquer
him, this would be again to invade the enemy's country, after
having lost all the advantages of the conquests we have already
made by having voluntarily abandoned them. To hold such a line
successfully and in security, it is far from being certain that
it would not require as large an army as would be necessary to
hold all the conquests we have already made, and to continue the
prosecution of the war in the heart of the enemy's country. It
is also far from being certain that the expense of the war would
be diminished by such a policy."
These were the same arguments which Senator Benton had addressed to
the President the year before, when the recommendation of this line
of occupation had gone into the draught of his message, as a cabinet
measure, and was with such difficulty got out of it; but without
getting it out of the head of Mr. Calhoun and his political friends.
To return to the argument against such a line, in this subsequent
message, bespoke an adherence to it on the part of some formidable
interest, which required to be authoritatively combated: and such
was the fact. The formidable interest which wished a separation of
the slave from the free States, wished also as an extension of their
Southern territory, to obtain a broad slice from Mexico, embracing
Tampico as a port on the east, Guaymas as a port on the Gulf of
California, and Monterey and Saltillo in the middle. Mr. Polk did
not sympathize with that interest, and publicly repulsed their
plan--without, however, extinguishing their scheme--which survives,
and still labors at its consummation in a different form, and with
more success.
The expenses of the government during that season of war, were the
next interesting head of the message, and were presented, all heads
of expenditure included, at some fifty-eight millions of dollars; or
a quarter less than those same expenses now are in a state of peace
The message says:
"It is estimated that the receipts into the Treasury for the
fiscal year ending on the 30th of June, 1848, including the
balance in the Treasury on the 1st of July last, will amount
to forty-two millions eight hundred and eighty-six thousand
five hundred and forty-five dollars and eighty cents; of which
thirty-one millions, it is estimated, will be derived from
customs; three millions five hundred thousand from the sale of
the public lands; four hundred thousand from incidental sources;
including sales made by the solicitor of the Treasury; and six
millions two hundred and eighty-five thousand two hundred and
ninety-four dollars and fifty-five cents from loans already
authorized by law, which, together with the balance in the
Treasury on the 1st of July last, make the sum estimated. The
expenditures for the same period, if peace with Mexico shall not
be concluded, and the army shall be increased as is proposed,
will amount, including the necessary payments on account of
principal and interest of the public debt and Treasury notes, to
fifty-eight millions six hundred and fifteen thousand and sixty
dollars and seven cents."
An encomium upon the good working of the independent treasury
system, and the perpetual repulse of paper money from the federal
Treasury, concluded the heads of this message which retain a
surviving interest:
"The financial system established by the constitutional Treasury
has been, thus far, eminently successful in its operations; and
I recommend an adherence to all its essential provisions; and
especially to that vital provision, which wholly separates the
government from all connection with banks, and excludes bank
paper from all revenue receipts."
An earnest exhortation to a vigorous prosecution of the war
concluded the message.
CHAPTER CLXXI.
DEATH OF SENATOR BARROW: MR. BENTON'S EULOGIUM.
MR. BENTON. In rising to second the motion for paying to the memory
of our deceased brother senator the last honors of this body, I feel
myself to be obeying the impulsions of an hereditary friendship, as
well as conforming to the practice of the Senate. Forty years ago,
when coming to the bar at Nashville, it was my good fortune to enjoy
the friendship of the father of the deceased, then an inhabitant
of Nashville, and one of its most respected citizens. The deceased
was then too young to be noted amongst the rest of the family. The
pursuits of life soon carried us far apart, and long after, and for
the first time to know each other, we met on this floor. We met
not as strangers, but as friends--friends of early and hereditary
recollections; and all our intercourse since--every incident and
every word of our lives, public and private--has gone to strengthen
and confirm the feelings under which we met, and to perpetuate with
the son the friendship which had existed with the father. Up to the
last moments of his presence in this chamber--up to the last moment
that I saw him--our meetings and partings were the cordial greetings
of hereditary friendship; and now, not only as one of the elder
senators, but as the early and family friend of the deceased, I come
forward to second the motion for the honors to his memory.
The senator from Louisiana (Mr. H. Johnson) has performed the office
of duty and of friendship to his deceased friend and colleague.
Justly, truly and feelingly has he performed it. With deep and
heartfelt emotion he has portrayed the virtues, and sketched the
qualities, which constituted the manly and lofty character of
Alexander Barrow. He has given us a picture as faithful as it is
honorable, and it does not become me to dilate upon what he has so
well presented; but, in contemplating the rich and full portrait of
the high qualities of the head and heart which he has presented,
suffer me to look for an instant to the source, the fountain, from
which flowed the full stream of generous and noble actions which
distinguished the entire life of our deceased brother senator. I
speak of the heart--the noble heart--of Alexander Barrow. Honor,
courage, patriotism, friendship, generosity--fidelity to his friend
and his country--the social affections--devotion to the wife of his
bosom, and the children of their love: all--all, were there! and
never, not once, did any cold, or selfish, or timid calculation
ever come from his manly head to check or balk the noble impulsions
of his generous heart. A quick, clear, and strong judgment found
nothing to restrain in these impulsions; and in all the wide circle
of his public and private relations--in all the words and acts of
his life--it was the heart that moved first, and always so true to
honor that judgment had nothing to do but to approve the impulsion.
From that fountain flowed the stream of the actions of his life; and
now what we all deplore--what so many will join in deploring--is,
that such a fountain, so unexpectedly, in the full tide of its flow,
should have been so suddenly dried up. He was one of the younger
members of this body, and in all the hope and vigor of meridian
manhood. Time was ripening and maturing his faculties. He seemed
to have a right to look forward to many years of usefulness to his
country and to his family. With qualities evidently fitted for the
_field_ as well as for the Senate, a brilliant future was before
him; ready, as I know he was, to serve his country in any way that
honor and duty should require.
CHAPTER CLXXII.
DEATH OF MR. ADAMS.
"Just after the yeas and nays were taken on a question, and the
Speaker had risen to put another question to the House, a sudden
cry was heard on the left of the chair, 'Mr. Adams is dying!'
Turning our eyes to the spot, we beheld the venerable man in the
act of falling over the left arm of his chair, while his right
arm was extended, grasping his desk for support. He would have
dropped upon the floor had he not been caught in the arms of
the member sitting next him. A great sensation was created in
the House: members from all quarters rushing from their seats,
and gathering round the fallen statesman, who was immediately
lifted into the area in front of the clerk's table. The Speaker
instantly suggested that some gentleman move an adjournment,
which being promptly done, the House adjourned."
So wrote the editors of the National Intelligencer, friends and
associates of Mr. Adams for forty years, and now witnesses of the
last scene--the sudden sinking in his chair, which was to end in
his death. The news flew to the Senate chamber, the Senate then in
session, and engaged in business, which Mr. Benton interrupted,
standing up, and saying to the President of the body and the
senators:
"I am called on to make a painful announcement to the Senate. I
have just been informed that the House of Representatives has
this instant adjourned under the most afflictive circumstances.
A calamitous visitation has fallen on one of its oldest and
most valuable members--one who has been President of the United
States, and whose character has inspired the highest respect
and esteem. Mr. Adams has just sunk down in his chair, and
has been carried into an adjoining room, and may be at this
moment passing from the earth, under the roof that covers us,
and almost in our presence. In these circumstances the whole
Senate will feel alike, and feel wholly unable to attend to any
business. I therefore move the immediate adjournment of the
Senate."
The Senate immediately adjourned, and all inquiries were directed
to the condition of the stricken statesman. He had been removed
to the Speaker's room, where he slightly recovered the use of his
speech, and uttered in faltering accents, the intelligible words,
"_This is the last of earth_;" and soon after, "_I am composed._"
These were the last words he ever spoke. He lingered two days, and
died on the evening of the 23d--struck the day before, and dying
the day after the anniversary of Washington's birth--and attended
by every circumstance which he could have chosen to give felicity
in death. It was on the field of his labors--in the presence of the
national representation, presided by a son of Massachusetts (Robert
C. Winthrop, Esq.), in the full possession of his faculties, and of
their faithful use--at octogenarian age--without a pang--hung over
in his last unconscious moments by her who had been for more than
fifty years the worthy partner of his bosom. Such a death was the
"crowning mercy" of a long life of eminent and patriotic service,
filled with every incident that gives dignity and lustre to human
existence.
I was sitting in my library-room in the twilight of a raw and
blustering day, the lamp not yet lit, when a note was delivered to
me from Mr. Webster--I had saved it seven years, just seven--when
it was destroyed in that conflagration of my house which consumed,
in a moment, so much which I had long cherished. The note was to
inform me that Mr. Adams had breathed his last; and to say that the
Massachusetts delegation had fixed upon me to second the motion,
which would be made in the Senate the next day, for the customary
funeral honors to his memory. Seconding the motion on such an
occasion always requires a brief discourse on the life and character
of the deceased. I was taken by surprise, for I had not expected
such an honor: I was oppressed; for a feeling of inability and
unworthiness fell upon me. I went immediately to Mr. Winthrop, who
was nearest, to inquire if some other senator had been named to take
my place if I should find it impossible to comply with the request.
He said there was none--that Mr. Davis, of Massachusetts, would make
the motion, and that I was the only one named to second him. My
part was then fixed. I went to the other end of the city to see Mr.
Davis, and so to arrange with him as to avoid repetitions--which was
done, that he should speak of events, and I of characteristics. It
was late in the night when I got back to my house, and took pen and
paper to note the heads of what I should say. Never did I feel so
much the weight of Cicero's admonition--"_Choose with discretion out
of the plenty that lies before you._" The plenty was too much. It
was a field crowded with fruits and flowers, of which you could only
cull a few--a mine filled with gems, of which you could only snatch
a handful. By midnight I had finished the task, and was ready for
the ceremony.
Mr. Adams died a member of the House, and the honors to his
memory commenced there, to be finished in the Senate. Mr. Webster
was suffering from domestic affliction--the death of a son and
a daughter--and could not appear among the speakers. Several
members of the House spoke justly and beautifully; and of these,
the pre-eminent beauty and justice of the discourse delivered by
Mr. James McDowell, of Virginia (even if he had not been a near
connection, the brother of Mrs. Benton), would lead me to give it
the preference in selecting some passages from the tributes of the
House. With a feeling and melodious delivery, he said:
"It is not for Massachusetts to mourn alone over a solitary
and exclusive bereavement. It is not for her to feel alone
a solitary and exclusive sorrow. No, sir; no! Her sister
commonwealths gather to her side in this hour of her affliction,
and, intertwining their arms with hers, they bend together over
the bier of her illustrious son--feeling as she feels, and
weeping as she weeps, over a sage, a patriot, and a statesman
gone! It was in these great characteristics of individual and of
public man that his country reverenced that son when living, and
such, with a painful sense of her common loss, will she deplore
him now that he is dead.
"Born in our revolutionary day, and brought up in early and
cherished intimacy with the fathers and founders of the
republic, he was a living bond of connection between the present
and the past--the venerable representative of the memories of
another age, and the zealous, watchful, and powerful one of the
expectations, interests, and progressive knowledge of his own.
"There he sat, with his intense eye upon every thing that
passed, the picturesque and rare one man, unapproachable by all
others in the unity of his character and in the thousand-fold
anxieties which centred upon him. No human being ever entered
this hall without turning habitually and with heart-felt
deference first to him, and few ever left it without pausing,
as they went, to pour out their blessings upon that spirit of
consecration to the country which brought and which kept him
here.
"Standing upon the extreme boundary of human life, and
disdaining all the relaxations and exemptions of age, his outer
framework only was crumbling away. The glorious engine within
still worked on unhurt, uninjured, amid all the dilapidations
around it, and worked on with its wonted and its iron power,
until the blow was sent from above which crushed it into
fragments before us. And, however appalling that blow, and
however profoundly it smote upon our own feelings as we beheld
its extinguishing effect upon his, where else could it have
fallen so fitly upon him? Where else could he have been relieved
from the yoke of his labors so well as in the field where he
bore them? Where else would he himself have been so willing to
have yielded up his life, as upon the post of duty, and by the
side of that very altar to which he had devoted it? Where but
in the capitol of his country, to which all the throbbings and
hopes of his heart had been given, would the dying patriot be so
willing that those hopes and throbbings should cease? And where
but from this mansion-house of liberty on earth, could this
dying Christian more fitly go to his mansion-house of eternal
liberty on high?"
Mr. Benton concluded in the Senate the ceremonies which had
commenced in the House, pronouncing the brief discourse which was
intended to group into one cluster the varied characteristics of the
public and private life of this most remarkable man:
"The voice of his native State has been heard, through one of
the senators of Massachusetts, announcing the death of her aged
and most distinguished son. The voice of the other senator from
Massachusetts is not heard, nor is his presence seen. A domestic
calamity, known to us all, and felt by us all, confines him
to the chamber of grief while the Senate is occupied with the
public manifestations of a respect and sorrow which a national
loss inspires. In the absence of that senator, and as the member
of this body longest here, it is not unfitting or unbecoming in
me to second the motion which has been made for extending the
last honors of the Senate to him who, forty-five years ago, was
a member of this body, who, at the time of his death, was among
the oldest members of the House of Representatives, and who,
putting the years of his service together, was the oldest of all
the members of the American government.
"The eulogium of Mr. Adams is made in the facts of his life,
which the senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Davis) has so
strikingly stated, that from early manhood to octogenarian age,
he has been constantly and most honorably employed in the public
service. For a period of more than fifty years, from the time of
his first appointment as minister abroad under Washington, to
his last election to the House of Representatives by the people
of his native district, he has been constantly retained in the
public service, and that, not by the favor of a sovereign, or
by hereditary title, but by the elections and appointments
of republican government. This fact makes the eulogy of the
illustrious deceased. For what, except a union of all the
qualities which command the esteem and confidence of man, could
have insured a public service so long, by appointments free
and popular, and from sources so various and exalted? Minister
many times abroad; member of this body; member of the House
of Representatives; cabinet minister; President of the United
States; such has been the galaxy of his splendid appointments.
And what but moral excellence the most perfect; intellectual
ability the most eminent; fidelity the most unwavering; service
the most useful; would have commanded such a succession of
appointments so exalted, and from sources so various and so
eminent? Nothing less could have commanded such a series of
appointments; and accordingly we see the union of all these
great qualities in him who has received them.
"In this long career of public service, Mr. Adams was
distinguished not only by faithful attention to all the great
duties of his stations, but to all their less and minor
duties. He was not the Salaminian galley, to be launched only
on extraordinary occasions; but he was the ready vessel,
always under sail when the duties of his station required
it, be the occasion great or small. As President, as cabinet
minister, as minister abroad, he examined all questions that
came before him, and examined all, in all their parts--in all
the minutiæ of their detail, as well as in all the vastness
of their comprehension. As senator, and as a member of the
House of Representatives, the obscure committee-room was as
much the witness of his laborious application to the drudgery
of legislation, as the halls of the two Houses were to the
ever-ready speech, replete with knowledge, which instructed all
hearers, enlightened all subjects, and gave dignity and ornament
to all debate.
"In the observance of all the proprieties of life, Mr. Adams
was a most noble and impressive example. He cultivated the
minor as well as the greater virtues. Wherever his presence
could give aid and countenance to what was useful and honorable
to man, there he was. In the exercises of the school and of
the college--in the meritorious meetings of the agricultural,
mechanical, and commercial societies--in attendance upon Divine
worship--he gave the punctual attendance rarely seen but in
those who are free from the weight of public cares.
"Punctual to every duty, death found him at the post of duty;
and where else could it have found him, at any stage of his
career, for the fifty years of his illustrious public life?
From the time of his first appointment by Washington to his
last election by the people of his native town, where could
death have found him but at the post of duty? At that post, in
the fulness of age, in the ripeness of renown crowned with
honors, surrounded by his family, his friends, and admirers,
and in the very presence of the national representation, he has
been gathered to his fathers, leaving behind him the memory of
public services which are the history of his country for half a
century, and the example of a life, public and private, which
should be the study and the model of the generations of his
countrymen."
The whole ceremony was inconceivably impressive. The two Houses
of Congress were filled to their utmost capacity, and of all that
Washington contained, and neighboring cities could send--the
President, his cabinet, foreign ministers, judges of the Supreme
Court, senators and representatives, citizens and visitors.
CHAPTER CLXXIII.
DOWNFALL OF SANTA ANNA: NEW GOVERNMENT IN MEXICO: PEACE
NEGOTIATIONS: TREATY OF PEACE.
The war was declared May 13th, 1846, upon a belief, grounded on the
projected restoration of Santa Anna (then in exile in Havana), that
it would be finished in ninety to one hundred and twenty days, and
that, in the mean time, no fighting would take place. Santa Anna did
not get back until the month of August; and, simultaneously with his
return, was the President's overture for peace, and application to
Congress for two millions of dollars--with leave to pay the money
in the city of Mexico on the conclusion of peace there, without
waiting for the ratification of the treaty by the United States.
Such an overture, and such an application, and the novelty of paying
money upon a treaty before it was ratified by our own authorities,
bespoke a great desire to obtain peace, even by extraordinary means.
And such was the fact. The desire was great--the means unusual; but
the event baffled all the calculations. Santa Anna repulsed the
peace overture, put himself at the head of armies, inflamed the war
spirit of the country, and fought desperately. It was found that a
mistake had been made--that the sword, and not the olive branch had
been returned to Mexico; and that, before peace could be made, it
became the part of brave soldiers to conquer by arms the man whom
intrigue had brought back to grant it. Brought back by politicians,
he had to be driven out by victorious generals before the peace he
was to give could be obtained. The victories before the city of
Mexico, and the capture of the city, put an end to his career. The
republican party, which abhorred him, seized upon those defeats to
depose him. He fled the country, and a new administration being
organized, peaceful negotiations were resumed, and soon terminated
in the desired pacification. Mr. Trist had remained at his post,
though recalled, and went on with his negotiations. In three months
after his downfall, and without further operation of arms, the
treaty was signed, and all the desired stipulations obtained. New
Mexico and Upper California were ceded to the United States, and the
lower Rio Grande, from its mouth to El Paso, taken for the boundary
of Texas. These were the acquisitions. On the other hand, the United
States agreed to pay to Mexico fifteen millions of dollars in five
instalments, annual after the first; which first instalment, true to
the original idea of the efficacy of money in terminating the war,
was to be paid down in the city of Mexico as soon as the articles
of pacification were signed, and ratified there. The claims of
American citizens against Mexico were all assumed, limited to three
and a quarter millions of dollars, which, considering that the war
ostensibly originated in these claims, was a very small sum. But
the largest gratified interest was one which did not appear on the
face of the treaty, but had the full benefit of being included in
it. They were the speculators in Texas lands and scrip, now allowed
to calculate largely upon their increased value as coming under the
flag of the American Union. They were among the original promoters
of the Texas annexation, among the most clamorous for war, and among
the gratified at the peace. General provisions only were admitted
into the treaty in favor of claims and land titles. Upright and
disinterested himself, the negotiator sternly repulsed all attempts
to get special, or personal provisions to be inserted in behalf of
any individuals or companies. The treaty was a singular conclusion
of the war. Undertaken to get indemnity for claims, the United
States paid those claims herself. Fifteen millions of dollars were
the full price of New Mexico and California--the same that was paid
for all Louisiana; so that, with the claims assumed, the amount paid
for the territories, and the expenses of the war, the acquisitions
were made at a dear rate. The same amount paid to Mexico without
the war, and by treating her respectfully in treating with her for
a boundary which would include Texas, might have obtained the same
cessions; for every Mexican knew that Texas was gone, and that New
Mexico and Upper California were going the same way, both inhabited
and dominated by American citizens, and the latter actually severed
from Mexico by a successful revolution before the war was known of,
and for the purpose of being transferred to the United States.
The treaty was a fortunate event for the United States, and for
the administration which had made it. The war had disappointed
the calculation on which it began. Instead of brief, cheap, and
bloodless, it had become long, costly, and sanguinary: instead
of getting a peace through the restoration of Santa Anna, that
formidable chieftain had to be vanquished and expelled, before
negotiations could be commenced with those who would always have
treated fairly, if their national feelings had not been outraged
by the aggressive and defiant manner in which Texas had been
incorporated. Great discontent was breaking out at home. The
Congress elections were going against the administration, and the
aspirants for the presidency in the cabinet were struck with terror
at the view of the great military reputations which were growing
up. Peace was the only escape from so many dangers, and it was
gladly seized upon to terminate a war which had disappointed all
calculations, and the very successes of which were becoming alarming
to them.
Mr. Trist signed his treaty in the beginning of February, and it
stands on the statute-book, as it was in fact, the sole work on the
American side, of that negotiator. Two ministers plenipotentiary
and envoys extraordinary were sent out to treat after he had been
recalled. They arrived after the work was done, and only brought
home what he had finished. His name alone is signed to the treaty on
the American side, against three on the Mexican side: his name alone
appears on the American side in the enumeration of the ministers in
the preamble to the treaty. In that preamble he is characterized
as the "_plenipotentiary_" of the United States, and by that title
he was described in the commission given him by the President. His
work was accepted, communicated to the Senate, ratified; and became
a supreme law of the land: yet he himself was rejected! recalled
and dismissed, without the emoluments of plenipotentiary; while two
others received those emoluments in full for bringing home a treaty
in which their names do not appear. Certainly those who served
the government well in that war with Mexico, fared badly with the
administration. Taylor, who had vanquished at Palo Alto, Resaca de
la Palma, Monterey, and Buena Vista, was quarrelled with: Scott,
who removed the obstacles to peace, and subdued the Mexican mind to
peace, was superseded in the command of the army: Frémont, who had
snatched California out of the hands of the British, and handed it
over to the United States, was court-martialled: and Trist, who made
the treaty which secured the objects of the war, and released the
administration from its dangers, was recalled and dismissed.
CHAPTER CLXXIV.
OREGON TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENT: ANTI-SLAVERY ORDINANCE OF 1787
APPLIED TO OREGON TERRITORY: MISSOURI COMPROMISE LINE OF 1820, AND
THE TEXAS ANNEXATION RENEWAL OF IT IN 1845, AFFIRMED.
It was on the bill for the establishment of the Oregon territorial
government that Mr. Calhoun first made trial of his new doctrine of,
"No power in Congress to abolish slavery in territories;" which,
so far from maintaining, led to the affirmation of the contrary
doctrine, and to the discovery of his own, early as well as late
support, of what he now condemned as a breach of the constitution,
and justifiable cause for a separation of the slave from the free
States. For it was on this occasion that Senator Dix, of New York,
produced the ample proofs that Mr. Calhoun, as a member of Mr.
Monroe's cabinet, supported the constitutionality of the Missouri
compromise at the time it was made; and his own avowals eighteen
years afterwards proved the same thing--all to be confirmed by
subsequent authentic acts. On the motion of Mr. Hale, in the Senate,
the bill (which had come up from the House without any provision on
the subject of slavery) was amended so as to extend the principle
of the anti-slavery clause of the ordinance of '87 to the bill. Mr.
Douglass moved to amend by inserting a provision for the extension
of the Missouri compromise line to the Pacific Ocean. His proposed
amendment was specific, and intended to be permanent, and to apply
to the organization of all future territories established in the
West. It was in these words:
"That the line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes of north
latitude, known as the Missouri compromise line, as defined
by the eighth section of an act entitled 'An act to authorize
the people of the Missouri territory to form a constitution
and State government, and for the admission of such State into
the Union on an equal footing with the original States, and
to prohibit slavery in certain territories, approved March 6,
1820,' be, and the same is hereby, declared to extend to the
Pacific Ocean; and the said eighth section, together with the
compromise therein effected, is hereby revived, and declared to
be in full force and binding, for the future organization of the
territories of the United States, in the same sense, and with
the same understanding, with which it was originally adopted."
The yeas and nays were demanded on the adoption of this amendment,
and resulted, 33 for it, 22 against it. They were:
"YEAS--Messrs. Atchison, Badger, Bell, Benton, Berrien, Borland,
Bright, Butler, Calhoun, Cameron, Davis of Mississippi,
Dickinson, Douglass, Downs, Fitzgerald, Foote, Hannegan,
Houston, Hunter, Johnson of Maryland, Johnson of Louisiana,
Johnson of Georgia, King, Lewis, Mangum, Mason, Metcalfe,
Pearce, Sebastian, Spruance, Sturgeon, Turney, Underwood.
"NAYS--Messrs. Allen, Atherton, Baldwin, Bradbury, Breese,
Clark, Corwin, Davis of Massachusetts, Dayton, Dix, Dodge,
Felch, Greene, Hale, Hamlin, Miller, Niles, Phelps, Upham,
Walker, Webster."
The vote here given by Mr. Calhoun was in contradiction to his new
doctrine, and excused upon some subtle distinction between a vote
for an amendment, and a bill, and upon a reserved intent to vote
against the bill itself if adopted. Considering that his objections
to the matter of the amendment were constitutional and not
expedient, and that the votes of others might pass the bill with the
clause in it without his help, it is impossible to see the validity
of the distinction with which he satisfied himself. His language
was that, "though he had voted for the introduction of the Missouri
compromise, he could not vote for the bill which he regarded as
artificial." Eventually the bill passed through both Houses with
the anti-slavery principle of the ordinance embraced in it; whereat
Mr. Calhoun became greatly excited, and assuming to act upon the
new doctrine that he had laid down, that the exclusion of slavery
from any territory was a subversion of the Union, openly proclaimed
the strife between the North and the South to be ended, and the
separation of the States accomplished; called upon the South to do
her duty to herself, and denounced every Southern representative who
would not follow the same course that he did. He exclaimed:
"The great strife between the North and the South is ended. The
North is determined to exclude the property of the slaveholder,
and of course the slaveholder himself, from its territory.
On this point there seems to be no division in the North. In
the South, he regretted to say, there was some division of
sentiment. The effect of this determination of the North was
to convert all the Southern population into slaves; and he
would never consent to entail that disgrace on his posterity.
He denounced any Southern man who would not take the same
course. Gentlemen were greatly mistaken if they supposed the
presidential question in the South would override this more
important one. The separation of the North and the South is
completed. The South has now a most solemn obligation to
perform--to herself--to the constitution--to the Union. She is
bound to come to a decision not to permit this to go on any
further, but to show that, dearly as she prizes the Union, there
are questions which she regards as of greater importance than
the Union. She is bound to fulfil her obligations as she may
best understand them. This is not a question of territorial
government, but a question involving the continuance of the
Union. Perhaps it was better that this question should come to
an end, in order that some new point should be taken."
This was an open invocation to disunion, and from that time forth
the efforts were regular to obtain a meeting of the members from
the slave States, to unite in a call for a convention of the slave
States to redress themselves. Mr. Benton and General Houston, who
had supported the Oregon bill, were denounced by name by Mr.
Calhoun after his return to South Carolina, "as traitors to the
South:" a denunciation which they took for a distinction; as, what
he called treason to the South, they knew to be allegiance to the
Union. The President, in approving the Oregon bill, embraced the
opportunity to send in a special message on the slavery agitation,
in which he showed the danger to the Union from the progress of that
agitation, and the necessity of adhering to the principles of the
ordinance of 1787--the terms of the Missouri compromise of 1820--and
the Texas compromise (as he well termed it) of 1845, as the means of
averting the danger. These are his warnings:
"The fathers of the constitution--the wise and patriotic men
who laid the foundation of our institutions--foreseeing the
danger from this quarter, acted in a spirit of compromise and
mutual concession on this dangerous and delicate subject; and
their wisdom ought to be the guide of their successors. Whilst
they left to the States exclusively the question of domestic
slavery within their respective limits, they provided that
slaves, who might escape into other States not recognizing the
institution of slavery, shall 'be delivered up on the claim
of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.' Upon
this foundation the matter rested until the Missouri question
arose. In December, 1819, application was made to Congress by
the people of the Missouri territory for admission into the
Union as a State. The discussion upon the subject in Congress
involved the question of slavery, and was prosecuted with such
violence as to produce excitements alarming to every patriot in
the Union. But the good genius of conciliation which presided
at the birth of our institutions finally prevailed, and the
Missouri compromise was adopted. This compromise had the
effect of calming the troubled waves, and restoring peace and
good-will throughout the States of the Union. I do not doubt
that a similar adjustment of the questions which now agitate
the public mind would produce the same happy results. If the
legislation of Congress on the subject of the other territories
shall not be adopted in a spirit of conciliation and compromise,
it is impossible that the country can be satisfied, or that the
most disastrous consequences shall fail to ensue. When Texas
was admitted into our Union, the same spirit of compromise
which guided our predecessors in the admission of Missouri,
a quarter of a century before, prevailed without any serious
opposition. The 'joint-resolution for annexing Texas to the
United States,' approved March the first, one thousand eight
hundred and forty-five, provides that 'such States as may be
formed out of that portion of said territory lying south of
thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, commonly
known as the Missouri compromise line, shall be admitted into
the Union with or without slavery, as the people of each State
asking admission may desire. And in such State or States as
shall be formed out of said territory north of the Missouri
compromise line, slavery or involuntary servitude (except for
crime) shall be prohibited. The territory of Oregon lies far
north of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes, the Missouri and
Texas compromise line. Its southern boundary is the parallel
of forty-two, leaving the intermediate distance to be three
hundred and thirty geographical miles. And it is because the
provisions of this bill are not inconsistent with the terms of
the Missouri compromise, if extended from the Rio Grande to the
Pacific Ocean, that I have not felt at liberty to withhold my
sanction. Had it embraced territories south of that compromise,
the question presented for my consideration would have been
of a far different character, and my action upon it must have
corresponded with my convictions.
"Ought we now to disturb the Missouri and Texas compromises?
Ought we at this late day, in attempting to annul what has been
so long established and acquiesced in, to excite sectional
divisions and jealousies; to alienate the people of different
portions of the Union from each other; and to endanger the
existence of the Union itself?"
To the momentous appeals with which this extract concludes, a
terrible answer has just been given. To the question--Will you annul
these compromises, and excite jealousies and divisions, sectional
alienations, and endanger the existence of this Union? the dreadful
answer has been given--WE WILL! And in recording that answer,
History performs her sacred duty in pointing to its authors as the
authors of the state of things which now alarms and afflicts the
country, and threatens the calamity which President Polk foresaw and
deprecated.
CHAPTER CLXXV.
MR. CALHOUN'S NEW DOGMA ON TERRITORIAL SLAVERY: SELF-EXTENSION OF
THE SLAVERY PART OF THE CONSTITUTION TO THE TERRITORIES.
The resolutions of 1847 went no further than to deny the power of
Congress to prohibit slavery in a territory, and that was enough
while Congress alone was the power to be guarded against: but it
became insufficient, and even a stumbling-block, when New Mexico
and California were acquired, and where no Congress prohibition was
necessary because their soil was already free. Here the dogma of
'47 became an impediment to the territorial extension of slavery;
for, in denying power to legislate upon the subject, the denial
worked both ways--both against the admission and exclusion. It was
on seeing this consequence as resulting from the dogmas of 1847,
that Mr. Benton congratulated the country upon the approaching
cessation of the slavery agitation--that the Wilmot Proviso being
rejected as unnecessary, the question was at an end, as the friends
of slavery extension could not ask Congress to pass a law to carry
it into a territory. The agitation seemed to be at an end, and
peace about to dawn upon the land. Delusive calculation! A new
dogma was invented to fit the case--that of the transmigration of
the constitution--(the slavery part of it)--into the territories,
overriding and overruling all the anti-slavery laws which it found
there, and planting the institution there under its own wing, and
maintaining it beyond the power of eradication either by Congress
or the people of the territory. Before this dogma was proclaimed
efforts were made to get the constitution extended to these
territories by act of Congress: failing in those attempts, the
difficulty was leaped over by boldly assuming that the constitution
went of itself--that is to say, the slavery part of it. In this
exigency Mr. Calhoun came out with his new and supreme dogma of the
transmigratory function of the constitution in the _ipso facto_,
and the instantaneous transportation of itself in its slavery
attributes, into all acquired territories. This dogma was thus
broached by its author in his speech upon the Oregon territorial
bill:
"_But I deny that the laws of Mexico can have the effect
attributed to them (that of keeping slavery out of New Mexico
and California). As soon as the treaty between the two countries
is ratified, the sovereignty and authority of Mexico in the
territory acquired by it become extinct, and that of the United
States is substituted in its place, carrying with it the
constitution, with its overriding control over all the laws and
institutions of Mexico inconsistent with it._"
History cannot class higher than as a vagary of a diseased
imagination this imputed self-acting and self-extension of the
constitution. The constitution does nothing of itself--not even in
the States, for which it was made. Every part of it requires a law
to put it into operation. No part of it can reach a territory unless
imparted to it by act of Congress. Slavery, as a local institution,
can only be established by a local legislative authority. It cannot
transmigrate--cannot carry along with it the law which protects it:
and if it could, what law would it carry? The code of the State from
which the emigrant went? Then there would be as many slavery codes
in the territory as States furnishing emigrants, and these codes
all varying more or less; and some of them in the essential nature
of the property--the slave, in many States, being only a chattel
interest, governed by the laws applicable to chattels--in others,
as in Louisiana and Kentucky, a real-estate interest, governed by
the laws which apply to landed property. In a word, this dogma
of the self-extension of the slavery part of the constitution to
a territory is impracticable and preposterous, and as novel as
unfounded.
It was in this same debate, on the Oregon territorial bill, that
Mr. Calhoun showed that he had forgotten the part which he had
acted on the Missouri compromise question, and also forgotten its
history, and first declared that he held that compromise to be
unconstitutional and void. Thus:
"After an arduous struggle of more than a year, on the question
whether Missouri should come into the Union, with or without
restrictions prohibiting slavery, a compromise line was
adopted between the North and the South; but it was done under
circumstances which made it nowise obligatory on the latter. It
is true, it was moved by one of her distinguished citizens (Mr.
Clay), but it is equally so, that it was carried by the almost
united vote of the North against the almost united vote of the
South; and was thus imposed on the latter by superior numbers,
in opposition to her strenuous efforts. The South has never
given her sanction to it, or assented to the power it asserted.
She was voted down, and has simply acquiesced in an arrangement
which she has not had the power to reverse, and which she could
not attempt to do without disturbing the peace and harmony of
the Union--to which she has ever been adverse."
All this is error, and was immediately shown to be so by Senator
Dix of New York, who produced the evidence that Mr. Monroe's
cabinet, of which Mr. Calhoun was a member, had passed upon the
question of the constitutionality of that compromise, and given
their opinions in its favor. It has also been seen since that, as
late as 1838, Mr. Calhoun was in favor of that compromise, and
censured Mr. Randolph for being against it; and, still later,
in 1845, he acted his part in re-enacting that compromise, and
re-establishing its line, in that part of it which had been
abrogated by the laws and constitution of Texas, and which, if
not re-established, would permit slavery in Texas, to spread
south of 36° 30'. Forgetting his own part in that compromise, Mr.
Calhoun equally forgot that of others. He says Mr. Clay moved the
compromise--a clear mistake, as it came down to the House from the
Senate, as an amendment to the House restrictive bill. He says it
was carried by the almost united voice of the North against the
almost united voice of the South--a clear mistake again, for it was
carried in the Senate by the united voice of the South, with the aid
of a few votes from the North; and in the House, by a majority of
votes from each section, making 134 to 42. He says it was imposed on
the South: on the contrary, it was not only voted for, but invoked
and implored by its leading men--by all in the Senate, headed by Mr.
Pinkney of Maryland; by all in the House, headed by Mr. Lowndes,
with the exception of Mr. Randolph, whom Mr. Calhoun has since
authentically declared he blamed at the time for his opposition. So
far from being imposed on the South, she re-established it when she
found it down at the recovery of Texas. Every member of Congress
that voted for the legislative admission of Texas in 1845, voted
for the re-establishment of the prostrate Missouri compromise
line: and that vote comprehended the South, with Mr. Calhoun at
its head--not as a member of Congress, but as Secretary of State,
promoting that legislative admission of Texas, and seizing upon it
in preference to negotiation, to effect the admission. This was on
the third day of March, 1845; so that up to that day, which was only
two years before the invention of the "no power" dogma, Mr. Calhoun
is estopped by his own act from denying the constitutionality of
the Missouri compromise: and in that estoppel is equally included
every member of Congress that then voted for that admission. He says
the South never gave her sanction to it: on the contrary, she did
it twice--at its enactment in 1820, and at its re-establishment in
1845. He says she was voted down: on the contrary, she was voted up,
and that twice, and by good help added to her own exertions--and
for which she was duly grateful both times. All this the journals
and legislative history of the times will prove, and which any
person may see that will take the trouble to look. But admit all
these errors of fact, Mr. Calhoun delivered a sound and patriotic
sentiment which his disciples have disregarded and violated: He
would not attempt to reverse the Missouri compromise, because it
would disturb the peace and harmony of the Union. What he would not
attempt, they have done: and the peace and harmony of the Union are
not only disturbed, but destroyed.
In the same speech the dogma of squatter sovereignty was properly
repudiated and scouted, though condemnation was erroneously derived
from a denial, instead of an assertion, of the power of Congress
over it. "Of all the positions ever taken on the subject, he
declared this of squatter sovereignty to be the most absurd:" and,
going on to trace the absurdity to its consequences, he said:
"The first half-dozen of squatters would become the sovereigns,
with full dominion and sovereignty over the territories; and the
conquered people of New Mexico and California would become the
sovereigns of the country as soon as they become territories of
the United States, vested with the full right of excluding even
their conquerors."
Mr. Calhoun concluded this speech on the Oregon bill, in which
he promulgated his latest dogmas on slavery, with referring the
future hypothetical dissolution of the Union, to three phases of
the slavery question: 1. The ordinance of '87. 2. The compromise
of 1820. 3. The Oregon agitation of that day, 1848. These were his
words:
"Now, let me say, Senators, if our Union and system of
government are doomed to perish, and we to share the fate of
so many great people who have gone before us, the historian,
who, in some future day, may record the events tending to so
calamitous a result, will devote his first chapter to the
ordinance of 1787, as lauded as it and its authors have been,
as the first in that series which led to it. His next chapter
will be devoted to the Missouri compromise, and the next to the
present agitation. Whether there will be another beyond, I know
not. It will depend on what we may do."
These the three causes: The ordinance of 1787, which was voted
for by every slave State then in existence: The compromise of
1820, supported by himself, and the power of the South: The Oregon
agitation of 1848, of which he was the sole architect--for he was
the founder of the opposition to free soil in Oregon. But the
historian will have to say that neither of these causes dissolved
the Union: and that historian may have to relate that a fourth cause
did it--and one from which Mr. Calhoun recoiled, "_because it could
not be attempted without disturbing the peace and the harmony of the
Union_."
CHAPTER CLXXVI.
COURT-MARTIAL ON LIEUTENANT-COLONEL FREMONT.
Columbus, the discoverer of the New World, was carried home in
chains, from the theatre of his discoveries, to expiate the crime
of his glory: Frémont, the explorer of California and its preserver
to the United States, was brought home a prisoner to be tried for
an offence, of which the penalty was death, to expiate the offence
of having entered the army without passing through the gate of the
Military Academy.
The governor of the State of Missouri, Austin A. King, Esq.,
sitting at the end of a long gallery at Fort Leavenworth, in
the summer of 1846, where he had gone to see a son depart as a
volunteer in General Kearney's expedition to New Mexico, heard a
person at the other end of the gallery speaking of Frémont in a
way that attracted his attention. The speaker was in the uniform
of a United States officer, and his remarks were highly injurious
to Frémont. He inquired the name of the speaker, and was told it
was Lieutenant Emory, of the Topographical corps; and he afterwards
wrote to a friend in Washington that Frémont was to have trouble
when he got among the officers of the regular army: and trouble
he did have: for he had committed the offence for which, in the
eyes of many of these officers, there was no expiation except
in ignominious expulsion from the army. He had not only entered
the army intrusively, according to their ideas, that is to say,
without passing through West Point, but he had done worse: he had
become distinguished. Instead of seeking easy service about towns
and villages, he had gone off into the depths of the wilderness,
to extend the boundaries of science in the midst of perils and
sufferings, and to gain for himself a name which became known
throughout the world. He was brought home to be tried for the
crime of mutiny, expanded into many specifications, of which one
is enough to show the monstrosity of the whole. At page 11 of the
printed record of the trial, under the head of "Mutiny" stands this
specification, numbered 6:
"In this, that he, Lieutenant-colonel John C. Frémont, of the
regiment of mounted riflemen, United States army, did, at Ciudad
de los Angeles, on the second of March, 1847, in contempt of
the lawful authority of his superior officer, Brigadier-general
Kearney, assume to be and act as governor of California, in
executing a deed or instrument of writing in the following
words, to wit: '_In consideration of Francis Temple having
conveyed to the United States a certain island, commonly called
White, or Bird Island, situated near the mouth of San Francisco
Bay, I, John C. Frémont, Governor of California, and in virtue
of my office as aforesaid, hereby oblige myself as the legal
representative of the United States, and my successors in
office, to pay the said Francis Temple, his heirs or assigns,
the sum of $5,000, to be paid at as early a day as possible
after the receipt of funds from the United States. In witness
whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of
the Territory of California to be affixed, at Ciudad de los
Angeles, the capital of California, this 2d day of March, A. D.
1847.--John C. Frémont_.'"
And of this specification, as well as of all the rest, two dozen in
number, Frémont was duly found guilty by a majority of the court.
Now this case of mutiny consisted in this: That there being an
island of solid rock, of some hundred acres extent, in the mouth of
the San Francisco bay, formed by nature to command the bay, and on
which the United States are now constructing forts and a light-house
to cost millions, which island had been granted to a British subject
and was about to be sold to a French subject, Colonel Frémont
bought it for the United States, subject to their ratification in
paying the purchase money: all which appears upon the face of the
papers. Upon this transaction (as upon all the other specifications)
the majority of the court found the accused guilty of "mutiny,"
the appropriate punishment for which is death; but the sentence
was moderated down to dismission from the service. The President
disapproved the absurd findings (seven of them) under the mutiny
charge, but approved the finding and sentence on inferior charges;
and offered a pardon to Frémont: which he scornfully refused. Since
then the government has taken possession of that island by military
force, without paying any thing for it; Frémont having taken the
purchase on his own account since his conviction for "mutiny" in
having purchased it for the government--a conviction about equal to
what it would have been on a specification for witchcraft, heresy,
or "flat burglary." And now annual appropriations are made for forts
and the light-house upon it, under the name of Alcatraz, or Los
Alcatrazes--that is to say, Pelican Island; so called from being the
resort of those sea birds.
Justice to the dead requires it to be told that these charges, so
preposterously wicked, were not the work of General Kearney, but had
been altered from his. At page 64 of the printed record, and not in
answer to any question on that point, but simply to place himself
right before the court, and the country, General Kearney swore in
these words, and signed them: "_The charges upon which Colonel
Frémont is now arraigned, are not my charges. I preferred a single
charge against Lieutenant-colonel Frémont. These charges, upon which
he is now arraigned, have been changed from mine._" The change was
from one charge to three, and from one or a few specifications
to two dozen--whereof this island purchase is a characteristic
specimen. No person has ever acknowledged the authorship of the
change, but the caption to the charges (page 4 of the record)
declares them to have been preferred by order of the War Department.
The caption runs thus: "_Charges against Lieutenant-colonel Frémont,
of the regiment of mounted riflemen, United States army, preferred
against him by order of the War Department, on information of
Brigadier-general Kearney._" The War Department, at that time, was
William L. Marcy, Esq.; in consequence of which Senator Benton,
chairman for twenty years of the Senate's committee on Military
Affairs, refused to remain any longer at the head of that
committee, because he would not hold a place which would put him in
communication with that department.
The gravamen of the charge was, that Frémont had mutinied because
Kearney would not appoint him governor of California; and the answer
to that was, that Commodore Stockton, acting under full authority
from the President, had already appointed him to that place before
Kearney left Santa Fé for New Mexico: and the proof was ample,
clear, and pointed to that effect: but more has since been found,
and of a kind to be noticed by a court of West Point officers, as
it comes from graduates of the institution. It so happens that
two of General Kearney's officers (Captain Johnston, of the First
Dragoons, and Lieutenant Emory, of the Topographical corps), both
kept journals of the expedition, which have since been published,
and that both these journals contain the same proof--one by a plain
and natural statement--the other by an unnatural suppression which
betrays the same knowledge. The journal of Captain Johnston, of the
first dragoons, under the date of October 6th, 1846, contains this
entry:
"Marched at 9, after having great trouble in getting some ox
carts from the Mexicans: after marching about three miles we
met Kit Carson, direct on express from California, with a mail
of public letters for Washington. He informs us that Colonel
Frémont is probably civil and military governor of California,
and that about forty days since, Commodore Stockton with the
naval forces, and Colonel Frémont, acting in concert, commenced
to revolutionize that country, and place it under the American
flag: that in about ten days this was done, and Carson having
received the rank of lieutenant, was despatched across the
country by the Gila, with a party to carry the mail. The general
told him that he had just passed over the country which we were
to traverse, and he wanted him to go back with him as a guide:
he replied that he had pledged himself to go to Washington, and
he could not think of not fulfilling his promise. The general
told him he would relieve him of all responsibility, and place
the mail in the hands of a safe person to carry it on. He
finally consented, and turned his face towards the West again,
just as he was on the eve of entering the settlements, after
his arduous trip, and when he had set his hopes on seeing his
family. It requires a brave man to give up his private feelings
thus for the public good; but Carson is one: such honor to his
name for it."
This is a natural and straightforward account of this meeting
with Carson, and of the information he gave, that California was
conquered by Stockton and Frémont, and the latter governor of
it; and the journal goes on to show that, in consequence of this
information, General Kearney turned back the body of his command,
and went on with an escort only of one hundred dragoons. Lieutenant
Emory's journal of the same date opens in the same way, with the
same account of the difficulty of getting some teams from the
Mexicans, and then branches off into a dissertation upon peonage,
and winds up the day with saying: "_Came into camp late, and found
Carson with an express from California, bearing intelligence that
the country had surrendered without a blow, and that the American
flag floated in every part._" This is a lame account, not telling to
whom the country had surrendered, eschewing all mention of Stockton
and Frémont, and that governorship which afterwards became the
point in the court-martial trial. The next day's journal opens with
Carson's news, equally lame at the same point, and redundant in
telling something in New Mexico, under date of Oct. 7th, 1846, which
took place the next year in old Mexico, thus: "_Yesterday's news
caused some changes in our camp: one hundred dragoons, officered,
&c., formed the party for California. Major Sumner, with the
dragoons, was ordered to retrace his steps._" Here the news brought
by Carson is again referred to, and the consequence of receiving it
is stated; but still no mention of Frémont and Stockton, and that
governorship, the question of which became the whole point in the
next year's trial for mutiny. But the lack of knowledge of what
took place in his presence is more than balanced by a foresight
into what took place afterwards and far from him--exhibited thus
in the journal: "_Many friends here parted that were never to meet
again: some fell in California, some in New Mexico, and some at
Cerro Gordo._" Now, no United States troops fell in New Mexico until
after Lieutenant Emory left there, nor in California until he got
there, nor at Cerro Gordo until April of the next year, when he was
in California, and could not know it until after Frémont was fixed
upon to be arrested for that mutiny of which the governorship was
the point. It stands to reason, then, that this part of the journal
was altered nearly a year after it purports to have been written,
and after the arrest of Frémont had been resolved upon; and so,
while absolutely proving an alteration of the journal, explains
the omission of all mention of all reference to the governorship,
the ignoring of which was absolutely essential to the institution
of the charge of mutiny.--Long afterwards, and without knowing a
word of what Captain Johnston had written, or Lieutenant Emory had
suppressed, Carson gave his own statement of that meeting with
General Kearney, the identity of which with the statement of Captain
Johnston, is the identity of truth with itself. Thus:
"I met General Kearney, with his troops, on the 6th of October,
about ---- miles below Santa Fé. I had heard of their coming,
and when I met them, the first thing I told them was that they
were 'too late'--that California was conquered, and the United
States flag raised in all parts of the country. But General
Kearney said he would go on, and said something about going to
establish a civil government. I told him a civil government was
already established, and Colonel Frémont appointed governor,
to commence as soon as he returned from the north, some time
in that very month (October). General Kearney said that made
no difference--that he was a friend of Colonel Frémont, and
he would make him governor himself. He began from the first
to insist on my turning back to guide him into California. I
told him I could not turn back--that I had pledged myself to
Commodore Stockton and Colonel Frémont to take their despatches
through to Washington City, and to return with despatches as
far as New Mexico, where my family lived, and to carry them
all the way back if I did not find some one at Santa Fé that I
could trust as well as I could myself--that I had promised them
I would reach Washington in sixty days, and that they should
have return despatches from the government in 120 days. I had
performed so much of the journey in the appointed time, and in
doing so had already worn out and killed thirty-four mules--that
Stockton and Frémont had given me letters of credit to persons
on the way to furnish me with all the animals I needed, and all
the supplies to make the trip to Washington and back in 120
days; and that I was pledged to them, and could not disappoint
them; and besides, that I was under more obligations to Colonel
Frémont than to any other man alive. General Kearney would
not hear of any such thing as my going on. He told me he was
a friend to Colonel Frémont and Colonel Benton, and all the
family, and would send on the despatches by Mr. Fitzpatrick, who
had been with Colonel Frémont in his exploring party, and was a
good friend to him, and would take the despatches through, and
bring back despatches as quick as I could. When he could not
persuade me to turn back, he then told me that he had a right to
make me go with him, and insisted on his right; and I did not
consent to turn back till he had made me believe that he had a
right to order me; and then, as Mr. Fitzpatrick was going on
with the despatches and General Kearney seemed to be such a good
friend of the colonel's, I let him take me back; and I guided
him through, but went with great hesitation, and had prepared
every thing to escape the night before they started, and made
known my intention to Maxwell, who urged me not to do so. More
than twenty times on the road, General Kearney told me about his
being a friend of Colonel Benton and Colonel Frémont, and all
their family, and that he intended to make Colonel Frémont the
governor of California; and all this of his own accord, as we
were travelling along, or in camp, and without my saying a word
to him about it. I say, more than twenty times, for I cannot
remember how many times, it was such a common thing for him to
talk about it."
Such was the statement of Mr. Carson, made to Senator Benton; and
who, although rejected for a lieutenancy in the United States
army because he did not enter it through the gate of the military
academy, is a man whose word will stand wherever he is known, and
who is at the head, as a guide, of the principal military successes
in New Mexico. But why back his word? The very despatches he was
carrying conveyed to the government the same information that he
gave to General Kearney, to wit, that California was conquered
and Frémont to be governor. That information was communicated to
Congress by the President, and also sworn to by Commodore Stockton
before the court-martial: but without any effect upon the majority
of the members.
Colonel Frémont was found guilty of all the charges, and all the
specifications; and in the secrecy which hides the proceedings
of courts-martial, it cannot be told how, or whether the members
divided in their opinions; but circumstances always leak out to
authorize the formation of an opinion, and according to these
leakings, on this occasion four members of the court were against
the conviction: to wit, Brigadier-general Brooke, President;
Lieutenant-colonel Hunt; Lieutenant-colonel Taylor, brother of
the afterwards President; and Major Baker, of the Ordnance. The
proceedings required to be approved, or disapproved, by the
President; and he, although no military man, was a rational man,
and common reason told him there was no mutiny in the case. He
therefore disapproved that finding, and approved the rest, saying:
"Upon an inspection of the record, I am not satisfied that the
facts proved in this case constitute the military crime of
'mutiny.' I am of opinion that the second and third charges
are sustained by the proof, and that the conviction upon these
charges warrants the sentence of the court. The sentence of
the court is therefore approved; but in consideration of the
peculiar circumstances of the case--of the previous meritorious
and valuable services of Lieutenant-colonel Frémont, and of the
foregoing recommendation of a majority of the court, to the
clemency of the President, the sentence of dismissal from the
service is remitted. Lieutenant-col. Frémont will accordingly
be released from arrest, will resume his sword, and report for
duty." (Dated, February 17, 1848.)
Upon the instant of receiving this order, Frémont addressed to the
adjutant-general this note:
"I have this moment received the general order, No. 7 (dated
the 17th instant), making known to me the final proceedings of
the general court-martial before which I have been tried; and
hereby send in my resignation of lieutenant-colonel in the army
of the United States. In doing this I take the occasion to say,
that my reason for resigning is, that I do not feel conscious of
having done any thing to deserve the finding of the court; and,
this being the case, I cannot, by accepting the clemency of the
President, admit the justice of the decision against me."
General Kearney had two misfortunes in this court-martial affair:
he had to appear as prosecutor of charges which he swore before the
court were not his: and he had been attended by West Point officers
envious and jealous of Frémont, and the clandestine sources of
poisonous publications against him, which inflamed animosities, and
left the heats which they engendered to settle upon the head of
General Kearney. Major Cooke and Lieutenant Emory were the chief
springs of these publications, and as such were questioned before
the court, but shielded from open detection by the secret decisions
of the majority of the members.
The secret proceedings of courts-martial are out of harmony with the
progress of the age. Such proceedings should be as open and public
as any other, and all parties left to the responsibility which
publicity involves.
CHAPTER CLXXVII.
FREMONT'S FOURTH EXPEDITION, AND GREAT DISASTER IN THE SNOWS AT THE
HEAD OF THE RIO GRANDE DEL NORTE: SUBSEQUENT DISCOVERY OF THE PASS
HE SOUGHT.
No sooner freed from the army, than Frémont set out upon a fourth
expedition to the western slope of our continent, now entirely at
his own expense, and to be conducted during the winter, and upon
a new line of exploration. His views were practical as well as
scientific, and tending to the establishment of a railroad to the
Pacific, as well as the enlargement of geographical knowledge. He
took the winter for his time, as that was the season in which to see
all the disadvantages of his route; and the head of the Rio Grande
del Norte for his line, as it was the line of the centre, and one
not yet explored, and always embraced in his plan of discovery. The
mountain men had informed him that there was a good pass at the head
of the Del Norte. Besides other dangers and hardships, he had the
war ground of the Utahs, Apaches, Navahoes, and other formidable
tribes to pass through, then all engaged in hostilities with the
United States, and ready to prey upon any party of whites; but 33
of his old companions, 120 picked mules, fine rifles--experience,
vigilance and courage--were his reliance; and a trusted security
against all evil. Arrived at the _Pueblos_ on the Upper Arkansas,
the last of November, at the base of the first sierra to be crossed,
luminous with snow and stern in their dominating look, he dismounted
his whole company, took to their feet, and wading waist-deep in the
vast unbroken snow field, arrived on the other side in the beautiful
valley of San Luis; but still on the eastern side of the great
mountain chain which divided the waters which ran east and west to
the rising and the setting sun. At the head of that valley was the
pass, described to him by the old hunters. With his glasses he could
see the depression in the mountain which marked its place. He had
taken a local guide from the Pueblo San Carlos to lead him to that
pass. But this precaution for safety was the passport to disaster.
He was behind, with his faithful draughtsman, Preuss, when he saw
his guide leading off the company towards a mass of mountains to
the left: he rode up and stopped them, remonstrated with the guide
for two hours; and then yielded to his positive assertion that the
pass was there. The company entered a tortuous gorge, following a
valley through which ran a head stream of the great river Del Norte.
Finally they came to where the ascent was to begin, and the summit
range crossed. The snow was deep, the cold intense, the acclivity
steep, and the huge rocks projecting. The ascent was commenced in
the morning, struggled with during the day, an elevation reached
at which vegetation (wood) ceased, and the summit in view, when,
buried in snow, exhausted with fatigue, freezing with cold, and
incapable of further exertion, the order was given to fall back to
the line of vegetation where wood would afford fire and shelter for
the night. With great care the animals were saved from freezing,
and at the first dawn of day the camp, after a daybreak breakfast,
were in motion for the ascent. Precautions had been taken to make
it more practicable. Mauls, prepared during the night, were carried
by the foremost division to beat down a road in the snow. Men went
forward by relieves. Mules and baggage followed in long single
file in the track made in the snow. The mountain was scaled: the
region of perpetual congelation was entered. It was the winter
solstice, and at a place where the summer solstice brought no life
to vegetation--no thaw to congelation. The summit of the sierra was
bare of every thing but snow, ice and rocks. It was no place to
halt. Pushing down the side of the mountain to reach the wood three
miles distant, a new and awful danger presented itself: a snow storm
raging, the freezing winds beating upon the exposed caravan, the
snow become too deep for the mules to move in, and the cold beyond
the endurance of animal life. The one hundred and twenty mules,
huddling together from an instinct of self-preservation from each
other's heat and shelter, froze stiff as they stood, and fell over
like blocks, to become hillocks of snow. Leaving all behind, and the
men's lives only to be saved, the discomfited and freezing party
scrambled back, recrossing the summit, and finding under the lee of
the mountain some shelter from the driving storm, and in the wood
that was reached the means of making fires.
The men's lives were now saved, but destitute of every thing, only
a remnant of provisions, and not even the resource of the dead
mules which were on the other side of the summit; and the distance
computed at ten days of their travel to the nearest New Mexican
settlement. The guide, and three picked men, were despatched thither
for some supplies, and twenty days fixed for their return. When
they had been gone sixteen days, Frémont, preyed upon by anxiety
and misgiving, set off after them, on foot, snow to the waist,
blankets and some morsels of food on the back: the brave Godey,
his draughtsman Preuss, and a faithful servant, his only company.
When out six days he came upon the camp of his guide, stationary
and apparently without plan or object, and the men haggard, wild
and emaciated. Not seeing King, the principal one of the company,
and on whom he relied, he asked for him. They pointed to an older
camp, a little way off. Going there he found the man dead, and
partly devoured. He had died of exhaustion, of fatigue, and his
comrades fed upon him. Gathering up these three survivors, Frémont
resumed his journey, and had not gone far before he fell on signs
of Indians--two lodges, implying 15 or 20 men, and some 40 or 50
horses--all recently passed along. At another time this would have
been an alarm, one of his fears being that of falling in with a war
party. He knew not what Indians they were, but all were hostile in
that quarter, and evasion the only security against them. To avoid
their course was his obvious resource: on the contrary, he followed
it! for such was the desperation of his situation that even a change
of danger had an attraction. Pursuing the trail down the Del Norte,
then frozen solid over, and near the place where Pike encamped
in the winter of 1807-'8, they saw an Indian behind his party,
stopped to get water from an air hole. He was cautiously approached,
circumvented, and taken. Frémont told his name: the young man, for
he was quite young, started, and asked him if he was the Frémont
that had exchanged presents with the chief of the Utahs at Las Vegas
de Santa Clara three years before? He was answered, yes. Then, said
the young man, we are friends: that chief was my father, and I
remember you. The incident was romantic, but it did not stop there.
Though on a war inroad upon the frontiers of New Mexico, the young
chief became his guide, let him have four horses, conducted him to
the neighborhood of the settlements, and then took his leave, to
resume his scheme of depredation upon the frontier.
Frémont's party reached Taos, was sheltered in the house of his
old friend Carson--obtained the supplies needed--sent them back
by the brave Godey, who was in time to save two-thirds of the
party, finding the other third dead along the road, scattered at
intervals as each had sunk exhausted and frozen, or half burnt in
the fire which had been kindled for them to die by. The survivors
were brought in by Godey, some crippled with frozen feet. Frémont
found himself in a situation which tries the soul--which makes the
issue between despair and heroism--and leaves no alternative but to
sink under fate, or to rise above it. His whole outfit was gone:
his valiant mountain men were one-third dead, many crippled: he was
penniless, and in a strange place. He resolved to go forward--_nulla
vestigia retrorsum_: to raise another outfit, and turn the mountains
by the Gila. In a few days it was all done--men, horses, arms,
provisions--all acquired; and the expedition resumed. But it was
no longer the tried band of mountain men on whose vigilance, skill
and courage he could rely to make their way through hostile tribes.
They were new men, and to avoid danger, not to overcome it, was his
resource. The Navahoes and Apaches had to be passed, and eluded--a
thing difficult to be done, as his party of thirty men and double
as many horses would make a trail, easy to be followed in the snow,
though not deep. He took an unfrequented course, and relied upon
the secrecy and celerity of his movements. The fourth night on the
dangerous ground the horses, picketed without the camp, gave signs
of alarm: they were brought within the square of fires, and the men
put on the alert. Daybreak came without visible danger. The camp
moved off: a man lagged a little behind, contrary to injunctions:
the crack of some rifles sent him running up. It was then clear that
they were discovered, and a party hovering round them. Two Indians
were seen ahead: they might be a decoy, or a watch, to keep the
party in view until the neighboring warriors could come in. Evasion
was no longer possible: fighting was out of the question, for the
whole hostile country was ahead, and narrow defiles to be passed
in the mountains. All depended upon the address of the commander.
Relying upon his ascendant over the savage mind, Frémont took his
interpreter, and went to the two Indians. Godey said he should not
go alone, and followed. Approaching them, a deep ravine was seen
between. The Indians beckoned him to go round by the head of the
ravine, evidently to place that obstacle between him and his men.
Symptoms of fear or distrust would mar his scheme: so he went boldly
round, accosted them confidently, and told his name. They had never
heard it. He told them they ought to be ashamed, not to know their
best friend; inquired for their tribe, which he wished to see: and
took the whole air of confidence and friendship. He saw they were
staggered. He then invited them to go to his camp where the men
had halted, and take breakfast with him. They said that might be
dangerous--that they had shot at one of his men that morning, and
might have killed him, and now be punished for it. He ridiculed the
idea of their hurting his men, charmed them into the camp, where
they ate, and smoked, and told their secret, and became messengers
to lead their tribe in one direction, while Frémont and his men
escaped by another; and the whole expedition went through without
loss, and without molestation. A subsequent winter expedition
completed the design of this one, so disastrously frustrated
by the mistake of a guide. Frémont went out again upon his own
expense--went to the spot where the guide had gone astray--followed
the course described by the mountain men--and found safe and easy
passes all the way to California, through a good country, and
upon the straight line of 38 and 39 degrees. It is the route for
the Central Pacific Railroad, which the structure of the country
invites, and every national consideration demands.
CHAPTER CLXXVIII.
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
Party conventions for the nomination of presidential candidates,
had now become an institution, and a power in the government; and,
so far as the party was concerned, the nomination was the election.
No experience of the evils of this new power had yet checked its
sway, and all parties (for three of them now appeared in the
political field) went into that mode of determining the election
for themselves. The democratic convention met, as heretofore, at
Baltimore, in the month of May, and was numerously attended by
members of Congress, and persons holding office under the federal
government, who would be excluded by the constitution from the place
of electors, but who became more than electors, having virtually
supreme power over the selection of the President, as well as his
election, so far as the party was concerned. The two-thirds rule was
adopted, and that put the nomination in the hands of the minority,
and of the trained intriguers. Every State was to be allowed to give
the whole number of its electoral votes, although it was well known,
now as heretofore, that there were many of them which could not give
a democratic electoral vote at the election. The State of New York
was excluded from voting. Two sets of delegates appeared from that
State, each claiming to represent the true democracy: the convention
settled the question by excluding both sets: and in that exclusion
all the States which were confessedly unable to give a democratic
vote, were allowed to vote; and most of them voted for the
exclusion. Massachusetts, which had never given a democratic vote,
now gave twelve votes; and they were for the exclusion of New York,
which had voted democratically since the time of Mr. Jefferson; and
whose vote often decided the fate of the election. The vote for the
exclusion was 157 to 95: and in this collateral vote, as well as
in the main one, the delegates generally voted according to their
own will, without any regard to the people; and that _will_, with
the most active and managing, was simply to produce a nomination
which would be most favorable to themselves in the presidential
distribution of offices. After four days work a nomination was
produced. Mr. Lewis Cass, of Michigan, for President: General Wm.
O. Butler, of Kentucky, for Vice-President. The construction of
the platform, or party political creed for the campaign, was next
entered upon, and one was produced, interminably long, and long
since forgotten. The value of all such constructions may be seen
in comparing what was then adopted, or rejected as political test,
with what has since been equally rejected or adopted for the same
purpose. For example: the principle of squatter sovereignty, that is
to say, the right of the inhabitants of the _territories_ to decide
the question of slavery for themselves, was then repudiated, and by
a vote virtually unanimous: it is since adopted by a vote equally
unanimous. Mr. Yancy, of Alabama, submitted this resolution, as an
article of democratic faith to be inserted in the creed; to wit:
"_That the doctrine of non-interference with the rights of property
of any portion of this confederation, be it in the States or in the
Territories, by any other than the parties interested in them, is
the true republican doctrine recognized by this body._" This article
of faith was rejected; 246 against 36: so that, up to the month of
May, in the year 1848, squatter sovereignty, or the right of the
inhabitants of a _territory_ to determine the question of slavery
for themselves, was rejected and ignored by the democratic party.
The whig nominating convention met in Philadelphia, in the month of
June, and selected General Zachary Taylor, and Millard Fillmore,
Esq., for their candidates. On their first balloting, the finally
successful candidates lacked much of having the requisite number
of votes, there being 22 for Mr. Webster, 43 for General Scott,
97 for Mr. Clay, and 111 for General Taylor. Eventually General
Taylor received the requisite majority, 171--making his gains
from the friends of Mr. Clay, whose vote was reduced to 32. The
nomination of General Taylor was avowedly made on the calculation of
availability--setting aside both Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster, in favor
of the military popularity of Buena Vista, Monterey, Palo Alto, and
Resaca de la Palma. In one respect the whig convention was more
democratic than that of the democracy: it acted on the principle of
the majority to govern.
But there was a third convention, growing out of the rejection of
the Van Buren democratic delegates at the Baltimore democratic
convention--for the exclusion, though ostensibly against both,
was in reality to get rid of them--which met first at Utica, and
afterwards at Buffalo, in the State of New York, and nominated Mr.
Van Buren for President, and Mr. Charles Francis Adams (son of the
late John Quincy Adams), for Vice-President. This convention also
erected its platform, its distinctive feature being an opposition
to slave institutions, and a desire to abolish, or restrain slavery
wherever it constitutionally could be done. Three principles were
laid down: First, That it was the duty of the federal government
to abolish slavery wherever it could constitutionally be done.
Second, That the States within which slavery existed had the sole
right to interfere with it. Thirdly, That Congress alone can prevent
the existence of slavery in the territories. By the first of these
principles it would be the duty of Congress to abolish slavery in
the District of Columbia; by the second, to let it alone in the
States; by the third, to restrain and prevent it in the territories
then free; the dogma of squatter sovereignty being abjured by this
latter principle. The watchwords of the party, to be inscribed
on their banner, were: "_Free soil_"--"_Free speech_"--"_Free
labor_"--"_Free men_"--from which they incurred the appellation
of Free-soilers. It was an organization entirely to be regretted.
Its aspect was sectional--its foundation a single idea--and its
tendency, to merge political principles in a slavery contention. The
Baltimore democratic convention had been dominated by the slavery
question, but on the other side of that question, and not openly and
professedly: but here was an organization resting prominently on
the slavery basis. And deeming all such organization, no matter on
which side of the question, as fraught with evil to the Union, this
writer, on the urgent request of some of his political associates,
went to New York, to interpose his friendly offices to get the
Free-soil organization abandoned. The visit was between the two
conventions, and before the nominations and proceedings had become
final: but in vain. Mr. Van Buren accepted the nomination, and in
so doing, placed himself in opposition to the general tenor of his
political conduct in relation to slavery, and especially in what
relates to its existence in the District of Columbia. I deemed this
acceptance unfortunate to a degree far beyond its influence upon
persons or parties. It went to impair confidence between the North
and the South, and to narrow down the basis of party organization
to a single idea; and that idea not known to our ancestors as an
element in political organizations. The Free-soil plea was, that
the Baltimore democratic convention had done the same; but the
answer to that was, that it was a general convention from all the
States, and did not make its slavery principles the open test of the
election, while this was a segment of the party, and openly rested
on that ground. Mr. Van Buren himself was much opposed to his own
nomination. In his letter to the Buffalo convention he said: "_You
all know, from my letter to the Utica convention, and the confidence
you repose in my sincerity, how greatly the proceedings of that
body, in relation to myself, were opposed to my earnest wishes._"
Yet he accepted a nomination made against his earnest wishes; and
although another would have been nominated if he had refused, yet
no other nomination could have given such emphasis to the character
of the convention, and done as much harm. Senator Henry Dodge,
of Wisconsin, had first been proposed for Vice-President; but,
although opposed to the extension of slavery, he could not concur
in the Buffalo platform; and declined the nomination. Of the three
parties, the whig party, so far as slavery was concerned, acted most
nationally; they ignored the subject, and made their nomination on
the platform of the constitution, the country, and the character of
their candidate.
The issue of the election did not disappoint public expectation. The
State of New York could not be spared by the democratic candidate,
and it was quite sure that the division of the party there would
deprive Mr. Cass of the vote of that State. It did so: and these 36
votes, making a difference of 72, decided the election. The vote was
163 against 127, being the same for the vice-presidential candidates
as for their principals. The States voting for General Taylor, were:
Massachusetts, 12; Rhode Island 4; Connecticut, 6; Vermont, 7; New
York, 36; New Jersey, 7; Pennsylvania, 26; Delaware, 3; Maryland,
8; North Carolina, 11; Georgia, 10; Kentucky, 12; Tennessee, 13;
Louisiana, 6; Florida, 3. Those voting for Mr. Cass, were: Maine,
9; New Hampshire, 6; Virginia, 17; South Carolina, 9; Ohio, 23;
Mississippi, 6; Indiana, 12; Illinois, 9; Alabama, 9; Missouri,
7; Arkansas, 3; Michigan, 5; Texas, 4; Iowa, 4; Wisconsin, 4. The
Free-soil candidates received not a single electoral vote.
The result of the election was not without its moral, and its
instruction. All the long intrigues to govern it, had miscarried.
None of the architects of annexation, or of war, were elected.
A victorious general overshadowed them all; and those who had
considered Texas their own game, and made it the staple of incessant
plots for five years, saw themselves shut out from that presidency
which it had been the object of so many intrigues to gain. Even the
slavery agitation failed to govern the election; and a soldier was
elected, unknown to political machinations, and who had never even
voted at an election.
CHAPTER CLXXIX.
LAST MESSAGE OF MR. POLK.
The message opened with an encomium on the conquest of Mexico, and
of the citizen soldiers who volunteered in such numbers for the
service, and fought with such skill and courage--saying justly:
"Unlike what would have occurred in any other country, we were
under no necessity of resorting to draughts or conscriptions.
On the contrary, such was the number of volunteers who
patriotically tendered their services, that the chief difficulty
was in making selections, and determining who should be
disappointed and compelled to remain at home. Our citizen
soldiers are unlike those drawn from the population of any other
country. They are composed indiscriminately of all professions
and pursuits: of farmers, lawyers, physicians, merchants,
manufacturers, mechanics, and laborers; and this, not only
among the officers, but the private soldiers in the ranks. Our
citizen soldiers are unlike those of any other country in other
respects. They are armed, and have been accustomed from their
youth up to handle and use fire-arms; and a large proportion of
them, especially in the western and more newly settled States,
are expert marksmen. They are men who have a reputation to
maintain at home by their good conduct in the field. They are
intelligent, and there is an individuality of character which
is found in the ranks of no other army. In battle, each private
man, as well as every officer, fights not only for his country,
but for glory and distinction among his fellow-citizens when he
shall return to civil life."
And this was the case in a foreign war, in which a march of two
thousand miles had to be accomplished before the foe could be
reached: how much more so will it be in defensive war--war to
defend our own borders--the only kind in which the United States
should ever be engaged. That is the kind of war to bring out all
the strength and energy of volunteer forces; and the United States
have arrived at the point to have the use of that force with a
promptitude, a cheapness, and an efficiency, never known before,
nor even conceived of by the greatest masters of the art of war.
The electric telegraph to summon the patriotic host: the steam
car to precipitate them on the point of defence. The whole art of
defensive war, in the present condition of the United States, and
still more, what it is hereafter to be, is simplified into two
principles--accumulation of masses, and the system of incessant
attacks. Upon these two principles the largest invading force would
be destroyed--shot like pigeons on their roost--by the volunteers
and their rifles, before the lumbering machinery of a scientific
army could be got into motion.
The large acquisition of new territory was fiercely lighting up
the fires of a slavery controversy, and Mr. Polk recommended the
extension of the Missouri compromise line to the Pacific Ocean, as
the most effectual and easy method of averting the dangers to the
Union, which he saw in that question. He said:
"Upon a great emergency, however, and under menacing dangers to
the Union, the Missouri compromise line in respect to slavery
was adopted. The same line was extended further west on the
acquisition of Texas. After an acquiescence of nearly thirty
years in the principle of compromise recognized and established
by these acts, and to avoid the danger to the Union which might
follow if it were now disregarded, I have heretofore expressed
the opinion that that line of compromise should be extended
on the parallel of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes from the
western boundary of Texas, where it now terminates, to the
Pacific Ocean. This is the middle line of compromise, upon which
the different sections of the Union may meet, as they have
hitherto met."
This was the compromise proposition of the President, but there
were arrayed against it parties and principles which repelled its
adoption. First, the large party which denied the power of Congress
to legislate upon the subject of slavery in territories. Some of
that class of politicians, and they were numerous and ardent,
though of recent conception, were, from the necessity of their
position, compelled to oppose a proposition which involved, to the
greatest extent, the exercise of that denied power. Next, the class
who believed in the still newer doctrine of the self-extension of
slavery into all the territories, by the self-expansion of the
constitution over them. This class would have nothing to do with any
law upon the subject--equally repulsing congressional legislation,
squatter sovereignty, or territorial law. A third class objected
to the extension of the Missouri compromise line, because in its
extension that line, astronomically the same, became politically
different. In all its original extent it passed through territory
all slave, and therefore made one side free: in its extension it
would pass through territory all free, and therefore make one
side slave. This was the reverse of the principle of the previous
compromises, and although equal on its face, and to shallow
observers the same law, yet the transfer and planting of slavery
in regions where it did not exist, involved a breach of principle,
and a shock of feeling, in those conscientiously opposed to the
extension of slavery, which it was impossible for them to incur.
Finally, those who wanted no compromise--no peace--no rest on the
slavery question: These were of two classes; first, mere political
demagogues on each side of the agitation, who wished to keep
the question alive for their own political elevation; next, the
abolitionists, who denied the right of property in slaves, and were
ready to dissolve the Union to get rid of association with slave
States; and the nullifiers, who wished to dissolve the Union, and
who considered the slavery question the efficient means of doing it.
Among all these parties, the extension of the Missouri compromise
line became an impossibility.
The state of the finances, and of the expenditures of the government
for the last year of the war, and the first year of peace, was
concisely stated by the President, and deserves to be known and
considered by all who would study that part of the working of our
government. Of the first period it says:
"The expenditures for the same period, including the necessary
payment on account of the principal and interest of the public
debt, and the principal and interest of the first instalment due
to Mexico on the thirtieth of May next, and other expenditures
growing out of the war, to be paid during the present year, will
amount, including the reimbursement of treasury notes, to the
sum of fifty-four millions one hundred and ninety-five thousand
two hundred and seventy-five dollars and six cents; leaving an
estimated balance in the Treasury on the first of July, 1849, of
two millions eight hundred and fifty-three thousand six hundred
and ninety-four dollars and eighty-four cents."
Deducting the three heads of expense here mentioned, and the
expenses for the year ending the 30th of June, 1848, were about
twenty-five millions of dollars, and about the same sum was
estimated to be sufficient for the first fiscal year of entire
peace, ending the 30th of June, 1849. Thus:
"The Secretary of the Treasury will present, as required by
law, the estimate of the receipts and expenditures for the next
fiscal year. The expenditures, as estimated for that year, are
thirty-three millions two hundred and thirteen thousand one
hundred and fifty-two dollars and seventy-three cents, including
three millions seven hundred and ninety-nine thousand one
hundred and two dollars and eighteen cents, for the interest
on the public debt, and three millions five hundred and forty
thousand dollars for the principal and interest due to Mexico
on the thirtieth of May, 1850; leaving the sum of twenty-five
millions eight hundred and seventy-four thousand and fifty
dollars and thirty-five cents; which, it is believed, will be
ample for the ordinary peace expenditures."
About 25 millions of dollars for the future expenditures of the
government: and this the estimate and expenditure only seven years
ago. Now, three times that amount, and increasing with frightful
rapidity.
CHAPTER CLXXX.
FINANCIAL WORKING OF THE GOVERNMENT UNDER THE HARD MONEY SYSTEM.
The war of words was over: the test of experiment had come: and the
long contest between the hard money and the paper money advocates
ceased to rage. The issue of the war with Mexico was as disastrous
to the paper money party, as it was to the Mexicans themselves. The
capital was taken in each case, and the vanquished submitted in
quiet in each case. The virtue of a gold and silver currency had
shown itself in its good effects upon every branch of business--upon
the entire pursuits of human industry, and above all, in assuring to
the working man a solid compensation, instead of a delusive cheat
for his day's labor. Its triumph was complete: but that triumph was
limited to a home experiment in time of peace. War, and especially
war to be carried on abroad, is the great test of currency; and
the Mexican war was to subject the restored golden currency of
the United States to that supreme test: and here the paper money
party--the national bank sound-currency party--felt sure of the
victory. The first national bank had been established upon the war
argument presented by General Hamilton to President Washington:
the second national bank was born of the war of 1812: and the war
with Mexico was confidently looked to as the trial which was to
show inadequacy of the hard money currency to its exigencies, and
the necessity of establishing a national paper currency. Those who
had asserted the inadequacy of all the gold and silver in the world
to do the business of the United States, were quite sure of the
insufficiency of the precious metals to carry on a foreign war in
addition to all domestic transactions. The war came: its demands
upon the solid currency were not felt in its diminution at home.
Government bills were above par! and every loan taken at a premium!
and only obtained upon a hard competition! How different from any
thing which had ever been seen in our country, or in almost any
country before. The last loan authorized (winter of '47-'48) of
sixteen millions, brought a premium of about five hundred thousand
dollars; and one-half of the bidders were disappointed and chagrined
because they could get no part of it. Compare this financial result
to that of the war of 1812, during which the federal government was
a mendicant for loans, and paid or suffered a loss of forty-six
millions of dollars to obtain them, and the virtue of the gold
currency will stand vindicated upon the test of war, and foreign
war, as well as upon the test of home transactions. The war was
conducted upon the hard money basis, and found the basis to be as
ample as solid. Payments were regular and real: and, at the return
of peace, every public security was above par, the national coffers
full of gold; and the government having the money on hand, and
anxious to pay its loans before they were due, could only obtain
that privilege by paying a premium upon it, sometimes as high as
twenty per centum--thus actually giving one dollar upon every five
for the five before it was due. And this, more or less, on all the
loans, according to the length of time they had yet to run. And this
is the crown and seal upon the triumph of the gold currency.
CHAPTER CLXXXI.
COAST SURVEY: BELONGS TO THE NAVY: CONVERTED INTO A SEPARATE
DEPARTMENT: EXPENSE AND INTERMINABILITY: SHOULD BE DONE BY THE NAVY,
AS IN GREAT BRITAIN: MR. BENTONS SPEECH: EXTRACT.
MR. BENTON. My object, Mr. President, is to return the coast survey
to what the law directed it to be, and to confine its execution,
after the 30th of June next, to the Navy Department. We have now,
both by law and in fact, a bureau for the purpose--that of Ordnance
and Hydrography--and to the hydrographical section of this bureau
properly belongs the execution of the coast survey. It is the very
business of hydrography; and in Great Britain, from whom we borrow
the idea of this bureau, the hydrographer, always a naval officer,
and operating wholly with naval forces, is charged with the whole
business of the coast survey of that great empire. One hydrographer
and with only ten vessels until lately, conducts the whole survey
of coasts under the laws of that empire--surveys not confined to the
British Isles, but to the British possessions in the four quarters
of the globe--and not merely to their own possessions, but to the
coasts of all countries with which they have commerce, or expect
war, and of which they have not reliable charts--even to China and
the Island of Borneo. Rear Admiral Beaufort is now the hydrographer,
and has been for twenty years; and he has no civil astronomer to
do the work for him, or any civil superintendent to overlook and
direct him. But he has somebody to overlook him, and those who
know what they are about--namely, the Lords of the Admiralty--and
something more besides--namely, the House of Commons, through its
select committees--and by which the whole work of this hydrographer
is most carefully overlooked, and every survey brought to the test
of law and expediency in its inception, and of economy and speed in
its execution. I have now before me one of the examinations of this
hydrographer before a select committee of the House of Commons, made
only last year, and which shows that the British House of Commons
holds its hydrographer to the track of the law--confines him to his
proper business--and that proper business is precisely the work
which is required by our acts of 1807 and 1832. Here is the volume
which contains, among other things, the examination of Rear Admiral
Beaufort [showing a huge folio of more than a thousand pages]. I
do not mean to read it. I merely produce it to show that, in Great
Britain, the hydrographer, a naval officer, is charged with the
whole business of the coast survey, and executes it exclusively
with the men and ships of the navy; and having produced it for this
purpose, I read a single question from it, not for the sake of the
answer, but for the sake of the facts in the question. It relates to
the number of assistants retained by the rear admiral, and the late
increase in their number. The question is in these words:
"In 1834 and 1835 you had three assistants--one at three pounds
a week, and two at two guineas a week; now you have five
assistants--one at four pounds a week, three at three pounds,
and one at three guineas: why has this increase been made?"
The answer was that these assistants had to live in London, where
living was dear, and that they had to do much work--for example,
had printed 61,631 charts the year before. I pass over the answer
for the sake of the question, and the facts of the question, and to
contrast them with something in our own coast survey. The question
was, why he had increased the number of the assistants from three
to five, and the compensation of the principal one from about $800
to about $1,000, and of the others from about $600 to about $800 a
year? And turning to our Blue Book, under the head of coast survey,
I find the number of the assistants of our superintendent rather
more than three, or five, and their salaries rather more than six,
or eight, or even ten and twelve hundred dollars. They appear thus
in the official list: One assistant at $3,500 per annum; one at
$2,500; three at $2,000 each; three at $1,500 each; four at $1,300
each; two at $1,000 each; two at $600 each; one draughtsman at
$1,500; another at $600; one computer at $1,500; two ditto at $1,000
each; one disbursing officer at $2,000. All this in addition to
the superintendent himself at $4,500 as superintendent of coast
survey, and $1,500 as superintendent of weights and measures, with
an assistant at $2,000 to aid him in that business; with all the
paraphernalia of an office besides. I do not know what law fixes
either the number or compensation of these assistants, nor do I
know that Congress has ever troubled itself to inquire into their
existence: but if our superintendent was in England, with his long
catalogue of assistants, the question which I have read shows that
there would be an inquiry there.
Mr. President, the cost of this coast survey has been very great,
and is becoming greater every year, and, expanding as it does, must
annually get further from its completion. The direct appropriations
out of the Treasury exceed a million and a half of dollars
(1,509,725), besides the $186,000 now in the bill which I propose to
reduce to $30,000.
These are the direct appropriations; but they are only half, or less
than half the actual expense of this survey. The indirect expenses
are much greater than the direct appropriations; and without
pretending to know the whole extent of them, I think I can show a
table which will go as high as $210,000 for the last year. It has
been seen, that the superintendent (for I suppose that astronomer
is no longer the recognized title, although the legal one) is
authorized to get from the Treasury Department _quantum sufficit_
of men and ships. Accordingly, for the last year the number of
vessels was thirteen--the number of men and officers five hundred
and seventy-six--and the cost of supporting the whole about $210,000
a year; and this coming from the naval appropriations proper.
Thus, sir, the navy does a good deal, and pays a good deal, towards
this coast survey; and my only objection is, that it does not do
the whole, and pay the whole, and get the credit due to their work,
instead of being, as they now are, unseen and unnoticed--eclipsed
and cast into the shade by the civil superintendent and his civil
assistants.
I have shown you that, in Great Britain, the Bureau of Ordnance
and Hydrography is charged with the coast survey; we have the same
bureau, both by law and in fact; but that bureau has only a divided,
and, I believe, subordinate part of the coast survey. We have the
expense of it, and that expense should be added to the expense
of the coast survey. Great Britain has no civil superintendent
for this business. We have her law, but not her practice, and my
motion is, to come to her practice. We should save by it the whole
amount of the direct appropriations, saving and excepting the small
appropriations for the extra expense which it would bring upon the
navy. The men and officers are under pay, and would be glad to have
the work to do. Our naval establishment is now very large, and but
little to do. The ships, I suppose, are about seventy; the men and
officers some ten thousand: the expense of the whole establishment
between eight and nine millions of dollars a year. We are in a
state of profound peace, and no way to employ this large naval
force. Why not put it upon the coast survey? I know that officers
wish it--that they feel humiliated at being supposed incompetent
to it--and if found to be so, are willing to pay the penalty, by
being dismissed the service. Incompetency is the only ground upon
which a civil superintendent and a list of civil assistants can be
placed over them. And is that objection well founded? Look to Maury,
whose name is the synonym of nautical and astronomical science. Look
to that Dr. Locke, once on the medical staff of the navy, and now
pursuing a career of science in the West, from which has resulted
that discovery of the magnetic clock and telegraph register which
the coast survey now uses, and which an officer of the navy (Captain
Wilkes) was the first to apply to the purposes for which it is now
used.
And are we to presume our naval officers incompetent to the conduct
of this coast survey, when it has produced such men as these--when
it may contain in its bosom we know not how many more such? In 1807
we had no navy--we may say none, for it was small, and going down to
nothing. Then, it might be justifiable to employ an astronomer. In
1832, the navy had fought itself into favor; but Mr. Hassler, the
father of the coast survey, was still alive, and it was justifiable
to employ him as an astronomer. But now there is no need for a
civil astronomer, much less for a civil superintendent; and the
whole work should go to the navy. We have naval schools now for the
instruction of officers; we have officers with the laudable ambition
to instruct themselves. The American character, ardent in every
thing, is pre-eminently ardent in the pursuit of knowledge. In every
walk of life, from the highest to the lowest, from the most humble
mechanical to the highest professional employment, knowledge is a
pursuit, and a laudable object of ambition with a great number. We
are ardent in the pursuit of wealth--equally so in the pursuit of
science. The navy partakes of this laudable ambition. You will see
an immense number of the naval officers, of all ages and of all
ranks, devoting themselves, with all the ardor of young students,
for the acquisition of knowledge: and are all these--the whole naval
profession--to be told that none of them are able to conduct the
coast survey, none of them able to execute the act of 1807, none
of them able to find shoals and islands within twenty leagues of
the coast, to sound a harbor, to take the distance and bearings of
headlands and capes--and all this within sixty miles of the shore?
Are they to be told this? If they are, and it could be told with
truth, it would be time to go to reducing. But it cannot be said
with truth. The naval officers can not only execute the act of 1807
but they can do any thing, if it was proper to do it, which the
present coast survey is engaged in over and beyond that act. They
can do any thing that the British officers can do; and the British
naval officers conduct the coast survey of that great empire. We
have many that can do any thing that Rear Admiral Beaufort can do,
and he has conducted the British coast survey for twenty years,
and has stood examinations before select committees of the British
House of Commons, which have showed that no civil superintendent was
necessary to guide him.
Mr. President, we have a large, and almost an idle navy at present.
We have a home squadron, like the British, though we do not live
on an island, nor in times subject to a descent, like England from
Spain in the time of the Invincible Armada, or from the Baltic
in the times of Canute and Hardicanute. Our home squadron has
nothing to do, unless it can be put on the coast survey. We have
a Mediterranean squadron; but there are no longer pirates in the
Mediterranean to be kept in check. We have a Pacific squadron, and
it has no enemy to watch in the Pacific Ocean. Give these squadrons
employment--a part of them at least. Put them on the coast survey,
as many as possible, and have the work finished--finished for the
present age as well as for posterity. We have been forty years about
it; and, the way we go on, may be forty more. The present age wants
the benefit of these surveys, and let us accelerate them by turning
the navy upon them--as much of it as can be properly employed. Let
us put the whole work in the hands of the navy, and try the question
whether or not they are incompetent to it.
CHAPTER CLXXXII.
PROPOSED EXTENSION OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE
TERRITORIES, WITH A VIEW TO MAKE IT CARRY SLAVERY INTO CALIFORNIA,
UTAH AND NEW MEXICO.
The treaty of peace with Mexico had been ratified in the session
of 1847-'48, and all the ceded territory became subject to our
government, and needing the immediate establishment of territorial
governments: but such were the distractions of the slavery
question, that no such governments could be formed, nor any law
of the United States extended to these newly acquired and orphan
dominions. Congress sat for six months after the treaty had been
ratified, making vain efforts to provide government for the new
territories, and adjourning without accomplishing the work. Another
session had commenced, and was coming to a close with the same
fruitless result. Bills had been introduced, but they only gave
rise to heated discussion. In the last days of the session, the
civil and diplomatic appropriation bill, commonly called the general
appropriation bill--the one which provides annually for the support
of the government, and without the passage of which the government
would stop, came up from the House to the Senate. It had received
its consideration in the Senate, and was ready to be returned to the
House, when Mr. Walker, of Wisconsin, moved to attach to it, under
the name of amendment, a section providing a temporary government
for the ceded territories, and extending an enumerated list of
acts of Congress to them. It was an unparliamentary and disorderly
proposition, the proposed amendment being incongruous to the matter
of the appropriation bill, and in plain violation of the obvious
principle which forbade extraneous matter, and especially that which
was vehemently contested, from going into a bill upon the passage of
which the existence of the government depended. The proposition met
no favor: it would have died out if the mover had not yielded to a
Southern solicitation to insert the extension of the constitution
into his amendment, so as to extend that fundamental law to those
for whom it was never made, and where it was inapplicable, and
impracticable. The novelty and strangeness of the proposition called
up Mr. Webster, who said:
"It is of importance that we should seek to have clear ideas
and correct notions of the question which this amendment of
the member from Wisconsin has presented to us; and especially
that we should seek to get some conception of what is meant
by the proposition, in a law, to 'extend the constitution of
the United States to the territories.' Why, sir, the thing is
utterly impossible. All the legislation in the world, in this
general form, could not accomplish it. There is no cause for the
operation of the legislative power in such a manner as that.
The constitution--what is it? We extend the constitution of the
United States by law to territory! What is the constitution of
the United States? Is not its very first principle, that all
within its influence and comprehension shall be represented in
the legislature which it establishes, with not only a right
of debate and a right to vote in both Houses of Congress,
but a right to partake in the choice of the President and
Vice-President? And can we by law extend these rights, or any
of them, to a territory of the United States? Every body will
see that it is altogether impracticable. It comes to this, then,
that the constitution is to be extended as far as practicable;
but how far that is, is to be decided by the President of
the United States, and therefore he is to have absolute and
despotic power. He is the judge of what is suitable, and what
is unsuitable; and what he thinks suitable is suitable, and
what he thinks unsuitable is unsuitable. He is '_omnis in
hoc_;' and what is this but to say, in general terms, that the
President of the United States shall govern this territory as
he sees fit till Congress makes further provision. Now, if the
gentleman will be kind enough to tell me what principle of
the constitution he supposes suitable, what discrimination he
can draw between suitable and unsuitable which he proposes to
follow, I shall be instructed. Let me say, that in this general
sense there is no such thing as extending the constitution.
The constitution is extended over the United States, and over
nothing else. It cannot be extended over any thing except over
the old States and the new States that shall come in hereafter,
when they do come in. There is a want of accuracy of ideas in
this respect that is quite remarkable among eminent gentlemen,
and especially professional and judicial gentlemen. It seems
to be taken for granted that the right of trial by jury, the
_habeas corpus_, and every principle designed to protect
personal liberty, is extended by force of the constitution
itself over every new territory. That proposition cannot be
maintained at all. How do you arrive at it by any reasoning
or deduction? It can be only arrived at by the loosest of all
possible constructions. It is said that this must be so, else
the right of the _habeas corpus_ would be lost. Undoubtedly
these rights must be conferred by law before they can be enjoyed
in a territory."
It was not Mr. Walker, of Wisconsin, the mover of the proposition,
that replied to Mr. Webster: it was the prompter of the measure that
did it, and in a way to show immediately that this extension of the
constitution to territories was nothing but a new scheme for the
extension of slavery. Denying the power of Congress to legislate
upon slavery in territories--finding slavery actually excluded from
the ceded territories, and desirous to get it there--Mr. Calhoun,
the real author of Mr. Walker's amendment, took the new conception
of carrying the constitution into them; which arriving there, and
recognizing slavery, and being the supreme law of the land, it would
over-ride the anti-slavery laws of the territory, and plant the
institution of slavery under its Ægis, and above the reach of any
territorial law, or law of Congress to abolish it. He, therefore,
came to the defence of his own proposition, and thus replied to Mr.
Webster:
"I rise, not to detain the Senate to any considerable extent,
but to make a few remarks upon the proposition first advanced
by the senator from New Jersey, fully endorsed by the senator
from New Hampshire, and partly endorsed by the senator from
Massachusetts, that the constitution of the United States
does not extend to the territories. That is the point. I am
very happy, sir, to hear this proposition thus asserted,
for it will have the effect of narrowing very greatly the
controversy between the North and the South as it regards the
slavery question in connection with the territories. It is an
implied admission on the part of those gentlemen, that, if
the constitution does extend to the territories, the South
will be protected in the enjoyment of its property--that it
will be under the shield of the constitution. You can put no
other interpretation upon the proposition which the gentlemen
have made, than that the constitution does not extend to the
territories. Then the simple question is, does the constitution
extend to the territories, or does it not extend to them? Why,
the constitution interprets itself. It pronounces itself to be
the supreme law of the land."
When Mr. Webster heard this syllogistic assertion, that the
constitution being the supreme law of the land, and the territories
being a part of the land, _ergo_ the constitution being extended to
them would be their supreme law: when he heard this, he called out
from his seat--"_What land?_" Mr. Calhoun replied, saying:
"The land; the territories of the United States are a part
of the land. It is the supreme law, not within the limits
of the States of this Union merely, but wherever our flag
waves--wherever our authority goes, the constitution in
part goes, not all its provisions certainly, but all its
suitable provisions. Why, can we have any authority beyond the
constitution? I put the question solemnly to gentlemen; if the
constitution does not go there, how are we to have any authority
or jurisdiction whatever? Is not Congress the creature of the
constitution; does it not hold its existence upon the tenure
of the continuance of the constitution; and would it not be
annihilated upon the destruction of that instrument, and the
consequent dissolution of this confederacy? And shall we, the
creature of the constitution, pretend that we have any authority
beyond the reach of the constitution? Sir, we were told, a few
days since, that the courts of the United States had made a
decision that the constitution did not extend to the territories
without an act of Congress. I confess that I was incredulous,
and am still incredulous that any tribunal, pretending to have
a knowledge of our system of government, as the courts of the
United States ought to have, could have pronounced such a
monstrous judgment. I am inclined to think that it is an error
which has been unjustly attributed to them; but if they have
made such a decision as that, I for one say, that it ought not
and never can be respected. The territories belong to us; they
are ours; that is to say, they are the property of the thirty
States of the Union; and we, as the representatives of those
thirty States, have the right to exercise all that authority and
jurisdiction which ownership carries with it."
Mr. Webster replied, with showing that the constitution was made
for States, not territories--that no part of it went to a territory
unless specifically extended to it by act of Congress--that the
territories from first to last were governed as Congress chose to
govern them, independently of the constitution and often contrary
to it, as in denying them representatives in Congress, a vote
for President and Vice-President, the protection of the Supreme
Court--that Congress was constantly doing things in the territories
without constitutional objection (as making mere local roads and
bridges) which could not be attempted in a State. He argued:
"The constitution as the gentleman contends, extends over the
territories. How does it get there? I am surprised to hear a
gentleman so distinguished as a strict constructionist affirming
that the constitution of the United States extends to the
territories, without, showing us any clause in the constitution
in any way leading to that result; and to hear the gentleman
maintaining that position without showing us any way in which
such a result could be inferred, increases my surprise.
"One idea further upon this branch of the subject. The
constitution of the United States extending over the
territories, and no other law existing there! Why, I beg to know
how any government could proceed, without any other authority
existing there than such as is created by the constitution of
the United States? Does the constitution of the United States
settle titles to land? Does it regulate the rights of property?
Does it fix the relations of parent and child, guardian and
ward? The constitution of the United States establishes what
the gentleman calls a confederation for certain great purposes,
leaving all the great mass of laws which is to govern society
to derive their existence from State enactments. That is the
just view of the state of things under the constitution. And
a State or territory that has no law but such as it derives
from the constitution of the United States, must be entirely
without any State or territorial government. The honorable
senator from South Carolina, conversant with the subject as he
must be, from his long experience in different branches of the
government, must know that the Congress of the United States
have established principles in regard to the territories that
are utterly repugnant to the constitution. The constitution
of the United States has provided for them an independent
judiciary; for the judge of every court of the United States
holds his office upon the tenure of good behavior. Will the
gentleman say that in any court established in the territories
the judge holds his office in that way? He holds it for a term
of years, and is removable at Executive discretion. How did we
govern Louisiana before it was a State? Did the writ of _habeas
corpus_ exist in Louisiana during its territorial existence?
Or the right to trial by jury? Who ever heard of trial by jury
there before the law creating the territorial government gave
the right to trial by jury? No one. And I do not believe that
there is any new light now to be thrown upon the history of the
proceedings of this government in relation to that matter. When
new territory has been acquired it has always been subject to
the laws of Congress, to such laws as Congress thought proper to
pass for its immediate government, for its government during its
territorial existence, during the preparatory state in which it
was to remain until it was ready to come into the Union as one
of the family of States."
All this was sound constitutional law, or, rather, was veracious
history, showing that Congress governed as it pleased in the
territories independently of the constitution, and often contrary
to it; and consequently that the constitution did not extend to
it. Mr. Webster then showed the puerility of the idea that the
constitution went over the territories because they were "_land_,"
and exposed the fallacy of the supposition that the constitution,
even if extended to a territory, could operate there of itself, and
without a law of Congress made under it. This fallacy was exposed by
showing that Mr. Calhoun, in quoting the constitution as the supreme
law of the land, had omitted the essential words which were part of
the same clause, and which couples with that supremacy the laws of
Congress made in pursuance of the constitution. Thus:
"The honorable senator from South Carolina argues that the
constitution declares itself to be the law of the land, and
that, therefore, it must extend over the territories. 'The
land,' I take it, means the land over which the constitution
is established, or, in other words, it means the States united
under the constitution. But does not the gentleman see at
once that the argument would prove a great deal too much? The
constitution no more says that the constitution itself shall
be the supreme law of the land, than it says that the laws of
Congress shall be the supreme law of the land. It declares that
the constitution and the law of Congress passed under it shall
be the supreme law of the land."
The question took a regular slavery turn, Mr. Calhoun avowing his
intent to be to carry slavery into the territories under the wing
of the constitution, and openly treated as enemies to the South all
that opposed it. Having taken the turn of a slavery question, it
gave rise to all the dissension of which that subject had become
the parent since the year 1835. By a close vote, and before the
object had been understood by all the senators, the amendment
was agreed to in the Senate, but immediately disagreed to in the
House, and a contest brought on between the two Houses by which the
great appropriation bill, on which the existence of the government
depended, was not passed until after the constitutional expiration
of the Congress at midnight of the third of March, and was signed
by Mr. Polk (after he had ceased to be President) on the 4th of
March--the law and his approval being antedated of the 3d, to
prevent its invalidity from appearing on the face of the act. Great
was the heat which manifested itself, and imminent the danger that
Congress would break up without passing the general appropriation
bill; and that the government would stop until a new Congress could
be assembled--many of the members of which remained still to be
elected. Many members refused to vote after midnight--which it then
was. Mr. Cass said:
"As I am among those who believe that the term of this session
has expired, and that it is incompetent for us now to do
business, I cannot vote upon any motion. I have sat here as a
mere looker on. I merely desire to explain why I took no part in
the proceedings."
Mr. Yulee, of Florida, moving an adjournment, said:
"I should be very sorry, indeed, to make any proposition which
may in any degree run counter to the general sentiment of the
Senate; but I feel bound, laboring under the strong conviction
that I do, to arrest at every step, and by every means, any
recorded judgment of the Senate at a time when we are not
legally engaged in the discharge of our senatorial duties. I
agree entirely in the view taken by the senator from Michigan."
Mr. Turney, of Tennessee, said:
"I am one of those who believe that we have no right to sit
here. The time has expired; one-third of this body are not
present at all, and the others have no right to sit here as a
part of Congress. But a motion has been made for adjournment,
and the presiding officer has refused to entertain that motion.
This being the case, I must regard all that is done as done in
violation of the constitution, or, rather, not in pursuance of
it. It appears to me that we sit here more in the character of a
town meeting than as the Senate of the United States, and that
what we do is no more binding on the American people than if we
did it at a town meeting. I shall express no opinion by saying
yea or nay on the question before the Senate. At the same time,
I protest against it, as being no part of the constitutional
proceedings of the Senate of the United States."
Mr. Benton, and many others, declined to vote. The House of
Representatives had ceased to act, and sent to the Senate the
customary message of adjournment. The President who, according to
the usage, had remained in the capitol till midnight to sign bills,
had gone home. It was four o'clock in the morning of the fourth,
and the greatest confusion and disorder prevailed. Finally, Mr.
Webster succeeded in getting a vote, by which the Senate receded
from the amendment it had adopted, extending the constitution to the
territories; and that recession leaving the appropriation bill free
from the encumbrance of the slavery question, it was immediately
passed.
This attempt, pushed to the verge of breaking up the government in
pursuit of a newly invented slavery dogma, was founded in errors
too gross for misapprehension. In the first place as fully shown
by Mr. Webster, the constitution was not made for territories, but
for States. In the second place, it cannot operate any where, not
even in the States for which it was made without acts of Congress to
enforce it. This is true of the constitution in every particular.
Every part of it is inoperative until put into action by a statute
of Congress. The constitution allows the President a salary: he
cannot touch a dollar of it without an act of Congress. It allows
the recovery of fugitive slaves: you cannot recover one without an
act of Congress. And so of every clause it contains. The proposed
extension of the constitution to territories, with a view to its
transportation of slavery along with it, was then futile and
nugatory, until an act of Congress should be passed to vitalize
slavery under it. So that, if the extension had been declared by
law, it would have answered no purpose except to widen the field of
the slavery agitation--to establish a new point of contention--to
give a new phase to the embittered contest--and to alienate more
and more from each other the two halves of the Union. But the
extension was not declared. Congress did not extend the constitution
to the Territories. The proposal was rejected in both Houses; and
immediately the crowning dogma is invented, that the constitution
goes of itself to the territories without an act of Congress, and
executes itself, so far as slavery is concerned, not only without
legislative aid, but in defiance of Congress and the people of the
territory. This is the last slavery creed of the Calhoun school, and
the one on which his disciples now stand--and not with any barren
foot. They apply the doctrine to existing territories, and make
acquisitions from Mexico for new applications. It is impossible to
consider such conduct as any thing else than as one of the devices
for "_forcing the issue with the North_," which Mr. Calhoun in his
confidential letter to the member of the Alabama legislature avows
to have been his policy since 1835, and which he avers he would then
have effected if the members from the slave States had stood by him.
CHAPTER CLXXXIII.
PROGRESS OF THE SLAVERY AGITATION: MEETING OF MEMBERS FROM THE SLAVE
STATES: INFLAMMATORY ADDRESS TO THE SOUTHERN STATES.
The last days of Mr. Polk's administration were witness to an
ominous movement--nothing less than nightly meetings of large
numbers of members from the slave States to consider the state of
things between the North and the South--to show the aggressions
and encroachments (as they were called), of the former upon the
latter--to show the incompatibility of their union--and to devise
measures for the defence and protection of the South. Mr. Calhoun
was at the bottom of this movement, which was conducted with
extraordinary precautions to avoid publicity. None but slave State
members were admitted. No reporters were permitted to be present;
nor any spectators, or auditors. As many as seventy or eighty were
assembled; but about one half of this number were inimical to
the meeting, and only attended to prevent mischief to the Union,
and mostly fell off from their attendance before the work was
concluded. At the first meeting a grand committee of 15 (Mr. Calhoun
one) were appointed to consider of resolutions: when they met, a
sub-committee of five (Mr. Calhoun at their head) was carved out
of the 15 to report an address to the slave States: and when they
met, Mr. Calhoun produced the address ready written. So that the
whole contrivance of the grand and petty committees was a piece of
machinery to get Mr. Calhoun's own manifesto before the public with
the sanction of a meeting. Mr. Calhoun's manifesto, sanctioned by
the sub-committee, was only saved from condemnation in the committee
of 15 by one vote, and that vote his own. Saved by one vote, and got
before the meeting itself, it there underwent condemnation, and was
recommitted for amendment. Four of the grand committee, consisting
of those who were averse to the whole proceeding, were excused
upon their own request from serving longer upon it. Got back into
the grand committee, it was superseded _in toto_ by an entire new
address, not to the slave States, but to the people of the whole
Union, and addressed not to their angry, but to their good feelings.
That address was reported to an adjourned meeting of the members;
and those opposed to the whole proceeding having nearly ceased to
attend, the original manifesto of Mr. Calhoun was adopted in place
of it: and thus, after a tedious and painful process, and defeated
half the time, and only succeeding when the meeting had become thin
and nearly reduced to his own partisans, that gentleman succeeded in
getting his inflammatory composition before the public as the voice
of the Southern members. But even then not as he first drew it up.
In the primitive draft the introductory clause asserted that the
present wrongs of the North upon the South were equal to those which
produced the separation of these States, when colonies, from the
British empire: that clause was softened down, and generalized in
the amended and adopted manifesto into the assertion of a dangerous
conflict between the two sections of the Union, and the perpetration
of encroachments and aggressions upon the slave States which their
safety would no longer allow them to stand, and for which a cure
must be found. In the original it stood thus: "_Not excepting the
declaration which separated you and the United Colonies from the
parent country. That involved your independence; but this your all,
not excepting your safety._" As softened it ran thus:
"We, whose names are hereunto annexed, address you in the
discharge of what we believe to be a solemn duty on the most
important subject ever presented for your consideration. We
allude to the conflict between the two great sections of the
Union, growing out of a difference of feeling and opinion in
reference to the relation existing between the two races, the
European and African, which inhabit the Southern section, and
the acts of aggression and encroachment to which it has led.
The conflict commenced not long after the acknowledgment of our
Independence, and has gradually increased until it has arrayed
the great body of the North against the South on this most
vital subject. In the progress of this conflict, aggression has
followed aggression, and encroachment encroachment, until they
have reached a point when a regard for peace and safety will not
permit us to remain longer silent. The object of this address
is to give you a clear, correct, but brief account of the whole
series of aggression and encroachments on your rights, with a
statement of the dangers to which they expose you. Our object
in making it, is not to cause excitement, but to put you in
full possession of all the facts and circumstances necessary
to a full and just conception of a deep-seated disease, which
threatens great danger to you and the whole body politic. We act
on the impression, that in a popular government like ours, a
true conception of the actual character and state of a disease
is indispensable to effecting a cure."
The manifesto was modelled upon that of the Declaration of the
Independence of the United States; and, by its authors, was soon
saluted as the second Declaration of Independence. After the motive
clause, showing the inducements to the act, followed a long list
of grievances, as formidable in number as those which had impelled
the separation from Great Britain, but so frivolous and imaginary
in substance, that no one could repeat them now without recourse
to the paper. Strange to see, they have become more remarkable for
what they omitted than contained. That Missouri compromise, since
become an outrage which the constitution and the slave States could
no longer endure, was then a good thing, of which the slave States
wished more, and claimed its extension to the Pacific Ocean. The
Wilmot proviso, which had been the exasperation of the slave States
for three years, was skipped over, the great misfortune having
happened to the South which had been deprecated in the letter to
the Alabama member of the General Assembly: it had been defeated!
and for the express purpose of taking a handle of agitation out
of the hands of the enemies of the Union: but without benefit, as
others were seized upon immediately, and the slavery contention
raged more furiously than ever. But past, or present, "encroachments
and aggressions" were too light and apocryphal to rouse a nation.
Something more stirring was wanted; and for that purpose, Time,
and Imagination--the Future, and Invention--were to be placed
in requisition. The abolition of slavery in the States--the
emancipation of slaves, all over the South--the conflict between
the white and the black races--the prostration of the white race,
as in San Domingo: the whites the slaves of the blacks: such were
the future terrors and horrors to be visited upon the slave States
if not arrested by an instant and adequate remedy. Some passages
from this conglomeration of invented horrors will show the furious
zeal of the author, and the large calculation which he made upon the
gullibility of the South when a slavery alarm was to be propagated:
"Such, then, being the case, it would be to insult you to
suppose you could hesitate. To destroy the existing relation
between the free and servile races at the South would lead to
consequences unparalleled in history. They cannot be separated,
and cannot live together in peace or harmony, or to their mutual
advantage, except in their present relation. Under any other,
wretchedness, and misery, and desolation would overspread
the whole South. The example of the British West Indies, as
blighting as emancipation has proved to them, furnishes a very
faint picture of the calamities it would bring on the South.
The circumstances under which it would take place with us
would be entirely different from those which took place with
them, and calculated to lead to far more disastrous results.
There, the government of the parent country emancipated slaves
in her colonial possessions--a government rich and powerful,
and actuated by views of policy (mistaken as they turned out
to be) rather than fanaticism. It was, besides, disposed to
act justly towards the owners, even in the act of emancipating
their slaves, and to protect and foster them afterwards. It
accordingly appropriated nearly $100,000,000 as a compensation
to them for their losses under the act, which sum, although
it turned out to be far short of the amount, was thought at
that time to be liberal. Since the emancipation it has kept up
a sufficient military and naval force to keep the blacks in
awe, and a number of magistrates, and constables, and other
civil officers, to keep order in the towns and plantations,
and enforce respect to their former owners. It can only be
effected by the prostration of the white race; and that would
necessarily engender the bitterest feelings of hostility
between them and the North. But the reverse would be the case
between the blacks of the South and the people of the North.
Owing their emancipation to them, they would regard them as
friends, guardians, and patrons, and centre, accordingly, all
their sympathy in them. The people of the North would not fail
to reciprocate and to favor them, instead of the whites. Under
the influence of such feelings, and impelled by fanaticism and
love of power, they would not stop at emancipation. Another step
would be taken--to raise them to a political and social equality
with their former owners, by giving them the right of voting and
holding public offices under the federal government. But when
once raised to an equality, they would become the fast political
associates of the North, acting and voting with them on all
questions, and by this political union between them, holding the
white race at the South in complete subjection. The blacks, and
the profligate whites that might unite with them, would become
the principal recipients of federal offices and patronage, and
would, in consequence, be raised above the whites of the South
in the political and social scale. We would, in a word, change
conditions with them--a degradation greater than has ever yet
fallen to the lot of a free and enlightened people, and one from
which we could not escape, should emancipation take place (which
it certainly will if not prevented), but by fleeing the homes
of ourselves and ancestors, and by abandoning our country to
our former slaves, to become the permanent abode of disorder,
anarchy, poverty, misery and wretchedness."
Emancipation, with all these accumulated horrors, is here held to
be certain, "if not prevented:" certain, so far as it depended
upon the free States, which were rapidly becoming the majority;
and only to be prevented by the slave States themselves. Now, this
certain emancipation of slaves in the States, was a pure and simple
invention of Mr. Calhoun, not only without evidence, but against
evidence--contradicted by every species of human action, negative
and positive, before and since. Far from attacking slavery in
the States, the free States have co-operated to extend the area
of slavery within such States: witness the continued extinctions
of Indian title which have so largely increased the available
capacity of the slave States. So far from making war upon slave
States, several such States have been added to the Union, as Texas
and Florida, by the co-operation of free States. Far from passing
any law to emancipate slaves in the States no Congress has ever
existed that has seen a man that would make such a motion in the
House; or, if made, would not be as unanimously rejected by one
side of the House as the other--as if the unanimity would not be
the same whether the whole North went out, and let the South vote
alone! or the whole South went out, and let the North alone vote.
Yet, this incendiary cry of abolishing slavery in the States has
become the staple of all subsequent agitators. Every little agitator
now jumps upon it--jumps into a State the moment a free territory
is mentioned--and repeats all the alarming stuff invented by Mr.
Calhoun; and as much more as his own invention can add to it. In
the mean time events daily affix the brand of falsehood on these
incendiary inventions. Slave State Presidents are continually
elected by free State votes: the price of slaves themselves, instead
of sinking, as it would if there was any real danger, is continually
augmenting, and, in fact, has reached a height the double of what it
was before the alarming story of emancipation had begun.
Assuming this emancipation of the slaves in the States to be
certain and inevitable, with all its dreadful consequences, unless
prevented by the slave States, the manifesto goes on seriously to
bring the means of prevention most closely to the consideration
of the slave States--to urge their unity and concert of action
on the slavery question--to make it the supreme object of their
labors, before which all other subjects are to give way--to take the
attitude of self-defence; and, braving all consequences, throw the
responsibility on the other side. Thus:
"With such a prospect before us, the gravest and most solemn
question that ever claimed the attention of a people is
presented for your consideration: What is to be done to prevent
it? It is a question belonging to you to decide. All we propose
is to give you our opinion. We, then, are of the opinion that
the first and indispensable step, without which nothing can be
done, and with which every thing may be, is to be united among
yourselves on this great and most vital question. The want of
union and concert in reference to it has brought the South, the
Union, and our system of government to their present perilous
condition. Instead of placing it above all others, it has been
made subordinate not only to mere questions of policy, but to
the preservation of party ties and insuring of party success.
As high as we hold a due respect for these, we hold them
subordinate to that and other questions involving our safety
and happiness. Until they are so held by the South, the North
will not believe that you are in earnest in opposition to their
encroachments, and they will continue to follow, one after
another, until the work of abolition is finished. To convince
them that you are, you must prove by your acts that you hold
all other questions subordinate to it. If you become united,
and prove yourselves in earnest, the North will be brought to
a pause, and to a calculation of consequences; and that may
lead to a change of measures, and to the adoption of a course
of policy that may quietly and peaceably terminate this long
conflict between the two sections. If it should not, nothing
would remain for you but to stand up immovably in defence of
rights involving your all--your property, prosperity, equality,
liberty, and safety. As the assailed, you would stand justified
by all laws human and divine, in repelling a blow so dangerous,
without looking to consequences, and to resort to all means
necessary for that purpose. Your assailants, and not you, would
be responsible for consequences. Entertaining these opinions, we
earnestly entreat you to be united, and for that purpose adopt
all necessary measures. Beyond this, we think it would not be
proper to go at present."
The primitive draft of the manifesto went further, and told what
was to be done: opinions and counsels are as far as the signers
thought it proper to go then. But something further was intimated;
and that soon came in the shape of a Southern convention to dissolve
the Union, and a call from the legislatures of two of the most
heated States (South Carolina and Mississippi), for the assembling
of a "Southern Congress," to put the machinery of the "United
States South" into operation: but of this hereafter. Following
the Declaration of Independence in its mode of adoption, as well
in its exposition of motives as in its enumeration of grievances,
the manifesto was left with the secretary of the meeting for the
signature of the slave-holding members who concurred in it. The
signers were the following:
"Messrs. Atchison of Missouri; Hunter and Mason of Virginia;
Calhoun and Butler of South Carolina; Downs of Louisiana;
Foote and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi; Fitzpatrick of
Alabama; Borland and Sebastian of Arkansas; Westcott and Yulee
of Florida; Atkinson, Bayley, Bedinger, Bocock, Beale, W. G.
Brown, Meade, R. A. Thompson of Virginia; Daniel, Venable of
North Carolina; Burt, Holmes, Rhett, Simpson, Woodward of South
Carolina; Wallace, Iverson, Lumpkin of Georgia; Bowdon, Gayle,
Harris of Alabama; Featherston, I. Thompson of Mississippi; La
Sere, Morse of Louisiana; R. W. Johnson of Arkansas; Santon of
Kentucky."
ADMINISTRATION OF ZACHARY TAYLOR.
CHAPTER CLXXXIV.
INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT TAYLOR: HIS CABINET.
On the 4th of March the new President was inaugurated with the
customary formalities, Chief Justice Taney administering the oath
of office. He delivered an address, as use and propriety required,
commendably brief, and confined to a declaration of general
principles. Mr. Millard Fillmore, the Vice-President elect, was
duly installed as President of the Senate, and delivered a neat and
suitable address on taking the chair. Assembled in extraordinary
session, the Senate received and confirmed the several nominations
for the cabinet. They were: John M. Clayton, of Delaware, to be
Secretary of State; William M. Meredith, of Pennsylvania, to be
Secretary of the Treasury; George W. Crawford, of Georgia, to be
Secretary at War; William Ballard Preston, of Virginia, to be
Secretary of the Navy; Thomas Ewing, of Ohio, to be Secretary of the
Home Department--a new department created at the preceding session
of Congress; Jacob Collamer, of Vermont, to be Postmaster General;
Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, to be Attorney General. The whole
cabinet were, of course, of the whig party.
CHAPTER CLXXXV.
DEATH OF EX-PRESIDENT POLK.
He died at Nashville, Tennessee, soon after he returned home, and
within three months after his retirement from the presidency. He
was an exemplary man in private life, moral in all his deportment,
and patriotic in his public life, aiming at the good of his
country always. It was his misfortune to have been brought into
the presidency by an intrigue, not of his own, but of others, and
the evils of which became an inheritance of his position, and the
sole cause of all that was objectionable in his administration. He
was the first President put upon the people without their previous
indication--the first instance in which a convention assumed the
right of disposing of the presidency according to their own will,
and of course with a view to their own advantage. The scheme of
these intriguers required the exclusion of all independent and
disinterested men from his councils and confidence--a thing easily
effected by representing all such men as his enemies, and themselves
as his exclusive friends. Hence the ejection of the Globe newspaper
from the organship of the administration, and the formation of a
cabinet too much dominated by intrigue and selfishness. All the
faults of his administration were the faults of his cabinet: all
its merits were his own, in defiance of them. Even the arrangement
with the Calhoun and Tyler interest by which the Globe was set aside
before the cabinet was formed, was the work of men who were to be
of the cabinet. His own will was not strong enough for his position,
yet he became firm and absolute where his judgment was convinced
and patriotism required decision. Of this he gave signal proof in
overruling his whole cabinet in their resolve for the sedentary line
in Mexico, and forcing the adoption of the vigorous policy which
carried the American arms to the city of Mexico, and conquered a
peace in the capital of the country. He also gave a proof of it in
falling back upon the line of 49° for the settlement of the Oregon
boundary with Great Britain, while his cabinet, intimidated by their
own newspapers, and alarmed at the storm which themselves had got
up, were publicly adhering to the line of 54° 40', with the secret
hope that others would extricate them from the perils of that
forlorn position. The Mexican war, under the impulse of speculators,
and upon an intrigue with Santa Anna, was the great blot upon his
administration; and that was wholly the work of the intriguing part
of his cabinet, into which he entered with a full belief that the
intrigue was to be successful, and the war finished in "ninety or
one hundred and twenty days;" and without firing another gun after
it should be declared. He was sincerely a friend to the Union, and
against whatever would endanger it, especially that absorption of
the whole of Mexico which had advocates in those who stood near
him; and also against the provisional line which was to cover
Monterey and Guaymas, when he began to suspect the ultimate object
of that line. The acquisition of New Mexico and California were
the distinguishing events of his administration--fruits of the war
with Mexico; but which would have come to the United States without
that war if the President had been surrounded by a cabinet free
from intrigue and selfishness, and wholly intent upon the honor and
interest of the country.
CHAPTER CLXXXVI.
THIRTY-FIRST CONGRESS: FIRST SESSION: LIST OF MEMBERS: ORGANIZATION
OF THE HOUSE.
The Senate, now consisting of sixty members was composed as follows:
MAINE.--Hannibal Hamlin, James W. Bradbury.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.--John P. Hale, Moses Norris, jr.
MASSACHUSETTS.--Daniel Webster, John Davis.
RHODE ISLAND.--Albert C. Greene, John H. Clarke.
CONNECTICUT.--Roger S. Baldwin, Truman Smith.
VERMONT.--Samuel S. Phelps, William Upham.
NEW YORK.--Daniel S. Dickinson, William H. Seward.
NEW JERSEY.--William L. Dayton, Jacob W. Miller.
PENNSYLVANIA.--Daniel Sturgeon, James Cooper.
DELAWARE.--John Wales, Presley Spruance.
MARYLAND.--David Stuart, James A. Pearce.
VIRGINIA.--James M. Mason, Robert M. T. Hunter.
NORTH CAROLINA.--Willie P. Mangum, George E. Badger.
SOUTH CAROLINA.--John C. Calhoun, Arthur P. Butler.
GEORGIA.--John M. Berrien, William C. Dawson.
KENTUCKY.--Joseph R. Underwood, Henry Clay.
TENNESSEE.--Hopkins L. Turney, John Bell.
OHIO.--Thomas Corwin, Salmon P. Chase.
LOUISIANA.--Solomon W. Downs, Pierre Soulé.
INDIANA.--Jesse D. Bright, James Whitcomb.
MISSISSIPPI.--Jefferson Davis, Henry S. Foote.
ILLINOIS.--Stephen A. Douglass, James Shields.
ALABAMA.--Jeremiah Clemens, William R. King.
MISSOURI.--Thomas H. Benton, David R. Atchison.
ARKANSAS.--William R. Sebastian, Solon Borland.
FLORIDA.--David L. Yulee, Jackson Morton.
MICHIGAN.--Lewis Cass, Alpheus Felch.
TEXAS.--Thomas J. Rusk, Sam Houston.
WISCONSIN.--Henry Dodge, Isaac P. Walker.
IOWA.--George W. Jones, Augustus C. Dodge.
In this list the reader will not fail to remark the names of Mr.
Clay, Mr. Webster, and Mr. Calhoun, all of whom, commencing their
congressional career nearly a generation before, and after several
retirings, had met again, and towards the close of their eventful
lives, upon this elevated theatre of their long and brilliant
labors. The House, consisting of two hundred and thirty members, was
thus composed:
MAINE.--Thomas J. D. Fuller, Elbridge Gerry, Rufus K. Goodenow,
Nathaniel S. Littlefield, John Otis, Cullen Sawtelle, Charles
Stetson.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.--Harry Hibbard, Charles H. Peaslee, Amos Tuck, James
Wilson.
VERMONT.--William Hebard, William Henry, James Meacham, Lucius B.
Peck.
MASSACHUSETTS.--Charles Allen, George Ashmun, James H. Duncan,
Orin Fowler, Joseph Grinnell, Daniel P. King, Horace Mann, Julius
Rockwell, Robert C. Winthrop, Daniel Webster.
RHODE ISLAND.--Nathan F. Dixon, George G. King.
CONNECTICUT.--Walter Booth, Thomas B. Butler, Chauncey F. Cleveland,
Loren P. Waldo.
NEW YORK.--Henry P. Alexander, George R. Andrews, Henry Bennett,
David A. Bokee, George Briggs, James Brooks, Lorenzo Burrows,
Charles E. Clarke, Harmon S. Conger, William Duer, Daniel Gott,
Herman D. Gould, Ransom Halloway, William T. Jackson, John A. King,
Preston King, Orsamus B. Matteson, Thomas McKissock, William Nelson,
J. Phillips Phoenix, Harvey Putnam, Gideon Reynolds, Elijah
Risley, Robert L. Rose, David Rumsey, jr., William A. Sackett,
Abraham M. Schermerhorn, John L. Schoolcraft, Peter H. Silvester,
Elbridge G. Spaulding, John R. Thurman, Walter Underhill, Hiram
Walden, Hugh White.
NEW JERSEY.--Andrew K. Hay, James G. King, William A. Newell, John
Van Dyke, Isaac Wildrick.
PENNSYLVANIA.--Chester Butler, Samuel Calvin, Joseph Casey, Joseph
R. Chandler, Jesse C. Dickey, Milo M. Dimmick, John Freedley, Alfred
Gilmore, Moses Hampton, John W. Howe, Lewis C. Levin, Job Mann,
James X. McLanahan, Henry D. Moore, Henry Nes, Andrew J. Ogle,
Charles W. Pitman, Robert R. Reed, John Robbins, jr., Thomas Ross,
Thaddeus Stevens, William Strong, James Thompson, David Wilmot.
DELAWARE.--John W. Houston.
MARYLAND.--Richard I. Bowie, Alexander Evans, William T. Hamilton,
Edward Hammond, John B. Kerr, Robert M. McLane.
VIRGINIA.--Thomas H. Averett, Thomas H. Bayly, James M. H. Beale,
Thomas S. Bocock, Henry A. Edmundson, Thomas S. Haymond, Alexander
R. Holladay, James McDowell, Fayette McMullen, Richard K. Meade,
John S. Millson, Jeremiah Morton, Richard Parker, Paulus Powell,
James A. Seddon.
NORTH CAROLINA.--William S. Ashe, Joseph P. Caldwell, Thomas L.
Clingman, John R. J. Daniel, Edmund Deberry, David Outlaw, Augustine
H. Shepperd, Edward Stanly, Abraham W. Venable.
SOUTH CAROLINA.--Armistead Burt, William F. Colcock, Isaac E.
Holmes, John McQueen, James L. Orr, Daniel Wallace, Joseph A.
Woodward.
GEORGIA.--Howell Cobb, Thomas C. Hackett, Hugh A. Haralson, Thomas
Butler King, Allen F. Owen, Alexander H. Stephens, Robert Toombs,
Marshall J. Wellborn.
ALABAMA.--Albert J. Alston, Franklin W. Bowdon, Williamson R. W.
Cobb, Sampson W. Harris, Henry W. Hilliard, David Hubbard, Samuel W.
Inge.
MISSISSIPPI.--Albert G. Brown, Winfield S. Featherston, William
McWillie, Jacob Thompson.
LOUISIANA.--Charles M. Conrad, John H. Harmanson, Emile La Sère,
Isaac E. Morse.
OHIO.--Joseph Cable, Lewis D. Campbell, David K. Carter, Moses
B. Corwin, John Crowell, David T. Disney, Nathan Evans, Joshua
R. Giddings, Moses Hoagland, William F. Hunter, John K. Miller,
Jonathan D. Morris, Edson B. Olds, Emery D. Potter, Joseph M. Root,
Robert C. Schenck, Charles Sweetser, John L. Taylor, Samuel F.
Vinton, William A. Whittlesey, Amos E. Wood.
KENTUCKY.--Linn Boyd, Daniel Breck, Geo A. Caldwell, James L.
Johnson, Humphrey Marshall, John C. Mason, Finis E. McLean, Charles
S. Morehead, Richard H. Stanton, John B. Thompson.
TENNESSEE.--Josiah M. Anderson, Andrew Ewing, Meredith P. Gentry,
Isham G. Harris, Andrew Johnson, George W. Jones, John H. Savage,
Frederick P. Stanton, Jas. H. Thomas, Albert G. Watkins, Christopher
H. Williams.
INDIANA.--Nathaniel Albertson, William J. Brown, Cyrus L. Dunham,
Graham N. Fitch, Willis A. Gorman, Andrew J. Harlan, George W.
Julian, Joseph E. McDonald, Edward W. McGaughey, John L. Robinson.
ILLINOIS.--Edward D. Baker, William H. Bissell, Thomas L. Harris,
John A. McClernand, William A. Richardson, John Wentworth, Timothy
R. Young.
MISSOURI.--William V. N. Bay, James B. Bowlin, James S. Green,
Willard P. Hall, John S. Phelps.
ARKANSAS.--Robert W. Johnson.
MICHIGAN.--Kinsley S. Bingham, Alexander W. Buel, William Sprague.
FLORIDA.--E. Carrington Cabell.
TEXAS.--Volney E. Howard, David S. Kaufman.
IOWA.--Shepherd Leffler, William Thompson.
WISCONSIN.--Orsamus Cole, James D. Doty, Charles Durkee.
_Delegates from Territories._
OREGON.--S. R. Thurston.
MINNESOTA.--Henry S. Sibley.
The election of a Speaker is the first business of a new Congress,
and the election which decided the political character of the House
while parties divided on political principles. Candidates from
opposite parties were still put in nomination at this commencement
of the Thirty-first Congress, but it was soon seen that the slavery
question mingled with the election, and gave it its controlling
character. Mr. Robert Winthrop, of Massachusetts (whig), and Mr.
C. Howell Cobb, of Georgia (democratic), were the respective
candidates; and in the vain struggle to give either a majority of
the House near three weeks of time was wasted, and above sixty
ballotings exhausted. Deeming the struggle useless, resort was had
to the plurality rule, and Mr. Cobb receiving 102 votes to the 99
for Mr. Winthrop--about twenty votes being thrown away--he was
declared elected, and led to the chair most courteously by his
competitor, Mr. Winthrop, and Mr. James McDowell, of Virginia. Mr.
Thomas I. Campbell was elected clerk, and upon his death during the
session, Richard M. Young, Esq., of Illinois, was elected in his
place.
CHAPTER CLXXXVII.
FIRST AND ONLY ANNUAL MESSAGE OF PRESIDENT TAYLOR.
This only message of one of the American Presidents, shows that he
comprehended the difficulties of his position, and was determined
to grapple with them--that he saw where lay the dangers to the
harmony and stability of the Union, and was determined to lay these
dangers bare to the public view--and, as far as depended on him,
to apply the remedies which their cure demanded. The first and the
last paragraphs of his message looked to this danger, and while the
first showed his confidence in the strength of the Union, the latter
admitted the dangers to it, and averred his own determination to
stand by it to the full extent of his obligations and powers. It was
in these words:
"But attachment to the Union of the States should be habitually
fostered in every American heart. For more than half a century,
during which kingdoms and empires have fallen, this Union has
stood unshaken. The patriots who formed it have long since
descended to the grave; yet still it remains the proudest
monument to their memory, and the object of affection and
admiration with every one worthy to bear the American name. In
my judgment its dissolution would be the greatest of calamities,
and to avert that should be the study of every American. Upon
its preservation must depend our own happiness, and that of
countless generations to come. Whatever dangers may threaten it,
I shall stand by it, and maintain it in its integrity, to the
full extent of the obligations imposed and the power conferred
upon me by the constitution."
This paragraph has the appearance where it occurs of being an
addition to the message after it had been written: and such it was.
It was added in consequence of a visit from Mr. Calhoun to the
Department of State, and expressing a desire that nothing should be
said in the message about the point to which it relates. The two
paragraphs were then added--the one near the beginning, the other
at the end of the message; and it was in allusion to these passages
that Mr. Calhoun's last speech, read in the Senate by Mr. Mason, of
Virginia, contained those memorable words, so much noted at the time:
"_It (the Union) cannot, then, be saved by eulogies on it,
however splendid or numerous. The cry of 'Union, Union, the
glorious Union!' can no more prevent disunion than the cry of
'Health, Health, glorious Health!' on the part of the physician
can save a patient from dying that is lying dangerously ill._"
President Taylor surveyed the difficulties before him, and expressed
his opinion of the remedies they required. California, New Mexico,
and Utah had been left without governments: Texas was asserting a
claim to one half of New Mexico--a province settled two hundred
years before Texian independence, and to which no Texian invader
ever went except to be killed or taken, to the last man. Each of
these presented a question to be settled, in which the predominance
of the slavery agitation rendered settlement difficult and
embarrassing. President Taylor frankly and firmly presented his
remedy for each one. California, having the requisite population for
a State, and having formed her constitution, and prepared herself
for admission into the Union, was favorably recommended for that
purpose to Congress:
"No civil government having been provided by Congress for
California, the people of that territory, impelled by the
necessities of their political condition, recently met in
convention, for the purpose of forming a constitution and
State government, which the latest advices give me reason to
suppose has been accomplished; and it is believed they will
shortly apply for the admission of California into the Union
as a sovereign State. Should such be the case, and should
their constitution be conformable to the requisitions of the
constitution of the United States, I recommend their application
to the favorable consideration of Congress."
New Mexico and Utah, without mixing the slavery question with their
territorial governments, were recommended to be left to ripen into
States, and then to settle that question for themselves in their
State constitutions--saying:
"By awaiting their action, all causes of uneasiness may be
avoided, and confidence and kind feeling preserved. With the
view of maintaining the harmony and tranquillity so dear to all,
we should abstain from the introduction of those exciting topics
of a sectional character which have hitherto produced painful
apprehensions in the public mind; and I repeat the solemn
warning of the first and most illustrious of my predecessors,
against furnishing 'any ground for characterizing parties by
geographical discriminations!'"
This reference to Washington was answered by Calhoun in the same
speech read by Mr. Mason, denying that the Union could be saved by
invoking his name, and averring that there was "_nothing in his
history to deter us from seceding from the Union should it fail to
fulfil the objects for which it was instituted_:" which failure the
speech averred--as others had averred for twenty years before: for
secession was the off-shoot of nullification, and a favorite mode
of dissolving the Union. With respect to Texas and New Mexico, it
was the determination of the President that their boundaries should
be settled by the political, or judicial authority of the United
States, and not by arms.
In all these recommendations the message was wise, patriotic,
temperate and firm; but it encountered great opposition, and from
different quarters, and upon different grounds--from Mr. Clay, who
wished a general compromise; from Mr. Calhoun, intent upon extending
slavery; and holding the Union to be lost except by a remedy of
his own which he ambiguously shadowed forth--a dual executive--two
Presidents: one for the North, one for the South: which was itself
disunion if accomplished. In his reference to Washington's warnings
against geographical and sectional parties, there was a pointed
rebuke to the daily attempts to segregate the South from the North,
and to form political parties exclusively on the basis of an
opposition of interest between the Southern and the Northern States.
As a patriot, he condemned such sectionalism: as a President, he
would have counteracted it.
After our duty to ourselves the President spoke of our duty to
others--to our neighbors--and especially the Spanish possession of
Cuba. An invasion of that island by adventurers from the United
States had been attempted, and had been suppressed by an energetic
proclamation, backed by a determination to carry it into effect upon
the guilty. The message said:
"Having been apprised that a considerable number of adventurers
were engaged in fitting out a military expedition, within the
United States, against a foreign country, and believing, from
the best information I could obtain, that it was destined to
invade the island of Cuba, I deemed it due to the friendly
relations existing between the United States and Spain; to
the treaty between the two nations; to the laws of the United
States; and, above all, to the American honor, to exert
the lawful authority of this government in suppressing the
expedition and preventing the invasion. To this end I issued
a proclamation, enjoining it upon the officers of the United
States, civil and military, to use all lawful means within their
power. A copy of that proclamation is herewith submitted. The
expedition has been suppressed. So long as the act of Congress
of the 20th of April, 1818, which owes its existence to the law
of nations and to the policy of Washington himself, shall remain
on our statute book, I hold it to be the duty of the Executive
faithfully to obey its injunctions."
This was just conduct, and just language, worthy of an upright
magistrate of a Republic, which should set an example of justice
and fairness towards its neighbors. The Spanish government had been
greatly harassed by expeditions got up against Cuba in the United
States, and put to enormous expense in ships and troops to hold
herself in a condition to repulse them. Thirty thousand troops, and
a strong squadron, were constantly kept on foot to meet this danger.
A war establishment was kept up in time of peace in the island of
Cuba to protect the island from threatened invasions. Besides the
injury done to Spain by these aggravations, and the enormous expense
of a war establishment to be kept in Cuba, there was danger of
injury to ourselves from the number and constant recurrence of these
expeditions, which would seem to speak the connivance of the people,
or the negligence of the government. Fortunately for the peace of
the countries during the several years that these expeditions were
most undertaken, the Spanish government was long represented at
Washington by a minister of approved fitness for his situation--Don
Luis Calderon de la Barca: a fine specimen of the old Castilian
character--frank, courteous, honorable, patriotic--whose amiable
manners enabled him to mix intimately with American society, and to
see that these expeditions were criminally viewed by the government
and the immense majority of the citizens; and whose high character
enabled him to satisfy his own government of that important fact,
and to prevent from being viewed as the act of the nation, what was
only that of lawless adventurers, pursued and repressed by our own
laws.
CHAPTER CLXXXVIII.
MR. CLAY'S PLAN OF COMPROMISE.
Early in the session Mr. Clay brought into the Senate a set of
resolutions, eight in number, to settle and close up once and for
ever, all the points of contestation in the slavery question, and to
consolidate the settlement of the whole into one general and lasting
compromise. He was placed at the head of a grand committee of
thirteen members to whom his resolutions were to be referred, with a
view to combine them all into one bill, and make that bill the final
settlement of all the questions connected with slavery. Mr. Benton
opposed this whole plan of pacification, as mixing up incongruous
measures--making one measure dependent upon another--tacking
together things which had no connection--as derogatory and perilous
to the State of California to have the question of her admission
confounded with the general slavery agitation in the United
States--as being futile and impotent, as no such conglomeration
of incongruities (though christened a compromise) could have
any force:--as being a concession to the spirit of disunion--a
capitulation to those who threatened secession--a repetition of
the error of 1833:--and itself to become the fruitful source
of more contentions than it proposed to quiet. His plan was to
settle each measure by itself, beginning with the admission of
California, settling every thing justly and fairly, in the spirit
of conciliation as well as of justice--leaving the consequences to
God and the country--and having no compromise with the threat of
disunion. The majority of the Senate were of Mr. Benton's opinion,
which was understood also to be the plan of the President: but
there are always men of easy or timid temperaments in every public
body that delight in temporizations, and dread the effects of any
firm and straightforward course; and so it was now, but with great
difficulty--Mr. Clay himself only being elected by the aid of one
vote, given to him by Mr. Webster after it was found that he lacked
it. The committee were: Mr. Clay, chairman: Messrs. Cass, Dickinson,
Bright, Webster, Phelps, Cooper, King, Mason, Downs, Mangum, Bell,
and Berrien, members. Mr. Clay's list of measures was referred to
them; and as the committee was selected with a view to promote the
mover's object, a bill was soon returned embracing the comprehensive
plan of compromise which he proposed. The admission of California,
territorial governments for Utah and New Mexico, the settlement of
the Texas boundary, slavery in the District of Columbia, a fugitive
slave law--all--all were put together in one bill, to be passed or
rejected by the same vote! and to be called a system. United they
could not be. Their natures were too incongruous to admit of union
or mixture. They were simply tied together--called one measure; and
required to be voted on as such. They were not even bills drawn up
by the committee, but existing bills in the Senate--drawn up by
different members--occupying different places on the calendar--and
each waiting its turn to be acted on separately. Mr. Clay had made
an ample report in favor of his measure, and further enforced it by
an elaborate speech: the whole of which Mr. Benton contested, and
answered in an ample speech, some extracts from which constitute a
future chapter.
CHAPTER CLXXXIX.
EXTENSION OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE LINE TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN: MR.
DAVIS, OF MISSISSIPPI, AND MR. CLAY: THE WILMOT PROVISO.
In the resolutions of compromise submitted by Mr. Clay there
was one declaring the non-existence of slavery in the territory
recently acquired from Mexico, and affirming the "inexpediency"
of any legislation from Congress on that subject within the said
territories. His resolution was in these words:
"_Resolved_, That as slavery does not exist by law, and is not
likely to be introduced into any of the territory acquired by
the United States from the Republic of Mexico, it is inexpedient
for Congress to provide by law either for its introduction into
or exclusion from any part of the said territory; and that
appropriate territorial governments ought to be established
by Congress in all of the said territory, not assigned as the
boundaries of the proposed State of California, without the
adoption of any restriction or condition on the subject of
slavery."
This proposition, with some half-dozen others, formed the system
of compromise with which Mr. Clay expected to pacify the slavery
agitation in the United States. Mr. Davis, of Mississippi, did not
perceive any thing of a compromise in a measure which gave nothing
to the South in the settlement of the question, and required the
extension of the Missouri compromise line to the Pacific ocean as
the least that he would be willing to take. Thus:
"But, sir, we are called on to receive this as a measure of
compromise! Is a measure in which we of the minority are to
receive nothing, a measure of compromise? I look upon it as but
a modest mode of taking that, the claim to which has been more
boldly asserted by others; and that I may be understood upon
this question, and that my position may go forth to the country
in the same columns that convey the sentiments of the senator
from Kentucky, I here assert that never will I take less than
the Missouri compromise line extended to the Pacific ocean, with
the specific recognition of the right to hold slaves in the
territory below that line; and that, before such territories are
admitted into the Union as States, slaves may be taken there
from any of the United States at the option of their owners."
This was a manly declaration in favor of extending slavery into the
new territories, and in the only way in which it could be done--that
is to say, by act of Congress. Mr. Clay met it by a declaration
equally manly, and in conformity to the principles of his whole
life, utterly refusing to plant slavery in any place where it did
not previously exist. He answered:
"I am extremely sorry to hear the senator from Mississippi
say that he requires, first, the extension of the Missouri
compromise line to the Pacific, and also that he is not
satisfied with that, but requires, if I understood him
correctly, a positive provision for the admission of slavery
south of that line. And now, sir, coming from a slave State, as
I do, I owe it to myself, I owe it to truth, I owe it to the
subject, to say that no earthly power could induce me to vote
for a specific measure for the introduction of slavery where
it had not before existed, either south or north of that line.
Coming as I do from a slave State, it is my solemn, deliberate
and well matured determination that no power, no earthly power,
shall compel me to vote for the positive introduction of slavery
either south or north of that line. Sir, while you reproach,
and justly too, our British ancestors for the introduction of
this institution upon the continent of America, I am, for one,
unwilling that the posterity of the present inhabitants of
California and of New Mexico shall reproach us for doing just
what we reproach Great Britain for doing to us. If the citizens
of those territories choose to establish slavery, and if they
come here with constitutions establishing slavery, I am for
admitting them with such provisions in their constitutions;
but then it will be their own work, and not ours, and their
posterity will have to reproach them, and not us, for forming
constitutions allowing the institution of slavery to exist among
them. These are my views, sir, and I choose to express them; and
I care not how extensively or universally they are known."
These were manly sentiments, courageously expressed, and taking
the right ground so much overlooked, or perverted by others. The
Missouri compromise line, extending to New Mexico and California,
though astronomically the same with that in Louisiana, was
politically directly the opposite. One went through a territory
all slave, and made one-half free; the other would go through
territory all free, and make one-half slave. Mr. Clay saw this
difference, and acted upon it, and declared his sentiments honestly
and boldly; and none but the ignorant or unjust could reproach him
with inconsistency in maintaining the line in the ancient Louisiana,
where the whole province came to us with slavery, and refusing it
in the new territories where all came to us free.
Mr. Seward, of New York, proposed the renewal of the Wilmot proviso:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, otherwise than by
conviction for crime, shall ever be allowed in either of said
territories of Utah and New Mexico."
Upon the adoption of which the yeas and nays were:
"YEAS.--Messrs. Baldwin, Bradbury, Bright, Chase, Clarke,
Cooper, Corwin, Davis of Massachusetts, Dayton, Dodge of
Wisconsin, Douglas, Felch, Greene, Hale, Hamlin, Miller, Norris,
Seward, Shields, Smith, Upham, Whitcomb, and Walker--23.
"NAYS.--Messrs. Atchison, Badger, Bell, Benton, Berrien, Butler,
Cass, Clay, Clemens, Davis of Mississippi, Dawson, Dickinson,
Dodge of Iowa, Downs, Foote, Houston, Hunter, Jones, King,
Mangum, Mason, Morton, Pearce, Pratt, Rusk, Sebastian, Soulé,
Spruance, Sturgeon, Turney, Underwood, Webster, and Yulee--33."
CHAPTER CXC.
MR. CALHOUN'S LAST SPEECH: DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION PROCLAIMED
UNLESS THE CONSTITUTION WAS AMENDED, AND A DUAL EXECUTIVE
APPOINTED--ONE PRESIDENT FROM THE SLAVE AND ONE FROM THE FREE STATES.
On the 4th of March Mr. Calhoun brought into the Senate a written
speech, elaborately and studiously prepared, and which he was too
weak to deliver, or even to read. Upon his request it was allowed to
be read by his friend, Mr. James M. Mason of Virginia, and was found
to be an amplification and continuation of the Southern manifesto of
the preceding year; and, like it, occupied entirely with the subject
of the dissolution of the Union, and making out a case to justify
it. The opening went directly to the point, and presented the
question of Union, or disunion with the formality and solemnity of
an actual proposition, as if its decision was the business on which
the Senate was convened. It opened thus:
"I have, senators, believed from the first that the agitation of
the subject of slavery would, if not prevented by some timely
and effective measure, end in disunion. Entertaining this
opinion, I have, on all proper occasions, endeavored to call
the attention of each of the two great parties which divide the
country to adopt some measure to prevent so great a disaster but
without success. The agitation has been permitted to proceed,
with almost no attempt to resist it, until it has reached a
period when it can no longer be disguised or denied that the
Union is in danger. You have thus had forced upon you the
greatest and the gravest question that can ever come under your
consideration: How can the Union be preserved?"
Professing to proceed like a physician who must find out the cause
of a disease before he can apply a remedy, the speech went on to
discover the reasons which now rendered disunion inevitable, unless
an adequate remedy to prevent it should be administered. The first
of these causes was the anti-slavery ordinance of 1787, which was
adopted before the constitution was formed, and had its origin from
the South, and the unanimous support of that section. The second
was the Missouri compromise line, which also had its origin in the
South, the unanimous support of the Southern senators, the majority
of the Southern representatives, the unanimous support of Mr.
Monroe's cabinet, of which Mr. Calhoun was a member; and his own
approbation of it for about twenty-five years. The long continued
agitation of the slave question was another cause of disunion,
dating the agitation from the year 1835--which was correct; for in
that year he took it up in the Senate, and gave the abolitionists
what they wanted, and could not otherwise acquire--an antagonist
to cope with, an elevated theatre for the strife, and a national
auditory to applaud or censure. Before that time he said, and truly,
the agitation was insignificant; since then it had become great;
and (he might have added), that senators North and South told him
that would be the case when he entered upon the business in 1835.
Repeal of the slave sojournment laws by New York and Pennsylvania,
was referred to, and with reason, except that these repeals did not
take place until after his own conduct in the Senate had made the
slavery agitation national, and given distinction and importance to
the abolitionists. The progressive increase of the two classes of
States, rapid in one, slow in the other, was adverted to as leading
to disunion by destroying, what he called, the _equilibrium_ of
the States--as if that difference of progress was not mainly in
the nature of things, resulting from climate and soil; and in some
degree political, resulting from the slavery itself which he was so
anxious to extend. The preservation of this equilibrium was to be
effected by acquiring Southern territory and opening it to slavery.
The _equality_ of the States was held to be indispensable to the
continuance of the Union; and that equality was to be maintained
by admitting slavery to be carried into all the territories--even
Oregon--equivocally predicated on the right of all persons to carry
their "_property_" with them to these territories. The phrase was
an equivocation, and has been a remarkable instance of delusion
from a phrase. Every citizen can carry his property now wherever he
goes, only he cannot carry the State law with him which makes it
property, and for want of which it ceases to be so when he gets to
his new residence. The New Englander can carry his bank along with
him, and all the money it contains, to one of the new territories;
but he cannot carry the law of incorporation with him; and it ceases
to be the property he had in New England. All this complaint about
inequality in a slave-holder in not being allowed to carry his
"_property_" with him to a territory, stript of the ambiguity of
phraseology, is nothing but a complaint that he cannot carry the law
with him which makes it property; and in that there is no inequality
between the States. They are all equal in the total inability of
their citizens to carry the State laws with them. The result of the
whole, the speech went on to say, was that the process of disruption
was then going on between the two classes of States, and could not
be arrested by any remedy proposed--not by Mr. Clay's compromise
plan, nor by President's plan, nor by the cry of "Union, Union,
Glorious Union!" The speech continues:
"Instead of being weaker, all the elements in favor of agitation
are stronger now than they were in 1835, when it first
commenced, while all the elements of influence on the part
of the South are weaker. Unless something decisive is done,
I again ask what is to stop this agitation, before the great
and final object at which it aims--the abolition of slavery in
the States--is consummated? Is it, then, not certain that if
something decisive is not now done to arrest it, the South will
be forced to choose between abolition and secession? Indeed, as
events are now moving, it will not require the South to secede
to dissolve the Union."
The speech goes on to say that the Union could not be dissolved at
a single blow: it would require many, and successive blows, to snap
its cords asunder:
"It is a great mistake to suppose that disunion can be effected
by a single blow. The cords which bind these States together in
one common Union are far too numerous and powerful for that.
Disunion must be the work of time. It is only through a long
process, and successively, that the cords can be snapped, until
the whole fabric falls asunder. Already the agitation of the
slavery question has snapped some of the most important, and has
greatly weakened all the others, as I shall proceed to show."
The speech goes on to show that cords have already been snapt, and
others weakened:
"The cords that bind the States together are not only many, but
various in character. Some are spiritual or ecclesiastical;
some political; others social. Some appertain to the benefit
conferred by the Union, and others to the feeling of duty and
obligation.
"The strongest of those of a spiritual and ecclesiastical nature
consisted in the unity of the great religious denominations,
all of which originally embraced the whole Union. All these
denominations, with the exception, perhaps, of the Catholics,
were organized very much upon the principle of our political
institutions; beginning with smaller meetings correspondent
with the political divisions of the country, their organization
terminated in one great central assemblage, corresponding
very much with the character of Congress. At these meetings
the principal clergymen and lay members of the respective
denominations from all parts of the Union met to transact
business relating to their common concerns. It was not
confined to what appertained to the doctrines and discipline
of the respective denominations, but extended to plans for
disseminating the Bible, establishing missionaries, distributing
tracts, and of establishing presses for the publication of
tracts, newspapers, and periodicals, with a view of diffusing
religious information, and for the support of the doctrines
and creeds of the denomination. All this combined, contributed
greatly to strengthen the bonds of the Union. The strong ties
which held each denomination together formed a strong cord to
hold the whole Union together; but, as powerful as they were,
they have not been able to resist the explosive effect of
slavery agitation.
"The first of these cords which snapped, under its explosive
force, was that of the powerful Methodist Episcopal Church.
The numerous and strong ties which held it together are all
broke, and its unity gone. They now form separate churches,
and, instead of the feeling of attachment and devotion to the
interests of the whole church which was formerly felt, they are
now arrayed into two hostile bodies, engaged in litigation about
what was formerly their common property.
"The next cord that snapped was that of the Baptists, one of the
largest and most respectable of the denominations. That of the
Presbyterian is not entirely snapped, but some of its strands
have given way. That of the Episcopal Church is the only one of
the four great Protestant denominations which remains unbroken
and entire.
"The strongest cord of a political character consists of the
many and strong ties that have held together the two great
parties, which have, with some modifications, existed from the
beginning of the government. They both extended to every portion
of the Union, and strongly contributed to hold all its parts
together. But this powerful cord has fared no better than the
spiritual. It resisted for a long time the explosive tendency of
the agitation, but has finally snapped under its force--if not
entirely, in a great measure. Nor is there one of the remaining
cords which have not been greatly weakened. To this extent the
Union has already been destroyed by agitation, in the only way
it can be, by snapping asunder and weakening the cords which
bind it together."
The last cord here mentioned, that of political parties, founded
upon principles not subject to sectional, or geographical lines, has
since been entirely destroyed, snapped clean off by the abrogation
of the Missouri compromise line, and making the extension, or
non-extension of slavery, the foundation of political parties.
After that cord should be snapped, the speech goes on to consider
"_force_" the only bond of Union, and justly considers that as no
Union where power and violence constitute the only bond.
"If the agitation goes on, the same force, acting with increased
intensity, as has been shown, will finally snap every cord,
when nothing will be left to hold the States together except
force. But surely that can, with no propriety of language, be
called a Union, when the only means by which the weaker is held
connected with the stronger portion is _force_. It may, indeed,
keep them connected; but the connection will partake much more
of the character of subjugation, on the part of the weaker to
the stronger, than the union of free, independent, and sovereign
States, in one confederation, as they stood in the early stages
of the government, and which only is worthy of the sacred name
of Union."
The admission of the State of California, with her free
constitution, was the exciting cause of this speech from Mr.
Calhoun. The Wilmot proviso was disposed of. That cause of disunion
no longer existed; but the admission of California excited the same
opposition, and was declared to be the "_test_" question upon which
all depended. The President had communicated the constitution of
that State to Congress, which Mr. Calhoun strongly repulsed.
"The Executive has laid the paper purporting to be the
Constitution of California before you, and asks you to admit
her into the Union as a State; and the question is, will you
or will you not admit her? It is a grave question, and there
rests upon you a heavy responsibility. Much, very much, will
depend upon your decision. If you admit her, you endorse
and give your sanction to all that has been done. Are you
prepared to do so? Are you prepared to surrender your power of
legislation for the territories--a power expressly vested in
Congress by the constitution, as has been fully established? Can
you, consistently with your oath to support the constitution,
surrender the power? Are you prepared to admit that the
inhabitants of the territories possess the sovereignty over
them, and that any number, more or less, may claim any extent of
territory they please, may form a constitution and government,
and erect it into a State, without asking your permission? Are
you prepared to surrender the sovereignty of the United States
over whatever territory may be hereafter acquired to the first
adventurers who may rush into it? Are you prepared to surrender
virtually to the Executive Department all the powers which you
have heretofore exercised over the territories? If not, how can
you, consistently with your duty and your oaths to support the
constitution, give your assent to the admission of California as
a State, under a pretended constitution and government?"
Having shown that all the cords that held the Union together had
snapped except one (political party principle), and that one
weakened and giving way, the speech came to the solemn question:
"_How can the Union be saved?_" and answered it (after some
generalities) by coming to the specific point--
"_To provide for the insertion of a provision in the
Constitution, by an amendment, which will restore to the South
in substance the power she possessed of protecting herself,
before the equilibrium between the sections was destroyed by the
action of this government._"
The speech did not tell of what this amendment was to consist, which
was to have the effect of saving the Union, by protecting the slave
States, and restoring the equilibrium between the two classes of
States; but an authentic publication soon after disclosed it, and
showed it to be the election of two Presidents, one from the free
and the other from the slave States, and each to approve of all the
acts of Congress before they became laws. Upon this condition alone,
the speech declared the Union could be saved! which was equivalent
to pronouncing its dissolution. For, in the first place, no such
amendment to the constitution could be made; in the second place, no
such double-headed government could work through even one session
of Congress, any more than two animals could work together in the
plough with their heads yoked in opposite directions.
This last speech of Mr. Calhoun becomes important, as furnishing
a key to his conduct, and that of his political friends, and as
connecting itself with subsequent measures.
CHAPTER CXCI.
DEATH OF MR. CALHOUN: HIS EULOGIUM BY SENATOR BUTLER.
"MR. PRESIDENT: Mr. Calhoun has lived in an eventful period
of our Republic and has acted a distinguished part. I surely
do not venture too much when I say, that his reputation forms
a striking part of a glorious history. Since 1811 until this
time, he has been responsibly connected with the federal
government. As representative, senator, cabinet minister, and
Vice President, he has been identified with the greatest events
in the political history of our country. And I hope I may be
permitted to say that he has been equal to all the duties which
were devolved upon him in the many critical junctures in which
he was placed. Having to act a responsible part, he always
acted a decided part. It would not become me to venture upon
the judgment which awaits his memory. That will be formed by
posterity before the impartial tribunal of history. It may be
that he will have had the fate, and will have given to him the
judgment that has been awarded to Chatham.
"Mr. Calhoun was a native of South Carolina, and was born in
Abbeville district, on the 18th March, 1782. He was of an Irish
family. His father, Patrick Calhoun, was born in Ireland, and at
an early age came to Pennsylvania, thence moved to the western
part of Virginia, and after Braddock's defeat moved to South
Carolina, in 1756. He and his family gave a name to what is
known as the Calhoun settlement in Abbeville district. The
mother of my colleague was a Miss Caldwell, born in Charlotte
County, Virginia. The character of his parents had no doubt a
sensible influence on the destiny of their distinguished son.
His father had energy and enterprise, combined with perseverance
and great mental determination. His mother belonged to a family
of revolutionary heroes. Two of her brothers were distinguished
in the Revolution. Their names and achievements are not left to
tradition, but constitute a part of the history of the times.
"He became a student in Yale College, in 1802, and graduated
two years afterwards with distinction--as a young man of great
ability, and with the respect and confidence of his preceptors
and fellows. What they have said and thought of him, would have
given any man a high reputation. It is the pure fountain of a
clear reputation. If the stream has met with obstructions, they
were such as have only shown its beauty and majesty.
"Mr. Calhoun came into Congress at a time of deep and exciting
interest--at a crisis of great magnitude. It was a crisis
of peril to those who had to act in it, but of subsequent
glory to the actors, and the common history of the country.
The invincibility of Great Britain had become a proverbial
expression, and a war with her was full of terrific issues.
Mr. Calhoun found himself at once in a situation of high
responsibility--one that required more than speaking qualities
and eloquence to fulfil it. The spirit of the people required
direction; the energy and ardor of youth were to be employed
in affairs requiring the maturer qualities of a statesman. The
part which Mr. Calhoun acted at this time, has been approved
and applauded by contemporaries, and now forms a part of the
glorious history of those times.
"The names of Clay, Calhoun, Cheves, and Lowndes, Grundy,
Porter, and others, carried associations with them that reached
the _heart of the nation_. Their clarion notes penetrated the
army; they animated the people, and sustained the administration
of the government. With such actors, and in such scenes--the
most eventful of our history--to say that Mr. Calhoun did not
play a second part, is no common praise. In debate he was equal
with Randolph, and in council he commanded the respect and
confidence of Madison. At this period of his life he had the
quality of Themistocles--_to inspire confidence_--which, after
all, is the highest of earthly qualities: it is a mystical
something which is felt, but cannot be described. The events
of the war were brilliant and honorable to both statesmen and
soldiers, and their history may be read with enthusiasm and
delight. The war terminated with honor; but the measures which
had to be taken, in a transition to a peace establishment,
were full of difficulty and embarrassment. Mr. Calhoun, with
his usual intrepidity, did not hesitate to take a responsible
part. Under the influence of a broad patriotism, he acted with
an uncalculating liberality to all the interests that were
involved, and which were brought under review of Congress. His
personal adversary at this time, in his admiration for his
genius, paid Mr. Calhoun a beautiful compliment for his noble
and national sentiments.
"At the termination of Mr. Madison's administration, Mr. Calhoun
had acquired a commanding reputation; he was regarded as one
of the sages of the Republic. In 1817 Mr. Monroe invited him
to a place in his cabinet; Mr. Calhoun's friends doubted the
propriety of his accepting it, and some of them thought he would
put a high reputation at hazard in this new sphere of action.
Perhaps these suggestions fired his high and gifted intellect;
he accepted the place, and went into the War Department, under
circumstances that might have appalled other men. His success
has been acknowledged; what was complex and confused, he reduced
to simplicity and order. His organization of the War Department,
and his administration of its undefined duties, have made the
impression of an _author_, having the interest of originality
and the sanction of trial.
"While he was Vice-President he was placed in some of the most
trying scenes of any man's life. I do not now choose to refer
to any thing that can have the elements of controversy; but I
hope I may be permitted to speak of my friend and colleague
in a character in which all will join in paying him sincere
respect. As a presiding officer of this body, he had the
undivided respect of its members. He was punctual, methodical,
and accurate, and had a high regard for the dignity of the
Senate, which, as a presiding officer, he endeavored to preserve
and maintain. He looked upon debate as an honorable contest of
intellect for truth. Such a strife has its incidents and its
trials; but Mr. Calhoun had, in an eminent degree, a regard for
parliamentary dignity and propriety.
"Upon General Hayne's leaving the Senate to become Governor
of South Carolina, Mr. Calhoun resigned the Vice-Presidency,
and was elected in his place. All will now agree that such a
position was environed with difficulties and dangers. His own
State was under the ban, and he was in the national Senate to do
her justice under his constitutional obligations. That part of
his life posterity will review, and will do justice to it.
"After his senatorial term had expired, he went into retirement
by his own consent. The death of Mr. Upshur--so full of
melancholy association--made a vacancy in the State Department;
and it was by the common consent of all parties, that Mr.
Calhoun was called to fill it. This was a tribute of which any
public man might well be proud. It was a tribute to truth,
ability, and experience. Under Mr. Calhoun's counsels, Texas
was brought into the Union. His name is associated with one of
the most remarkable events of history--that of one Republic
being annexed to another by the voluntary consent of both.
Mr. Calhoun was but the agent to bring about this fraternal
association. It is a conjunction under the sanction of his name,
and by an influence exerted through his great and intrepid
mind. Mr. Calhoun's connection with the Executive Department of
the government terminated with Mr. Tyler's administration. As
Secretary of State, he won the confidence and respect of foreign
ambassadors, and his despatches were characterized by clearness,
sagacity, and boldness.
"He was not allowed to remain in retirement long. For the last
five years he has been a member of this body, and has been
engaged in discussions that have deeply excited and agitated the
country. He has died amidst them. I had never had any particular
association with Mr. Calhoun, until I became his colleague in
this body. I had looked on his fame as others had done, and
had admired his character. There are those here who know more
of him than I do. I shall not pronounce any such judgment as
may be subject to a controversial criticism. But I will say,
as a matter of justice, from my own personal knowledge, that I
never knew a fairer man in argument or a juster man in purpose.
His intensity allowed of little compromise. While he did not
qualify his own positions to suit the temper of the times, he
appreciated the unmasked propositions of others. As a senator,
he commanded the respect of the ablest men of the body of
which he was a member; and I believe I may say, that where
there was no political bias to influence the judgment, he had
the confidence of his brethren. As a statesman, Mr. Calhoun's
reputation belongs to the history of the country, and I commit
it to his countrymen and posterity.
"In my opinion, Mr. Calhoun deserves to occupy the first rank as
a parliamentary speaker. He had always before him the dignity of
purpose, and he spoke to an end. From a full mind he expressed
his ideas with clearness, simplicity, and force and in language
that seemed to be the vehicle of his thoughts and emotions. His
thoughts leaped from his mind, like arrows from a well-drawn
bow. They had both the aim and force of a skilful archer. He
seemed to have had little regard for ornament; and when he used
figures of speech, they were only for illustration. His manner
and countenance were his best language; and in these there was
an exemplification of what is meant by action, in that term of
the great Athenian orator and statesman. They served to exhibit
the moral elevation of the man.
"In speaking of Mr. Calhoun as a man and a neighbor, I hope
I may speak of him in a sphere in which all will like to
contemplate him. Whilst he was a gentleman of striking
deportment, he was a man of primitive tastes and simple manners.
He had the hardy virtues and simple tastes of a republican
citizen. No one disliked ostentation and exhibition more than
he did. When I say he was a _good neighbor_, I imply more than
I have expressed. It is summed up under the word _justice_.
I will venture to say, that no one in his private relations
could ever say that Mr. Calhoun treated him with injustice,
or that he deceived him by professions. His private character
was characterized by a beautiful propriety, and was the
exemplification of truth, justice, temperance, and fidelity to
his engagements."
CHAPTER CXCII.
MR. CLAY'S PLAN OF SLAVERY COMPROMISE: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH AGAINST
IT: EXTRACTS.
MR. BENTON. It is a bill of thirty-nine sections--forty, save
one--an ominous number; and which, with the two little bills which
attend it, is called a compromise, and is pressed upon us as a
remedy for the national calamities. Now, all this labor of the
committee, and all this remedy, proceed upon the assumption that
the people of the United States are in a miserable, distracted
condition; that it is their mission to relieve this national
distress, and that these bills are the sovereign remedy for that
purpose. Now, in my opinion, all this is a mistake, both as to
the condition of the country, the mission of the committee, and
the efficacy of their remedy. I do not believe in this misery
and distraction, and distress, and strife, of the people. On the
contrary, I believe them to be very quiet at home, attending to
their crops, such of them as do not mean to feed out of the public
crib; and that they would be perfectly happy if the politicians
would only permit them to think so. I know of no distress in the
country, no misery, no strife, no distraction, none of those five
gaping wounds of which the senator from Kentucky made enumeration
on the five fingers of his left hand, and for the healing of which,
all together, and all at once, and not one at a time, like the
little Doctor Taylor, he has provided this capacious plaster in the
shape of five old bills tacked together. I believe the senator and
myself are alike, in this, that each of us has but five fingers
on the left hand; and that may account for the limitation of the
wounds. When the fingers gave out, they gave out; and if there had
been five more fingers, there might have been more wounds--as many
as fingers--and, toes also. I know nothing of all these "gaping
wounds," nor of any distress in the country since we got rid of the
Bank of the United States, and since we got possession of the gold
currency. Since that time I have heard of no pecuniary or business
distress, no rotten currency, no expansions and contractions, no
deranged exchanges, no decline of public stocks, no laborers begging
employment, no produce rotting upon the hands of the farmer, no
property sacrificed at forced sales, no loss of confidence, no three
per centum a month interest, no call for a bankrupt act. Never
were the people--the business-doing and the working people--as
well off as they are to-day. As for political distress, "_it is
all in my eye_." It is all among the politicians. Never were the
political blessings of the country greater than at present: civil
and religious liberty eminently enjoyed; life, liberty, and property
protected; the North and the South returning to the old belief
that they were made for each other; and peace and plenty reigning
throughout the land. This is the condition of the country--happy in
the extreme; and I listen with amazement to the recitals which I
have heard on this floor of strife and contention, gaping wounds and
streaming blood, distress and misery. I feel mystified. The senator
from Kentucky (Mr. Clay), chairman of the committee, and reporter of
the bill, and its pathetic advocate, formerly delivered us many such
recitals, about the times that the tariff was to be increased, the
national bank charter to be renewed, the deposits to be restored,
or a bankrupt act to be passed. He has been absent for some years;
and, on returning among us, seems to begin where he left off. He
treats us to the old dish of distress! Sir, it is a mistake. There
is none of it; and if there was, the remedy would be in the hands of
the people--in the hearts of the people--who love their country, and
mean to take care of it--and not in the contrivances of politicians,
who mistake their own for their country's distresses. It is all
a mistake. It looks to me like a joke. But when I recollect the
imposing number of the committee, and how "distinguished" they all
were, and how they voted themselves free from instructions, and
allowed the Senate to talk, but not to vote, while they were out,
and how long they were deliberating: when I recollect all these
things, I am constrained to believe the committee are in earnest.
And as for the senator himself, the chairman of the committee, the
perfect gravity with which he brought forward his remedy--these
bills and the report--the pathos with which he enforced them, and
the hearty congratulations which he addressed to the Senate, to the
United States, and all mankind on the appointment of his committee,
preclude the idea of an intentional joke on his part. In view of
all this, I find myself compelled to consider this proceeding as
serious, and bound to treat it parliamentarily; which I now proceed
to do. And, in the first place, let us see what it is the committee
has done, and what it is that it has presented to us as the
sovereign remedy for the national distempers, and which we are to
swallow whole--in the lump--all or none--under the penalty of being
treated by the organs as enemies to the country.
Here are a parcel of old bills, which have been lying upon our
tables for some months, and which might have been passed, each by
itself, in some good form, long ago; and which have been carried
out by the committee, and brought back again, bundled into one,
and altered just enough to make each one worse; and then called a
compromise--where there is nothing to compromise--and supported by
a report which cannot support itself. Here are the California State
admission bill, reported by the committee on territories three
months ago--the two territorial government bills reported by the
same committee at the same time--the Texas compact bill, originated
by me six years ago, and reproduced at the present session--the
fugitive slave recovery bill, reported from the judiciary committee
at the commencement of the session--and the slave trade suppression
bill for this District of Columbia, which is nothing but a revival
of an old Maryland law, in force before the District was created,
and repealed by an old act of Congress. These are the batch--five
bills taken from our files, altered just enough to spoil each, then
tacked together, and christened a compromise, and pressed upon the
Senate as a sovereign remedy for calamities which have no existence.
This is the presentation of the case: and now for the case itself.
The committee has brought in five old bills, bundled into one, and
requires us to pass them. Now, how did this committee get possession
of these bills? I do not ask for the manual operation. I know that
each senator had a copy on his table, and might carry his copy where
he pleased; but these bills were in the possession of the Senate,
on its calendar--for discussion, but not for decision, while the
committee was out. Two sets of resolutions were referred to the
committee--but not these bills. And I now ask for the law--the
parliamentary law--which enables a committee to consider bills
not referred to it? to alter bills not in their legal power or
possession? to tack bills together which the Senate held separate
on its calendar? to reverse the order of bills on the calendar?
to put the hindmost before, and the foremost behind? to conjoin
incongruities, and to conglomerate individualities? This is what I
ask--for this is what the committee has done; and which, if a point
of order was raised, might subject their bundle of bills to be ruled
off the docket. Sir, there is a custom--a good-natured one--in
some of our State legislatures, to convert the last day of the
session into a sort of legislative saturnalia--a frolic--something
like barring out the master--in which all officers are displaced,
all authorities disregarded, all rules overturned, all license
tolerated, and all business turned topsy-turvy. But then this is
only done on the last day of the session, as a prelude to a general
break-up. And the sport is harmless, for nothing is done; and it is
relieved by adjournment, which immediately follows. Such license
as this may be tolerated; for it is, at least, innocent sport--the
mere play of those "children of a larger growth" which some poet,
or philosopher, has supposed men to be. And it seems to me that
our committee has imitated this play without its reason--taken the
license of the saturnalia without its innocence--made grave work of
their gay sport--produced a monster instead of a merry-andrew--and
required us to worship what it is our duty to kill.
I proceed to the destruction of this monster. The California bill
is made the scape-goat of all the sins of slavery in the United
States--that California which is innocent of all these sins. It
is made the scape-goat; and as this is the first instance of an
American attempt to imitate that ancient Jewish mode of expiating
national sins, I will read how it was done in Jerusalem, to show how
exactly our committee have imitated that ancient expiatory custom. I
read from an approved volume of Jewish antiquities:
"The goat being tied in the north-east corner of the court of
the temple, and his head bound with scarlet cloth to signify
sin; the high-priest went to him, and laid his hands on his
head, and confessed over it all the iniquities of the children
of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins,
putting them all on the head of the goat. After which, he was
given to the person appointed to lead him away, who, in the
early ages of the custom, led him into the desert, and turned
him loose to die; but as the goat sometimes escaped from the
desert, the expiation, in such cases, was not considered
complete; and, to make sure of his death, the after-custom was
to lead him to a high rock, about twelve miles from Jerusalem,
and push him off of it backwards, to prevent his jumping, the
scarlet cloth being first torn from his head, in token that the
sins of the people were taken away."
This was the expiation of the scape-goat in ancient Jerusalem: an
innocent and helpless animal, loaded with sins which were not his
own, and made to die for offences which he had never committed. So
of California. She is innocent of all the evils of slavery in the
United States, yet they are all to be packed upon her back, and
herself sacrificed under the heavy load. First, Utah and New Mexico
are piled upon her, each pregnant with all the transgressions of the
Wilmot Proviso--a double load in itself--and enough, without further
weight, to bear down California. Utah and New Mexico are first piled
on; and the reason given for it by the committee is thus stated in
their authentic report:
"The committee recommend to the Senate the establishment of
those territorial governments; and, in order more effectually
to secure that desirable object, they also recommend that the
bill for their establishment be incorporated in the bill for the
admission of California, and that, united together, they both be
passed."
This is the reason given in the report: and the first thing that
strikes me, on reading it, is its entire incompatibility with the
reasons previously given for the same act. In his speech in favor
of raising the committee, the senator from Kentucky [Mr. Clay] was
in favor of putting the territories upon California for her own
good, for the good of California herself--as the speedy way to
get her into the Union, and the safe way to do it, by preventing
an opposition to her admission which might otherwise defeat it
altogether. This was his reason then, and he thus delivered it to
the Senate:
"He would say now to those who desired the speedy admission of
California, the shortest and most expeditious way of attaining
the desired object was to include her admission in a bill giving
governments to the territories. He made this statement because
he was impelled to do so from what had come to his knowledge.
If her admission as a separate measure be urged, an opposition
is created which may result in the defeat of any bill for her
admission."
These are the reasons which the senator then gave for urging
the conjunction of the State and the territories--quickest and
safest for California: her admission the supreme object, and
the conjunction of the territories only a means of helping her
along and saving her. And, unfounded as I deemed these reasons at
the time, and now know them to be, they still had the merit of
giving preference where it was due--to the superior object--to
California herself, a State, without being a State of the Union,
and suffering all the ills of that anomalous condition. California
was then the superior object: the territories were incidental
figures and subordinate considerations, to be made subservient
to her salvation. Now all this is reversed. The territories
take the superior place. They become the object: the State the
incident. They take the first--she the second place! And to make
sure of their welfare--make more certain of giving governments to
them--_innuendo_, such governments as the committee prescribe--the
conjunction is now proposed and enforced. This is a change of
position, with a corresponding change of reasons. Doubtless the
senator from Kentucky has a right to change his own position, and
to change his reasons at the same time; but he has no right to ask
other senators to change with him, or to require them to believe
in two sets of reasons, each contradictory to the other. It is my
fortune to believe in neither. I did not believe in the first set
when they were delivered; and time has shown that I was right. Time
has disposed of the argument of speed. That reason has expired
under the lapse of time. Instead of more speedy, we all now know
that California has been delayed three months, waiting for this
conjunction: instead of defeat if she remained single, we all know
now that she might have been passed singly before the committee was
raised, if the senator from Kentucky had remained on his original
ground, on my side; and every one knows that the only danger to
California now comes from the companionship into which she has been
forced. I do not believe in either set of reasons. I do not admit
the territorial governments to be objects of superior interest to
the admission of California. I admit them to be objects of interest,
demanding our attention, and that at this session; but not at the
expense of California, nor in precedence of her, nor in conjunction
with her, nor as a condition for her admission. She has been delayed
long, and is now endangered by this attempt to couple with her the
territories, with which she has no connection, and to involve her
in the Wilmot Proviso question, from which she is free. The senator
from Kentucky has done me the favor to blame me for this delay. He
may blame me again when he beholds the catastrophe of his attempted
conjunctions; but all mankind will see that the delay is the result
of his own abandonment of the position which he originally took with
me. The other reason which the senator gave in his speech for the
conjunction is not repeated in the report--the one which addressed
itself to our nervous system, and menaced total defeat to California
if urged in a bill by herself. He has not renewed that argument to
our fears, so portentously exhibited three months ago; and it may be
supposed that that danger has passed by, and that Congress is now
free. But California is not bettered by it, but worsted. Then it was
only necessary to her salvation that she should be joined to the
territories; so said the speech. Now she is joined to Texas also;
and must be damned if not strong enough to save Texas, and Utah, and
New Mexico, and herself into the bargain!
United together, the report says, the bills will be passed together.
That is very well for the report. It was natural for it to say so.
But, suppose they are rejected together, and in consequence of
being together: what is, then, the condition of California? First,
she has been delayed three months, at great damage to herself,
waiting the intrusive companionship of this incongruous company.
Then she is sunk under its weight. Who, then, is to blame--the
senator from Kentucky or the senator from Missouri? And if
opposition to this indefinite postponement shall make still further
delay to California, and involve her defeat in the end, who then
is to be blamed again? I do not ask these questions of the senator
from Kentucky. It might be unlawful to do so: for, by the law of the
land, no man is bound to criminate himself.
Mr. CLAY (from his seat). I do not claim the benefit of the law.
Mr. BENTON. No; a high-spirited man will not claim it. But the law
gives him the privilege; and, as a law-abiding and generous man, I
give him the benefit of the law whether he claims it or not. But I
think it is time for him to begin to consider the responsibility
he has incurred in quitting his position at my side for California
single, and first, to jumble her up in this crowd, where she is sure
to meet death, come the vote when it will. I think it is time for
him to begin to think about submitting to a mis-trial! withdraw a
juror, and let a _venire facias de novo_ be issued.
But I have another objection to this new argument. The territorial
government bills are now the object; and to make more certain of
these bills they are put into the California bill, to be carried
safe through by it. This is the argument of the report; and it is
a plain declaration that one measure is to be forced to carry the
other. This is a breach of parliamentary law--that law upon the
existence of which the senator from Kentucky took an issue with
me, and failed to maintain his side of it. True, he made a show of
maintaining it--ostentatiously borrowing a couple of my books from
me, in open Senate, to prove his side of the case; and taking good
care not to open them, because he knew they would prove my side of
it. Then he quoted that bill for the "relief of John Thompson, and
for other purposes," the reading of which had such an effect upon
the risible susceptibilities of that part of our spectators which
Shakspeare measures by the quantity, and qualifies as barren! Sir,
if the senator from Kentucky had only read us Dr. Franklin's story
of John Thompson and his hat-sign, it would have been something--a
thing equally pertinent as argument, and still more amusing as
anecdote. The senator, by doing that much, admitted his obligation
to maintain his side of the issue: by doing no more, he confessed
he could not. And now the illegality of this conjunction stands
confessed, with the superaddition of an avowed condemnable motive
for it. The motive is--so declared in the report--to force one
measure to carry the other--the identical thing mentioned in all the
books as the very reason why subjects of different natures should
not be tacked together. I do not repeat what I have heretofore
said on this point: it will be remembered by the Senate: and its
validity is now admitted by the attempt, and the failure, to
contest it. It is compulsory legislation, and a flagrant breach of
parliamentary law, and of safe legislation. It is also a compliment
of no equivocal character to a portion of the members of this
Chamber. To put two measures together for the avowed purpose of
forcing one to carry the other, is to propose to force the friends
of the stronger measure to take the weak one, under the penalty of
losing the stronger. It implies both that these members cannot be
trusted to vote fairly upon one of the measures, or that an unfair
vote is wanted from them; and that they are coercible, and ought
to be coerced. This is the compliment which the compulsory process
implies, and which is as good as declared in this case. It is a
rough compliment, but such a one as "distinguished senators"--such
as composed this committee--may have the prerogative to offer to
the undistinguished ones: but then these undistinguished may have
the privilege to refuse to receive it--may refuse to sanction the
implication, by refusing to vote as required--may take the high
ground that they are not coercible, that they owe allegiance, not
to the committee, but to honor and duty; and that they can trust
themselves for an honest vote, in a bill by itself, although the
committee cannot trust them! But, stop! Is it _a_ government or
_the_ government which the committee propose to secure by coercion?
Is it _a_ government, such as a majority of the Senate may agree
upon? or is it _the_ government, such as a majority of the committee
have prescribed? If the former, why not leave the Senate to free
voting in a separate bill? if the latter, will the Senate be
coerced? will it allow a majority of the committee to govern the
Senate?--seven to govern sixty? Sir! it is the latter--so avowed;
and being the first instance of such an avowal, it should meet a
reception which would make it the last.
Mr. President: all the evils of incongruous conjunctions are
exemplified in this conjunction of the territorial government bills
with the California State admission bill. They are subjects not
only foreign to each other, but involving different questions,
and resting upon principles of different natures. One involves
the slavery and anti-slavery questions: the other is free from
them. One involves constitutional questions: the other does not.
One is a question of right, resting upon the constitution of the
United States and the treaty with Mexico: the other is a question
of expediency, resting in the discretion of Congress. One is the
case of a State, asking for an equality of rights with the other
States: the other is a question of territories, asking protection
from States. One is a sovereignty--the other a property. So that,
at all points, and under every aspect, the subjects differ; and it
is well known that there are senators here who can unite in a vote
for the admission of California, who cannot unite in any vote for
the territorial governments; and that, because these governments
involve the slavery questions, from all which the California bill
is free. That is the rock on which men and parties split here. Some
deny the power of Congress _in toto_ over the subject of slavery in
territories: such as these can support no bill which touches that
question one way or the other. Others admit the power, but deny the
expediency of its exercise. Others again claim both the power and
the exercise. Others again are under legislative instructions--some
to vote one way, some the other. Finally, there are some opposed to
giving any governments at all to these territories, and in favor
of leaving them to grow up of themselves into future States. Now,
what are the senators, so circumstanced, to do with these bills
conjoined? Vote for all--and call it a compromise! as if oaths,
duty, constitutional obligation, and legislative instructions, were
subjects of compromise. No! rejection of the whole is the only
course; and to begin anew, each bill by itself, the only remedy.
The conjunction of these bills illustrates all the evils of joining
incoherent subjects together. It presents a revolting enormity,
of which all the evils go to an innocent party, which has done
all in its power to avoid them. But, not to do the Committee of
Thirteen injustice, I must tell that they have looked somewhat to
the interest of California in this conjunction, and proposed a
compensating advantage to her; of which kind consideration they are
entitled to the credit in their own words. This, then, is what they
propose for her:
"As for California--far from feeling her sensibility affected
by her being associated with other kindred measures--she ought
to rejoice and be highly gratified that, in entering into
the Union, she may have contributed to the tranquillity and
happiness of the great family of States, of which it is to be
hoped she may one day be a distinguished member."
This is the compensation proposed to California. She is to rejoice,
and be highly gratified. She is to contribute to the tranquillity
and happiness of the great family of States, and thereby become
tranquil and happy herself. And she is one day, it is hoped, to
become a distinguished member of this confederacy. This is to
be her compensation--felicity and glory! Prospective felicity,
and contingent glory. The felicity rural--rural felicity--from
the geographical position of California--the most innocent and
invigorating kind of felicity. The glory and distinction yet to be
achieved. Whether California will consider these anticipations ample
compensation for all the injuries of this conjunction--the long
delay, and eventual danger, and all her sufferings at home in the
mean time--will remain for herself to say. For my part, I would not
give one hour's duration of actual existence in this Union for a
whole eternity of such compensation; and such, I think, will be the
opinion of California herself. Life, and present relief from actual
ills, is what she wants. Existence and relief, is her cry! And for
these she can find no compensation in the illusions of contributing
to the tranquillity of States which are already tranquil, the
happiness of people who are already happy, the settlement of
questions in which she has no concern, and the formation of
compromises which breed new quarrels in assuming to settle old ones.
With these fine reasons for tacking Utah and New Mexico to
California, the committee proceed to pile a new load upon her
back. Texas next appears in the committee's plan, crammed into
the California bill, with all her questions of debt and boundary,
dispute with New Mexico, division into future States, cession of
territory to the United States, amount of compensation to be given
her, thrust in along with her! A compact with one State put into
a law for the life of another! And a veto upon the admission of
California given to Texas! This is a monstrosity of which there is
no example in the history of our legislation, and for the production
of which it is fair to permit the committee to speak for themselves.
These are the reasons of the committee, and they present grave
errors in law, both constitutional and municipal, and of geography
and history. They assume a controversy between New Mexico and Texas.
No such thing. New Mexico belongs to the United States, and the
controversy is with the United States. They assume there is no way
to settle this controversy but by a compact with Texas. This is
another great mistake. There are three ways to settle it: first,
and best, by a compact; secondly, by a suit in the Supreme Court of
the United States; thirdly, by giving a government to New Mexico
according to her actual extent when the United States acquired her,
and holding on to that until the question of title is decided,
either amicably by compact, or legally by the Supreme Court. The
fundamental error of the committee is in supposing that New Mexico
is party to this controversy with Texas. No such thing. New Mexico
is only the _John Doe_ of the concern. That error corrected, and
all the reasoning of the committee falls to the ground. For the
judicial power of the United States extends to all controversies to
which the United States are party; and the original jurisdiction of
the Supreme Court extends to all cases to which a State is a party.
This brings the case bang up at once within the jurisdiction of the
Supreme Court, without waiting for the consent of Texas, or waiting
for New Mexico to grow up into a State, so as to have a suit between
two States; and so there is no danger of collision, as the committee
suppose, and make an argument for their bill, in the danger there is
to New Mexico from this apprehended collision. If any takes place it
will be a collision with the United States, to whom the territory
of New Mexico belongs; and she will know how to prevent this
collision, first, by offering what is not only just, but generous to
Texas; and next, in defending her territory from invasion, and her
people from violence.
These are the reasons for thrusting Texas, with all her multifarious
questions, into the California bill; and, reduced to their essence,
they argue thus: Utah must go in, because she binds upon California;
New Mexico must go in, because she binds upon Utah; and Texas must
go in, because she binds upon New Mexico. And thus poor California
is crammed and gorged until she is about in the condition that
Jonah would have been in, if he had swallowed the whale, instead of
the whale swallowing him. This opens a new chapter in legislative
ratiocination. It substitutes contiguity of territory for congruity
of matter, and makes geographical affinities the rule of legislative
conjunctions. Upon that principle the committee might have gone
on, cramming other bills into the California bill, all over the
United States; for all our territory is binding in some one part
upon another. Upon that principle, the District of Columbia slave
trade suppression bill might have been interjected; for, though not
actually binding upon Texas, yet it binds upon land that binds upon
land that does bind upon her. So of the fugitive slave bill. For,
let the fugacious slave run as far as he may, he must still be on
land; and that being the case, the territorial contiguity may be
established which justifies the legislative conjunction.
Mr. President, the moralist informs us that there are some subjects
too light for reason--too grave for ridicule; and in such cases the
mere moralist may laugh or cry, as he deems best. But not so with
the legislator--his business is not laughing or crying. Whimpering,
or simpering, is not his mission. Work is his vocation, and gravity
his vein; and in that vein I proceed to consider this interjection
of Texas, with all her multifarious questions, into the bowels of
the California bill.
In the first place, this Texas bill is a compact, depending for its
validity on the consent of Texas, and is put into the California
bill as part of a compromise and general settlement of all the
slavery questions; and, of course, the whole must stand together,
or fall together. This gives Texas a veto upon the admission of
California. This is unconstitutional, as well as unjust; for by
the constitution, new States are to be admitted by Congress, and
not by another State; and, therefore, Texas should not have a veto
upon the admission of California. In the next place, Texas presents
a great many serious questions of her own--some of them depending
upon a compact already existing with the United States, many of them
concerning the United States, one concerning New Mexico, but no one
reaching to California. She has a question of boundary nominally
with New Mexico, in reality with the United States, as the owner of
New Mexico; and that might be a reason for joining her in a bill,
so far as that boundary is concerned, with New Mexico; but it can
be no reason for joining her to California. The western boundary of
Texas is the point of collision with New Mexico; and this plan of
the committee, instead of proposing a suitable boundary between them
adapted to localities, or leaving to each its actual possessions,
disturbing no interest, until the decision of title upon the
universal principle of _uti possidetis_; instead of these obvious
and natural remedies, the plan of the committee cuts deep into the
actual possessions of the United States in New Mexico--rousing the
question which the committee professes to avoid, the question of
extending slavery, and so disturbing the whole United States.
And here I must insist on the error of the committee in
constitutional and municipal law, before I point out their mistakes
in geography and history. They treat New Mexico as having a
controversy with Texas--as being in danger of a collision with
her--and that a compact with Texas to settle the boundary between
them is the only way to settle that controversy and prevent that
collision. Now, all this is a mistake. The controversy is not with
New Mexico, but with the United States, and the judicial power
of the United States has jurisdiction of it. Again, possession
is title until the right is tried; and the United States having
the possession, may give a government at once according to the
possession; and then wait the decision of title.
I avoid all argument about right--the eventual right of Texas to any
part of what was New Mexico before the existence of Texas. I avoid
that question. Amicable settlement of contested claim, and not
adjudication of title, is now my object. I need no argument from any
quarter to satisfy me that the Texas questions ought to be settled.
I happened to know that before Texas was annexed, and brought in
bills and made speeches for that purpose at that time. I brought
in such bills six years ago, and again at the present session; and
whenever presented single, either by myself or any other person, I
shall be ready to give it a generous consideration; but, as part of
the California bill, I wash my hands of it.
I am against disturbing actual possession, either that of New
Mexico or of Texas; and, therefore, am in favor of leaving to each
all its population, and an ample amount of compact and homogeneous
territory. With this view, all my bills and plans for a divisional
line between New Mexico and Texas--whether of 1844 or 1850--left
to each all its settlements, all its actual possessions, all its
uncontested claim; and divided the remainder by a line adapted
to the geography and natural divisions of the country, as well
as suitable to the political and social condition of the people
themselves. This gave a longitudinal line between them; and the
longitude of 100 degrees in my bill of 1844, and 102 degrees in
my bill of 1850--and both upon the same principle of leaving
possessions intact, Texas having extended her settlements in the
mean time. The proposed line of the committee violates all these
conditions. It cuts deep and arbitrarily into the actual possessions
of New Mexico, such as she held them before Texas had existence;
and so conforms to no principle of public policy, private right,
territorial affinity, or local propriety. It begins on the Rio del
Norte, twenty miles in a straight line above El Paso, and thence,
diagonally and northeastwardly, to the point where the Red River
crosses the longitude of 100°. Now this beginning, twenty miles
above El Paso, is about three hundred miles in a straight line
(near six hundred by the windings of the river) above the ancient
line of New Mexico; and this diagonal line to the Red River cuts
about four hundred miles in a straight line through the ancient
New Mexican possessions, cutting off about seventy thousand square
miles of territory from New Mexico, where there is no slavery, and
giving it to Texas where there is. This constitutes a more serious
case of _tacking_ than even that of sticking incongruous bills
together, and calls for a most considerate examination of all the
circumstances it involves. I will examine these circumstances, first
making a statement, and then sustaining it by proof.
El Paso, above which the Texas boundary is now proposed to be
placed by the committee, is one of the most ancient of the New
Mexican towns, and to which the Spaniards of New Mexico retreated
in the great Indian revolt in 1680, and made their stand, and
thence recovered the whole province. It was the residence of the
lieutenant-governor of New Mexico, and the most southern town of the
province, as Taos was the most northern. Being on the right bank
of the river, the dividing line between the United States and the
Republic of Mexico leaves it out of our limits, and consequently out
of the present limits of New Mexico; but New Mexico still extends
to the Rio del Norte at the Paso; and therefore this beginning line
proposed by the committee cuts into the ancient possession of New
Mexico--a possession dating from the year 1595. That line in its
course to the Red River, cuts the river and valley of the Puerco
(called Pecos in the upper part) into two parts, leaving the lower
and larger part to Texas; the said Rio Puerco and its valley, from
head to mouth, having always been a part of New Mexico, and now
in its actual possession. Putting together what is cut from the
Puerco, and from the Del Norte above and below El Paso, and it
would amount to about seventy thousand square miles, to be taken
by the committee's line from its present and ancient possessor,
and transferred to a new claimant. This is what the new line would
do, and in doing it would raise the question of the extension of
slavery, and of its existence at this time, by law, in New Mexico as
a part of Texas.
To avoid all misconception, I repeat what I have already declared,
that I am not occupying myself with the question of title as it may
exist and be eventually determined between New Mexico and Texas;
nor am I questioning the power of Congress to establish any line it
pleases in that quarter for the State of Texas, with the consent of
the State, and any one it pleases for the territory of New Mexico
without her consent. I am not occupying myself with the questions of
title or power, but with the question of possession only--and how
far the possession of New Mexico is to be disturbed, if disturbed
at all, by the committee's line; and the effect of that disturbance
in rousing the slavery question in that quarter. In that point of
view the fact of possession is every thing: for the possessor has a
right to what he holds until the question of title is decided--by
law, in a question between individuals or communities in a land
of law and order--or by negotiation or arms between independent
Powers. I use the phrase, possession by New Mexico; but it is only
for brevity, and to give locality to the term possession. New Mexico
possesses no territory; she is a territory, and belongs to the
United States; and the United States own her as she stood on the
day of the treaty of peace and cession between the United States
and the Republic of Mexico; and it is into that possession that I
inquire, and all which I assert that the United States have a right
to hold until the question of title is decided. And to save inquiry
or doubt, and to show that the committee are totally mistaken in
law in assuming the consent of Texas to be indispensable to the
settlement of the title, I say there are three ways to settle it;
the first and best by compact, as I proposed before Texas was
annexed, and again by a bill of this year: next, by a suit in the
Supreme Court, under that clause in the constitution which extends
the judicial power of the United States to all controversies to
which the United States is a party, and that other clause which
gives the Supreme Court original jurisdiction of all cases to which
a State is a party: the third way is for the United States to give
a government to New Mexico according to the territory she possessed
when she was ceded to the United States. These are the three ways to
settle the question--one of them totally dependent on the will of
Texas--one totally independent of her will--and one independent of
her will until she chooses to go into court. As to any thing that
Texas or New Mexico may do in taking or relinquishing possession, it
is all moonshine. New Mexico is a territory of the United States.
She is the property of the United States; and she cannot dispose
of herself, or any part of herself; nor can Texas take her or any
part of her. She is to stand as she did the day the United States
acquired her; and to that point all my examinations are directed.
And in that point of view it is immaterial what are the boundaries
of New Mexico. The whole of the territory obtained from Mexico, and
not rightfully belonging to a State, belongs to the United States;
and, as such, is the property of the United States, and to be
attended to accordingly. But I proceed with the possession of New
Mexico, and show that it has been actual and continuous from the
conquest of the country by Don Juan de Onate, in 1595 to the present
time. That ancient actual possession has already been shown at the
starting point of the line--at El Paso del Norte. I will now show it
to be the same throughout the continuation of the line across the
Puerco and its valley, and at some points on the left bank of the
Del Norte below El Paso. And first, of the Puerco River. It rises
in the latitude of Santa Fé, and in its immediate neighborhood,
only ten miles from it, and running south, falls into the Rio del
Norte, about three hundred miles on a straight line below El Paso,
and has a valley of its own between the mountain range on the west,
which divides it from the valley of the Del Norte, to which it is
parallel, and the high arid table land on the east called El Llano
Estacado--the Staked Plain--which divides it from the head waters of
the Red River, the Colorado, the Brasos, and other Texian streams.
It is a long river, its head being in the latitude of Nashville--its
mouth a degree and a half south of New Orleans. It washes the base
of the high table land, and receives no affluents, and has no valley
on that side; on the west it has a valley, and many bold affluents,
coming down from the mountain range (the Sierra Obscura, the Sierra
Blanca, and the Sierra de los Organos), which divides it from the
valley of the upper Del Norte. It is valuable for its length, being
a thousand miles, following its windings--from its course, which
is north and south--from the quality of its water, derived from
high mountains--from its valley, timbered and grassy, part prairie,
good for cultivation, for pasturage, and salt. It has two climates,
cold in the north from its altitude (seven thousand feet)--mild
in the south from its great descent, not less than five thousand
feet, and with a general amelioration of climate over the valley of
the Del Norte from its openness on the east, and mountain shelter
on the west. It is a river of New Mexico, and is so classified in
geography. It is an old possession of New Mexico and the most
valuable part of it, and has many of her towns and villages upon
it. Las Vegas, Gallinas, Tecolote Abajo, Cuesta, Pecos, San Miguel,
Anton Chico, Salinas, Gran Quivira, are all upon it. Some of these
towns date their origin as far back as the first conquest of the
Taos Indians, about the year 1600, and some have an historical
interest, and a special relation to the question of title between
New Mexico and Texas. Pecos is the old village of the Indians of
that name, famous for the sacred fire so long kept burning there for
the return of Montezuma. Gran Quivira was a considerable mining town
under the Spaniards before the year 1680, when it was broken up in
the great Indian revolt of that year.
San Miguel, twenty miles from Santa Fé, is the place where the
Texian expedition, under Colonel Cooke, were taken prisoners in 1841.
To all these evidences of New Mexican possession of the Rio Puerco
and its valley, is to be added the further evidence resulting from
acts of ownership in grants of land made upon its upper part, as
in New Mexico, by the superior Spanish authorities before the
revolution, and by the Mexican local authorities since. The lower
half was ungranted, and leaves much vacant land, and the best in the
country, to the United States.
The great pastoral lands of New Mexico are in the valley of the
Puerco, where millions of sheep were formerly pastured, now reduced
to about two hundred thousand by the depredation of the Indians. The
New Mexican inhabitants of the Del Norte send their flocks there to
be herded by shepherds, on shares; and in this way, and by taking
their salt there, and in addition to their towns and settlements,
and grants of lands, the New Mexicans have had possession of the
Puerco and its valley since the year 1600--that is to say, for about
one hundred years before the shipwreck of La Salle, in the bay of
San Bernardo, revealed the name of Texas to Europe and America.
These are the actual possessions of New Mexico on the Rio Puerco.
On the Rio del Norte, as cut off by the committee's bill, there
are, the little town of Frontera, ten miles above El Paso, a town
begun opposite El Paso, San Eleazario, twenty miles below, and some
houses lower down opposite El Presidio del Norte. Of all these, San
Eleazario is the most considerable, having a population of some
four thousand souls, once a town of New Biscay, now of New Mexico,
and now the property of the United States by avulsion. It is an
island; and the main river, formerly on the north and now on the
south of the island, leaves it in New Mexico. When Pike went through
it, it was the most northern town, and the frontier garrison of New
Biscay; and there the then lieutenant-governor of New Mexico, who
had escorted him from El Paso, turned him over to the authorities
of a new province. It is now the most southern town of New Mexico,
without having changed its place, but the river which disappeared
from its channel in that place, in 1752, has now changed it to the
south of the island.
I reiterate: I am not arguing title; I am only showing possession,
which is a right to remain in possession until title is decided.
The argument of title has often been introduced into this question;
and a letter from President Polk, through Secretary Buchanan, has
often been read on the Texian side. Now, what I have to say of that
letter, so frequently referred to, and considered so conclusive, is
this: that, however potent it may have been in inducing annexation,
or how much soever it may be entitled to consideration in fixing the
amount to be paid to Texas for her Mexican claim, yet as an evidence
of title, I should pay no more regard to it than to a chapter
from the life and adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Congress and the
judiciary are the authorities to decide such claims to titles, and
not Presidents and secretaries.
I rest upon the position, then, that the Rio Puerco, and its valley,
is and was a New Mexican possession, as well as the left bank of the
Del Norte, from above El Paso to below the mouth of the Puerco; and
that this possession cannot be disturbed without raising the double
question, first, of actual extension of slavery; and, secondly, of
the present legal existence of slavery in all New Mexico east of the
Rio Grande, as a part of Texas. These are the questions which the
proposed line of the committee raise, and force us to face. They are
not questions of my seeking, but I shall not avoid them. It is not a
new question with me, this extension of slavery in that quarter. I
met it in 1844, before the annexation of Texas. On the 10th day of
June, of that year, and as part of a bill for a compact with Texas,
and to settle all questions with her--the very ones which now
perplex us--before she was annexed, I proposed, as article V. in the
projected compact:
ART. V. "The existence of slavery to be for ever prohibited
in that part of the annexed territory which lies west of
the hundredth degree of longitude west from the meridian of
Greenwich."
This is what I proposed six years ago, and as one in a series of
propositions to be offered to Texas and Mexico for settling all
questions growing out of the projected annexation beforehand.
They were not adopted. Immediate annexation, without regard to
consequences, was the cry; and all temperate counsels were set
down to British traitors, abolitionists, and whigs. Well! we have
to regard consequences now--several consequences: one of which is
this large extension of slavery, which the report and conglomerate
bills of the Committee of Thirteen force us to face. I did so six
years ago, and heard no outbreak against my opinions then. But my
opposition to the extension of slavery dates further back than
1844--forty years further back; and as this is a suitable time for
a general declaration, and a sort of general conscience delivery,
I will say that my opposition to it dates from 1804, when I was a
student at law in the State of Tennessee, and studied the subject
of African slavery in an American book--a Virginia book--Tucker's
edition of Blackstone's Commentaries. And here it is (holding
up a volume and reading from the title-page): "_Blackstone's
Commentaries, with notes of reference to the Constitution and
laws of the Federal Government of the United States, and of the
Commonwealth of Virginia, in five volumes, with an appendix to each
volume containing short tracts, as appeared necessary to form a
connected view of the laws of Virginia as a member of the Federal
Union. By St. George Tucker, Professor of Law in the University
of William and Mary, and one of the Judges of the General Court
in Virginia._" In this American book--this Virginia edition of an
English work--I found my principles on the subject of slavery.
Among the short tracts in the appendices, is one of fifty pages
in the appendix to the first volume, second part, which treats of
the subject of African slavery in the United States, with a total
condemnation of the institution, and a plan for its extinction
in Virginia. In that work--in that school--that old Virginia
school which I was taught to reverence--I found my principles on
slavery: and adhere to them. I concur in the whole essay, except
the remedy--gradual emancipation--and find in that remedy the
danger which the wise men of Virginia then saw and dreaded, but
resolved to encounter, because it was to become worse with time:
the danger to both races from so large an emancipation. The men of
that day were not enthusiasts or fanatics: they were statesmen and
philosophers. They knew that the emancipation of the black slave
was not a mere question between master and slave--not a question
of property merely--but a question of white and black--between
races; and what was to be the consequence to each race from a large
emancipation.[10] And there the wisdom, not the philanthropy,
of Virginia balked fifty years ago; there the wisdom of America
balks now. And here I find the largest objection to the extension
of slavery--to planting it in new regions where it does not now
exist--bestowing it on those who have it not. The incurability of
the evil is the greatest objection to the extension of slavery. It
is wrong for the legislator to inflict an evil which can be cured:
how much more to inflict one that is incurable, and against the
will of the people who are to endure it for ever! I quarrel with no
one for supposing slavery a blessing: I deem it an evil: and would
neither adopt it nor impose it on others. Yet I am a slaveholder,
and among the few members of Congress who hold slaves in this
District. The French proverb tells us that nothing is new but what
has been forgotten. So of this objection to a large emancipation.
Every one sees now that it is a question of races, involving
consequences which go to the destruction of one or the other: it
was seen fifty years ago, and the wisdom of Virginia balked at it
then. It seems to be above human wisdom. But there is a wisdom above
human! and to that we must look. In the mean time, not extend the
evil.
[10] "It may be asked why not retain the blacks among us, and
incorporate them into the State. Deep-rooted prejudices entertained
by the whites; ten thousand recollections of the blacks of
the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real
distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances,
will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions, which will
probably never end but in the extermination of one or the other
race."--_Jefferson._
In refusing to extend slavery into these seventy thousand square
miles, I act in conformity not only to my own long-established
principles, but also in conformity to the long-established practice
of Congress. Five times in four years did Congress refuse the prayer
of Indiana for a temporary suspension of the anti-slavery clause of
the ordinance of '87. On the 2d of March, 1803, Mr. Randolph, of
Roanoke, as chairman of the committee to which the memorial praying
the suspension was referred, made a report against it, which was
concurred in by the House. This is the report:
"That the rapid population of the State of Ohio, sufficiently
evinces, in the opinion of your committee, that the labor of
slaves is not necessary to promote the growth and settlement
of colonies in that region. That this labor, demonstrably
the dearest of any, can only be employed to advantage in the
cultivation of products more valuable than any known to that
quarter of the United States: that the committee deem it
highly dangerous and inexpedient to impair a provision wisely
calculated to promote the happiness and prosperity of the
north-western country, and to give strength and security to that
extensive frontier. In the salutary operation of this sagacious
and benevolent restraint, it is believed that the inhabitants of
Indiana will, at no very distant day, find ample remuneration
for a temporary privation of labor and of emigration."
This report of Mr. Randolph was in 1803: the next year, March, 1804,
a different report, on the same prayer, was made by a committee
of which Mr. Rodney, of Delaware, was chairman. It recommended a
suspension of the anti-slavery clause for ten years: it was not
concurred in by the House. Two years afterwards, February, 1806, a
similar report, recommending suspension for ten years, was made by
a committee of which Mr. Garnett, of Virginia, was chairman: it met
the same fate--non-concurrence. The next year, 1807, both Houses
were tried. In February of that year, a committee of the House, of
which Mr. Parke was chairman, reported in favor of the indefinite
suspension of the clause: the report was not concurred in. And in
November of that year, Mr. Franklin, of North Carolina, as chairman
of a committee of the Senate, made a report against the suspension,
which was concurred in by the Senate, and unanimously, as it would
seem from the journal, there being no division called for. Thus,
five times in four years, the respective Houses of Congress refused
to admit even a temporary extension, or rather re-extension of
slavery into Indiana territory, which had been before the ordinance
of '87 a slave territory, holding many slaves at Vincennes. These
five refusals to suspend the ordinance of '87, were so many
confirmations of it. All the rest of the action of Congress on the
subject, was to the same effect or stronger. The Missouri compromise
line was a curtailment of slave territory; the Texas annexation
resolutions were the same; the ordinance of '87 itself, so often
confirmed by Congress, was a curtailment of slave territory--in
fact, its actual abolition; for it is certain that slavery existed
in fact in the French settlements of the Illinois at that time; and
that the ordinance terminated it. I acted then in conformity to
the long, uniformly established policy of Congress, as well as in
conformity to my own principles, in refusing to vote the extension
of slavery, which the committee's line would involve.
And here, it does seem to me that we, of the present day, mistake
the point of the true objection to the extension of slavery. We look
at it as it concerns the rights, or interests, of the inhabitants of
the States! and not as it may concern the people to whom it is to
be given! and to whom it is to be an irrevocable gift--to them, and
posterity! Mr. Randolph's report, in the case of Indiana, took the
true ground. It looked to the interests of the people to whom the
slavery was to go, and refused them an evil, although they begged
for it.
This is a consequence which the committee's bill involves, and from
which there is no escape but in the total rejection of their plan,
and the adoption of the line which I propose--the longitudinal
line of 102--which, corresponding with ancient title and actual
possession, avoids the question of slavery in either country: which,
leaving the population of each untouched, disturbs no interest,
and which, in splitting the high sterile table land of the Staked
Plain, conforms to the natural division of the country, and leaves
to each a natural frontier, and an ample extent of compact and
homogeneous territory. To Texas is left all the territory drained by
all the rivers which have their mouths within her limits, whether
those mouths are in the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi, or the Rio
Grande: to New Mexico is left the whole course of the Rio Puerco
and all its valley: and which, added to the valley of the Del
Norte, will make a State of the first class in point of territory,
susceptible of large population and wealth, and in a compact form,
capable of defence against Indians. The Staked Plain is the natural
frontier of both countries. It is a dividing wall between systems
of waters and systems of countries. It is a high, sterile plain,
some sixty miles wide upon some five hundred long, running north and
south, its western declivity abrupt, and washed by the Puerco at its
base: its eastern broken into chasms--cañones--from which issue the
myriad of little streams which, flowing towards the rising sun, form
the great rivers--Red River, Brasos, Colorado, Nueces, which find
their outlet in the Mississippi or in the Gulf of Mexico. It is a
salient feature in North American geography--a table of land sixty
miles wide, five hundred long, and some thousands of feet above the
level of the sea--and sterile, level, without a shrub, a plant, or
grass, and presenting to the traveller a horizon of its own like
the ocean. Without a landmark to guide the steps of the traveller
across it, the early hunters and herdsmen of New Mexico staked their
course across it, and hence its name, _El Llano Estacado_--the
Staked Plain. It is a natural frontier between New Mexico and Texas;
and for such a line, quieting all questions between them, all with
the United States, yielding near two hundred thousand square miles
of territory to the United States and putting into her hands the
means of populating and defending New Mexico by giving lands to
settlers and defenders--I am ready to vote the fifteen millions
which my bill fairly and openly proposes. For the line in this bill
I would not give a copper. But it would be a great error to suppose
I would give fifteen millions for the territory in dispute between
New Mexico and Texas. That disputed territory is only a small part
of what the Texian cession would be. It would embrace four degrees
of latitude on the north of Texas, and a front of a thousand miles
on the Arkansas, and would give to the United States territory
indispensable to her--to the population and defence both of New
Mexico and Utah, in front of both which this part of Texas lies.
The committee, in their report, and the senator from Kentucky [Mr.
Clay], in his speech, are impressive in their representations in
favor of giving governments to New Mexico and the remaining part of
California. I join them in all they say in favor of the necessity
of these governments, and the duty of Congress to give them. But
this bill is not the way to give it. These governments are balked
by being put into this bill. They not only impede California, but
themselves. The conjunction is an injury to both. They mutually
delay and endanger each other. And it is no argument in favor of
the conjunction to say that the establishment of a government for
New Mexico requires the previous settlement of her eastern boundary
with Texas. That is no argument for tacking Texas, with all her
multifarious questions, even to New Mexico, much less to California.
It is indeed very desirable to settle that boundary, and to settle
it at once, and for ever; but it is not an indispensability to
the creation of a government for New Mexico. We have a right to
a government according to her possession; and that we can give
her, to continue till the question of title is decided. The _uti
possidetis_--as you possess--is the principle to govern our
legislation--the principle which gives the possessor a right to the
possession until the question of title is decided. This principle
is the same both in national and municipal law--both in the case
of citizens or communities of the same government and between
independent nations. The mode of decision only is different. Between
independent nations it is done by negotiation or by arms: between
citizens or communities of the same government, it is done by law.
Independent nations may invade and fight each other for a boundary:
citizens or communities of the same government cannot. And the party
that shall attempt it commits a violation of law and order; and the
government which permits such violation is derelict of its duty.
I have now examined, so far as I propose to do it on a motion for
indefinite postponement, the three bills which the committee have
tacked together--the California, Utah, New Mexico and Texas bills.
There are two other bills which I have not mentioned, because they
are not tacked, but only hung on; but which belong to the system,
as it is called, and without some mention of which, injustice would
be done to the committee in the presentation of their scheme. The
fugitive slave recovery bill, and the District of Columbia slave
trade suppression bill, are parts of the system of measures which
the committee propose, and which, taken together, are to constitute
a compromise, and to terminate for ever and most fraternally all
the dissensions of the slavery agitation in the United States. They
apply to two out of the five gaping wounds which the senator from
Kentucky enumerated on the five fingers of his left hand, and for
healing up all which at once he had provided one large plaster,
big enough to cover all, and efficacious enough to cure all; while
the President only proposed to cure one, and that with a little
plaster, and it of no efficacy. I do not propose to examine these
two attendant or sequacious bills, which dangle at the tail of the
other three.
This is the end of the committee's labor--five old bills gathered
up from our table, tacked together, and christened a compromise!
Now compromise is a pretty phrase at all times, and is a good
thing in itself, when there happens to be any parties to make it,
any authority to enforce it, any penalties for breaking it, or
any thing to be compromised. The compromises of the constitution
are of that kind; and they stand. Compromises made in court, and
entered of record, are of that kind; and they stand. Compromises
made by individuals on claims to property are likewise of that
character; and they stand. I respect all such compromises. But
where there happens to be nothing to be compromised, no parties
to make a compromise, no power to enforce it, no penalty for its
breach, no obligation on any one--not even its makers--to observe
it, and when no two human beings can agree about its meaning, then a
compromise becomes ridiculous and pestiferous. I have no respect for
it, and eschew it. It cannot stand, and will fall; and in its fall
will raise up more ills than it was intended to cure. And of this
character I deem this farrago of incongruous matter to be, which
has been gathered up and stuck together, and offered to us "all or
none," like "fifty-four forty." It has none of the requisites of a
compromise, and the name cannot make it so.
In the first place, there are no parties to make a compromise.
We are not in convention, but in Congress; and I do not admit a
geographical division of parties in this chamber, although the
Committee of Thirteen was formed upon that principle--six from the
South, half a dozen from the North, and one from the borders of
both--sitting on a ridge-pole, to keep the balance even. The senator
from Kentucky chairman of this committee of a baker's dozen and the
illustrious progenitor of that committee, sits on that ridge-pole.
It is a most critical position, and requires a most nice adjustment
of balance to preserve the equilibrium--to keep the weight from
falling on one side or the other--something like that of the Roman
emperor, in his apotheosis, who was required to fix himself exactly
in the middle of the heavens when he went up among the gods, lest,
by leaning on one side or the other, he might overset the universe:
"Press not too much on any part the sphere,
Hard were the task thy weight divine to bear!
O'er the mid orb more equal shalt thou rise,
And with a juster balance fix the skies."--LUCAN.
I recognize no such parties--no two halves in this Union, separated
by a ridge-pole, with a man, or a god, sitting upon it, to keep
the balance even. I know no North, and I know no South; and I
repulse and repudiate, as a thing to be for ever condemned, this
first attempt to establish geographical parties in this chamber,
by creating a committee formed upon that principle. In the next
place, there is no sanction for any such compromise--no authority
to enforce it--none to punish its violation. In the third place,
there is nothing to be compromised. A compromise is a concession, a
mutual concession of contested claims between two parties. I know
of nothing to be conceded on the part of the slaveholding States
in regard to their slave property. Their rights are independent of
the federal government, and admitted in the constitution--a right
to hold their slaves _as property_, a right to pursue and recover
them _as property_, a right to it as a _political element_ in the
weight of these States, by making five count three in the national
representation. These are our rights by an instrument which we are
bound to respect, and I will concede none of them, nor purchase any
of them. I never purchase as a concession what I hold as a right,
nor accept an inferior title when I already hold the highest. Even
if this congeries of bills was a compromise, in fact, I should be
opposed to it for the reasons stated. But the fact itself is to me
apocryphal. What is it but the case of five old bills introduced
by different members as common legislative measures--caught up by
the senator from Kentucky, and his committee, bundled together,
and then called a compromise! Now, this mystifies me. The same
bills were ordinary legislation in the hands of their authors; they
become a sacred compromise in the hands of their new possessors.
They seemed to be of no account as laws: they become a national
panacea as a compromise. The difference seems to be in the change
of name. The poet tells us that a rose will smell as sweet by any
other name. That may be true of roses, but not of compromises. In
the case of the compromise, the whole smell is in the name; and
here is the proof. The senator from Illinois (Mr. Douglass) brought
in three of these bills: they emitted no smell. The senator from
Virginia (Mr. Mason) brought in another of them--no smell in that.
The senator from Missouri, who now speaks to the Senate, brought
in the fifth--_ditto_, no smell about it. The olfactory nerve of
the nation never scented their existence. But no sooner are they
jumbled together, and called a compromise, than the nation is
filled with their perfume. People smell it all over the land, and,
like the inhalers of certain drugs, become frantic for the thing.
This mystifies me; and the nearest that I can come to a solution
of the mystery is in the case of the two Dr. Townsends and their
sarsaparilla root. They both extract from the same root, but the
extract is a totally different article in the hands of the two
doctors. Produced by one it is the universal panacea: by the other,
it is of no account, and little less than poison. Here is what the
old doctor says of this strange difference:
"We wish it understood, because it is the _absolute truth_,
that S. P. Townsend's article and Old Dr. Jacob Townsend's
sarsaparilla are _heaven-wide apart, and infinitely dissimilar_;
that they are unlike in every particular, having not one single
thing in common."
And accounts for the difference thus:
"The sarsaparilla root, it is well known to medical men,
contains many medicinal properties, and some properties which
are inert or useless, and others which, if retained in preparing
it for use, produce _fermentation and acid_, which is injurious
to the system. Some of the properties of sarsaparilla are
so _volatile_ that they entirely evaporate, and are lost in
the preparation, if they are not preserved by a _scientific
process_, known only to the experienced in its manufacture.
Moreover, those _volatile principles_, which fly off in vapor,
or as an exhalation, under heat, are the very _essential medical
properties_ of the root, which give to it all its value."
Now, all this is perfectly intelligible to me. I understand it
exactly. It shows me precisely how the same root is either to be
a poison or a medicine, as it happens to be in the hands of the
old or the young doctor. This may be the case with these bills. To
me it looks like a clue to the mystery; but I decide nothing, and
wait patiently for the solution which the senator from Kentucky may
give when he comes to answer this part of my speech. The old doctor
winds up in requiring particular attention to his name labelled
on the bottle, to wit, "Old Doctor Jacob Townsend," and not Young
Doctor Samuel Townsend. This shows that there is virtue in a name
when applied to the extract of sarsaparilla root; and there may be
equal virtue in it when applied to a compromise bill. If so, it
may show how these self-same bills are of no force or virtue in
the hands of the young senator from Illinois (Mr. Douglass), and
become omnipotently efficacious in the hands of the old senator from
Kentucky.
This is the end of the grand committee's work--five old bills
tacked together, and presented as a remedy for evils which have no
existence, and required to be accepted under a penalty--the penalty
of being gazetted as enemies of compromise, and played at by the
organs! The old one, to be sure, is dreadfully out of tune--the
strings all broken, and the screws all loose, and discoursing
most woful music, and still requiring us to dance to it! And such
dancing it would be!--nothing but turn round, cross over, set-to,
and back out! Sir, there was once a musician--we have all read of
him--who had power with his lyre (but his instrument was spelt
_l y r e_)--not only over men, but over wild beasts also, and
even over stones, which he could make dance into their places when
the walls of Ilion were built. But our old organist was none of that
sort, even in his best day; and since the injury to his instrument
in playing the grand national symphony of the four F's--the
fifty-four forty or fight--it is so out of tune that its music will
be much more apt to scare off tame men than to charm wild beasts or
stones.
No, sir! no more slavery compromises. Stick to those we have in
the constitution, and they will be stuck to! Look at the four
votes--those four on the propositions which I submitted. No
abolition of slavery in the States: none in the forts, arsenals,
navy-yards, and dock-yards: none in the District of Columbia: no
interference with the slave trade between the States. These are
the votes given on this floor, and which are above all Congress
compromises, because they abide the compromises of the constitution.
The committee, besides the ordinary purpose of legislation, that
of making laws for the government of the people, propose another
object of a different kind, that of acting the part of national
benefactors, and giving peace and happiness to a miserable and
distracted people--_innuendo_, the people of the United States.
They propose this object as the grand result and crowning mercy of
their multifarious labors. The gravity with which the chairman of
the committee has brought forward this object in his report, and
the pathetic manner in which he has enforced it in his speech, and
the exact enumeration he has made of the public calamities upon his
fingers' ends, preclude the idea, as I have heretofore intimated, of
any intentional joke to be practised upon us by that distinguished
senator; otherwise I might have been tempted to believe that the
eminent senator, unbending from his serious occupations, had
condescended to amuse himself at our expense. Certain it is that
the conception of this restoration of peace and happiness is most
jocose. In the first place, there is no contention to be reconciled,
no distraction to be composed, no misery to be assuaged, no lost
harmony to be restored, no lost happiness to be recovered! And,
if there was, the committee is not the party to give us these
blessings. Their example and precept do not agree. They preach
concord, and practise discord. They recommend harmony to others,
and disagree among themselves. They propose the fraternal kiss to
us, and give themselves rude rebuffs. They set us a sad example.
Scarcely is the healing report read, and the anodyne bills, or
pills, laid on our tables, than fierce contention breaks out in the
ranks of the committee itself. They attack each other. They give and
take fierce licks. The great peacemaker himself fares badly--stuck
all over with arrows, like the man on the first leaf of the almanac.
Here, in our presence, in the very act of consummating the marriage
of California with Utah, New Mexico, Texas, the fugacious slaves
of the States, and the marketable slaves of this District--in this
very act of consummation, as in a certain wedding feast of old, the
feast becomes a fight--the festival a combat--and the amiable guests
pummel each other.
When his committee was formed, and himself safely installed at the
head of it, conqueror and pacificator, the senator from Kentucky
appeared to be the happiest of mankind. We all remember that night.
He seemed to ache with pleasure. It was too great for continence. It
burst forth. In the fulness of his joy, and the overflowing of his
heart, he entered upon that series of congratulations which we all
remember so well, and which seemed to me to be rather premature, and
in disregard of the sage maxim which admonishes the traveller never
to halloo till he is out of the woods. I thought so then. I was
forcibly reminded of it on Saturday last, when I saw that senator,
after vain efforts to compose his friends, and even reminding them
of what they were "threatened" with this day--_innuendo_, this poor
speech of mine--gather up his beaver and quit the chamber, in a
way that seemed to say, the Lord have mercy upon you all, for I am
done with you! But the senator was happy that night--supremely so.
All his plans had succeeded--Committee of Thirteen appointed--he
himself its chairman--all power put into their hands--their own
hands untied, and the hands of the Senate tied--and the parties
just ready to be bound together for ever. It was an ecstatic moment
for the senator, something like that of the heroic Pirithous
when he surveyed the preparations for the nuptial feast--saw the
company all present, the lapithæ on couches, the centaurs on their
haunches--heard the _Io hymen_ beginning to resound, and saw the
beauteous Hippodamia, about as beauteous I suppose as California,
come "glittering like a star," and take her stand on his left hand.
It was a happy moment for Pirithous! and in the fulness of his
feelings he might have given vent to his joy in congratulations to
all the company present, to all the lapithæ and to all the centaurs,
to all mankind, and to all horsekind, on the auspicious event.
But, oh! the deceitfulness of human felicity. In an instant the
scene was changed! the feast a fight--the wedding festival a mortal
combat--the table itself supplying the implements of war!
"At first a medley flight,
Of bowls and jars supply the fight;
Once implements of feasts, but now of fate."
You know how it ended. The fight broke up the feast. The wedding
was postponed. And so may it be with this attempted conjunction of
California with the many ill-suited spouses which the Committee of
Thirteen have provided for her.
Mr. President, it is time to be done with this comedy of errors.
California is suffering for want of admission. New Mexico is
suffering for want of protection. The public business is suffering
for want of attention. The character of Congress is suffering for
want of progress in business. It is time to put an end to so many
evils; and I have made the motion intended to terminate them, by
moving the indefinite postponement of this unmanageable mass of
incongruous bills, each an impediment to the other, that they may be
taken up one by one, in their proper order, to receive the decision
which their respective merits require.
CHAPTER CXCIII.
DEATH OF PRESIDENT TAYLOR.
He died in the second year of his presidency, suddenly, and
unexpectedly, of violent fever, brought on by long exposure to
the burning heat of a fourth of July sun--noted as the warmest of
the season. He attended the ceremonies of the day, sitting out
the speeches, and omitting no attention which he believed the
decorum of his station required. It cost him his life. The ceremony
took place on Friday: on the Tuesday following, he was dead--the
violent attack commencing soon after his return to the presidential
mansion. He was the first President elected upon a reputation purely
military. He had been in the regular army from early youth. Far from
having ever exercised civil office, he had never even voted at an
election, and was a major-general in the service, at the time of
his election. Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Monterey, and Buena
Vista, were his titles to popular favor--backed by irreproachable
private character, undoubted patriotism, and established reputation
for judgment and firmness. His brief career showed no deficiency
of political wisdom for want of previous political training. He
came into the administration at a time of great difficulty, and
acted up to the emergency of his position. The slavery agitation
was raging; the Southern manifesto had been issued: California,
New Mexico, Utah, were without governments: a Southern Congress
was in process of being called, the very name of which implied
disunion: a Southern convention was actually called, and met, to
consult upon disunion. He met the whole crisis firmly, determined
to do what was right among all the States, and to maintain the
Federal Union at all hazards. His first, and only annual message,
marked out his course. The admission of California as a State was
recommended by him, and would avoid all questions about slavery.
Leaving Utah and New Mexico to ripen into State governments, and
then decide the question for themselves, also avoided the question
in those territories where slavery was then extinct under the laws
of the country from which they came to the United States. Texas had
an unsettled boundary on the side of New Mexico. President Taylor
considered that question to be one between the United States and New
Mexico, and not between New Mexico and Texas; and to be settled by
the United States in some legal and amicable way--as, by compact,
by mutual legislation, or judicial decision. Some ardent spirits
in Texas proposed to take possession of one half of New Mexico, in
virtue of a naked pretension to it, founded in their own laws and
constitution. President Taylor would have resisted that pretension,
and protected New Mexico in its ancient actual possession until the
question of boundary should have been settled in a legal way. His
death was a public calamity. No man could have been more devoted
to the Union, or more opposed to the slavery agitation; and his
position as a Southern man, and a slave-holder--his military
reputation, and his election by a majority of the people and of the
States--would have given him a power in the settlement of these
questions which no President without these qualifications could have
possessed. In the political division he classed with the whig party,
but his administration, as far as it went, was applauded by the
democracy, and promised to be so to the end of his official term.
Dying at the head of the government, a national lamentation bewailed
his departure from life and power, and embalmed his memory in the
affections of his country.
ADMINISTRATION OF MILLARD FILLMORE.
CHAPTER CXCIV.
INAUGURATION AND CABINET OF MR. FILLMORE.
Wednesday, July the tenth, witnessed the inauguration of Mr.
Fillmore, Vice-President of the United States, become President
by the death of President Taylor. It took place in the Hall of
the House of Representatives, in the presence of both Houses
of Congress, in conformity to the wish of the new President,
communicated in a message. The constitution requires nothing of
the President elect, before entering on the duties of his station,
except to take the oath of office, _faithfully to execute his
duties, and do his best to preserve, protect, and defend the
constitution_; and that oath might be taken any where, and before
any magistrate having power to administer oaths, and then filed in
the department of State; but propriety and custom have made it a
ceremony to be publicly performed, and impressively conducted. A
place on the great eastern portico of the Capitol, where tens of
thousands could witness it, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court of the United States to administer the oath, have always
been the place and the magistrate for this ceremony, in the case
of Presidents elected to the office--giving the utmost display to
it--and very suitably as in such cases there is always a feeling
of general gratification and exultation. Mr. Fillmore, with great
propriety, reduced the ceremony of his inauguration to an official
act, impressively done in Congress, and to be marked by solemnity
without joy. A committee of the two Houses attended him--Messrs.
Soulé, of Louisiana, Davis, of Massachusetts, and Underwood,
of Kentucky, on the part of the Senate; Messrs. Winthrop, of
Massachusetts, Morse, of Louisiana, and Morehead, of Kentucky, on
the part of the House; and he was accompanied by all the members of
the late President's cabinet. The Chief Justice of the Circuit Court
of the District of Columbia, the venerable William Cranch, appointed
fifty years before, by President John Adams, administered the oath;
which being done, the President, without any inaugural address,
bowed, and retired; and the ceremony was at an end.
The first official act of the new President was an immediate message
to the two Houses, recommending suitable measures to be taken by
them for the funeral of the deceased President--saying:
"A great man has fallen among us, and a whole country is called
to an occasion of unexpected, deep, and general mourning.
"I recommend to the two Houses of Congress to adopt such
measures as in their discretion they may deem proper, to
perform with due solemnities the funeral obsequies of ZACHARY
TAYLOR, late President of the United States; and thereby to
signify the great and affectionate regard of the American
people for the memory of one whose life has been devoted to the
public service; whose career in arms has not been surpassed in
usefulness or brilliancy; who has been so recently raised by the
unsolicited voice of the people to the highest civil authority
in the government--which he administered with so much honor and
advantage to his country; and by whose sudden death, so many
hopes of future usefulness have been blighted for ever.
"To you, senators and representatives of a nation in tears,
I can say nothing which can alleviate the sorrow with which
you are oppressed. I appeal to you to aid me, under the
trying circumstances which surround me, in the discharge of
the duties, from which, however much I may be oppressed by
them, I dare not shrink; and I rely upon Him, who holds in his
hands the destinies of nations, to endow me with the requisite
strength for the task, and to avert from our country the evils
apprehended from the heavy calamity which has befallen us.
"I shall most readily concur in whatever measures the wisdom of
the two Houses may suggest, as befitting this deeply melancholy
occasion."
The two Houses readily complied with this recommendation, and a
solemn public funeral was unanimously voted, and in due time,
impressively performed. All the members of the late President's
cabinet gave in their resignations immediately, but were requested
by President Fillmore to retain their places until successors
could be appointed; which they did. In due time, the new cabinet
was constituted: Daniel Webster, of Massachusetts, Secretary of
State; Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, Secretary of the Treasury; Alexander
H. H. Stuart, of Virginia, Secretary of the Interior; Charles M.
Conrad, of Louisiana, Secretary at War; William A. Graham, of North
Carolina, Secretary of the Navy (succeeded by John P. Kennedy,
of Maryland); John J. Crittenden, of Kentucky, Attorney-General;
Nathan K. Hall, of New York (succeeded by Samuel D. Hubbard, of
Connecticut).
CHAPTER CXCV.
REJECTION OF MR. CLAY'S PLAN OF COMPROMISE.
The Committee of Thirteen had reported in favor of Mr. Clay's plan.
It was a committee so numerous, almost a quarter of the Senate, that
its recommendation would seem to insure the senatorial concurrence.
Not so the fact. The incongruities were too obvious and glaring to
admit of conjunction. The subjects were too different to admit of
one vote--yea or nay--upon all of them together. The injustice of
mixing up the admission of California, a State which had rejected
slavery for itself, with all the vexations of the slave question in
the territories, was too apparent to subject her to the degradation
of such an association. It was evident that no compromise, of any
kind whatever, on the subject of slavery, under any one of its
aspects separately, much less under all put together, could possibly
be made. There was no spirit of concession--no spirit in which
there could be giving and taking--in which a compromise could be
made. Whatever was to be done, it was evident would be done in the
ordinary spirit of legislation, in which the majority gives law to
the minority. The only case in which there was even forbearance, was
in that of rejecting the Wilmot proviso. That measure was rejected
again as heretofore, and by the votes of those who were opposed to
extending slavery into the territories, because it was unnecessary
and inoperative--irritating to the slave States without benefit to
the free States--a mere work of supererogation, of which the only
fruit was to be discontent. It was rejected, not on the principle of
non-intervention--not on the principle of leaving to the territories
to do as they pleased on the question; but because there had been
intervention! because Mexican law and constitution had intervened!
had abolished slavery by law in those dominions! which law would
remain in force, until repealed by Congress. All that the opponents
to the extension of slavery had to do then, was to do nothing. And
they did nothing.
The numerous measures put together in Mr. Clay's bill were
disconnected and separated. Each measure received a separate and
independent consideration, and with a result which showed the
injustice of the attempted conjunction. United, they had received
the support of the majority of the committee: separated, and no two
were passed by the same vote: and only four members of the whole
grand committee that voted alike on each of the measures.
CHAPTER CXCVI.
THE ADMISSION OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA: PROTEST OF SOUTHERN
SENATORS: REMARKS UPON IT BY MR. BENTON.
This became the "_test_" question in the great slavery agitation
which disturbed Congress and the Union, and as such was impressively
presented by Mr. Calhoun in the last and most intensely considered
speech of his life--read for him in the Senate by Mr. Mason of
Virginia. In that speech, and at the conclusion of it, and as the
resulting consequence of the whole of it, he said:
"It is time, senators, that there should be an open and manly
avowal on all sides, as to what is intended to be done. If the
question is not now settled, it is uncertain whether it ever can
hereafter be; and we, as the representatives of the States of
this Union, regarded as governments, should come to a distinct
understanding as to our respective views, in order to ascertain
whether the great questions at issue can be settled or not. If
you, who represent the stronger portion, cannot agree to settle
them on the broad principle of justice and duty, say so; and
let the States we both represent agree to separate and part
in peace. If you are unwilling that we should part in peace,
tell us so, and we shall know what to do, when you reduce the
question to submission or resistance. If you remain silent, you
will compel us to infer by your acts what you intend. In that
case, California will become the _test_ question. If you admit
her, under all the difficulties that oppose her admission, you
compel us to infer that you intend to exclude us from the whole
of the acquired territories, with the intention of destroying
irretrievably the equilibrium between the two sections. We
would be blind not to perceive, in that case, that your real
objects are power and aggrandizement, and infatuated not to act
accordingly."
Mr. Calhoun died before the bill for the admission of California
was taken up: but his principles did not die with him: and the test
question which he had proclaimed remained a legacy to his friends.
As such they took it up, and cherished it. The bill was taken up
in the Senate, and many motions made to amend, of which the most
material was by Mr. Turney of Tennessee, to limit the southern
boundary of the State to the latitude of 36° 30', and to extend
the Missouri line through to the Pacific, so as to authorize the
existence of slavery in all the territory south of that latitude. On
this motion the yeas and nays were:
"YEAS--Messrs. Atchison, Badger, Barnwell, Bell, Berrien,
Butler, Clemens, Davis of Mississippi, Dawson, Downs, Foote,
Houston, Hunter, King, Mangum, Mason, Morton, Pearce, Pratt,
Rusk, Sebastian, Soulé, Turney, and Yulee--24.
"NAYS--Messrs. Baldwin, Benton, Bradbury, Bright, Cass, Clarke,
Cooper, Davis of Massachusetts, Dayton, Dickinson, Dodge of
Wisconsin, Dodge of Iowa, Douglass, Ewing, Felch, Greene, Hale,
Hamlin, Jones, Norris, Phelps, Seward, Shields, Smith, Spruance,
Sturgeon, Underwood, Upham, Wales, Walker, Whitcomb, and
Winthrop--32."
The amendments having all been disposed of, the question was taken
upon the passage of the bill, and resulted in its favor, 34 yeas to
18 nays. The vote was:
"YEAS--Messrs. Baldwin, Bell, Benton, Bradbury, Bright, Cass,
Chase, Cooper, Davis of Massachusetts, Dickinson, Dodge of
Wisconsin, Dodge of Iowa, Douglass, Ewing, Felch, Greene, Hale,
Hamlin, Houston, Jones, Miller, Norris, Phelps, Seward, Shields,
Smith, Spruance, Sturgeon, Underwood, Upham, Wales, Walker,
Whitcomb, and Winthrop--34.
"NAYS--Messrs. Atchison, Barnwell, Berrien, Butler, Clemens,
Davis of Mississippi, Dawson, Foote, Hunter, King, Mason,
Morton, Pratt, Rusk, Sebastian, Soulé, Turney, and Yulee--18."
Immediately upon the passage of the bill through the Senate, ten
of the senators opposed to it offered a protest against it, which
was read at the secretary's table, of which the leading points were
these:
"We, the undersigned senators, deeply impressed with the
importance of the occasion, and with a solemn sense of the
responsibility under which we are acting, respectfully submit
the following protest against the bill admitting California as a
State into this Union, and request that it may be entered upon
the Journal of the Senate. We feel that it is not enough to
have resisted in debate alone a bill so fraught with mischief
to the Union and the States which we represent, with all the
resources of argument which we possessed; but that it is also
due to ourselves, the people whose interest have been intrusted
to our care, and to posterity, which even in its most distant
generations may feel its consequences, to leave in whatever form
may be most solemn and enduring, a memorial of the opposition
which we have made to this measure, and of the reasons by which
we have been governed, upon the pages of a journal which the
constitution requires to be kept so long as the Senate may have
an existence. We desire to place the reasons upon which we are
willing to be judged by generations living and yet to come, for
our opposition to a bill whose consequences may be so durable
and portentous as to make it an object of deep interest to all
who may come after us.
"We have dissented from this bill because it gives the sanction
of law, and thus imparts validity to the unauthorized action of
a portion of the inhabitants of California, by which an odious
discrimination is made against the property of the fifteen
slaveholding States of the Union, who are thus deprived of
that position of equality which the constitution so manifestly
designs, and which constitutes the only sure and stable
foundation on which this Union can repose.
"Because the right of the slaveholding States to a common
and equal enjoyment of the territory of the Union has been
defeated by a system of measures which, without the authority
of precedent, of law, or of the constitution, were manifestly
contrived for that purpose, and which Congress must sanction and
adopt, should this bill become a law.
"Because to vote for a bill passed under such circumstances
would be to agree to a principle, which may exclude for ever
hereafter, as it does now, the States which we represent from
all enjoyment of the common territory of the Union; a principle
which destroys the equal rights of their constituents, the
equality of their States in the Confederacy, the equal dignity
of those whom they represent as men and as citizens in the eye
of the law, and their equal title to the protection of the
government and the constitution.
"Because all the propositions have been rejected which have
been made to obtain either a recognition of the rights of the
slaveholding States to a common enjoyment of all the territory
of the United States, or to a fair division of that territory
between the slaveholding and non-slaveholding States of the
Union--every effort having failed which has been made to obtain
a fair division of the territory proposed to be brought in as
the State of California.
"But, lastly, we dissent from this bill, and solemnly protest
against its passage, because, in sanctioning measures so
contrary to former precedent, to obvious policy, to the spirit
and intent of the constitution of the United States, for the
purpose of excluding the slaveholding States from the territory
thus to be erected into a State, this government in effect
declares, that the exclusion of slavery from the territory
of the United States is an object so high and important as
to justify a disregard not only of all the principles of
sound policy, but also of the constitution itself. Against
this conclusion we must now and for ever protest, as it is
destructive of the safety and liberties of those whose rights
have been committed to our care, fatal to the peace and
_equality_ of the States which we represent, and must lead, if
persisted in, to the _dissolution_ of that confederacy, in which
the slaveholding States have never sought more than _equality_,
and in which they will not be content to _remain_ with less."
This protest was signed by Messrs. Mason and Hunter, senators from
Virginia; Messrs. Butler and Barnwell, senators from South Carolina;
Mr. Turney, senator from Tennessee; Mr. Pierre Soulé, senator from
Louisiana; Mr. Jefferson Davis, senator from Mississippi; Mr.
Atchison, senator from Missouri; and Messrs. Morton and Yulee,
senators from Florida. It is remarkable that this protest is not
on account of any power exercised by Congress over the subject of
slavery in a territory, but for the non-exercise of such power, and
especially for not extending the Missouri compromise line to the
Pacific Ocean; and which non-extension of that line was then cause
for the dissolution of the Union.
Mr. Winthrop, newly appointed senator from Massachusetts, in place
of Mr. Webster, appointed Secretary of State, immediately raised
the question of reception upon this protest, for the purpose of
preventing it from going upon the Journal, where, he alleged, the
only protest that could be entered by a senator (and that was a
sufficient one) was his peremptory "no:" and then said:
"Sir, does my honorable friend from Virginia (Mr. Hunter), know
that there is but one parliamentary body in the world--so far
as my own knowledge, certainly, goes--which acknowledges an
inherent right in its members to enter their protests upon the
Journals? That body is the British House of Lords. It is the
privilege of every peer, as I understand it, to enter upon the
Journals his protest against any measure which may have been
passed contrary to his own individual views or wishes. But what
has been the practice in our own country? You, yourself, Mr.
President, have read to us an authority upon this subject. It
seems that in the earliest days of our history, when there may
have been something more of a disposition than I hope prevails
among us now, to copy the precedents of the British government,
a rule was introduced into this body for the purpose of securing
to the senators of the several States this privilege which
belongs to the peers of the British Parliament. That proposition
was negatived. I know not by what majority, for you did not
read the record; I know not by whose votes; but that rule was
rejected. It was thus declared in the early days of our history
that this body should not be assimilated to the British House of
Lords in this respect, however it may be in any other; and that
individual senators should not be allowed this privilege which
belongs to British peers, of spreading upon the Journals the
reasons which may have influenced their votes."
Mr. Benton spoke against the reception of the protest, denying the
right of senators to file any reasons upon the Journal for their
vote; and said:
"In the British House of Lords, Mr. President, this right
prevails, but not in the House of Commons; and I will show you
before I have done that the attempt to introduce it into the
House of Commons gave rise to altercation, well-nigh led to
bloodshed on the floor of the House, and caused the member who
attempted to introduce it, though he asked leave to do so, to
be committed to the Tower for his presumption. And I will show
that we begin the practice here at a point at which the British
Parliament had arrived, long after they commenced the business
of entering the dissents. It will be my business to show that,
notwithstanding the British House of Lords in the beginning
entered the protestor's name under the word 'dissent,' precisely
as our names are entered here under the word 'nay,' it went on
until something very different took place, and which ended in
authorizing any member who pleased to arraign the sense of the
House, and to reproach the House whenever he pleased. Now, how
came the lords to possess this right? It is because every lord
is a power within himself. He is his own constituent body. He
represents himself; and in virtue of that representation of
himself, he can constitute a representative, and can give a
proxy to any lord to vote for him on any measure not judicial.
Members of the House of Commons cannot do it, because they
are themselves nothing but proxies and representatives of the
people. The House of Lords, then, who have this privilege and
right of entering their dissent, have it by virtue of being
themselves, each one, a power within himself, a constituent body
to himself, having inherent rights which he derives from nobody,
but which belong to him by virtue of being a peer of the realm;
and by virtue of that he enters his protest on the Journal, if
he pleases. It is a privilege belonging to every lord, each for
himself, and is an absolute privilege; and although the form is
to ask leave of the House, yet the House is bound to grant the
leave."
Mr. Benton showed that there was no right of protest in the
members of the British House of Commons--that the only time it was
attempted there was during the strifes of Charles the First with the
Parliament, and by Mr. Hyde (afterwards Lord Clarendon), who was
committed prisoner to the Tower for presuming to insult the House,
by proposing to set up his judgment against the act of the House
after the House had acted. Having spoken against the right of the
senators to enter a protest on the Journal against an act of the
Senate, Mr. Benton proceeded to speak against the protest itself,
and especially the concluding part of it, in which a dissolution
of the Union was hypothetically predicated upon the admission of
California.
"I now pass over what relates to the body or matter of the
protest, and come to the concluding sentence, where, sir, I
see a word which I am sorry to see, or hear used even in the
heat of debate in this chamber. It is one which I believe I
have not pronounced this session, not even hypothetically or
historically, in speaking of every thing which has taken place.
But I find it here, and I am sorry to see it. It is qualified,
it is true; yet I am sorry to see it any where, and especially
in a paper of such solemn import. It is in the concluding
sentence:
'Against this conclusion we must now and for ever _protest_, as
it is destructive of the safety and liberties of those whose
rights have been committed to our care, fatal to the peace and
_equality_ of the States which we represent, and must lead,
if persisted in, to the _dissolution_ of that confederacy in
which the slaveholding States have never sought more than an
_equality_, and in which they will not be content to _remain_
with less.'
"I grieve to see these words used with this deliberation; still
more do I grieve to see an application made to enter them on
the Journal of the Senate. Hypothetically they use the words;
but we all know what this word "if" is--a great peacemaker,
the poet tells us, between individuals, but, as we all know,
a most convenient introduction to a positive conclusion. The
language here is used solemnly, and the word protest is one of
serious import. Protest is a word known to the law, and always
implies authority, and one which is rarely used by individuals
at all. It is a word of grave and authoritative import in the
English language, which implies the testification of the truth!
and a right to testify to it! and which is far above any other
mode of asseveration. It comes from the Latin--_testari_, to be
a witness--_protestari_, to be a public witness, to publish,
avouch, and testify the truth; and can be only used on legal or
on the most solemn occasions. It has given a name to a great
division of the Christian family, who took the title from the
fact of their '_protesting_' against the imperial edicts of
Charles V., which put on a level with the Holy Scriptures the
traditions of the church and the opinions of the commentators.
It was a great act of _protesting_, and an act of conscience and
duty. It was a proper occasion to use the word _protest_; and it
was used in the face of power, and maintained through oceans
and seas of blood, until it has found an immortality in the name
of one division of the Christian family.
"I have read to you from British history--history of 1640--the
most eventful in the British annals--to show the first attempt
to introduce a protest in the House of Commons--to show you how
the men of that day--men in whose bosoms the love of liberty
rose higher than love of self--the Puritans whose sacrifices
for liberty were only equalled by their sacrifices to their
religion--these men, from whom we learned so much, refused to
suffer themselves to be arraigned by a minority--refused to
suffer an indictment to be placed on their own Journals against
themselves. I have shown you that a body in which were such
men as Hampden, and Cromwell, and Pym, and Sir Harry Vane,
would not allow themselves to be arraigned by a minority, or
to be impeached before the people, and that they sent the man
to the Tower who even asked leave to do it. This period of
British history is that of the civil wars which deluged Great
Britain with blood; and, sir, may there be no analogy to it in
our history!--may there be no omen in this proceeding--nothing
ominous in this attempted imitation of one of the scenes which
preceded the outbreak of civil war in Great Britain. Sir, this
protest is treated by some senators as a harmless and innocent
matter; but I cannot so consider it. It is a novelty, but a
portentous one, and connects itself with other novelties,
equally portentous. The Senate must bear with me for a moment.
I have refrained hitherto from alluding to the painful subject,
and would not now do it if it was not brought forward in such
a manner as to compel me. This is a novelty, and it connects
itself with other novelties of a most important character. We
have seen lately what we have never before seen in the history
of the country--sectional meetings of members of Congress,
sectional declarations by legislative bodies, sectional meetings
of conventions, sectional establishment of a press here! and
now the introduction of this protest, also sectional, and not
only connecting itself in time and circumstances, but connecting
itself by its arguments, by its facts, and by its conclusions,
with all these sectional movements to which I have referred. It
is a sectional protest.
"All of these sectional movements are based upon the hypothesis,
that, if a certain state of things is continued, there is to be
a dissolution of the Union. The Wilmot proviso, to be sure, is
now dropped, or is not referred to in the protest. That cause of
dissolution is dead; but the California bill comes in its place,
and the system of measures of which it is said to be a part. Of
these, the admission of California is now made the prominent,
the salient point in that whole system, which hypothetically it
is assumed may lead to a dissolution of the Union. Sir, I cannot
help looking upon this protest as belonging to the series of
novelties to which I have referred. I cannot help considering
it as part of a system--as a link in a chain of measures all
looking to one result, hypothetically, to be sure, but all
still looking to the same result--that of a dissolution of the
Union. It is afflicting enough to witness such things out of
doors; but to enter a solemn protest on our Journals, looking
to the contingent dissolution of the Union, and that for our
own acts--for the acts of a majority--to call upon us of the
majority to receive our own indictment, and enter it, without
answer, upon our own Journals--is certainly going beyond all the
other signs of the times, and taking a most alarming step in
the progress which seems to be making in leading to a dreadful
catastrophe. '_Dissolution_' to be entered on our Journal! What
would our ancestors have thought of it? The paper contains
an enumeration of what it characterizes as unconstitutional,
unjust, and oppressive conduct on the part of Congress against
the South, which, if persisted in, must lead to a dissolution of
the Union, and names the admission of California as one of the
worst of these measures. I cannot consent to place that paper
on our Journals. I protest against it--protest in the name of
my constituents. I have made a stand against it. It took me by
surprise; but my spirit rose and fought. I deem it my sacred
duty to resist it--to resist the entrance upon our Journal of
a paper hypothetically justifying disunion. If defeated, and
the paper goes on the Journal, I still wish the present age and
posterity to see that it was not without a struggle--not without
a stand against the portentous measure--a stand which should
mark one of those eras in the history of nations from which
calamitous events flow."
The reception of the protest was refused, and the bill sent to
the House of Representatives, and readily passed; and immediately
receiving the approval of the President, the senators elect from
California, who had been long waiting (Messrs. William M. Gwinn
and John Charles Frémont), were admitted to their seats; but not
without further and strenuous resistance. Their credentials being
presented, Mr. Davis, of Mississippi, moved to refer them to the
Committee on the Judiciary, to report on the law and the facts of
the case; which motion led to a discussion, terminated by a call
for the yeas and nays. The yeas were 12 in number; to wit: Messrs.
Atchison, Barnwell, Berrien, Butler, Davis of Mississippi, Hunter,
Mason, Morton, Pratt, Sebastian, Soulé, Turney. Only 12 voting for
the reference, and 36 against it; the two senators elect were then
sworn in, and took their seats.
CHAPTER CXCVII.
FUGITIVE SLAVES--ORDINANCE OF 1787: THE CONSTITUTION: ACT OF 1793:
ACT OF 1850.
It is of record proof that the anti-slavery clause in the ordinance
of 1787, could not be passed until the fugitive slave recovery
clause was added to it. That anti-slavery clause, first prepared
in the Congress of the confederation by Mr. Jefferson in 1784,
and rejected, remained rejected for three years--until 1787; when
receiving the additional clause for the recovery of fugitives,
it was unanimously passed. This is clear proof that the first
clause, prohibiting slavery in the Northwest territory, could not
be obtained without the second, authorizing the recovery of slaves
which should take refuge in that territory. It was a compromise
between the slave States and the free States, unanimously agreed
to by both parties, and founded on a valuable consideration--one
preventing the spread of slavery over a vast extent of territory,
the other retaining the right of property in the slaves which might
flee to it. Simultaneously with the adoption of this article in
the ordinance of 1787 was the formation of the constitution of
the United States--both formed at the same time, in neighboring
cities, and (it may be said) by the same men. The Congress sat in
New York--the Federal Convention in Philadelphia--and, while the
most active members of both were members of each, as Madison and
Hamilton, yet, from constant interchange of opinion, the members
of both bodies may be assumed to have worked together for a
common object. The right to recover fugitive slaves went into the
constitution, as it went into the ordinance, simultaneously and
unanimously; and it may be assumed upon the facts of the case, and
all the evidence of the day, that the constitution, no more than
the ordinance, could have been formed without the fugitive slave
recovery clause contained in it. A right to recover slaves is not
only authorized by the constitution, but it is a right without which
there would have been no constitution, and also no anti-slavery
ordinance.
One of the early acts of Congress, as early as February, '93, was
a statute to carry into effect the clause in the constitution for
the reclamation of fugitives from justice, and fugitives from labor;
and that statute, made by the men who made the constitution, may
be assumed to be the meaning of the constitution, as interpreted
by men who had a right to know its meaning. That act consisted of
four sections, all brief and clear, and the first two of which
exclusively applied to fugitives from justice. The third and fourth
applied to fugitives from labor, embracing apprentices as well as
slaves, and applying the same rights and remedies in each case:
and of these two, the third alone contains the whole provision for
reclaiming the fugitive--the fourth merely containing penalties for
the obstruction of that right. The third section, then, is the only
one essential to the object of this chapter, and is in these words:
"That when a person held to labor in any of the United
States, or in either of the territories on the north-west,
or south of Ohio, under the laws thereof, shall escape into
any other of said States or territories, the person to whom
such labor is due, his agent or attorney, is hereby empowered
to seize or arrest such fugitive from labor, and to take him
or her before any judge of the circuit or district courts of
the United States, residing or being within the State, or
before any magistrate of a county, city, or town corporate,
wherein such seizure or arrest shall be made, and upon proof
to the satisfaction of such judge or magistrate, either by
oral testimony, or affidavit taken before and certified by a
magistrate of any such State or territory, that the person
so seized and arrested, doth under the laws of the State or
territory from which he or she fled, owe service to the person
claiming him or her, it shall be the duty of such judge or
magistrate to give a certificate thereof to such claimant,
his agent or attorney, which shall be sufficient warrant for
removing the said fugitive from labor, to the State or territory
from which he or she fled."
This act was passed on the recommendation of President Washington,
in consequence of a case having arisen between Pennsylvania and
Virginia, which showed the want of an act of Congress to carry the
clause in the constitution into effect. It may be held to be a fair
interpretation of the constitution, and by it the party claiming the
service of the fugitive in any State or territory, had the right
to seize his slave wherever he saw him, and to carry him before
a judicial authority in the State; and upon affidavit, or oral
testimony, showing his right, he was to receive a certificate to
that effect, by virtue of which he might carry him back to the State
from which he had fled. This act, thus fully recognizing the right
of the claimant to seize his slave by mere virtue of ownership, and
then to carry him out of the State upon a certificate, and without
a trial, was passed as good as unanimously by the second Congress
which sat under the constitution--the proceedings of the Senate
showing no division, and in the House only seven voting against
the bill, there being no separate vote on the two parts of it, and
two of these seven from slave States (Virginia and Maryland). It
does not appear to what part these seven objected--whether to the
fugitive slave sections, or those which applied to fugitives from
justice. Such unanimity in its passage, by those who helped to make
the constitution, was high evidence in its favor: the conduct of the
States, and both judiciaries, State and federal, were to the same
effect. The act was continually enforced, and the courts decided
that this right of the owner to seize his slave, was just as large
in the free State to which he had fled as in the slave State from
which he had run away--that he might seize, by night as well as
by day, of Sundays as well as other days; and, also, in a house,
provided no breach of the peace was committed. The penal section
in the bill was clear and heavy, and went upon the ground of the
absolute right of the master to seize his slave by his own authority
wherever he saw him, and the criminality of any obstruction or
resistance in the exercise of that right. It was in these words:
"That any person who shall knowingly and wilfully obstruct or
hinder such claimant, his agent or attorney, in so seizing
or arresting such fugitive from labor, or shall rescue such
fugitive from such claimant, his agent or attorney, when so
arrested pursuant to the authority herein given or declared; or
shall harbor or conceal such person after notice that he or she
was a fugitive from labor as aforesaid, shall, for either of the
said offences, forfeit and pay the sum of five hundred dollars.
Which penalty may be recovered by and for the benefit of such
claimant, by action of debt in any court proper to try the same,
saving moreover to the person claiming such labor or service
his right of action for or on account of the said injuries, or
either of them."
State officers, the magistrates and judges, though not bound to act
under the law of Congress, yet did so; and State jails, though not
obligatory under a federal law, were freely used for the custody
of the re-captured fugitive. This continued till a late day in
most of the free States--in all of them until after the Congress
of the United States engaged in the slavery agitation--and in the
great State of Pennsylvania until the 20th of March, 1847: that is
to say, until a month after the time that Mr. Calhoun brought into
the Senate the slavery resolutions, stigmatized by Mr. Benton as
"fire-brand," at the moment of their introduction, and which are
since involving the Union in conflagration. Then Pennsylvania passed
the act forbidding her judicial authorities to take cognizance of
any fugitive slave case--granted a habeas corpus remedy to any
fugitive arrested--denying the use of her jails to confine any
one--and repealing the six months' slave sojourning law of 1780.
Some years before the passage of this harsh act, and before the
slavery agitation had commenced in Congress, to wit, 1826 (which was
nine years before the commencement of the agitation), Pennsylvania
had passed a most liberal law of her own, done upon the request of
Maryland, to aid the recovery of fugitive slaves. It was entitled,
"_An act to give effect to the Constitution of the United States
in reclaiming fugitives from justice_." Such had been the just and
generous conduct of Pennsylvania towards the slave States until up
to the time of passing the harsh act of 1847. Her legal right to
pass that act is admitted; her magistrates were not bound to act
under the federal law--her jails were not liable to be used for
federal purposes. The sojourning law of 1780 was her own, and she
had a right to repeal it. But the whole act of '47 was the exercise
of a mere right, against the comity which is due to States united
under a common head, against moral and social duty, against high
national policy, against the spirit in which the constitution
was made, against her own previous conduct for sixty years; and
injurious and irritating to the people of the slave States, and
parts of it unconstitutional. The denial of the intervention of
her judicial officers, and the use of her prisons, though an
inconvenience, was not insurmountable, and might be remedied by
Congress; the repeal of the act of 1780 was the radical injury and
for which there was no remedy in federal legislation.
That act was passed before the adoption of the constitution, and
while the feelings of conciliation, good will, and entire justice,
prevailed among the States; it was allowed to continue in force near
sixty years after the constitution was made; and was a proof of good
feeling towards all during that time. By the terms of this act, a
discrimination was established between sojourners and permanent
residents, and the element of time--the most obvious and easy of all
arbiters--was taken for the rule of discrimination. Six months was
the time allowed to discriminate a sojourner from a resident; and
during that time the rights of the owner remained complete in his
slave; after the lapse of that time, his ownership ceased. This six
months was equally in favor of all persons; but there was a further
and indefinite provision in favor of members of Congress, and of
the federal government, all of whom, coming from slave States,
were allowed to retain their ownership as long as their federal
duties required them to remain in the State. Such an act was just
and wise, and in accordance with the spirit of comity which should
prevail among States formed into a Union, having a common general
government, and reciprocating the rights of citizenship. It is to be
deplored that any event ever arose to occasion the repeal of that
act. It is to be wished that a spirit would arise to re-enact it;
and that others of the free States should follow the example. For
there were others, and several which had similar acts, and which
have repealed them in like manner, as Pennsylvania--under the same
unhappy influences, and with the same baleful consequences. New
York, for example--her law of discrimination between the sojourner
and the resident, being the same in principle, and still more
liberal in detail, than that of Pennsylvania--allowing nine months
instead of six, to determine that character.
This act of New York, like that of Pennsylvania, continued
undisturbed in the State, until the slavery agitation took root
in Congress; and was even so well established in the good opinion
of the people of that State, as late as thirteen years after the
commencement of that agitation, as to be boldly sustained by the
candidates for the highest offices. Of this an eminent instance
will be given in the canvass for the governorship of the State,
in the year 1838. In that year Mr. Marcy and Mr. Seward were the
opposing candidates, and an anti-slavery meeting, held at Utica,
passed a resolve to have them interrogated (among other things) on
the point of repealing the slave sojournment act. Messrs. Gerritt
Smith, and William Jay, were nominated a committee for that purpose,
and fulfilled their mission so zealously as rather to overstate the
terms of the act, using the word "importation" as applied to the
coming of these slaves with their owners, thus: "Are you in favor of
the repeal of the law which now authorizes the importation of slaves
into this State, and their detention here as such for the time of
nine months?" Objecting to the substitution of the term importation,
and stating the act correctly, both the candidates answered fully in
the negative, and with reasons for their opinion. The act was first
quoted in its own terms, as follows:
"Any person, not being an inhabitant of this State, who shall
be travelling to or from, or passing through this State, may
bring with him any person lawfully held by him in slavery, and
may take such person with him from this State; but the person so
held in slavery shall not reside or continue in this State more
than nine months; and if such residence be continued beyond that
time, such person shall be free."
Replying to the interrogatory, Mr. Marcy then proceeds to give his
opinion and reasons in favor of sustaining the act, which he does
unreservedly:
"By comparing this law with your interrogatory, you will
perceive at once that the latter implies much more than the
former expresses. The discrepancy between them is so great, that
I suspected, at first, that you had reference to some other
enactment which had escaped general notice. As none, however,
can be found but the foregoing, to which the question is in
any respect applicable, there will be no mistake, I presume,
in assuming it to be the one you had in view. The deviation,
in putting the question, from what would seem to be the plain
and obvious course of directing the attention to the particular
law under consideration, by referring to it in the very terms
in which it is expressed, or at least in language showing its
objects and limitations, I do not impute to an intention to
create an erroneous impression as to the law, or to ascribe to
it a character of odiousness which it does not deserve; yet I
think that it must be conceded that your question will induce
those who are not particularly acquainted with the section of
the statute to which it refers, to believe that there is a law
of this State which allows a free importation of slaves into it,
without restrictions as to object, and without limitation as
to the persons who may do so; yet this is very far from being
true. This law does not permit any inhabitant of this State to
bring into it any person held in slavery, under any pretence
or for any object whatsoever; nor does it allow any person of
any other State or country to do so, except such person is
actually travelling to or from, or passing through this State.
This law, in its operation and effect, only allows persons
belonging to States or nations where domestic slavery exists,
who happen to be travelling in this State, to be attended by
their servants whom they lawfully hold in slavery when at home,
provided they do not remain within our territories longer than
nine months. The difference between it and the one implied by
your interrogatory is so manifest, that it is perhaps fair to
presume, that if those by whose appointment you act in this
matter had not misapprehended its character, they would not
have instructed you to make it the subject of one of your
questions. It is so restricted in its object, and that is so
unexceptionable, that it can scarcely be regarded as obnoxious
to well-founded objections when viewed in its true light. Its
repeal would, I apprehend, have an injurious effect upon our
intercourse with some of the other States, and particularly
upon their business connection with our commercial emporium. In
addition to this, the repeal would have a tendency to disturb
the political harmony among the members of our confederacy,
without producing any beneficial results to compensate for these
evils. I am not therefore in favor of it."
This is an explicit answer, meeting the interrogatory with a full
negative, and impliedly rebuking the phrase "importation," by
supposing it would not have been used if the Utica convention had
understood the act. Mr. Seward answered in the same spirit, and
to the same effect, only giving a little more amplitude to his
excellent reasons. He says:
"Does not your inquiry give too broad a meaning to the section?
It certainly does not confer upon any citizen of a State, or of
any other country, or any citizen of any other State, except
the owner of slaves in another State by virtue of the laws
thereof, the right to bring slaves into this State or detain
them here under any circumstances as such. I understand your
inquiry, therefore to mean, whether I am in favor of a repeal
of the law which declares, in substance, that any person from
the southern or south-western States, who may be travelling to
or from or passing thrugh the State, may bring with him and
take with him any person lawfully held by him in slavery in the
State from whence he came, provided such slaves do not remain
here more than nine months. The article of the constitution
of the United States which bears upon the present question,
declares that no person held to service or labor in one State,
under the laws thereof, escaping to another State, shall, in
consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged
from such service or labor, but such persons shall be delivered
up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be
due. I understand that, in the State of Massachusetts, this
provision of the constitution has been decided by the courts
not to include the case of a slave brought by his master into
the State, and escaping thence. But the courts of law in this
State have uniformly given a different construction to the same
article of the constitution, and have always decided that it
does embrace the case of a slave brought by his master into
this State, and escaping from him here. Consequently, under
this judicial construction of the constitution, and without,
and in defiance of any law or regulation of this State, if the
slave escape from his master in this State, he must be restored
to him, when claimed at any time during his master's temporary
sojournment within the State, whether that sojournment be six
months, nine months, or longer. It is not for me to say that
this decision is erroneous, nor is it for our legislature.
Acting under its authority, they passed the law to which you
object, for the purpose, not of conferring new powers or
privileges on the slave-owner, but to prevent his abuse of that
which the constitution of the United States, thus expounded,
secures to him. The law, as I understand it, was intended to
fix a period of time as a test of transient passage through, or
temporary residence in the State, within the provisions of the
constitution. The duration of nine months is not material in the
question, and if it be unnecessarily long, may and ought to be
abridged. But, if no such law existed, the right of the master
(under the construction of the constitution before mentioned)
would be indefinite, and the slave must be surrendered to him
in all cases of travelling through, or passage to or from the
State. If I have correctly apprehended the subject, this law
is not one conferring a right upon any person to import slaves
into the State, and hold them here as such; but is an attempt
at restriction upon the constitutional right of the master; a
qualification, or at least a definition of it, and is in favor
of the slave. Its repeal, therefore, would have the effect
to put in greater jeopardy the class of persons you propose
to benefit by it. While the construction of the constitution
adopted here is maintained, the law, it would seem, ought to
remain upon our statute book, not as an encroachment upon the
rights of man, but a protection for them.
"But, gentlemen, being desirous to be entirely candid in
this communication, it is proper I should add, that I am not
convinced it would be either wise, expedient or humane, to
declare to our fellow-citizens of the southern and south-western
States, that if they travel to or from, or pass through the
State of New York, they shall not bring with them the attendants
whom custom, or education, or habit, may have rendered necessary
to them. I have not been able to discover any good object to
be attained by such an act of inhospitality. It certainly can
work no injury to us, nor can it be injurious to the unfortunate
beings held in bondage, to permit them, once perhaps in their
lives, and at most, on occasions few and far between, to
visit a country where slavery is unknown. I can even conceive
of benefits to the great cause of human liberty, from the
cultivation of this intercourse with the South. I can imagine
but one ground of objection, which is, that it may be regarded
as an implication that this State sanctions slavery. If this
objection were well grounded, I should at once condemn the law.
But, in truth, the law does not imply any such sanction. The
same statute which, in necessary obedience to the constitution
of the United States as expounded, declares the exception,
condemns, in the most clear and definite terms, all human
bondage. I will not press the considerations flowing from the
nature of our Union, and the mutual concessions on which it
was founded, against the propriety of such an exclusion as
your question contemplates, apparently for the purpose only
of avoiding an implication not founded in fact, and which the
history of our State so nobly contradicts. It is sufficient
to say that such an exclusion could have no good effect
practically, and would accomplish nothing in the great cause of
human liberty."
These answers do not seem to have affected the election in any way.
Mr. Seward was elected, each candidate receiving the full vote of
his party. Since that time the act has been repealed, and no voice
has yet been raised to restore it. Just and meritorious as were
the answers of Messrs. Marcy and Seward in favor of sustaining
the sojourning act, their voice in favor of its restoration would
be still more so now. It was a measure in the very spirit of the
constitution, and in the very nature of a union, and in full harmony
with the spirit of concession, deference and good-will in which
the constitution was founded. Several other States had acts to the
same effect, and the temper of the people in all the free States
was accordant. It was not until after the slavery question became
a subject of _political_ agitation, in the national legislature,
that these acts were repealed, and this spirit destroyed. Political
agitation has done all the mischief.
The act of Pennsylvania, of March 3d, 1847, besides repealing the
slave sojournment act of 1780--(an act made in the time of Dr.
Franklin, and which had been on her statute-book near seventy
years), besides repealing her recent act of 1826, and besides
forbidding the use of her prisons, and the intervention of her
officers in the recovery of fugitive slaves--besides all this, went
on to make positive enactments to prevent the exercise of the rights
of forcible recaption of fugitive slaves, as regulated by the act of
Congress, under the clause in the constitution; and for that purpose
contained this section:
"That if any person or persons claiming any negro or mulatto,
as fugitive from servitude or labor, shall, under any pretence
of authority whatever, violently and tumultuously seize upon
and carry away in a riotous, violent, and tumultuous manner,
and so as to disturb and endanger the public peace, any negro
or mulatto within this commonwealth, either with or without the
intention of taking such negro or mulatto before any district
or circuit judge, the person or persons so offending against
the peace of this commonwealth, shall be deemed guilty of a
misdemeanor; and on conviction thereof, shall be sentenced
to pay a fine of not less than one hundred nor more than two
thousand dollars; and, further, be confined in the county jail
for any period not exceeding three months, at the discretion of
the court."
The granting of the _habeas corpus_ writ to any fugitive slave
completed the enactments of this statute, which thus carried out, to
the full, the ample intimations contained in its title, to wit: "_An
act to prevent kidnapping, preserve the public peace, prohibit the
exercise of certain powers heretofore exercised by judges, justices
of the peace, aldermen, and jailers in this commonwealth; and, to
repeal certain slave laws._" This act made a new starting-point in
the anti-slavery movements North, as the resolutions of Mr. Calhoun,
of the previous month, made a new starting-point in the pro-slavery
movements in the South. The first led to the new fugitive slave
recovery act of 1850--the other has led to the abrogation of the
Missouri Compromise line; and, between the two, the state of things
has been produced which now afflicts and distracts the country, and
is working a sectional divorce of the States.
A citizen of Maryland, acting under the federal law of '93, in
recapturing his slave in Pennsylvania, was prosecuted under the
State act of 1826--convicted--and sentenced to its penalties.
The constitutionality of this enactment was in vain plead in
the Pennsylvania court; but her authorities acted in the spirit
of deference and respect to the authorities of the Union, and
concurred in an "_agreed case_," to be carried before the Supreme
Court of the United States, to test the constitutionality of the
Pennsylvania law. That court decided fully and promptly all the
points in the case, and to the full vindication of all the rights of
a slaveholder, under the recaption clause in the constitution. The
points decided cover the whole ground, and, besides, show precisely
in what particular the act of 1793 required to be amended, to make
it work out its complete effect under the constitution, independent
of all extrinsic aid. The points were these:
"The provisions of the act of 12th of February, 1793, relative
to fugitive slaves, is clearly constitutional in all its leading
provisions, and, indeed, with the exception of that part which
confers authority on State magistrates, is free from reasonable
doubt or difficulty. As to the authority so conferred on State
magistrates, while a difference of opinion exists, and may exist
on this point, in different States, whether State magistrates
are bound to act under it, none is entertained by the court,
that State magistrates may, if they choose, exercise that
authority, unless forbid by State legislation." "The power of
legislation in relation to fugitives from labor is exclusive
in the national legislature." "The right to seize and retake
fugitive slaves, and the duty to deliver them up, in whatever
State of the Union they may be found, is under the constitution
recognized as an absolute, positive right and duty, pervading
the whole Union with an equal and supreme force, uncontrolled
and uncontrollable by State sovereignty or State legislation.
The right and duty are co-extensive and uniform in remedy
and operation throughout the whole Union. The owner has the
same exemption from State regulations and control, through
however many States he may pass with the fugitive slaves in
his possession _in transitu_ to his domicil." "The act of the
legislature of Pennsylvania, on which the indictment against
Edward Prigg was founded, for carrying away a fugitive slave,
is unconstitutional and void. It purports to punish, as a
public offence against the State, the very act of seizing and
removing a slave by his master, which the constitution of
the United States was designed to justify and uphold." "The
constitutionality of the act of Congress (1793), relating to
fugitives from labor, has been affirmed by the adjudications of
the State tribunals, and by those of the courts of the United
States."
This decision of the Supreme Court--so clear and full--was further
valuable in making visible to the legislative authority what was
wanting to give efficacy to the act of 1793; it was nothing but to
substitute federal commissioners for the State officers forbidden
to act under it; and that substitution might have been accomplished
in an amendatory bill of three or four lines--leaving all the rest
of the act as it was. Unfortunately Congress did not limit itself
to an amendment of the act of 1793; it made a new law--long and
complex--and striking the public mind as a novelty. It was early in
the session of 1849-'50 that the Judiciary Committee of the Senate
reported a bill on the subject; it was a bill long and complex, and
distasteful to all sides of the chamber, and lay upon the table
six months untouched. It was taken up in the last weeks of a nine
months' session, and substituted by another bill, still longer and
more complex. This bill also was very distasteful to the Senate
(the majority), and had the singular fate of being supported in
its details, and passed into law, with less than a quorum of the
body in its favor, and without ever receiving the full senatorial
vote of the slave States. The material votes upon it, before it was
passed, were on propositions to give the fugitive a jury trial, if
he desired it, upon the question of his condition--free or slave;
and upon the question of giving him the benefit of the writ of
_habeas corpus_. The first of these propositions originated with
Mr. Webster, but was offered in his absence by Mr. Dayton, of New
Jersey. He (Mr. Webster) drew up a brief bill early in the session,
to supply the defect found in the working of the act of '93; it was
short and simple; but it contained a proviso in favor of a jury
trial when the fugitive denied his servitude. That would have been
about always; and this jury trial, besides being incompatible with
the constitution, and contradictory to all cases of proceeding
against fugitives, would have been pretty sure to have been fatal to
the pursuer's claim; and certainly both expensive and troublesome to
him. It was contrary to the act of 1793, and contrary to the whole
established course of reclaiming fugitives, which is always to carry
them back to the place from which they fled to be tried. Thus,
if a man commits an offence in one country, and flies to another,
he is carried back; so, if he flies from one State to another;
and so in all the extradition treaties between foreign nations.
All are carried back to the place from which they fled, the only
condition being to establish the flight and the probable cause; and
that in the case of fugitives from labor, as well as from justice,
both of which classes are put together in the constitution of the
United States, and in the fugitive act of 1793. The proposition
was rejected by a vote of eleven to twenty-seven. The yeas were:
Messrs. Davis of Massachusetts, Dayton, Dodge of Wisconsin, Greene,
Hamlin, Phelps, Smith, Upham, Walker of Wisconsin, and Winthrop.
The nays were: Messrs. Atchison, Badger, Barnwell, Bell, Benton,
Berrien, Butler, Cass, Davis of Mississippi, Dawson, Dodge of Iowa,
Downs, Houston, Jones of Iowa, King, Mangum, Mason, Morton, Pratt
of Maryland, Rusk, Sebastian, Soulé, Sturgeon, Turney, Underwood,
Wales, Yulee. The motion in favor of granting the benefit of the
writ of habeas corpus to the fugitive was made by Mr. Winthrop, and
rejected by the same vote of eleven yeas and twenty-seven nays.
Other amendments were offered and disposed of, and the question
coming on the passing of the bill, Mr. Cass, in speaking his own
sentiments in favor of merely amending the act of 1793, also spoke
the sentiments of many others, saying:
"When this subject was before the compromise committee, there
was a general wish, and in that I fully concurred, that the
main features of the act of 1793 upon this subject, so far
as they were applicable, should be preserved, and that such
changes as experience has shown to be necessary to a fair and
just enforcement of the provisions of the constitution for the
surrender of fugitive slaves, should be introduced by way of
amendment. That law was approved by Washington, and has now been
in force for sixty years, and lays down, among others, four
general principles, to which I am prepared to adhere: 1. The
right of the master to arrest his fugitive slave wherever he
may find him. 2. His duty to carry him before a magistrate in
the State where he is arrested, and that claim may be adjudged
by him. 3. The duty of the magistrate to examine the claim, and
to decide it, like other examining magistrates, without a jury,
and then to commit him to the custody of the master. 4. The
right of the master then to remove the slave to his residence.
At the time this law was passed, every justice of the peace
throughout the Union was required to execute the duties under
it. Since then, as we all know, the Supreme Court has decided
that justices of the peace cannot be called upon to execute
this law, and the consequence is, that they have almost every
where refused to do so. The master seeking his slave found his
remedy a good one at the time, but now very ineffectual; and
this defect is one that imperiously requires a remedy. And this
remedy I am willing to provide, fairly and honestly, and to make
such other provisions as may be proper and necessary. But I
desire for myself that the original act should remain upon the
statute book, and that the changes shown to be necessary should
be made by way of amendment."
The vote on the passing of the bill was 27 to 12, the yeas being:
Messrs. Atchison, Badger, Barnwell, Bell, Berrien, Butler, Davis
of Miss., Dawson, Dodge of Iowa, Downs, Foote, Houston, Hunter,
Jones of Iowa, King, Mangum, Mason, Pearce, Rusk, Sebastian, Soulé,
Spruance, Sturgeon, Turney, Underwood, Wales, and Yulee. The nays
were: Messrs. Baldwin, Bradbury, Cooper, Davis of Mass., Dayton,
Dodge of Wisconsin, Greene of Rhode Island, Smith, Upham, Walker,
and Winthrop. Above twenty senators did not vote at all upon the
bill, of whom Mr. Benton was one. Nearly the whole of these twenty
would have voted for an amendment to the act of 1793, supplying
federal officers in place of the State officers who were to assist
in its execution. Some three or four lines would have done that;
but instead of this brief enactment to give effect to an ancient
and well-known law, there was a long bill of ten sections, giving
the aspect of a new law; and with such multiplied and complex
provisions as to render the act inexecutable, except at a cost and
trouble which would render the recovery of little or no value;
and to be attended with an array and machinery which would excite
disturbance, and scenes of force and violence, and render the law
odious. It passed the House, and became a law, and has verified all
the objections taken to it.
Mr. Benton did not speak upon this bill at the time of its passage;
he had done that before, in a previous stage of the question, and
when Mr. Clay proposed to make it a part of his compromise measures.
He (Mr. Benton) was opposed to confounding an old subject of
constitutional obligation with new and questionable subjects, and
was ready to give the subject an independent consideration, and to
vote for any bill that should be efficient and satisfactory. He said:
"We have a bill now--an independent one--for the recovery of
these slaves. It is one of the oldest on the calendar, and
warmly pressed at the commencement of the session. It must be
about ripe for decision by this time. I am ready to vote upon
it, and to vote any thing under the constitution which will be
efficient and satisfactory. It is the only point, in my opinion,
at which any of the non-slaveholding States, as States, have
given just cause of complaint to the slaveholding States. I
leave out individuals and societies, and speak of States in
their corporate capacity; and say, this affair of the runaway
slaves is the only case in which any of the non-slaveholding
States, in my opinion, have given just cause of complaint to
the slaveholding States. But, how is it here? Any refusal on
the part of the northern members to legislate the remedy? We
have heard many of them declare their opinions; and I see no
line of east and west dividing the north from the south in these
opinions. I see no geographical boundary dividing northern and
southern opinions. I see no diversity of opinion but such as
occurs in ordinary measures before Congress. For one, I am ready
to vote at once for the passage of a fugitive slavery recovery
bill; but it must be as a separate and independent measure."
Mr. Benton voted upon the amendments, and to make the bill efficient
and satisfactory; but failed to make it either, and would neither
vote for it nor against it. It has been worth but little to the
slave States in recovering their property, and has been annoying to
the free States from the manner of its execution, and is considered
a new act, though founded upon that of '93, which is lost and hid
under it. The wonder is how such an act came to pass, even by so
lean a vote as it received--for it was voted for by less than the
number of senators from the slave States alone. It is a wonder how
it passed at all, and the wonder increases on knowing that, of the
small number that voted for it, many were against it, and merely
went along with those who had constituted themselves the particular
guardians of the rights of the slave States, and claimed a lead in
all that concerned them.
Those self-constituted guardians were permitted to have their own
way; some voting with them unwillingly, others not voting at all.
It was a part of the plan of "compromise and pacification," which
was then deemed essential to save the Union: and under the fear of
danger to the Union on one hand, and the charms of pacification
and compromise on the other, a few heated spirits got the control,
and had things their own way. Under other circumstances--in any
season of quiet and tranquillity--the vote of Congress would have
been almost general against the complex, cumbersome, expensive,
annoying, and ineffective bill that was passed, and in favor of the
act (with the necessary amendment) which Washington recommended and
signed--which State and Federal judiciaries had sanctioned--which
the people had lived under for nearly sixty years, and against
which there was no complaint until slavery agitation had become a
political game to be played at by parties from both sides of the
Union. All public men disavow that game. All profess patriotism.
All applaud the patriotic spirit of our ancestors. Then imitate
that spirit. Do as these patriotic fathers did--the free States
by reviving the sojournment laws which gave safety to the slave
property of their fellow-citizens of other States passing through
them--the slave States by acting in the spirit of those who enacted
the anti-slavery ordinance of 1787, and the Missouri Compromise line
of 1820. New York and Pennsylvania are the States to begin, and to
revive the sojournment laws which were in force within them for
half a century. The man who would stand up in each of these States
and propose the revival of these acts, for the same reasons that
Messrs. Marcy and Seward opposed their repeal, would give a proof of
patriotism which would entitle him to be classed with our patriotic
ancestors.
CHAPTER CXCVIII.
DISUNION MOVEMENTS: SOUTHERN PRESS AT WASHINGTON: SOUTHERN
CONVENTION AT NASHVILLE: SOUTHERN CONGRESS CALLED FOR BY SOUTH
CAROLINA AND MISSISSIPPI.
"_When the future historian shall address himself to the task
of portraying the rise, progress, and decline of the American
Union, the year 1850 will arrest his attention, as denoting and
presenting the first marshalling and arraying of those hostile
forces and opposing elements which resulted in dissolution; and
the world will have another illustration of the great truth,
that forms and modes of government_, _however correct in
theory, are only valuable as they conduce to the great ends of
all government--the peace, quiet, and conscious security of the
governed._"
So wrote a leading South Carolina paper on the first day of January,
1850--and not without a knowledge of what it was saying. All that
was said was attempted, and the catastrophe alone was wanting to
complete the task assigned to the future historian.
The manifesto of the forty-two members from the slave States,
issued in 1849, was not a _brutum fulmen_, nor intended to be so.
It was intended for action, and was the commencement of action;
and regular steps for the separation of the slave from the free
States immediately began under it. An organ of disunion, entitled
"The Southern Press," was set up at Washington, established upon a
contribution of $30,000 from the signers to the Southern manifesto,
and their ardent adherents--its daily occupation to inculcate the
advantages of disunion, to promote it by inflaming the South against
the North, and to prepare it by organizing a Southern concert of
action. Southern cities were to recover their colonial superiority
in a state of sectional independence; the ships of all nations were
to crowd their ports to carry off their rich staples, and bring back
ample returns; Great Britain was to be the ally of the new "United
States South;" all the slave States were expected to join, but the
new confederacy to begin with the South Atlantic States, or even a
part of them; and military preparation was to be made to maintain by
force what a Southern convention should decree. That convention was
called--the same which had been designated in the first manifesto,
entitled THE CRISIS, published in the Charleston Mercury in 1835;
and the same which had been repulsed from Nashville in 1844. Fifteen
years of assiduous labor produced what could not be started in
1835, and what had been repulsed in 1844. A disunion convention met
at Nashville! met at the home of Jackson, but after the grave had
become his home.
This convention (assuming to represent seven States) took the
decisive step, so far as it depended upon itself, towards a
separation of the States. It invited the assembling of a "Southern
Congress." Two States alone responded to that appeal--South Carolina
and Mississippi; and the legislatures of these two passed solemn
acts to carry it into effect--South Carolina absolutely, by electing
her quota of representatives to the proposed congress; Mississippi
provisionally, by subjecting her law to the approval of the people.
Of course, each State gave a reason, or motive for its action. South
Carolina simply asserted the "aggressions" of the slaveholding
States to be the cause, without stating what these aggressions were;
and, in fact, there were none to be stated. For even the repeal
of the slave sojournment law in some of them, and the refusal to
permit the State prisons to be used for the detention of fugitives
from service, or State officers to assist in their arrest, though
acts of unfriendly import, and a breach of the comity due to sister
States, and inconsistent with the spirit of the constitution, were
still acts which the States, as sovereign within their limits upon
the subjects to which they refer, had a right to pass. Besides,
Congress had readily passed the fugitive slave recovery bill, just
as these Southern members wished it; and left them without complaint
against the national legislature on that score. All other matters of
complaint which had successively appeared against the free States
were gone--Wilmot Proviso, and all. The act of Mississippi gave two
reasons for its action:
"_First_. That the legislation of Congress, at the last session,
was controlled by a dominant majority regardless of the
constitutional rights of the slaveholding States: and,
"_Secondly_. That the legislation of Congress, such as it was,
affords alarming evidence of a settled purpose on the part of
said majority to destroy the institution of slavery, not only
in the State of Mississippi, but in her sister States, and to
subvert the sovereign power of that and other slaveholding
States."
Waiving the question whether these reasons, if true, would be
sufficient to justify this abrupt attempt to break up the Union,
an issue of fact can well be taken on their truth: and first, of
the dominant majority of the last session, ending September 1850:
that majority, in every instance, was helped out by votes from the
slave States, and generally by a majority of them. The admission of
California, which was the act of the session most complained of,
most resisted, and declared to be a "test" question, was supported
by a majority of the members from the slave States: so that reason
falls upon the trial of an issue of fact. The second set of reasons
have for their point, an assertion that the majority in Congress
have a settled purpose to destroy the institution of slavery in the
State of Mississippi, and in the other slave States, and to subvert
the sovereignty of all the slave States. It is the duty of history
to deal with this assertion, thus solemnly put in a legislative
act as a cause for the secession of a State from the Union--and to
say, that it was an assertion without evidence, and contrary to
the evidence, and contrary to the fact. There was no such settled
purpose in the majority of Congress, nor in a minority of Congress,
nor in any half-dozen members of Congress--if in any one at all.
It was a most deplorable assertion of a most alarming design,
calculated to mislead and inflame the ignorant, and make them fly to
disunion as the refuge against such an appalling catastrophe. But it
was not a new declaration. It was part and parcel of the original
agitation of slavery commenced in 1835, and continued ever since.
To destroy slavery in the States has been the design attributed to
the Northern States from that day to this, and is necessary to be
kept up in order to keep alive the slavery agitation in the slave
States. It has received its constant and authoritative contradiction
in the conduct of those States at home, and in the acts of their
representatives in Congress, year in and year out; and continues
to receive that contradiction, continually; but without having the
least effect upon its repetition and incessant reiteration. In the
mean time there is a fact visible in all the slave States, which
shows that, notwithstanding these twenty years' repetition of the
same assertion, there is no danger to slavery in any slave State.
Property is timid! and slave property above all: and the market is
the test of safety and danger to all property. Nobody gives full
price for anything that is insecure, either in title or possession.
All property, in danger from either cause, sinks in price when
brought to that infallible test. Now, how is it with slave property,
tried by this unerring standard? Has it been sinking in price
since the year 1835? since the year of the first alarm manifesto
in South Carolina, and the first of Mr. Calhoun's twenty years'
alarm speeches in the Senate? On the contrary, the price has been
constantly rising the whole time--and is still rising, although it
has attained a height incredible to have been predicted twenty
years ago.
But, although the slavery alarm does not act on property, yet
it acts on the feelings and passions of the people, and excites
sectional animosity, hatred for the Union, and desire for
separation. The Nashville convention, and the call for the Southern
Congress, were natural occasions to call out these feelings;
and most copiously did they flow. Some specimens, taken from
the considered language of men in high authority, and speaking
advisedly, and for action, will show the temper of the whole--the
names withheld, because the design is to show a danger, and not to
expose individuals.
In the South Carolina Legislature, a speaker declared:
"We must secede from a Union perverted from its original
purpose, and which has now become an engine of oppression to the
South. He thought our proper course was for this legislature
to proceed directly to the election of delegates to a Southern
Congress. He thought we should not await the action of all the
Southern States; but it is prudent for us to await the action
of such States as Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Florida;
because these States have requested us to wait. If we can get
but one State to unite with us, then we must act. Once being
independent, we would have a strong ally in England. But we must
prepare for secession."
Another:
"The friends of the Southern movement in the other States look
to the action of South Carolina; and he would make the issue in
a reasonable time, and the only way to do so is by secession.
There would be no concert among the Southern States until a blow
is struck. And if we are sincere in our determination to resist,
we must give the South some guarantee that we are in earnest.
He could not concur with the gentleman from Greenville in his
expressions of attachment to the Union. He hated and detested
the Union, and was in favor of cutting the connection. He avowed
himself a disunionist--a disunionist _per se_. If he had the
power, he would crush this Union to-morrow."
Another:
"Denied the right or the power of the general government to
coerce the State in case of secession. This State is sovereign
and independent, so soon as she sees proper to assert that
sovereignty. And when can we be stronger than we are now? If
we intend to wait until we become superior to the federal
government in numerical strength, we will wait for ever. In the
event of an attempt to coerce her, sacrifices might be made,
but we are willing and ready to make those sacrifices. But he
did not believe one gun would be fired in this contest. South
Carolina would achieve a bloodless victory. But, should there be
a war, all the nations of Europe would be desirous of preserving
their commercial intercourse with the Southern States, and would
make the effort to do so. He thought there never would be a
union of the South until this State strikes the blow, and makes
the issue."
Another:
"Would not recapitulate the evils which had been perpetrated
upon the South. Great as they have been, they are comparatively
unimportant, when compared with the evils to which they would
inevitably lead. We must not consider what we have borne, but
what we must bear hereafter. There is no remedy for these evils
in the government; we have no alternative left us, then, but to
come out of the government."
Another:
"He was opposed to calling a convention, because he thought
it would impede the action of this State on the questions now
before the country. He thought it would impede our progress
towards disunion. All his objections to a convention of
the people applied only to the proposition to call it now.
He thought conventions dangerous things, except when the
necessities of the country absolutely demand them. He said that
he had adopted the course he had taken on these weighty matters
simply and entirely with the view of hastening the dissolution
of this Union."
Another:
"Would sustain the bill for electing delegates to a Southern
Congress, because he thought it would bring about a more speedy
dissolution of the Union."
In the Nashville convention a delegate said:
"I shall enumerate no more of the wrongs that we have suffered,
or the dangers with which we are threatened. If these, so
enormous and so atrocious, are not sufficient to arouse the
Southern mind, our case is desperate. But, supposing that we
shall be roused, and that we shall act like freemen, and,
knowing our rights and our wrongs, shall be prepared to sustain
the one and redress the other, what is the remedy? I answer
secession--united secession of the slaveholding States, or a
large number of them. Nothing else will be wise--nothing else
will be practicable. The Rubicon is passed. The Union is already
dissolved. Instead of wishing the perpetuity of any government
over such vast boundaries, the rational lover of liberty should
wish for its speedy dissolution, as dangerous to all just and
free rule. Is not all this exemplified in our own case? In nine
months, in one session of Congress, by a great _coup d'etat_,
our constitution has been completely and for ever subverted.
Instead of a well balanced government, all power is vested
in one section of the country, which is in bitter hostility
with the other. And this is the glorious Union which we are to
support, for whose eternal duration we are to pray, and before
which the once proud Southron is to bow down. He ought to perish
rather."
"They have not, however, been satisfied with taking all (the
territory). They have made that all a wicked instrument for
the abolition of the constitution, and of every safeguard of
our property and our lives. I have said they have made the
appropriation of this territory an instrument to abolish the
constitution. There is no doubt that they have abolished the
constitution. The carcass may remain, but the spirit has left
it. It is now a fetid mass, generating disease and death. It
stinks in our nostrils."
"A constitution means _ex vi termini_, a guarantee of the
rights, liberty, and security of a free people, and can never
survive in the shape of dead formalities. It is a thing of life,
and just and fair proportions; not the _caput mortuum_ which the
so-called Constitution of the United States has now become. Is
there a Southern man who bears a soul within his ribs, who will
consent to be governed by this vulgar tyranny," &c.
From public addresses:
"Under the operation of causes beyond the scan of man, we are
rapidly approaching a great and important crisis in our history.
The shadow of the sun has gone back upon the dial of American
liberty, and we are rapidly hastening towards the troubled sea
of revolution. A dissolution of the Union is our inevitable
destiny, and it is idle for man to raise his puny arm to stem
the tide of events," &c.
Another:
"We must form a separate government. The slaveholding States
must all yet see that their only salvation consists in uniting,
and that promptly too, in organizing a Southern confederacy.
Should we be wise enough thus to unite, all California, with her
exhaustless treasures, would be ours; all New Mexico also, and
the sun would never shine upon a country so rich, so great and
so powerful, as would be our Southern republic."
Another:
"By our physical power," said one of the foremost of those
leaders, in a late speech to his constituents, "we can protect
ourselves against foreign nations, whilst by our productions we
can command their peace or support. The keys of their wealth
and commerce are in our hands, which we will freely offer to
them by a system of free trade, making our prosperity their
interest--our security their care. The lingering or decaying
cities of the South, which before our Revolution carried on all
their foreign commerce, buoyant with prosperity and wealth, but
which now are only provincial towns, sluggish suburbs of Boston
and New York, will rise up to their natural destiny, and again
enfold in their embraces the richest commerce of the world.
Wealth, honor, and power, and one of the most glorious destinies
which ever crowned a great and happy people, awaits the South,
if she but control her own fate; but, controlled by another
people, what pen shall paint the infamous and bloody catastrophe
which must mark her fall?"
From fourth of July toasts:
"The Union: A splendid failure of the first modern attempt,
by people of different institutions, to live under the same
government.
"The Union: For it we have endured much; for it we have
sacrificed much. Let us beware lest we endure too much; lest we
sacrifice too much.
"Disunion rather than degradation.
"South Carolina: She struck for the Union when it was a
blessing; when it becomes a curse, she will strike for herself.
"The Compromise: 'The best the South can get.' A cowardly banner
held out by the _spoilsman_ that would sell his country for a
mess of pottage.
"The American Eagle: In the event of a dissolution of the Union,
the South claims as her portion, the heart of the noble bird; to
the Yankees we leave the feathers and carcass.
"The South: Fortified by right, she considers neither threats
nor consequences.
"The Union: Once a holy alliance, now an accursed bond."
Among the multitude of publications most numerous in South Carolina
and Mississippi, but also appearing in other slave States, all
advocating disunion, there were some (like Mr. Calhoun's letter to
the Alabama member which feared the chance might be lost which the
Wilmot Proviso furnished) also that feared agitation would stop
in Congress, and deprive the Southern politicians of the means of
uniting the slave States in a separate confederacy. Of this class of
publications here is one from a leading paper:
"The object of South Carolina is undoubtedly to dissolve this
Union, and form a confederacy of slaveholding States. Should it
be impossible to form this confederacy, then her purpose is, we
believe conscientiously, to disconnect herself from the Union,
and set up for an independent Power. Will delay bring to our
assistance the slaveholding States? If the slavery agitation,
its tendencies and objects, were of recent origin, and not fully
disclosed to the people of the South, delay might unite us in
concerted action. We have no indication that Congress will soon
pass obnoxious measures, restricting or crippling directly the
institution of slavery. Every indication makes us fear that a
pause in fanaticism is about to follow, to allow the government
time to consolidate her late acquisitions and usurpations of
power. Then the storm will be again let loose to gather its
fury, and burst upon our heads. We have no hopes that the
agitation in Congress, this or next year, will bring about the
union of the South."
Enough to show the spirit that prevailed, and the extraordinary and
unjustifiable means used by the leaders to mislead and exasperate
the people. The great effort was to get a "Southern Congress"
to assemble, according to the call of the Nashville convention.
The assembling of that "Congress" was a turning point in the
progress of disunion. It failed. At the head of the States which
had the merit of stopping it, was Georgia--the greatest of the
South-eastern Atlantic States. At the head of the presses which did
most for the Union, was the National Intelligencer at Washington
City, long edited by Messrs. Gales & Seaton, and now as earnest
against Southern disunion in 1850 as they were against the Hartford
convention disunion of 1814. The Nashville convention, the Southern
Congress, and the Southern Press established at Washington, were the
sequence and interpretation (so far as its disunion-design needed
interpretation), of the Southern address drawn by Mr. Calhoun. His
last speech, so far as it might need interpretation, received it
soon after his death in a posthumous publication of his political
writings, abounding with passages to show that the Union was a
mistake--the Southern States ought not to have entered into it, and
should not now re-enter it, if out of it, and that its continuance
was impossible as things stood: Thus:
"All this has brought about a state of things hostile to the
continuance of this Union, and the duration of the government.
Alienation is succeeding to attachment, and hostile feelings to
alienation; and these, in turn, will be followed by revolution,
or a disruption of the Union, unless timely prevented. But this
cannot be done by restoring the government to its _federal_
character--however necessary that may be as a first step. What
has been done cannot be undone. The equilibrium between the
two sections has been permanently destroyed by the measures
above stated. The Northern section, in consequence, will ever
concentrate within itself the two majorities of which the
government is composed; and should the Southern be excluded
from all the territories, now acquired, _or to be hereafter
acquired_, it will soon have so decided a preponderance in
the government and the Union, as to be able to mould the
constitution to its pleasure. Against this the restoration
of the _federal_ character of the government can furnish no
remedy. So long as it continues there can be no safety for
the weaker section. It places in the hands of the stronger
and the _hostile_ section, the power to crush her and her
_institutions_; and leaves no alternative but to _resist_,
or sink down into a colonial condition. This must be the
consequence, if some effectual and appropriate remedy is not
applied.
"The nature of the disease is such, that nothing can reach it,
short of some organic change--a change which will so modify
the constitution as to give to the weaker section, in some one
form or another, a _negative_ on the action of the government.
Nothing short of this can protect the weaker, and restore
harmony and tranquillity to the Union by arresting effectually
the tendency of the dominant section to oppress the weaker.
When the constitution was formed, the impression was strong
that the tendency to conflict would be between the larger and
smaller States; and effectual provisions were accordingly made
to guard against it. But experience has proved this to be a
mistake; and that instead of being as was then supposed, the
conflict is between the two great sections which are so strongly
distinguished by their institutions, geographical character,
productions and pursuits. Had this been then as clearly
perceived as it now is, the same jealousy which so vigilantly
watched and guarded against the danger of the larger States
oppressing the smaller, would have taken equal precaution to
guard against the same danger between the two sections. It is
for _us_, who see and feel it, to do, what the framers of the
constitution would have done, had they possessed the knowledge,
in this respect, which experience has given to us; that is, to
provide against the dangers which the system has practically
developed; and which, had they been foreseen at the time, and
left without guard, would undoubtedly have _prevented_ the
States forming the _Southern_ section of the confederacy, from
ever _agreeing_ to the constitution; and which, under like
circumstances, were they now out of, would for ever _prevent_
them _entering_ into the Union. How the constitution could
best be modified, so as to effect the object, can only be
authoritatively determined by the amending power. It may be
done in various ways. Among others, it might be effected
through a re-organization of the Executive Department; so
that its powers, instead of being vested, as they now are, in
a single officer, should be vested in two, to be so elected,
as that the two should be constituted the special organs and
representatives of the respective sections in the Executive
Department of the government; and requiring each to _approve_
of all the acts of Congress before they become laws. One might
be charged with the administration of matters connected with
the foreign relations of the country; and the other, of such as
were connected with its domestic institutions: the selection
to be decided by lot. Indeed it may be doubted, whether the
framers of the constitution did not commit a great _mistake_, in
constituting a single, instead of a plural executive. Nay, it
may even be doubted whether a single magistrate, invested with
all the powers properly appertaining to the Executive Department
of the government, as is the President, is compatible with the
_permanence_ of a popular government; especially in a wealthy
and populous community, with a large revenue, and a numerous
body of officers and employées. Certain it is, that there is
no instance of a popular government so constituted which has
long endured. Even ours, thus far, furnishes no evidence in
its favor, and not a little against it: for, to it the present
disturbed and dangerous state of things, which threaten the
country with _monarchy_ or _disunion_, may be justly attributed."
The observing reader, who may have looked over the two volumes of
this View, in noting the progress of the slavery agitation, and its
successive alleged causes for disunion, must have been struck with
the celerity with which these causes, each in its turn, as soon
as removed, has been succeeded by another, of a different kind;
until, at last, they terminate in a cause which ignores them all,
and find a new reason for disunion in the constitution itself! in
that constitution, the protection of which had been invoked as
sufficient, during the whole period of the alleged "aggressions and
encroachments." In 1835, when the first agitation manifesto and
call for a Southern convention, and invocation to unity and concert
of action, came forth in the Charleston Mercury, entitled "_The
Crisis_," the cause of disunion was then in the abolition societies
established in some of the free States, and which these States were
required to suppress. Then came the abolition petitions presented
in Congress; then the mail transmission of incendiary publications;
then the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; then
the abolition of the slave trade between the States; then the
exclusion of slavery from Oregon; then the Wilmot Proviso; then the
admission of California with a free constitution. Each of these,
in its day, was a cause of disunion, to be effected through the
instrumentality of a Southern convention, forming a sub-confederacy,
in flagrant violation of the constitution, and effecting the
disunion by establishing a commercial non-intercourse with the free
States. After twenty years' agitation upon these points, they are
all given up. The constitution, and the Union, were found to be
a "mistake" from the beginning--an error in their origin, and an
impossibility in their future existence, and to be amended into
another impossibility, or broken up at once.
The regular inauguration of this slavery agitation dates from
the year 1835; but it had commenced two years before, and in
this way: nullification and disunion had commenced in 1830 upon
complaint against protective tariff. That being put down in 1833
under President Jackson's proclamation and energetic measures, was
immediately substituted by the slavery agitation. Mr. Calhoun, when
he went home from Congress in the spring of that year, told his
friends, _That the South could never be united against the North on
the tariff question--that the sugar interest of Louisiana would keep
her out--and that the basis of Southern union must be shifted to the
slave question._ Then all the papers in his interest, and especially
the one at Washington, published by Mr. Duff Green, dropped tariff
agitation, and commenced upon slavery; and, in two years, had the
agitation ripe for inauguration on the slavery question. And, in
tracing this agitation to its present stage, and to comprehend its
rationale, it is not to be forgotten that it is a mere continuation
of old tariff disunion; and preferred because more available.
In June, 1833, at the first transfer of Southern agitation from
tariff to slavery, Mr. Madison wrote to Mr. Clay:
"_It is painful to see the unceasing efforts to alarm the
South, by imputations against the North of unconstitutional
designs on the subject of slavery. You are right, I have no
doubt, in believing that no such intermeddling disposition
exists in the body of our Northern brethren. Their good faith
is sufficiently guaranteed by the interest they have as
merchants, as ship-owners, and as manufacturers in preserving
a union with the slaveholding States. On the other hand, what
madness in the South to look for greater safety in disunion.
It would be worse than jumping into the fire for fear of the
frying-pan. The danger from the alarms is, that pride and
resentment excited by them may be an overmatch for the dictates
of prudence; and favor the project of a Southern convention,
insidiously revived, as promising by its counsels the best
security against grievances of every kind from the North._"
Nullification, secession, and disunion were considered by Mr.
Madison as Synonymous terms, dangerous to the Union as fire to
powder, and the danger increasing in all the Southern States, even
Virginia. "_Look at Virginia herself, and read in the Gazettes,
and in the proceedings of popular meetings, the figure which the
anarchical principle now makes, in contrast with the scouting
reception given to it but a short time ago._" Mr. Madison solaced
himself with the belief that this heresy would not reach a majority
of the States; but he had his misgivings, and wrote them down in
the same paper, entitled, "Memorandum on nullification," written in
his last days and published after his death. "_But a susceptibility
of the contagion in the Southern States is visible, and the danger
not to be concealed, that the sympathy arising from known causes,
and the inculcated impression of a permanent incompatibility of
interests between the North and the South, may put it in the power
of popular leaders, aspiring to the highest stations, to unite
the South on some critical occasion, in a course that will end in
creating a theatre of great though inferior extent. In pursuing this
course, the first and most obvious step is nullification--the next,
secession--and the last, a farewell separation. How near has this
course been lately exemplified! and the danger of its recurrence,
in the same or some other quarter, may be increased by an increase
of restless aspirants, and by the increasing impracticability of
retaining in the Union a large and cemented section against its
will._"--So wrote Mr. Madison in the year 1836, in the 86th year
of his age, and the last of his life. He wrote with the pen of
inspiration, and the heart of a patriot, and with a soul which
filled the Union, and could not be imprisoned in one half of it.
He was a Southern man! but his Southern home could not blind his
mental vision to the origin, design, and consequences of the slavery
agitation. He gives to that agitation, a Southern origin--to that
design, a disunion end--to that end, disastrous consequences both to
the South and the North.
Mr. Calhoun is dead. Peace to his manes. But he has left his
disciples who do not admit of peace! who "_rush in_" where their
master "_feared to tread_." He recoiled from the disturbance of the
Missouri compromise: they expunge it. He shuddered at the thought of
bloodshed in civil strife: they demand three millions of dollars to
prepare arms for civil war.
CHAPTER CXCIX.
THE SUPREME COURT: ITS JUDGES, CLERK, ATTORNEY-GENERALS, REPORTERS
AND MARSHALS DURING THE PERIOD TREATED OF IN THIS VOLUME.
CHIEF JUSTICE:--Roger Brooke Taney, of Maryland, appointed in 1836:
continues, 1850.
JUSTICES:--Joseph Story, of Massachusetts, appointed, 1811:
died 1845.--John McLean, of Ohio, appointed, 1829: continues,
1850.--James M. Wayne, of Georgia, appointed, 1835: continues,
1850.--John Catron, of Tennessee, appointed, 1837: continues,
1850.--Levi Woodbury, of New Hampshire, appointed, 1845: continues,
1850.--Robert C. Grier, of Pennsylvania, appointed, 1846: continues,
1850.
ATTORNEY-GENERALS:--Henry D. Gilpin, of Pennsylvania, appointed,
1840.--John J. Crittenden, of Kentucky, appointed, 1841.--Hugh
S. Legare, of South Carolina, appointed, 1841.--John Nelson, of
Maryland, appointed, 1843.--John Y. Mason, of Virginia, appointed,
1846.--Nathan Clifford, of Maine, appointed, 1846.--Isaac Toucey,
of Connecticut, appointed, 1848.--Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland,
appointed, 1849.--John J. Crittenden, of Kentucky, appointed, 1850.
CLERK:--William Thomas Carroll, of the District of Columbia,
appointed, 1827: continues, 1850.
REPORTERS OF DECISIONS:--Richard Peters, jr., of Pennsylvania,
appointed, 1828.--Benjamin C. Howard, appointed, 1843: continues,
1850.
MARSHALS:--Alexander Hunter, appointed, 1834.--Robert Wallace,
appointed, 1848.--Richard Wallach, appointed, 1849.
CHAPTER CC.
CONCLUSION.
I have finished the View which I proposed to take of the Thirty
Years' working of the federal government during the time that I was
a part of it--a task undertaken for a useful purpose and faithfully
executed, whether the object of the undertaking has been attained or
not. The preservation of what good and wise men gave us, has been
the object; and for that purpose it has been a duty of necessity to
show the evil, as well as the good, that I have seen, both of men
and measures. The good, I have exultingly exhibited! happy to show
it, for the admiration and imitation of posterity: the evil, I have
stintedly exposed, only for correction, and for the warning example.
I have seen the capacity of the people for self-government tried at
many points, and always found equal to the demands of the occasion.
Two other trials, now going on, remain to be decided to settle the
question of that capacity. 1. The election of President! and whether
that election is to be governed by the virtue and intelligence of
the people, or to become the spoil of intrigue and corruption? 2.
The sentiment of political nationality! and whether it is to remain
co-extensive with the Union, leading to harmony and fraternity; or,
divide into sectionalism, ending in hate, alienation, separation and
civil war?
An irresponsible body (chiefly self-constituted, and mainly
dominated by professional office-seekers and office-holders) have
usurped the election of President (for the nomination is the
election, so far as the party is concerned); and always making
it with a view to their own profit in the monopoly of office and
plunder.
A sectional question now divides the Union, arraying one-half
against the other, becoming more exasperated daily--which has
already destroyed the benefits of the Union, and which, unless
checked, will also destroy its form.
Confederate republics are short-lived--the shortest in the whole
family of governments. Two diseases beset them--corrupt election
of the chief magistrate, when elective; sectional contention, when
interest or ambition are at issue. Our confederacy is now laboring
under both diseases: and the body of the people, now as always,
honest in sentiment and patriotic in design, remain unconscious
of the danger--and even become instruments in the hands of their
destroyers.
If what is written in these chapters shall contribute to open their
eyes to these dangers, and rouse them to the resumption of their
electoral privileges and the suppression of sectional contention,
then this View will not have been written in vain. If not, the
writer will still have one consolation--the knowledge of the fact
that he has labored in his day and generation, to preserve and
perpetuate the blessings of that Union and self-government which
wise and good men gave us.
THE END.
INDEX TO VOL. II.
A
ADAMS, JOHN Q., on the bill for the relief of Mrs. Harrison, 258;
on the origin of the Pension act of 1837, 269;
defends the administration in the McLeod affair, 289;
on the protest of President Tyler, 418;
relative to the Chinese mission, 511;
on the Home squadron, 575;
decease of, 707;
manner of his death, 707;
House and Senate adjourn, 707;
Senator Benton requested to second the motion of funeral honors in
the Senate, 707;
reflections, 707;
eloquent remarks of McDowell, 708;
eulogium of Senator Benton, 708, 709.--_See Index_, vol. 1.
ADAMS, CHARLES F., candidate for Vice President, 723.
ALLEN, WILLIAM, on the Oregon question, 663, 664.
ALISON, the historian, remark on the war of 1812, 573.
_Amendment of the Constitution._--Speech of Mr. Benton, 626;
the plan proposed, 626;
object and principle of the amendment to dispense with all other
intermediate bodies, and keep the election wholly in the
hands of the people, 626;
liberty would be ruined by providing any kind of substitute but
popular elections, 627;
at present, the will of the people was liable to be frustrated in
the election of their chief officers, by the intervention of
small bodies of men between themselves and the object of
their choice, 627;
details of the proposed amendment, 627;
its efficiency and practicability in preserving the rights of the
people, maintaining the purity of elections, 628;
a copy of the proposition, 628. _See Index_, vol. 1.
ANDERSON, ALEXANDER, Eulogium on Hugh L. White, 185.
_Anti-Duelling Act._--Death of Cilley, 148;
penalties of the duelling act, 148;
the act did not look to the assassinations under the pretext of
self-defence, which were to rise up in the place of the
regular duel, 148;
contrast, 148;
the act did not suppress the passions in which duels
originate, 149;
the law was also mistaken in the nature of its penalties, 149;
defective in not pursuing the homicidal offence into all the new
forms it might assume, 149.
ARCHER, WILLIAM S., on the charge of a privy council of President
Tyler's, 327. _See Index_, vol. 1.
_Ashburton, Lord, his mission.--See British Treaty._
_Assumption of State Debts._--Amount of these debts, 171;
Sidney Smith, 171;
assumption sought by a class of the bondholders as more
substantial security, 171;
London Bankers' Circular, 171;
resolutions against the constitutionality, the justice, and the
policy of any such measure, 171;
attempt to reverse their import by obtaining a direct vote of the
Senate in favor of distributing the land revenue to aid the
States, 172;
proposition rejected, 172.
Speech of Mr. Benton, 172;
extracts, 172;
"this movement been long going on, 172;
steps taken in the road to assumption, 172;
time for enemies of assumption to take the field and to act, 173;
disguised assumption in the form of land revenue distribution is
the shape in which we shall have to meet the danger, 173;
we have had one assumption in this country, 173;
intense excitement, 173;
statement of Mr. Jefferson, 174;
the picture presented, 174;
these stocks of the States are now greatly depreciated, 174;
what more unwise or unjust to contract debts on long time as some
of the States have done, 175;
the evils of foreign influence, 175;
the constitution itself contains a special canon directed against
them, 175;
to what purpose all this precaution if we invite foreign
influence?" 175.
B
BADGER, GEORGE E., Secretary of the Navy, 209;
reasons for resigning his seat in President Tyler's Cabinet, 354.
BANCROFT, GEORGE, Secretary of the Navy, 650.
_Bank, National, First Bill._--This the great measure of the session
and the great object of the whig party, 317;
all others complete without it, 317;
kept in the background during the canvass, 318;
call upon the secretary for a plan, 318;
objections of the President, 318;
its title, 318;
its course in the Senate, 318;
passed in both Houses, 318;
views of the democracy, 318;
light dawning upon them, 318;
veto, 318;
remarks of Mr. Clay, 318;
"circumstances under which Mr. Tyler became President, 319;
his address, 319;
interpretation of one passage, 319;
most confident and buoyant hopes entertained, 319;
fears that the President's address had been misunderstood, 319;
name of the proposed bank," 319;
Mr. Tyler's early opinions on a bank, 320;
extract, 320;
remarks of Mr. Clay on the passage, 320;
the course which the President might have taken and saved his
consistency, 321;
retaining the bill ten days, 321;
a third course to resign the Presidency, 321;
the propriety of the step enforced by Mr. Clay, 321;
remarks of Mr. Clay, 321;
his allusion to the rumor that the President was proposing a
suitable bill, 321;
remarks of Mr. Rives in defence of the President, 322;
a bank not an issue in the election, 323;
the imputation of perfidy repelled, 323;
General Harrison would have disproved the same bill, 323;
the conditions upon which he would sign a bill for a bank, 323;
reasons to believe he would have signed a bill, 323;
reply of Mr. Clay, 323;
Mr. Rives at "the half way house," 323;
Mr. Tyler's inner circle of advisers, 324;
caustic remarks of Mr. Clay thereon, 324;
rumor of a design to make a third party, 324;
remarks of Mr. Clay upon it, 324;
the bank was the great issue, 324;
apostrophe of Mr. Clay, 325;
reply of Mr. Rives to the imputed cabal--the privy council, 325;
remarks on sojourning in the half way house, 326;
rumor of a dictatorship installed in the capitol, 326;
disclaimer of Mr. Clay, 326;
conversational debate between Mr. Archer and Mr. Clay, 326, 327;
vote, 328.
Effects of the rejection, 328;
hisses in the Senate and outrages at the President's house, 328;
an inquiry into the extent of the disturbances moved, 328;
proceedings dropped, 328;
visit of Senators to the President, 328;
remarks of Mr. Clay on this visit, 328;
further remarks, 329;
Buchanan in reply pictures scenes that might have happened on the
same night at the other end of the avenue, 330;
a motion made to amend the Fiscal bill, so as to prevent members
of Congress from borrowing money from the institution, 330;
remarks of Mr. Pierce, 330;
"incorruptibility of members of Congress, 330;
what did history teach in relation to the course of members of
Congress," 331;
reference to the bank report by Mr. Tyler, 331;
the vote, 331;
its significance, 331.
Two histories to the second attempt at a fiscal bill, 331;
one public, the other secret, 331;
bill reported from a select committee on the currency early in the
session, 332;
move to strike out all after the enacting clause and insert a new
bill, 332;
remarks of Mr. Sargeant on the proposed new bill, 332;
the bill before committee, 332;
sharp practice, 332;
objections to rapid legislation, 333;
debate on the bill, 333;
bill passed, 333;
its title, 333;
remarks of Mr. Benton in ridicule of the bill, 333;
referred to a committee, 335;
a one-sided committee, 335;
remarks of Mr. King upon the appointment of this committee, 335;
rule of Jefferson's Manual quoted in justification, 336;
remarks of Mr. Benton, 336;
remarks of Mr. Buchanan, 337;
bill reported by the chairman with remarks upon the favorable
views of the President, 337;
amendments offered by Mr. Benton, 338;
objection to the exchange dealings authorized, 339;
operation of a bill as a discount, 339;
this exposed by Senator Tappan, 339;
amendment requiring all the stockholders to be citizens of the
United States, 340;
none but citizens allowed to take the original stock would not
prevent foreigners owning it, 340;
the bill designed to resurrect by smuggling the United States
Bank, 340;
same amendment moved in a different form, 340;
debate, 340;
vote, 341;
the bill compared with the old bank charter, 341;
bill passed and sent to the President and disapproved, 341;
violent speaking excited by the veto, 341;
the speakers, 341;
nays on the returned bill, 341.
Secret history of the returned bank bill, 342;
conversation between Mr. Gilmer and a whig member of the
House, 342;
change in Mr. Tyler, 342;
effect on the whigs, 343;
newspapers in the President's interest, 343;
no information given to the cabinet respecting the first veto
message, 343;
slight to his cabinet, 343;
readiness of the President for a second bill as stated by Mr.
Ewing, 343;
Mr. Bell's account, 343;
statement of Mr. A. H. Stuart, 344;
was the President sincere in his professions, or were they only
phrases to deceive the whigs and
calm the commotion which raged in their camp, 344;
a cabinet meeting on the new bill and proceedings, 345;
statement of Mr. Ewing, 345;
the sixteenth fundamental article, 345;
every part of the bill made to suit the President, 346;
further exposition, 346;
statement of Mr. Bell, 346;
proceedings of the members of the Cabinet under instructions to
prepare a majority of each House for the passage of the
second bill, 346;
grounds of the veto, and the explanations and careful preparation
of the point on which it turned, 347;
reason for Mr. Berrien's motion to postpone the consideration of
the veto and take up the bank bill, 347;
statement of Mr. A. H. Stuart, 347;
another side to this statement that the President was in favor of
the second bill, 348;
signs and facts which show against it from the beginning, 348;
letter of Mr. Webster, 349;
letter of Mr. Botts noticed, 349;
"Head him or die," 349;
how the phrase was intended and how interpreted, 349;
solution of the views of Mr. Tyler, 350;
he would have signed no bank bill under any name after the eighth
or ninth day of the session, 350.
Reception of the veto message in the Senate, 350;
hisses and applause in the galleries, 350;
Mr. Benton moves that the Sergeant-at-Arms take into custody those
who hissed, 351;
debate on the amount of the disorderly proceedings, 351, 352.
_See Tyler's Administration._
_Bank of the United States._--Changes to a State institution, 23;
history since the expiration of her charter, 23;
the bill reported in the Assembly of Pennsylvania, 24;
the tail to a bill to repeal a tax and make roads and canals, 24;
its reception in the House, 24;
an explanation demanded, 24;
letter of Mr. Biddle to J. Q. Adams, 24;
the first step in the movement, 24;
how managed, 24;
the bonus, 24;
passage of the bill through the legislature, 25;
indignation of the people, 25;
investigation of the next legislature, 25;
remarks, 25.
Refuses to cease its operations after its legal existence had
expired, 67;
its proviso charter made no difference in its condition, 67;
its use of the defunct notes of the expired institution, 68;
statement of its conduct by Mr. Buchanan, 68;
remarks of Calhoun on the right of Congress to pass a bill on this
subject, 69;
it rests on the general power of legislation, 69;
character of the bill, 69;
this the last question between the bank and the Federal
government, 69.
_Resumption by the Pennsylvania U. S. Bank._--Effect of resumption
by the New York banks, 94;
convention called in Philadelphia, 94;
result of its deliberations, 94;
resumption, 94;
speedy failure again and forever of the U. S. Bank foretold, 94.
Exposition of its affairs, 157;
resignation of Mr. Biddle, 157;
prediction of Senator Benton, 157;
suspension, 157;
its effects, 157;
another statement of her condition, 158.
Silence in Congress on this institution, 365;
her condition, 365;
report of the affairs to the stockholders, 365;
the exhibition of waste and destruction, 365;
proceedings of the bank during the period of the application for a
recharter, 366;
its loans, 366;
to whom made, 366;
manner in which they were made, 366;
extract from the report on this point, 366;
its foreign agencies, 367;
business of these stock speculations, 367;
extract, 367;
losses by the cotton agency, 368;
extracts from the report, 368;
the way of the bank in guaranteeing the individual contracts of
Mr. Biddle, 369;
unintelligible accounts of large amounts, 369;
parties concerned refuse to give an explanation, 369;
entertainments to members of Congress at immense expense, 369;
losses of stockholders, 369;
statement of the London Bankers' Circular, 370;
the credit of the bank and the prices of its stock kept up by
delusive statements of profits, 370;
operations to make the second suspension begin in New York, 370;
extent of the ruin, 371;
the case of London bankers and their punishment, 371;
remarks of the Judge on passing sentence, 372. _See Index_,
vol. 1.
_Bankrupt Act against the Banks._--Recommended by the President, 43;
reasons, 43;
framers of the constitution hard-money men, 43;
operation of the constitution had nullified this intention, 44;
a question whether the fault was in the instrument or in the
administrators, 44;
remedy now proposed, 44;
all that was wanted was a Congress to back the President, 44;
the array against it, 44;
opposition of Mr. Webster, 44;
right of Congress questioned, 44;
doubtless sanctioned by the whole cabinet, 45;
speech of Mr. Benton, 45;
"a bankrupt law authorized by the constitution," 45;
signification of the word bankruptcy, 45;
what is this grant of power, and does the country require its
exercise, 45;
Congress is not confined to English statutory decisions for the
construction of phrases used in the constitution, 45;
the term is not of English but Roman origin, 46;
it is said, we must confine our legislation to the usual objects,
the usual subjects, and the usual purposes of bankrupt laws
in England, 46;
on what act of English legislation can an example be fixed? 46;
the acts passed on this subject, 47;
affirmative definitions of the classes liable to bankruptcy in
England, 47;
the negative, 47;
cut off from improvement since the adoption of our constitution,
48;
in this view we must find one of two things--a case in point or a
general authority, 48;
these considered, 48;
a case in point, 48;
the general practice of the British Parliament for five hundred
years, over the whole subject of bankruptcy, 49;
it is asked if bankrupt laws ordinarily extend to moneyed
corporations, 49;
No; Why? 49;
the question of corporation unreliability in England, 49;
do such law ordinarily extend to corporations at all? 50;
history of our first bankrupt law, 51;
the bill of 1827, 51;
it is said, the object of bankrupt laws has no relation to
currency, 51;
what says history? 51;
effect of the application of bankrupt laws in England twofold,
51;
recommendation of the President, 51;
the British bankrupt code as it relates to bank notes, 52;
all our acts and bills have applied to bankers, 53;
and why not to banks? 53;
why this distinction? 53;
banks of circulation are the fittest subjects of a bankrupt
law, 53;
the opinion that there can be no resumption of specie payments
until the Bank of the United States is rechartered, 54;
as bankrupts, the Federal authority extends to all the banks, 54;
other great purposes to be attained by the application of a
bankrupt law to banks, 54;
every form of government has something in it to excite the pride
and to rouse the devotion of its citizens, 55;
we are called upon to have mercy on the banks, the prayer should
be to them to have mercy on the citizens, 55;
Jefferson's legacy is never to suffer the government to fall under
the control of unauthorized or self-created institutions, 55;
it is said that bankruptcy is a severe remedy to apply to banks, 56;
three things for which the banks have no excuse, and which should
forever weigh against their claims to favor, 56.
Congress convened at the urgent instance of Mr. Clay, 229;
a bankrupt act not in the programme of Mr. Clay or the message of
President Tyler, 229;
parties nearly balanced in the Senate, 229;
one member obtains leave to bring in a bill on bankruptcy, 229;
manner of its passage, 229;
the bank bill and the land bill made to pass it through both
Houses, 230;
its passage through the House, 230;
amendment, 230;
proceedings in the Senate to get up the amendment, 230, 231;
remark of White, of Indiana, 231;
remark of Senator Benton, 231, remark of Senator Linn, 231;
bankrupt bill reported as passed the House, 232;
remarks of Mr. King, 232;
distribution bill laid on the table and the bankrupt bill taken
up, 232;
remarks of Mr. Walker, 232;
the bank distribution and bankrupt bills travel together, 232;
remarks on the amendment to the bankrupt bill, 233;
passed, 233;
remarks on the nature of the bankrupt bill, 233, 234.
Speech of Mr. Benton on the bankrupt bill, 234;
"this is not a bankrupt system but an insolvent law, perverted to
a discharge from debts, instead of a discharge from
imprisonment," 234;
it is framed from the English insolvent debtor act, 234;
the English acts, 234;
how came such a bill to be introduced here? 235;
it is an insolvent bill, 235;
defended by insisting that insolvency and bankruptcy are the same
thing, a mere inability to pay debts, 235;
extracts from Webster's remarks, 235;
no foundation for confounding bankruptcy and insolvency, 235;
Blackstone's definition of a bankrupt, 235;
ability and fraud the basis of the system, 235;
_cessio bonorum_, 236;
laws of Scotland, 236;
_cessio_ examined, 236;
bankruptcy defined by the laws of Scotland, 237;
the Code Napoleon, 238;
the civil law, 238;
comparison of sections of the bill with the English law, 239;
voluntary and involuntary bankruptcy under the bill, 240.
_An attempt to Repeal._--Repeal commenced at the outset of the
session, 395;
passed the House and lost in the Senate, 395;
repealed at the next session, 396;
the fate of the confederate bills, 396.
_Repeal._--A repeal of a great act of legislation by the same
Congress that passed it, 463;
a homage to the will of the people, 463;
remarks of Mr. Benton on offering a petition from the State of
Vermont for the repeal of the act, 463;
"the act unconstitutional in abolishing debts with the consent of
a given majority of the creditors, 463;
principles of the act of 1800, 464;
forms which the wisdom of the law provided for executing
itself, 464;
an invasion of the rights of the States over the ordinary
relations of debtor and creditor within their own
limits," 465;
the passage of the act has been a reproach to Congress, its repeal
should do them honor, and still more the people under whose
will it was done, 465;
a bankrupt act has never been favored by the American people, 465;
the system has been nearly intolerable in England, 466;
further remarks, 466.
An act to repeal promptly passed both houses, 503;
a splendid victory for the minority, who had resisted the passage
of the original bill, 503;
all the authorities had sustained the act, 503;
sense of the people revolted against it, 503;
former act repealed in two years, 503;
its repeal a bitter mortification to the administration, 503;
Cushing in defence of the act, 504;
extract, 504;
an unparliamentary reference to Mr. Clay, 504;
reply by Mr. Davis, 504;
Cushing upon the impotent attacks on the administration, 504;
extracts, 505;
the seductive arguments of persuasion and enticement used to gain
adherents to the new administration, 505;
appeals to the democratic party, 505;
reply of Mr. Thompson, 505;
Cushing states that there are persons connected with the
administration who will yet be heard of for the Presidency,
505;
indignant reply of Mr. Thompson, 505;
reproaches cast upon Cushing, 506;
Davis upon the charges of Cushing, 506;
his versatility in defending vetoes, 507.
_Banks, Suspension of Payment by._--Deranged finances and broken up
treasury awaited the nascent administration, 9;
two parties at work to accomplish it, 9;
condition of the banks, 9;
remarks of Senator Benton on the prospect, 9;
do on rescinding the specie circular, 10;
desperate condition of the deposit banks, 10;
proper amount of specie to be retained by the banks, 10;
amount retained by the Bank of England, 10;
amount retained by the deposit banks, 10;
conference between Senator Benton and Mr. Van Buren, 10;
remark of the latter, 10;
Senator Benton miffed, 10;
silence, 10;
course which might have been taken, 11;
benefits, 11.
_Preparations for the Distress and Suspension._--Characteristic
letter of Mr. Biddle, 11;
picture of ruin presented, alarm given out, and the Federal
government the cause, 11;
extracts, 11;
course followed in and out of Congress, 12;
reception of Mr. Webster in New York, 12;
the public meeting, 12;
cause of this demonstration, 12;
his speech a manifesto against Jackson's administration, a protest
against its continuation in the person of his successor, and
an invocation to a general combination against it, 13;
the ominous sentence of the speech, 13;
extract relating to the general distress, 13;
conclusion of the speech, 13;
its vehement appeal, 14;
the specie circular, 14;
the original draft, 14;
the rescinding bill, 15;
President Jackson's action, 15;
an experiment on the nerves of the President resolved on, 15.
Consequences of Webster's speech, 16;
an immense meeting, 16;
its resolves, 16;
the word "experiment," 16;
a committee of fifty to wait on the President, 17;
to call another meeting on their return, 17;
co-operation of other cities invited, 17;
state of feeling as characterized by the press, 17;
visit of the committee to the President, 18;
extract from their addresses, 18;
a written answer of complete refusal, 18;
their return, 18;
visit of Mr. Biddle to the President, 19;
a second meeting in New York, 19;
report, 19;
resolutions adopted, 19;
list of grievances, 19;
remarks, 20.
_Actual Suspension._--Suspension not recommended at any public
meeting, 20;
the suspension, 20;
proceedings, 20;
act of self-defence on the part of the deposit banks, 21;
course of the United States Bank, 21;
letter of Mr. Biddle, 21;
extracts, 21;
Webster's tour at the West and his speeches, 22;
first speech at Wheeling, 22;
extract, 22;
the time when the suspension was to take place, 22;
Bank of the United States to be the remedy, 23;
the contrivance of politicians now exposed, 23.
_Effects of the Suspension._--Disturbance in the business of the
country, 26;
depreciation of bank notes, 26;
disappearance of small specie, 26;
"better currency," 26;
"the whole hog," 26;
inflammatory publications of the press, 26;
extracts, 26;
government payments, 27;
the medium, 27;
condition of the administration, 27;
payment of the Tennessee volunteers, 27;
its effect, 27;
visit of the agent to Washington, 27;
extra session of Congress necessary, 28.
_Attempted Resumption._--Declaration of the Bank of the United
States of its ability to continue paying specie, 43;
resumption commenced in New York, 43;
resolution, 43;
committee of correspondence, 43;
opposition of the Philadelphia interest, 43;
the explanation, 43.
_Resumption of Specie Payments by the New York Banks._--The proposed
convention, 83;
frustrated by the United States Bank, 83;
Philadelphia banks refuse to co-operate, 83;
letter from Mr. Biddle to John Q. Adams, 83;
a characteristic sentence, 83;
his threat against the New York banks, 83;
a general bank convention, 83;
vote on resumption, 83;
reasons for the vote, 84;
resumption by the New York banks, 84;
resumption general, 84;
the United States Bank, 84;
her stock, 84;
her power, 84;
speech of Mr. Webster, expressing her wishes, 84;
her friends come to the rescue for the last time, 85;
Mr. Benton's remarks, 85.
"Two periods working the termination of a national bank charter,
each full of lessons, 85;
the two compared, 85;
the quantity of the currency, 86;
its solidity, 86;
it is said, there is no specie, 86;
the cause of the non-resumption is plain and undeniable, 87;
what say the New York City banks? 87;
extract from their report, 87;
the reasons, 87;
it is said there can be no resumption until Congress act on the
currency, 88;
conduct of the leading banks, 88;
the honest commercial banks have resumed or mean to resume, 89;
politicians propose to compel the government to receive paper
money for its dues, 89;
the pretext is to aid the banks in resuming, 89;
an enemy lies in wait for the banks, 89;
power of the United States Bank over others, 90;
the contrast between former and the present bank stoppages, 90;
justice to the men of this day," 91.
_Mr. Clay's Resolution in favor of Resuming Banks._--Proposed to
make the notes of resuming banks receivable in payment of
all dues to the Federal government, 91;
render assistance to the banks, 92.
No power can prevent the solvent banks from resuming, 92;
every solvent one in the country will resume in a few months, 92;
Congress cannot prevent them if it tried, 92;
the most revolting proposition ever made in Congress, 93;
proposition lost, 93.
_Divorce of Bank and State._--The bill is to declare the divorce and
the amendment is to exclude their notes from revenue
payments, 56;
this change to be made gradually, 56;
it will restore the currency of the constitution and re-establish
the great acts of 1789 and 1800, 56;
great evils--pecuniary, political, and moral--have flowed from
this departure from our constitution, 57;
loss to the government from the banks, 57;
losses from the local banks, 57;
comparison with steamboats, 57;
the case with the banks, 58;
the epoch of resumption is to be a perilous crisis to many, 58;
they fell in time of peace and prosperity, 58;
banks of circulation are banks of hazard and of failure, 58;
the power of a few banks over the whole presents a new feature in
our system, 58;
they have all become links of one chain, 59;
the government and its creditors must continue to sustain losses
if they continue to use such depositories and to receive
such paper, 59;
in an instant every disbursing officer in the Union was stripped
of the money he was going to pay out, 59;
it was tantamount to a disbandment of the entire government, 59;
it is a danger we have just escaped, 60;
the same danger may be seen again if we use them, 60;
what excuse have we for abandoning the precise advantage for which
the constitution was formed? 60;
the moral view of this question not examined, 60;
the government required to retrace its steps and to return to first
principles, 61;
what is the obstacle to the adoption of this course, 61;
the message recommends four things, 61;
the right and obligation of the government to keep its own moneys
in its own hands results from the law of self-preservation,
61;
England trusts none of her banks with the collection, keeping, and
disbursement of her public money, 62;
what were the "continental treasurers" of the confederation, 62;
bill reported by the Finance Committee, 62;
taunted with these treasury notes, 62;
the case of France on the occasion of the First Consul, 63;
French currency is the best in the world, 63;
Congress has a sacred duty to perform in reforming the finances
and the currency, 64;
this is a measure of reform worthy to be called a reformation, 65.
Destined to be carried into effect at this session, 164;
opposition to it, 164;
remarks of Mr. Clay, 164;
bill passed the Senate, 165;
passed the House under the previous question, 165;
the title of the bill, 165;
form in which opposition appeared, 165;
proceedings in the House, 166;
title passed by the operation of the previous question, 167.
_Banks, Specie basis for._--A point of great moment, 128;
well understood in England, 128;
vice of the banking system of this country, 128;
the motion intended to require the bank to keep a certain amount
of specie, 128;
testimony of Horsley Palmer, 128;
requirement on the Bank of England, 129;
the proportion in England is one-third, 129;
first object when a bank stops payment, 129;
the issuing of currency is the prerogative of sovereignty, 130;
proportion required of the deposit banks, 130;
effect of the Treasury order of 1836 upon them, 130.
_Bank Notes, Tax on._--Motion for leave to bring in a bill to tax
the circulation of banks, bankers, and all corporations
issuing paper money, 179;
nothing more just than that this interest should contribute to the
support of government, 179;
in other countries it was subject to taxation, 179;
has formerly been taxed in our country, 179;
manner of levying the bank tax in Great Britain, 180;
taxation of the Bank of England, 180;
equity of the tax, its simplicity, and large product, 180;
unknown how the banking interest would relish the proposition,
181;
petition of Stephen Girard, 181;
objects of the bill, 181.
_Banks, District, Re-charter of._--Amendment proposed to the bill
prohibiting the issue of bills less than five dollars, &c.,
273;
"the design is to suppress two evils of banking--that of small
notes and that of banks combining to sustain each other in
a state of suspension," 273;
shall notes banish gold and silver from the country? 274;
one a curse to the public, 274;
why are banks so fond of issuing these small notes? 274;
counterfeiting is of small notes, 274;
an Insurance Company of St. Louis, 275;
a proper opportunity to bring before the people the question
whether they should have an exclusive paper currency or
not, 275;
some merchants think there is no living without banks, 275.
_See Index_, vol. I.
BARBOUR, PHILIP P., decease of, 202;
his mess, 202;
his character, 203;
intellect, 203;
death, 203;
instance of self-denial and fidelity to party, 203;
position in Virginia, 203.
_See Index_, vol. I.
BARROW, SENATOR, decease of, 706;
early life, 706;
his character, 706;
his intellect 706;
youth, 706.
BATES, ISAAC C., on exempting salt from duty, 315.
BAYARD, R. H., on the slavery resolutions, 139.
BELL, JOHN, candidate for Speaker, 160;
Secretary at War, 209;
on the readiness of President Tyler to sign a second bank bill,
343, 346;
his reasons for resigning his seat in President Tyler's cabinet,
355.
BENTON, THOMAS H., on the bankrupt act for banks, 45;
on the divorce of bank and State, 56;
on the Florida war, 72;
on bank resumption, 85;
on the graduation bill, 126;
on the armed occupation of Florida, 167;
on the assumption of State debts, 172;
on the salt tax, 176;
on the tax on bank notes, 179;
on the drawback on refined sugar, 190;
on fishing bounties and allowances, 194;
on the bankrupt bill, 234;
on the nature and effect of the previous question, 253;
on the bill for the relief of Mrs. Harrison, 262;
on the issue of small bills, 273;
on the action of the administration in the McLeod affair, 291;
on the repeal of the tariff compromise, 312;
on the committee on the bank bill, 336;
offers amendment to the second bank bill, 338;
moves to arrest the persons who hissed in the Senate gallery, 351;
against the Fiscal plan of Mr. Tyler, 375, 376;
on paper money payments, 406;
on the merits of the British treaty, 426;
on the North-eastern boundary, 438;
on the North-western boundary, 441;
on the expenses of the Navy, 456;
on the Oregon bill, 474;
eulogy on Linn, 485;
on the Chinese mission, 512;
on the annexation of Texas, 619;
on the authorship of the war with Mexico, 689;
on the Oregon question, 667;
his plan for conducting the Mexican war, 678;
designed for the appointment of Lieutenant-General, 678;
on the expedition of Col. Doniphan, 684;
advice relative to the conduct of the war against the northern
frontiers of Mexico, 687;
advises with the President relative to the prosecution of the war,
693;
his reply to Calhoun's question respecting his support of the
latter's resolutions, 697;
on the cause that may dissolve the Union, 715;
on Clay's compromise plan, 749;
on the protest of Southern Senators, 771.
_See Index_, vol. I.
BIBB, GEORGE M., Secretary of the Treasury, 569.
_See Index_, vol. I.
BIDDLE, NICHOLAS, his letters, 11, 24;
visits the President, 19;
his letter to J. Q. Adams, 83;
decease of, 567;
BLACK, Mr., on the appropriation for the Military Academy, 468.
BLAIR, FRANCIS P., statement of the declaration of Mr. Polk relative
to the mode of Texas annexation, 637.
_See Index_, vol. I.
BOTTS, JOHN M., on the protest of President Tyler, 419.
BREDON, Mr., on the nomination of Van Buren, 593.
BREWSTER, Mr., on the nomination of Van Buren, 592.
_Brig Somers_, Mutiny on board. _See Somers._
_British Treaty._--The Maine boundary still unsettled, 420;
particulars of the case, 420;
subject referred to the King of the Netherlands, 420;
his award rejected, 420;
Ashburton appointed on a special mission, 420;
professing to come to settle all questions--only such were settled
as suited Great Britain, 421;
points embraced in the treaty, 421;
points omitted, 421;
return of Ashburton, 421;
thanks of Parliament to him, 421;
discussion in Parliament, 422;
the map having the original line of the North-eastern boundary
hidden from Lord Ashburton's, 422;
remark of Brougham, 422;
his speech when charged with a want of frankness to this country,
422;
extract, 422;
sport in the British Parliament, 422;
map shown to Mr. Everett, 423;
statement of the result of the treaty on this point by an English
speaker, 423;
manner of conducting the negotiations, 423;
no instructions given to the Secretary of State, 423;
remarks of Mr. Benton, 423;
the action of certain Senators forestalled, 424;
the treaty or war was the constant alternative presented, 424;
remarks of Mr. Benton, 424;
extract, 424;
his remarks on the unsettled points of difficulty, 425.
Mr. Benton's remarks on the merits of the treaty, 426;
"four subjects omitted--the Columbia River and valley,
impressment, the outrage on the Caroline, and the liberation
of American slaves, 426.
"The Oregon territory, 426;
remark on the President's message relative to its omission from
the negotiation, 426;
the American title to the Columbia River and its valley stated,
426, 427;
the treaty of 1818, 427;
its great fault, 428;
another fault was in admitting a claim on the part of Great
Britain to any portion of these territories, 428;
our title under the Nootka Sound treaty, 428;
Sir Alexander McKenzie, 429;
the British title to the Columbia, 429;
it is asked, what do we want of this country so far off from
us? 430;
the value and extent of the country, 430.
"Impressment is another of the omitted subjects, 430;
correspondence upon it, 431;
manner in which it was treated, 431;
how different this holiday scene from the firm and virile language
of Mr. Jefferson, 432;
if this treaty is ratified, we must begin where we were in 1806,
432.
"The case of the liberated slaves of the Creole is another of the
omitted subjects, 432;
only one of a number of cases recently occurred, 432;
peculiarity of these cases, 433;
each of these vessels should have been received with the
hospitality due to misfortune, and allowed to depart with
all convenient dispatch and with all her contents, of
persons and property, 433;
remarks of the President's message, 433;
the grounds taken by the Government and the engagements entered
into by the British Minister, examined, 433;
Lord Ashburton proposes London as the best place to consider this
subject, 434.
"The burning of the Caroline, another of the omitted subjects,
434;
this case is now near four years old, 435;
the note of Lord Ashburton sent to us by the President, 435;
it is said there is a certain amount of gullibility in the public
mind which must be provided for, 436;
the letter of our Secretary, 436;
the whole negotiation has been one of shame and injury, but this
catastrophe of the Caroline puts the finishing hand to our
disgrace, 437;
the timing of this negotiation after the retirement of Mr. Van
Buren, and when the Government was in more pliable hands, 437;
further remarks, 437."
_The North-eastern Boundary Article._--Remarks of Mr. Benton. The
establishment of the low land boundary in place of the
mountain boundary, and parallel to it, 438;
contrived for the purpose of weakening our boundary and retiring
it further from Quebec, 438;
character of this line, 438;
remarks, 438;
a palliation attempted, 439;
letters on the subject, 439;
plea of Ashburton, 440;
to mitigate the enormity of this barefaced sacrifice, a
description of the soil given, 440;
report of Mr. Buchanan and the resolution of the Senate, 440;
the award of the King of the Netherlands infinitely better for
us, 441.
_North-western Boundary._--"The line from the Lake of the Woods to
the Mississippi, was disputable, 441;
that from Lake Superior to the Lake of the Woods described, 442;
proposition of a British traveller to turn the line down from
Isle-Royale near two hundred miles to St. Louis River, 442;
reasons, 442;
words of Ashburton, 443;
what he claimed, he got, 443;
the value of the concession, 443;
the Secretary put himself to the trouble to hunt testimony to
justify his surrender of the northern route to the British,
443;
his letter, 443;
answer of Mr. Ferguson, 444;
do. of Mr. Delafield, 444;
the answers refused to follow the lead of the questions, asked,"
444.
_Extradition Article._--"It stipulates for the mutual surrender of
fugitive criminals, 444;
no light on the origin, progress, and formation of this article,
445;
this is a subject long since considered in our country, 445;
Jefferson's views, 445;
these surrenders could only be under three limitations, 445;
his proposition, 445;
compared with the article of the treaty, 445;
it is said to be copied from the article in Jay's treaty, 446;
the two articles, 446;
difference between them, 446;
another essential difference, which nullifies the article in its
material bearing, 447;
words of the message relative to this article, 448;
nothing can be more deceptive and fallacious than its
recommendation, 448;
what offences are embraced, and what excluded," 448.
_African Squadron for the Suppression of the Slave Trade._--Nothing
in relation to the subject in the shape
of negotiation is communicated to us, 449;
the immediate and practical effects which lie within our view, and
display the enormous expediency of the measure, 449;
the expense in money, 449;
in what circumstances do we undertake all this fine work? 450;
Great Britain is not the country to read us a lesson upon the
atrocity of the slave trade, or to stimulate our exertions
to suppress it, 450;
these articles of the treaty bind us in this alliance with Great
Britain, 451;
the papers communicated do not show at whose instance these
articles were inserted, 451.
BROUGHAM, LORD, speech relative to the Ashburton treaty, 422.
BROWN, CHARLES, on the coast survey, 488.
BUCHANAN, JAMES, his proposition relative to the deposit fund, 37;
on the slavery resolutions, 138;
on the committee on the bank bill, 337;
on the disorder in the Senate gallery, 351;
on the Missouri Compromise line, 633;
Secretary of State, 650.
_See Index_, vol. I.
BUTLER, BENJAMIN F., Attorney-General, 9;
resigns, 9;
on the adoption of the two-thirds rule in the democratic
convention, 591.
_See Index_, vol. I.
BUTLER, WILLIAM O., on the action of the administration in the
McLeod affair, 291;
nominated for the Vice-Presidency, 722.
C
CALHOUN, JOHN C., debate with Clay, 97;
justifies his resolutions, 139;
resolution relative to the liberation of slaves in British
colonial ports, 182;
in opposition to the war rule, 250;
against the previous question, 255;
on the passage of the bill declaring war in 1812, 256;
passage with Clay, 257;
on the bill for the relief of Mrs. Harrison, 260;
on the naval pension act, 267;
on the repeal of the compromise, 311, 312, 313;
on exempting salt from duty, 316;
on expenditures, 397;
on naval expenditures, 452;
on the Oregon settlement bill, 471;
appointed Secretary of State, 569;
opens negotiations on Oregon, 661;
offers resolutions relative to slavery, 696;
in relation to the Oregon territorial bill, 711, 714;
on the dissolution of the Union, 715;
on extending the constitution to territories, 730;
his last speech, 744, 769.
Decease of, 747;
eulogium by Senator Butler, 747;
birth, 747;
student, 747;
a member of Congress, 747;
his fellow-members, 747;
his political career, 748;
rank as a parliamentary speaker, 748.
_See Index_, vol. I.
_California, Admission of._--The test question in the great slavery
agitation, 769;
remarks of Calhoun in his last speech, 769;
passage of the bill, 769;
protest of ten Senators opposed to it, 769;
extract, 769;
the signers, 770;
question of reception raised, 770;
remarks of Senator Benton, 771;
reception refused, 772.
_Caroline_, a steamboat, her destruction, 278.
CASS, LEWIS, on the fugitive slave bill, 779;
nominated for the Presidency, 722.
_See Index_, vol. I.
CATRON, JOHN, Judge of the Supreme Court, 9.
_Cessio bonorum_, the law of, 236.
_Chinese Mission._--Bill reported to provide the means of opening
future intercourse between the United States and China, 510;
extract from the bill, 510;
objectionable features of the bill, 510;
the act of 1790, 510;
moved to strike out the restrictions to the use of the money, 510;
remarks of Mr. Merriweather in opposition to the amendment, 511;
further debate, 511;
McKeon in opposition to the whole scheme, 511;
amendment adopted, 512;
bill passed, 512.
Mr. Cushing takes no part in the discussion, 518;
bill called up in the Senate at midnight on the last day, 512;
Mr. Benton's remarks against the mission, 512;
"no necessity for a treaty with China, 512;
the outfit, 512;
ill framed after the act of 1790," 513;
further debate, 513;
amendment carried, that no agent be appointed without the consent
of the Senate, 514;
no nomination made before the adjournment, 514;
Mr. Cushing appointed in the recess, 514;
remarks, 514;
outfit of the minister, 515;
his embarkation, 515;
arrival, 515;
address to the Governor-General of Canton, 515;
reply, 515;
correspondence, 515;
no necessity for a treaty of commerce on the part of the United
States, 515;
remarks, 516;
Mr. Cushing objects to delay to send to Pekin, 516;
extracts, 516, 517;
threats, &c., 517;
remonstrance of the Governor, 517;
a salute to the ship demanded, 518;
remonstrance of the Governor, 518;
threats of war to China, 518;
reply of the Governor, 519;
rejoinder of Mr. Cushing, 519;
further complaints from Mr. Cushing, 519;
answer from the Emperor, 520;
arrival of a commissioner to treat, 520;
difficulty, 520;
justification for not going to Pekin, 521;
remarks, 521;
effect of the publication of the correspondence, 522.
CLARK, J. C., in the Chinese mission, 501.
CLAY AND CALHOUN--_Debate between_.--Calhoun's co-operation with
Clay and Webster, 97;
co-operates with the democrats, 97;
feelings of the opposition, 97;
a feeling of personal resentment against Calhoun, 97;
Clay's talent for philippic, 97;
bursting of the storm, 97;
Calhoun's speech in favor of the Independent Treasury, 97;
answer of Mr. Clay, 97;
time for preparation, 98;
the attack on Calhoun, 98;
his reply, 98;
rejoinder of Mr. Clay, 99;
rejoinders, 99;
attempted excuse of Clay for making the attack, 99;
the Edgefield letter, 99;
character of this contest between two eminent men, and of their
oratory, 99;
Fox and Burke, 100;
remarkable passages in the speeches of each, 100;
remarks, 100;
Mr. Clay's speech, 101.
"Who are most conspicuous of those pressing this bill upon
Congress and the American people? 101;
its endorser the Senator from South Carolina, 101;
intimated that my course in opposing the bill was unpatriotic,
101;
the arduous contest in which we were so long engaged was about to
terminate in a glorious victory, 102;
at this critical moment the Senator left us, 102;
the speech of the Senator, 102;
the alternatives presented, 102;
if we denounced the pet bank system, must we take a system
infinitely worse? 103;
attack upon the whole banking system of the United States, 103;
the doctrine of 1816, 103;
we concur in nothing now," 103.
Reply of Mr. Calhoun, 103;
"he has not even attempted to answer a large and not the least
weighty portion of my remarks, 104;
the introduction of personal remarks, which cannot pass unnoticed,
104;
no shadow of a pretext for this attack, 104;
what can be his motive? 104;
the weakness of his cause has led him to personalities, 104;
the leading charge is that I have left his side and joined the
other, 105;
three questions involved in the present issue, 105;
remarks four years ago, 105;
another reference to the record, 105;
the measure of renewing the charter of the bank, 106;
relations with Mr. Webster, 106;
statement of his past course by further reference to speeches,
107;
the charge of desertion falls prostrate to the ground, 107;
the first fruits of union in the attack would have been a national
bank, 108;
explanation of views expressed in the Edgefield letter, 108;
further explanation of views entertained, 109;
present political position, 110;
the attack on my intellectual faculties, 110;
qualities wanting in Clay's mind, 110;
commencement of Calhoun's public life, 111;
support of the Navy, 111;
the restrictive system opposed, 111;
the bank proposed in 1814, 111;
administration of the War Department, 112;
the Vice-President's chair," 112.
Rejoinder of Mr. Clay, 112;
"anxious to avoid all personal controversy, 112;
a painful duty, 112;
ever anxious to think well of Calhoun, 112;
the Edgefield letter, 112;
extract, 113;
nullification overthrew the protective policy! 113;
it sanctioned the constitutional power it had so strongly
controverted, 113;
no one ever supposed the protective policy would be perpetual,
113;
further extract from the Edgefield letter, 114;
he has left no party and joined no party, 114;
charges me with going over on some occasion, 114;
the stale calumny of George Kremer, 114;
who went in 1825, 115;
charges me with always riding some hobby, 115;
he is free from all reproach of sticking to hobbies," 115.
Rejoinder of Mr. Calhoun, 116;
"the Senator tells us that he is among the most constant men in
this world, 116;
his speech remarkable both for its omissions and mistakes," 116.
Rejoinder of Mr. Clay, 116;
"he says, if I have not changed principles, I have at least got
into strange company, 117;
extract from his speeches, 117;
the dispute about the protection of cotton manufacture," 117.
Rejoinders, 118;
conclusion, 118;
reconciliation of Calhoun with Van Buren, 118;
sinister motives charged, 119;
further taunts of Mr. Clay, 119;
the change of Clay to the side of Adams, 119;
expositions of the compromise of 1833, 119;
bargain charged between Clay and Adams, 120;
remarks, 120;
Calhoun for the succession, 120;
Calhoun and Van Buren, 120;
source of the real disorders of the country, 121;
Adams and Clay, 121;
the threat of Gen. Jackson, 120;
the compromise measure, 122;
Webster on the side of Jackson at the time of nullification, 122;
"he my master," 123;
further remarks, 123.
CLAY, HENRY, on the slavery resolutions, 138;
offers a programme of measures for Tyler's administration, 219;
proposes to introduce the hour rule in the Senate, 250;
on exempting salt from duty, 316;
on the veto of the bank by President Tyler, 318;
his feelings on the veto of the bank bill by President Tyler, 356.
_Retirement of._--Resigns his seat in the Senate, and delivers a
valedictory address, 398;
reasons, 398;
formally announces his retirement, 399;
extract, 399;
period at which he had formed the design of retiring, 399;
time when the design was really formed, 399;
could have been elected when Harrison was, 399;
that triumph a fruitless one, 399;
reasons for not resigning at the time intended, 400;
reasons for appearing at the regular session, 400;
the formation of a new cabinet wholly hostile to him, and the
attempt to take the whig party from him, 400;
the failure of his measures, 400;
review of the past, 401;
extract, 401;
thanks to his friends, 401;
notice of foes, 401;
imputation of the dictatorship, 402;
extract, 402;
secret of Clay's leadership, 402;
forgiveness implored for offences, 402;
a tribute to Crittenden, 403;
a motion to adjourn, 403;
the criticism of Senators on the valedictory, 403.
Candidate for the Presidency in 1844, 625.
His plan for a compromise, 742;
all measures to be settled in one bill, 742;
the manner, 742;
failure, 742.
Resolution respecting slavery in New Mexico, 743;
Davis advocates the extension of the Missouri Compromise to the
Pacific, 743;
reply of Mr. Clay, 743;
vote 744;
Senator Benton's speech against it, 749;
a bill of thirty-nine sections pressed upon us as a remedy for the
national calamities, 749;
no political distress, 749;
a parcel of old bills which might each have been passed by itself
long ago, 750;
how did the committee get possession of these bills? 750;
the California bill made the scape-goat of all, 750;
reasons for urging the conjunction of the State and Territories,
751;
the territorial government bills are now the object, and put with
the California bill to make them more certain, 752;
all the evils of incongruous conjunctions here exemplified, 753;
the compensation to California, 754;
the reasons of the committee present grave errors in law, both
constitutional and municipal, and of geography and history,
754;
features of the Texas bill, 755;
division line of New Mexico and Texas, 756;
the possession of New Mexico continuous, &c., 757;
further remarks on the original territory of New Mexico, 758;
question of large emancipation, 759;
grounds for refusal to extend slavery into New Mexico, 760;
the point of the true objection to the extension of slavery
mistaken, 760;
fugitive slave bill and slave trade suppression in the District of
Columbia, 761;
no parties to the compromise, 762;
Dr. Jacob Townsend and Dr. Samuel Townsend, 763;
further remarks, 764, 765;
rejection of Clay's plan, 768.
_See Index_, vol. I.
CLAYTON, JOHN M., Secretary of State, 737.
_See Index_, vol. I.
_Coast Survey._--Its origin, 487;
growth and importance, 487;
become a civil department almost, 487;
efforts to restore the naval superintendence, 488;
movement for its re-organization, 488;
remarks of Mr. B. Mallory in support of it, 488;
proposition to reduce the appropriation and to transfer the work
from the Treasury to the Navy Department, to be done by army
and naval officers, 488;
an examination of the laws on the subject, 482, 490;
proposition rejected, 491;
another made and rejected, 491.
Belongs to the Navy Department, 726;
manner of its execution in Great Britain, 727;
the great cost of the survey, 727;
the Navy should do the whole and get the credit, 728;
our Bureau of Hydrography has only a divided and subordinate part
of the survey, 728;
our officers not incompetent, 728;
our Navy large and nearly idle, 729.
COBB, HOWELL C., chosen Speaker, 740.
COLLAMER, JACOB, Postmaster General, 737.
_Committee_ of fifty to wait on the President, 17.
_Congress_, extra session, 28;
its members, 28;
their character, 29;
first session of the twenty-sixth convenes, 158;
its members, 158;
New Jersey contested election, 159;
first session of twenty-seventh, 213;
its members, 213;
difficulty of organization, 215;
first session of twenty-eighth, 563;
its members, 563;
organization of the House, 565;
twenty-ninth convenes, 655;
list of members, 655;
election of Speaker, 656;
meeting of the second session of the twenty-ninth, 677;
first session of the thirtieth, 702;
its members, 702, 703;
first session of thirty-first, 738;
its members, 738, 739;
numerous ballots for Speaker, 740.
CONRAD, CHARLES M., Secretary at War, 768.
_Contested Election of New Jersey._--Two sets of members, 159;
one set holding the certificates, the other claiming to have
received a majority of the votes, 159;
both referred to the committee of contested elections, 159;
House organize, 159;
issue put on the rights of the voters, 159;
the result, 160;
the contest in the House for Speaker, 160;
its result, 160;
its causes, 160.
CORWIN, THOMAS, Secretary of the Treasury, 768.
CRAWFORD, GEORGE W., Secretary at War, 737.
CRAWFORD, WILLIAM H., decease of, 562;
a great man, who became greater as he was closely examined, 562;
his appearance in 1821, 563;
a formidable candidate for the Presidency, 563;
pulled down in 1824, 563;
service in the Senate, 563;
talents, 563;
Minister to France, 563;
Secretary of the Treasury, 563;
a dauntless foe to nullification, 563.
_Creole, the American brig._--A case of slaves liberated by British
authorities while on the voyage from one American port to
another, 409;
brig bound from Richmond to New Orleans, mutiny and massacre by
the slaves, 409;
affidavit of the master at Nassau, N. P.--proceedings at Nassau,
410, 411;
this was the fifth of such outrages, 411;
the Caroline affair still unatoned for, 411;
call upon the President for information, 411;
remarks of Mr. Calhoun on moving a reference to the Committee on
Foreign relations, 411;
despatch of the Secretary of State, 412;
approved in the Senate, 413;
allusion to the mission of Lord Ashburton, 413.
CRITTENDEN, JOHN J., on the slavery resolutions, 138;
Attorney General, 209;
reasons for resigning his seat in President Tyler's Cabinet, 356;
eulogy on Dean, 487;
Attorney General, 768.
_See Index_, vol. I.
CUSHING, CALEB, attack on the President's message, 33;
on the organization of the House, 215;
defends the Administration in the McLeod affair, 289;
opposes the reduction of certain missions, 305;
replies to the Whig manifesto against Mr. Tyler, 359;
report on the third fiscal agent, 394;
in defence of the Bankrupt Act, 504;
his nomination rejected in the Senate, 629.
D
DALLAS, GEORGE M., elected Vice-President, 625.
_Danish Sound Dues._--Report of Mr. Webster, 362;
"the right of Denmark to levy these dues, 362;
recognized by European governments in several treaties, 362;
the tariff of 1645 never been revised, 362;
other charges, 363;
American commerce," 363;
negotiations to obtain the benefit of all reductions recommended,
363;
remarks, 364;
success of these recommendations, 364;
commerce of different nations through the Sound, 364.
DAVIS, G., reply to Mr. Cushing, 504, 506.
DAVIS JOHN W., chosen Speaker, 656.
DEAN, EZRA, on the home squadron, 577.
_Democratic Convention._--A motley assemblage, 591;
almost all under instructions for Mr. Van Buren, 591;
Van Buren to be nominated on the first ballot, unless a movement
made, 591;
motion to adopt the two-thirds rule, 591;
objected to as in violation of a fundamental principle, 591;
remarks of Morton, 591;
Butler enforces the majority rule, 591;
remarks, 591;
adoption of the rule, 592;
the ballotings, 592;
moved that Mr. Van Buren, having received a majority, be declared
nominated, 592;
violent debate, 592;
division in the Pennsylvania delegation, 593;
Van Buren withdrawn and Polk nominated, 594;
a surprise and a marvel to the country, 594;
nomination and declining of Silas Wright for the Vice-Presidency,
594;
object of stating these facts, 595.
_Refusal of Mr. Calhoun to submit his name._--His objections, 596;
the mode of choosing the delegates, and the manner of their
giving their votes, 596;
extract, 596;
the convention not constituted in conformity to the fundamental
articles of the republican creed, 596;
the working of the constitution on an election, 596;
Congressional presidential caucuses put down by the will of the
people, 597;
convention system more objectionable than the Congressional
caucus, 597;
the objection to the convention system that States voted which
could not aid in the election, 598;
extract, 598;
the danger of centralizing the nomination in the hands of a few
States by the present mode, 598;
danger of throwing the nomination into the meshes of a train-band
of office-holders and office-seekers, 598;
any President may now nominate his successor, 599;
remarks, 599.
_Deposits with the States, retention of._--Terms of the deposit, 36;
amounts deposited, 36;
wants of the Treasury, 36;
the cheat of the bill, 36;
bill to postpone the fourth instalment, 36;
its reception, 36;
remarks of Webster, 36;
of others, 36;
proposition of Mr. Buchanan, 37;
remarks of Mr. Niles, 37;
proposition carried, 37;
principle of the deposit act reversed, 37;
a disposition in the House to treat the act as a contract, and to
enforce it, 37;
remarks of Cushing on this point, 37;
remarks, 38;
carried, 38;
reconsidered and postponed to January 1st, 1839, 38;
fourth instalment finally relinquished, 38;
end of this scheme, 39;
remarks, 39.
DICKERSON, MAHLON, Secretary of the Navy, 9.
_Dictatorship_ charged upon Mr. Clay, 359.
_Distribution of the Public Lands Revenue._--Two hundred millions
due from states and corporations to Europe, 240;
indirect assumption by giving the public lands revenue recommended
by President Tyler, 241;
a violation of the constitution, 241;
remarks of Calhoun, 241;
what a time for squandering this patrimony, 241;
indebtedness, 241;
state of the national defences, 242;
picture of taxation in England, 242;
an open exertion of a foreign interest to influence our
legislation manifested, 243;
remarks of Fernando Wood, 243;
remarks of Mr. Benton, 243;
the bill denounced as unconstitutional, 244;
the constitution was not made to divide money, 244;
bill bound to pass, 245;
its features, 245;
supposed this scheme would be popular, 245;
passed, 245;
the course of these distribution bills, 246;
remarks, 247.
_Disunion movements._--Extract from a South Carolina paper, 780;
an organ of disunion established at Washington, 781;
disunion convention at Nashville, 781;
reasons given by the States for their action, 781;
an issue of fact taken on their truth, 781;
declarations of speakers in the South Carolina Legislature, 782,
783;
extracts from public addresses, 783;
Fourth of July toasts, 784;
failure of a Southern Congress, 784;
interpretation of Calhoun's last speech, 784;
changes in the causes ascribed for disunion, 785;
inauguration of the slavery agitation, how it was done, 786;
views of Mr. Madison, 786.
DOUGLAS, STEPHEN A., moves to extend the Missouri Compromise line
to the Pacific, 711.
DREW, CAPTAIN, his report of the capture of the Caroline, 279.
E
_Electric Telegraph._--Concerted signals for communicating
intelligence, 578;
first telegraphs, 578;
idea of using electricity first broached by Dr. Franklin, 578;
Prof. Morse gave practical application to the idea, 578;
his progress in the invention, 578;
application to Congress, 578;
results as relates to public defence, 578.
EWING, THOMAS, Secretary of the Treasury, 209;
states the readiness of President Tyler to sign a second bank
bill, 343-345;
reasons for resigning his seat in President Tyler's cabinet, 354;
Secretary of the Home Department, 737.
_See Index_, vol. I.
_Exchequer Board._--The plan for a bank proposed by President Tyler,
376;
Mr. Benton's speech against it, 376;
"we have gone back beyond the times of Hamilton, 376;
to those of Walpole and Queen Anne, 376;
the administration of Walpole, the fountain-head of British woes,
377;
extract from Smollett's continuation of Hume, 377;
corporations brought into existence by him, 377;
further extract, 378;
contrast with those in the United States, 378;
corporation credit ruined by the explosions of banks and companies
in both countries, 379;
the origin of our exchequer scheme, 379;
the manner in which this exchequer system has worked in England,
and from its workings there we may judge of its workings
here, 380;
amount of exchequer bills issued, 380;
the rapid growth and dangerous perversion of such issues, 381;
the British debt is the fruit of the exchequer system in Great
Britain, the same that we are now urged to adopt and under
the same circumstances, 381;
let no one say the exchequer and funding system will not work in
the same way in this country, 382;
if there were a thousand constitutional provisions in favor of
paper money, I should still be against it on account of its
own inherent baseness and vice, 383;
remarks of Webster on hard money in 1816, 383;
felicitation of the Senator from Virginia over these exchequer
bills, 384;
remark of Hamilton against Government paper money, 385;
division of the Whigs, 385;
the Tyler-Webster Whigs for Government banking, 385;
what are the pretexts for this flagrant attempt? 385;
distress still the staple of all whig speeches made here, 386;
action of the Biddle King Bank, 386;
was not all distress to cease when the democracy were turned out?
387;
the cry is distress! and the remedy a national poultice of
lamp-black and rags;
a national currency of uniform value, and universal circulation is
what modern whigs demand, meaning all the while a national
currency of paper money, 388;
specie acquisitions during the last twenty years, 388;
Gallatin on the quantity of gold and silver in Europe and America,
388;
points upon which the statesman's attention should be fixed, 388;
the quantity of paper money per head which any nation can use,
389;
the facility with which any industrious country can supply itself
with a hard money currency, 390;
the currency of Cuba, 390;
Holland and Cuba have the best currencies in the world, 391;
no abundant currency, low interest, and facility of loans except
in hard money countries, 391;
the soldiers of Mark Antony, 391;
people believe the old continental bills are to be revived and
restored to circulation by the Federal Government, 392;
proposition to supply the administration with these old bills,
instead of putting out a new emission, 393;
advantages of the old bills," 393.
The measure immediately taken up in either branch of Congress,
394;
a select committee of the House, 394;
report, 394;
extracts, 394;
the measure recommended for adoption, 394;
the bill, 395;
died a natural death, 395;
committee of the Senate discharged from the consideration of the
measure, 395.
_Expenditures of the Government._--Tendency of all governments to
increase their expenses, and it should be the care of all
statesmen to restrain them, 198;
economy a principle in the political faith of the Republican
party, 198;
gradual increase, 198;
report of the Secretary on the ordinary and extraordinary payments
and the public debts, 199;
three branches of public expenditure, 199;
evils of extravagance, 199;
room for reduction, 199;
speech of Senator Benton, 200;
"character and contents of the tables reported by the Secretary of
the Treasury, 200;
expenses of 1824 and of 1839 compared, 200;
expenses of 1824, 201;
expenses of 1889, 201;
further remarks on the statements," 202.
The civil list, its expenditures, 397;
extract from Calhoun's speech, 397;
"the contingent expenses of the two Houses of Congress, 398;
increased expense of collecting the duties on imports," 398;
facts to be gleaned from these statements, 398.
_Expense of the Navy._--The naval policy of the United States a
question of party division from the origin of parties, 452;
the policy of a great navy developed with great vigor under Mr.
Tyler, 452;
recommendations of the new Secretary, 452;
remarks of Mr. Calhoun, 452;
"aggregate expense of the British navy in 1840, 452;
its force, 453; force of our navy, 453;
the great increase proposed in the navy over last year is at the
head of the objects of retrenchment, 453;
expenses of the government of three classes, 453;
estimates," 453;
remarks of Mr. Woodbury, 454;
extract, 454;
present naval establishment a war rate, 455;
limitations of the act of 1806, 455;
increase carried, 455;
remarks of Mr. Benton, 456.
"The attempt made in 1822 to limit and fix a naval peace
establishment, 456;
actual state of the navy in 1841 and 1842, 456;
extract from Bayard's report, 456;
examine the plan in its parts, and see the enormity of its
proportions, 457;
the cost of each gun afloat, and the number of men to work it,
457;
I am asked how I get at these $9,000 cost for each gun afloat,
458;
correctness of the statement, 458;
Clay's resolutions, 459;
it is an obligation of imperious duty on Congress to arrest the
present state of things, to turn back the establishment to
what it was a year ago," 459.
Remarks of Mr. Merriweather, 482;
no hostility to the service led to a desire to reduce the pay of
the navy, 482;
pay at different periods, 482, 483;
fifty thousand dollars required to defray the expenses of
court-martials the present year, 483;
further points on which reduction can be made, stated, 484.
Annual appropriation considered, 507;
amendment moved to reduce number of master-mates, 507;
remarks of Cave Johnson, 507;
"should have a peace establishment for the navy as well as the
army, 507;
table of the British service, 507;
expenditures, 508;
squadrons," 508.
Principle of a naval force establishment nowhere developed, 508;
the amount of danger must be considered to measure the amount of
a naval peace establishment, 508;
remarks of Mr. Hamlin on abuses in the navy, 509;
enormous increase in the number of officers of the navy, 509;
items of extravagance, 509;
Hale's remarks on the abuses in the navy expenditures, and the
irresponsibility of officers, 509;
excess of navy-yards, 509;
no results attended the movement, 509.
_See Index_, vol. I.
"_Experiment_," the staple word of distress oratory, 16.
_Explosion of the Great Gun._--Excursion on board the Princeton,
567;
the company, 567;
the day, 567;
the guns of the vessel, 567;
trip down the Potomac, 567;
the firing, 568;
the President called back as he was about to witness it, 568;
the explosion, 568;
the fatal results, 568;
the effect on Col. Benton of the concussion, 569.
F
FEATHERSTONHAUGH, Mr., remarks on the results of the Ashburton
Treaty, 423.
FICKLIN, ORLANDO, on the appropriation for the military academy,
468.
FILLMORE, MILLARD, on the veto of the provisional tariff, 415;
candidate for Vice-President, 722;
elected, 723;
his inauguration as President, 767;
first official act, 767;
public funeral of Gen. Taylor, 763.
_Florida Armed Occupation Bill._--Armed occupation, with land to the
occupant, is the true way of settling and holding a conquered
country, 167;
fashion to depreciate the services of the troops in Florida, 168;
besides their military labors, our troops have done an immensity
of service of a different kind, 168;
the military have done their duty, and deserved well of their
country, 169;
the massacre on the banks of the Calvosahatchee, 169;
the plan of Congress has been tried and ended disastrously, 169;
we have to choose between granting the means, or doing nothing,
170;
Florida cannot be abandoned, 170;
it is the armed settler alone whose presence announces dominion,
170;
this is the most efficient remedy, 171;
the peninsula is a desolation, 171.
_Florida Indian War._--See _Indian War_.
_Florida and Iowa_, admission of, 660;
admitted by a single bill, 660;
arose from the antagonistic provisions on the subject of Slavery,
660;
free and slave States thus numerically even, 660.
_See Index_, vol. I.
_Foreign Missions, Reduction of._--Moved to strike from the
appropriation bill the salaries of some missions, 305;
question how far the House had a right to interfere with these
missions, and control them by withholding compensation, 305;
"the appointment of ministers gives them certain vested rights,"
305;
idea of vested rights scouted, 306;
time to inquire into their propriety when voting the salaries,
306;
remarks of Mr. Ingersoll, 306;
resolution of Mr. Adams to reduce the expenditures by reducing
the number of ministers, 306;
the subject should be pursued, and the object accomplished, 306;
many branches belong to the inquiry, 306.
FORSYTH, JOHN, Secretary of State, 9;
decease of, 659;
career of honor, 659;
connection with Crawford, 659;
rank as a debater, 659;
in social life, 659.
FORWARD, WALTER, Secretary of the Treasury, 356.
FRANKLIN, WALTER S., elected Clerk, 29.
FRAZER, Mr., on the nomination of Van Buren, 593.
FRELINGHUYSEN, THEODORE, candidate for the Vice-Presidency in 1844,
625.
FRENCH, B. B., chosen Clerk of the House, 656;
chosen clerk, 703.
FREMONT, JOHN C.--His first expedition to the Rocky Mountains, 478;
how it came about, 478;
Senator Linn moves the printing of the report of this expedition,
478;
remarks upon the objects and results of the expedition 478-479.
_Second Expedition._--Its grand results, 579;
not an offspring of the Government, 579;
countermanded after it began, 579;
his wife retains the countermanding order, and the expedition goes
forward, 579;
her conduct approved by her father, 579;
occasion of countermanding the expedition, 579;
object of the expedition, 580;
maps up to that time, 580;
crossing the mountains, 580;
progress south, 581;
discoveries, 581;
return of Fremont, 581.
_Third Expedition._--When commenced, 688;
the line of observation, 688;
start for Oregon, 689;
overtaken by two men, 689;
a messenger from the Government, 689;
turns towards California, 689;
the night of the interview, 690;
attack of savages, 690;
succeeding events, 690;
arrival in the Valley of Sacramento, 691;
three great operations going on, 691;
deputation of American settlers, 691;
approach of Castro, 691;
California secured as an independent country, 691;
efforts of Great Britain to secure the country, 692;
how the prize escaped them, 692;
remarks, 692.
_Court Martialled._--Brought home a prisoner from his third
expedition, 715;
speech of Lieut. Emory, 715;
his offence in the eyes of officers of the army, 716;
specifications of mutiny, 716;
justice to Gen. Kearney, 716;
the gravamen of the charge, 717;
proof of his innocence derived from the journals of Kearney's
officers, 717;
statement of Carson, 718;
result of the trial, 718;
course of the President, 719;
resignation of Fremont, 719.
_Fourth Expedition._--Undertaken at his own expense, 719;
the line of exploration, 719;
the march on foot, 719;
error of the guide, 720;
terrors of their situation, 720;
extricated by the aid of Indians, 720;
a new outfit obtained, 721;
march, 721;
meeting hostile Indians, 721;
subsequent explorations, 721.
G
GALLATIN, ALBERT, on the quantity of gold and silver in Europe and
America, 388.
_See Index_, vol. I.
GARDINER, Mr., killed on board the Princeton, 568.
GILMER, THOMAS W., against the bill for the relief of Mrs. Harrison,
258;
against the abrogation of the compromise, 309;
killed on board the Princeton, 568;
his letter relative to Texas, 581.
GILPIN, HENRY D., Attorney General, 9.
GIRARD, STEPHEN, memorial of, 181.
_Globe Newspaper superseded._--A visit to Mr. Polk, 651;
condition on which he could receive the vote of South Carolina,
651;
Mr. Blair and the Globe were to be given up, 651;
to whom obnoxious, 651;
position of Mr. Tyler, 651;
withdraws, 651;
reason, 651;
$50,000 transferred from a bank in Philadelphia to a village bank
in the interior of Pennsylvania, 651;
letters to Andrew Jackson Donnelson, 651;
proposition of Mr. Polk to Mr. Blair, 652;
letter of General Jackson to Mr. Blair, 652;
the Globe sold, 654;
letter of Mr. Van Buren to Mr. Rives, 654;
payment for the Globe, 655;
_see Index_, vol. I.
GOUGE, WILLIAM, on the quantity of gold and silver, 389.
GRAHAM, WILLIAM A., Secretary of the Navy, 768.
GRUNDY, FELIX, Attorney-General, 9.
GRANGER, FRANCIS, Postmaster General, 209;
on the course of Mr. Cushing, 514.
H
HALE, JOHN P., on abuses in the navy, 509;
on the home squadron, 575-576.
HALL, NATHAN K., Postmaster General, 768.
HAMLIN, HANNIBAL, on abuses in the navy, 509.
HANNEGAN, EDWARD A., on the Oregon question, 663-664.
HARALSON, H. A., on the appropriation for the military academy, 468.
HARRISON, WILLIAM H., candidate for the Presidency, 204;
meeting of the Senate, 209;
oath administered to the Vice-President, 209;
scene in the chamber, 209;
the eastern portico, 209;
the inaugural, 209;
the oath administered, 209;
cabinet nominations confirmed, 209;
proclamation convoking an extra session of Congress, 209;
sickness of Harrison, 210;
death, 210;
character, 210;
public manifestations, 210;
origin of the family, 210;
Benton's remarks on Harrison, 210;
his fidelity to public trust, 216.
HARRISON, Mrs., widow of President H.--Bill for the relief of,
introduced, 257;
to indemnify the President for his expenses in the Presidential
election, and in removing to the seat of government, 257;
words of the bill, 257;
motives on which the bill had been founded, explained by J. Q.
Adams, 258;
vehement opposition to the principle of the bill, 258;
reasons of Mr. Payne, of Ala., for voting against the bill, 258;
a precedent which might hereafter be strained and tortured, 259;
remarks of Mr. Underwood, 259;
passage of the bill in the House, 259.
In the Senate, remarks of Mr. Calhoun on the bill, 259,
"this is no new thing, 260;
the enormous pension-list of the government, 260;
no part of the constitution authorizes such an appropriation,"
260;
remarks of Senator Woodbury, 260;
first application of a pension to a civil officer likely to
succeed, 260;
protest against any legislation based upon our sympathies, 260;
claim did not come from the family of General Harrison, but from
persons who had advanced money for the purposes stated in
the bill, 260;
moved to recommit the bill, 260;
amendments proposed so as to secure the money to the widow, 260;
motion to recommit lost, 261;
Benton's remarks in reply to the argument founded on the alleged
poverty of General Harrison, 261;
the poverty of Jefferson, Monroe, Madison, 261;
bill passed, 262.
Speech of Senator Benton on the bill, 262;
a bill to make a grant of money, 262;
first case of the kind on the statute-book, 262;
it was said at the last session that a new set of books was to be
opened, 263;
the federal constitution differs fundamentally from those of the
States, 263;
it is said this is a payment in hand, 263;
by the constitution, the persons who fill offices are to receive a
compensation for their services, 264;
it is in vain to look to general clauses of the constitution, 264;
gentlemen refuse to commit themselves on the record, 265.
HAYNE, ROBERT Y., his gifts, 186;
appearance, 186;
mental qualities, 186;
talents, 186;
exemplary morals, 186;
habits, 186;
position in South Carolina, 187;
marriage, 187;
becomes member of Congress, 187;
associates, 187;
estimate put upon him, 187;
his debate with Webster, 187;
remarks, 187;
assistance of Mr. Calhoun, 188;
retires from the Senate, 188;
subsequent occupation, 188.
_See Index_, vol. I.
HAYWOOD, WILLIAM H., on the Oregon question, 662.
HENSHAW, DAVID, nomination rejected in the Senate, 630.
HICKMAN, Mr., on the nomination of Van Buren, 592.
_Home Squadron and Aid to Private Steam Lines._--Reasons for the
home squadron of Great Britain, 271;
United States has no need of a home squadron, 271;
Great Britain had one, therefore we must, 271;
bill passed, 271;
reasons given for it, 271;
appropriation made in gross, 272;
objected to, 272;
contrary to democratic practice, which required specific
appropriations, 272;
an increase of the navy in disguise, 272;
comparative statement of expenses of the navy, 272;
statement of the French and British navies, 273;
the railroad and electric telegraph have opened a new era in
defensive war, 273;
bill passed in the house almost unanimously, 273;
recommendation relative to ocean steamers, 273;
a useless waste of money, 273.
Resolution to inquire into the origin, use and expense of the
home squadron, 575;
remarks of Mr. Hale, 575;
"indebted to the present administration for a home squadron, 575;
said to be necessary for protecting the coasting trade, 575;
we need not such a navy as Great Britain," 575;
remarks of Mr. J. Ingersoll, 575;
in favor of retrenchment and economy, but the process ought to
begin in the civil and diplomatic department, 575;
the army and the navy the two great objects of wasteful
expenditure, 575;
reply of Mr. Hale to those who, without offering a word in favor
of this domestic squadron, were endeavoring to keep it up,
576;
no result followed, 576;
remarks of Mr. Dean on this item in the appropriation bill, 577;
more ships built and building than can be used, and three times
as many officers as can be employed, 577;
remarks of Mr. McKay, 577;
the illegality and wastefulness admitted, 577;
but the money has been earned by work and labor, 577;
the abuse sanctioned, 577;
a powerful combined interest pushes forward an augmented navy
without regard to any object but its own interest, 577.
_Hour Rule in the House._--Institution of, 247;
permanent injury done in order to get rid of temporary annoyance,
247;
such an anomaly never seen in a deliberative assembly, 248;
the English remedy for license in debate, 248;
the first instance of enforcing this new rule, 248;
described, 248;
same thing undertaken in the Senate, 249;
reason, 249;
numerous amendments offered to bills, 249;
the opposition speakers, 249;
Clay's remark on the anxiety of the country for action, 250;
sharp reply of Calhoun, 250;
a succession of contradictory asseverations, 250;
question asked of Clay if he meant to apply to the Senate the "gag
law," 251;
resolution of the democratic Senators, 251;
taunts of Calhoun, 251;
determination of Clay, 251;
remarks of Senator Linn, 252;
subject dropped and revived again, 252.
Another measure to be introduced, 252;
the previous question, 253;
issue made up, to introduce and to oppose it, 253;
remarks of Mr. Benton on the effect of the previous question, 253;
the previous question annihilates legislation, 254;
the previous question and the old sedition law are measures of the
same character, 254;
change of tone in Mr. Clay, 255;
intimation of going into executive session, 255;
hesitation, 255;
friends of the measure dared by Mr. Calhoun, 255;
remarks of Senator Linn on the words of Mr. Clay, 256;
executive session, 256;
an explanation by Mr. Calhoun relative to the declaration of war,
in 1812, 256;
further taunts, 257;
loan bill taken up, 257.
HUBBARD, SAMUEL D., Postmaster General, 768.
HUNTER, R. M. T., elected Speaker, 160.
HUNTINGTON, JABEZ W., on making salt free of duty, 315.
I
_Independent Treasury._--The crowning measure of the extra session,
39;
vehement opposition, 39;
the divorce of bank and state, 39;
attitude of Mr. Calhoun, 40;
taunts upon him, 40;
his reply, 40;
proposes to discontinue the use of bank paper in the receipts and
disbursements of the government, 40;
his remarks, 40;
divorce of bank and state treated as a divorce of the bank from
the people, 41;
Webster's main argument for a bank, 41;
regulator of the currency and the domestic exchanges, 41;
the founders of the bank never thought of such arguments for its
establishment, 41;
the discussion, 41;
remarks, 42.
Consists of two distinct parts, 124;
1st, keeping the public money--2d, the hard money currency in
which they were to be paid, 124;
a bill reported, 124;
hard money section added to the bill, 124;
struck out, 124;
bill opposed by Mr. Calhoun, 124;
reasons, 124;
passed the Senate and lost in the House, 125.
Repeal of, 219;
No. 1 in the list of bills, 219;
no substitute provided, 219;
motion to exclude the bank of the U.S., 220; vote, 220;
speech of Senator Benton, 220;
"artifices used against the independent treasury," 220;
French explanation of the vote, 221;
artifices exposed, 221;
what constitutes the independent treasury system, 221;
the advocate of British systems, 222;
history of our fiscal agents, 222;
proved by experience to be the safest, cheapest, and best mode of
collecting, keeping, and disbursing the revenue, 223;
no other system provided in its place, 223;
who demands the repeal of this system, 224;
this system was established by the will of the people, 225;
the spirit which pursues the measure, 225;
the deposits may go to the bank of the United States, 226;
laudations of Biddle, 227;
the State charter made no difference in the character or
management of the bank, 227;
the conduct of those who refused a re-charter was wise and
prudent, 228;
further remarks, 228.
Good effects of a gold and silver currency during the war, 726;
Government bills above par and every loan taken at a premium, 726;
triumph of the gold currency, 726.
_Indian War in Florida._--One of the most troublesome, expensive,
and unmanageable of Indian wars, 70;
its continuance and cost, 70;
its origin, 70;
one of flagrant and cruel aggression on the part of the Indians,
70;
the murder by a party under Osceola, 70;
other massacres, 70;
escape of a soldier of Dade's command, 70;
the struggle, 70;
the slaughter, 71;
misrepresentation of the origin and conduct of the war, 72;
speech of Mr. Benton, 72.
Charged that a fraud was committed on the Indians in the treaty
negotiated with them for their removal, 72;
affixed to the Payne's Landing treaty, 72;
afterwards transferred to the Fort Gibson treaty, 72;
the posts, 72, 73;
pretexts and excuses of the Indians for not removing, 73;
their real object, 73;
the agreement with the Creeks, 73;
article four of the treaty, 73;
extract from the treaty at Fort Gibson, 74;
how stands the accusation? 74;
every thing was done that was stipulated for, done by the persons
who were to do it, and done in the exact manner agreed upon,
74;
proved that no fraud was practised upon the Indians, 75;
moderation with which the United States acted, 75;
statement of Lieut. Harris, 75;
hostile proceedings not expected by the Government, 75;
the prime mover in all this mischief, 76;
our sympathies particularly invoked for him, 76;
statements tending to disparage the troops, answered, 76;
great error and great injustice in these imputations, 76;
reason why the same feats are not performed in Florida as in
Canada, 77;
eight months in the year military exertions are impossible, 77;
conduct of the army in Florida, 77;
charges of inefficiency against Gen. Jesup, 78;
of imbecility, 78;
with how much truth and justice is this charge made? 78;
his vindication, 78;
a specific accusation against the honor of this officer, 79;
justification of the seizure of Osceola, 79;
he had broken his parole, 79;
he had violated an order in coming in, with a view to return to
the hostiles, 79;
he had broken a truce, 79;
the expediency of having detained him, 80;
complaint of the length of time Gen. Jesup has consumed without
bringing the war to a conclusion, 80;
his essential policy, 81;
the little said to be expected by his large force, 81;
false information given to the Indians, 81;
remarks respecting his predecessors, 81;
the expenses of the war, 82;
concluding remarks, 82.
INGERSOLL, CHARLES J., on the administration in the McLeod case,
287;
moves the reduction of certain missions, 305;
on the repeal of the compromise tariff, 310;
on the home squadron, 575.
_Iowa and Florida_, admission of, 660.
J
JACKSON, GEN., _refunding his fine_.--Fined at New Orleans in the
winter of 1814-'15 for contempt of court, 499;
paid under protest, 499;
Senator Linn brings in a bill for refunding the fine, 499;
letter of Gen. Jackson to him on receiving notice of the bill,
500;
Jackson would only receive it on the ground of an illegal
exaction, 500;
the recourse to martial law vindicated, 500;
the measures could not be relaxed which a sense of danger had
dictated, 501;
reasons given at the time against the fine, 501;
proceedings of the court, 502;
bill passed both Houses, 502.
_See Index_, vol. I.
JEFFERSON, THOMAs, his views on the surrender of fugitive
criminals, 445.
_See Index_, vol. I.
JESUP, GEN., conduct of, the Florida war, 78.
JOHNSON, R. M., a candidate for the Vice-Presidency, 204.
JOHNSON, CAVE, on the appropriation for the military academy, 567;
on naval expenditures, 507;
Postmaster General, 650.
JOHNSON, REVERDY, on the Oregon question, 665;
Attorney General, 737.
JONES, JOHN W., candidate for Speaker, 160;
chosen Speaker, 565.
K
KENDALL, AMOS, Postmaster General, 9.
KENNEDY, JOHN P., Secretary of the Navy, 768.
KENNON, COMMODORE, killed on board the Princeton, 568.
KING, THOMAS B., on the previous question, 253;
reports a bill for a home squadron, 271;
on exempting salt from duty, 315;
on the committee on the bank bill, 335.
L
LEGARE, HUGH S., Attorney General, 356.
LINN, LOUIS F., opposition to the hour rule, 252, 256;
on the disturbance in the Senate galleries, 352;
in favor of the Oregon settlement bill, 472.
Remarks on his decease by Senator Benton, 485;
birth, 485;
parentage, 485;
education, 485;
honors, 484;
character, 486;
talents, 486;
amiable qualities, 486;
character in party times, 486;
remarks of Senator Crittenden, 487;
introduces a bill to refund the fine of Gen. Jackson, 500.
_London Bankers' Circular._--On assumption of State debts, 171.
M
MADISON, JAMES, on the dangers to the Union, 132;
his views on the subject of disunion, 786.
MAGOFFIN, JAMES, conducts Gen. Kearney and troops to New Mexico,
683.
MALLORY, FRANCIS, on the coast survey, 488.
MANGUM, WILLIE P., opposes the repeal of the pension act of 1837,
266.
_Map of_ the original North-eastern boundary, 423.
MARCY, WILLIAM L., Secretary of War, 650;
answer to the interrogatories of an anti-slavery meeting, 775.
MASON, JOHN G., Secretary of the Navy, 569;
Attorney General, 650.
MAXEY, VIRGIL, killed on board the Princeton, 568.
MCDOWELL, JAMES, remarks on the decease of John Quincy Adams, 708.
MCDUFFIE, JAMES, on the Oregon country, 471.
MCKAY, JAMES J., on the appropriation for the home squadron, 272;
on the appropriation for the military academy, 467.
MCKEON, JOHN, on the Chinese Mission, 511.
MCKINLEY, JOHN, Judge of the Supreme Court, 9.
MCLEAN, JOHN, declines the secretaryship of war, 356.
MCLEOD, the case of, 282.
MEREDITH, WILLIAM M., Secretary of the Treasury, 737.
MERRICK, WILLIAM D., on the disturbance in the Senate gallery, 352.
MERRIWEATHER, JAMES A., on reduction of navy pay and expenses, 482;
on the Chinese mission, 511.
_Military Department._--The progress of expenses of the army, 404;
comparative view presented by Mr. Calhoun, 404;
extract, 404;
cost of each man, at different periods, in the service, 405;
Adams proposes retrenchment in the army and navy, 405;
extract, 405.
_Military Academy._--The instincts of the people have been against
this academy ever since it took its present form, 466;
all efforts to abolish it are instantly met by Washington's
recommendation of it, 466;
Washington never saw such an institution as shelters under his
name, 466;
attack upon the institution by moving to strike out the
appropriation for its support, 467;
remarks of Mr. McKay in defence of it, 467;
points shown by him, 467;
remarks of Mr. Johnson against the bill, 467;
remarks of Mr. Haralson in favor, 468;
remarks of Mr. Ficklin against it, 468;
Mr. Black proposes an amendment that the cadets be compelled to
serve ten years, 468.
_See Index_, vol. I.
MILLER, Mr., moves the nomination of Van Buren, 592.
_Missouri Compromise._--Message of President Polk, 712.
MORTON, MARCUS, on the adoption of the two-thirds rule in the
democratic convention, 591.
MUTINY on board the brig Somers.
_See Somers._
N
NAPOLEON, his ideas of the art of war, 572.
_Naval Academy._--Remarks, 571;
instructions of Virginia to her Senators in 1799, 572;
the Great Emperor's idea of the whole art of war, 572;
remark of Alison the historian, 573;
the lesson taught by the war of 1812, 573;
officers now made in schools, whether they have any vocation for
the service or not, 573;
the finest naval officers the world over saw were bred in the
merchant service, 574;
no naval victory of Great Britain over France had the least effect
on the war, 574;
commerce wants no protection from men-of-war, except from
piratical nations, 574.
_Naval Pension System._--Annual bill for these pensions on its
passage, 265;
abuse introduced by the act of 1837, 265;
four things done by that act, 265;
absorbed and bankrupted the fund, 266;
manner of the passage of this act, 266;
its power to resist correction, 266;
amendment moved to repeal the act of 1837, 266;
debate, 266;
lost, 267;
character of the vote, 267;
difference in the two parties always the same without regard to
their name, 267.
Calhoun's remarks on confining all future pensioners to the act of
1800, &c., 267;
"the act of 1837 was not only inexpedient, but something much
worse, 267;
it is proposed to introduce new and extraordinary principles into
our pension list, 268;
object of the amendment to correct a monstrous abuse," 268;
remarks of Mr. Pierce on the abuses to which the pension law gave
rise, 168.
Adams asks who were the authors of the act of 1837, 269;
reply of Mr. Thomas, 269;
manner in which the bill passed the House, 269;
losses sustained by the action of the House, 270;
the debates show in what manner legislation can be carried on
under the silencing process of the previous question, 270;
no branch of the public service requires the reforming and
retrenching hand of Congress more than the naval, 270;
its cost, 270;
fallen chiefly under the management of members from the sea-coast,
270;
compared with Great Britain, 271.
NELSON, JOHN, Attorney General, 569.
NILES, JOHN M., on the surrender of the deposits, 36.
_North and South._--The working of the government on the two great
Atlantic sections, 131;
complained of as unequal and oppressive, 131;
history of the complaint, 131;
commercial conventions at Augusta and Charleston, 131;
distribution of foreign imports before the Revolutionary war, 131;
in 1821, 131;
the difference, 131;
effects, 132;
points of complaint, 131;
foundation for them, 132;
remark of Madison, 132;
remedy proposed by the conventions, 133;
the point on which Southern discontent arose, 133;
separation as a remedy, 133.
O
_Oregon._--Carrying and planting the Anglo-Saxon race on the shores
of the Pacific took place at this time, 468;
an act of the people going forward without government aid or
countenance, 469;
the action of the government was to endanger our title, 469;
first step of the treaty of joint occupation in 1818, 469;
the second false step, the extension of the treaty, 469;
third blunder, in omitting to settle it in the Ashburton treaty,
469;
fourth blunder, the recommendations of President Tyler to
discountenance emigration by withholding land from the
emigrants, 469;
the people saved the title thus endangered, 469;
a thousand emigrants in 1842, 469;
government attempts to discourage and Western members to encourage
it, 469;
Senator Linn introduces a bill for the purpose, 469;
its provisions, 469;
remarks, 470;
McDuffie's remarks to show the worthlessness of the country, 471;
Calhoun opposes it on the ground of infractions of the treaty and
danger of war--the difficulty and danger of defending a
possession so remote, 471;
his course when Secretary of War, 472.
Senator Linn's remarks in reply, 472;
the effect of temporizing in Maine, 473;
losses of our citizens by ravages of Indians, 473;
backwardness to protect our own citizens contrasted with the
readiness to expend untold amounts to protect our citizens
engaged in foreign commerce, or to guard the freedom of the
African negro, 473;
it is asked, why not give notice to terminate the treaty? 474.
Remarks of Mr. Benton on the clause allotting land, 474;
actual colonization going on at Columbia river, attended by every
circumstance that indicated ownership and the design of a
permanent settlement, 474;
our title, 475;
answer of the President to the call for the "informal conferences"
which had taken place on the subject, 476;
the north bank of the Columbia river, the object of the British,
476;
bill passed, 477;
bill sent to the House, 477;
the effect intended to encourage settlers produced, 477;
a colony planted and grew up, 477;
it saved the territory, 477.
All agree that the title is in the United States, 479;
a division on the point of giving offence to England by granting
the land to our settlers, 479;
has she a right to take offence? 479;
the fear of Great Britain is pressed upon us at the same time her
pacific disposition is enforced and insisted on, 480;
remarks of Ashburton, showing a want of inclination in the British
Government to settle the Creole case, 480;
the objection of distance examined, 481;
also that of expense examined, 481;
another objection, the land clause, 481;
time is invoked as the agent which is to help us, 481;
time and negotiation have been bad agents for us in our
controversies with Great Britain, 482.
Conventions of 1818 and 1828 provided for the joint occupation
of the countries, 624;
impropriety of such engagements, 624;
motion to give notice to terminate the joint occupation, 625;
arguments in opposition, 625;
the talk of war alarmed the commercial interest, and
looked upon the delivery of the notice as the signal for a
disastrous depression of foreign trade, 625;
motion for the notice lost, 625;
omitted in the Ashburton treaty, 660;
references to the subject, 660;
taken up by Mr. Calhoun, and conducted in the only safe way of
conducting negotiations, 661;
the negotiations come to a stand, 661;
declaration of the President's message, 661;
feeling in England, 661;
negotiations recommended by us as a means of avoiding war, 662;
the offer of 49°;
withdrawn, 662;
meeting of Congress and debate on the subject, 662.
Speech of Mr. Hayward on the line of 49° as the correct line, 662;
"the course pursued by the President in his offer, 662;
nothing improper in his repeating it, 662;
under no necessity to refuse the line of 49° if offered," 663;
his speech expressive of the sentiments of the President, 663;
a demand made of him if he expressed the views of the President,
663;
a call to order, 664;
remarks on the President's position from the extreme members,
665;
advantages of concurring in the line of 49° if offered, 665;
the merits of the question discussed, 666.
Speech of Mr. Benton, 667;
"the true extent and nature of our territorial claims beyond the
Rocky Mountains," 667;
the assumption that we have a dividing line with Russia is a great
mistake, 667;
circumstances of the convention of 1824, 667;
Great Britain and ourselves treated separately with Russia and
with each other, 668;
we proposed that fifty-four forty should be the northern
boundary for Great Britain, 668;
the line of Utrecht, 669;
items of testimony, 669, 670;
_note_, containing a letter of Edward Everett, 671;
Frazer's River, 671;
Harmon's Journal, 671;
New Caledonia, 671;
ground taken by Mr. Monroe, 672;
their action, 672;
notice to terminate the joint occupation voted, 673;
amended in the Senate, 674;
character of the vote, 674.
Negotiations renewed, 674;
49° offered by England, 674;
quandary of the administration, 674;
advice of the Senate asked, 674;
a message with a _projet_ of a treaty, sent in upon the advice of
Senator Benton, 675;
extract, 675;
treaty or no treaty depended on the Senate, 676;
advice of the Senate given in favor of 49°, 676;
treaty sent in, 676;
ratified, 667;
daily attack of the organ upon the Senators who were accomplishing
the wishes of the President, 676;
Mr. Benton assailed, 677;
remarks, 677.
On the bill for the Oregon territorial government, Mr. Calhoun
makes trial of his new doctrine, 711;
proofs of his support of the Missouri Compromise, 711;
motion of Mr. Hale, 711;
motion of Mr. Douglas, 711;
vote of Mr. Calhoun on it, 711;
bill passes both Houses, 712;
excitement of Mr. Calhoun, 712;
invocation to disunion, 712;
special message on the slavery agitation, 712;
extract, 712.--_See slavery agitation._
OSCEOLA, capture of, 79.
P
_Pairing off_, when first exhibited, 178;
a breach of the rules of the House, 178;
violation of the constitution, 178;
rebuked by J. Q. Adams, 178;
now a common practice, 178;
the early practice, 178;
leave always asked and obtained, 178.
PALMERSTON, LORD, his boldness, 285.
_Paper Money Payments._--Crisis in the struggle between paper money
and gold, 406;
recourse had to treasury notes reissuable, 406;
the government paid two-thirds in these notes and one-third in
specie, 406;
Mr. Benton determines to resist, 406;
has protested a check drawn for compensation for a few days as
Senator, 406;
his speech, 406;
"time come when every citizen will have to decide for himself,
407;
Hampden's resistance of the payment of ship money, 407;
there is no dispute about the fact, and the case is neither a
first nor a solitary one, 407;
a war upon the currency of the constitution has been going on for
many years, 408;
the remedy of the present disgraceful state of things is the point
now to be attended to, 408;
here is a forced payment of paper, money, 408;"
offers a resolution, 408.
PAYNE, Mr., against the bill for the relief of Mrs. Harrison, 258.
PICKENS, F. W., on the repeal of the compromise tariff, 310.
PIERCE, FRANKLIN, on the bill for the relief of Mrs. Harrison, 260;
on the abuses of the Pension Act, 268.
POINSETT, JOEL R., Secretary at War, 9.
POLK, JAMES K., chosen Speaker of the House, 29;
elected President, 625.
_Administration_, the longest address of the kind yet delivered,
649;
our title to Oregon asserted as clear and indisputable, 649;
the return voice from London equally positive on the other side,
650;
the cabinet, 650;
neither Mr. Calhoun nor any of his friends would take office under
the administration, 650;
circumstances affecting the formation of the cabinet, 650;
message, 657;
Texas the leading topic, 657;
position of Mexico and the United States, 657;
causes of war against Mexico from injuries to our citizens, 657;
treaty of indemnity never complied with, 658;
the mission to Mexico, and the consequences of its failure, 658.
Negotiations relative to Oregon had come to a dead stand, 658;
state of the case, 658;
the finances and public debt, 658;
revision of the tariff recommended, 659;
revenue the object and protection to home industry the incident,
659.
Message at second session of the twenty-ninth Congress, 677;
greatly occupied with the Mexican war, 677;
the real beginning of the war, 678;
the conquered provinces governed under the law of nations, 678;
Mr. Benton's plan of conducting the war adopted, 678;
to carry the war straight to the city of Mexico, 678;
a higher rank than Major-General required to execute this plan,
678;
negotiation a part of the plan, 678;
Lieutenant-Generalship proposed, 678;
defeated in the Senate by Marcy, Walker, and Buchanan, 679;
overrules his cabinet relative to the conduct of the war with
Mexico, 693.
His message at first session of the thirteenth Congress, 703;
gratifying intelligence to communicate, 703;
commissioner sent with the army, 704;
operations of a female to secure the absorption of Mexico and the
assumption of her debts, 704;
extract from the message relative thereto, 704;
do. relative to the absorption of a part of Mexico, 704;
return to the line rejected from the message at a former session,
705;
reason, 705;
a wish of the slave interest, 705;
expenses of the government, 705;
the good working of the independent treasury system, 705;
special message on the slavery agitation, 712;
extract, 712.
Last message, 724;
extract relative to the Mexican war, 724;
remarks, 724;
extension of the Missouri Compromise recommended, 724;
various parties on the subject, 725;
finances, 725;
expenditures, 725;
decease of, 737;
first President put on the people without previous indication,
737;
faults of the administration, the faults of his cabinet, 737;
his will, 738;
the Mexican war, 738;
acquisition of Mexico, 738.
PORTER, ALEXANDER.--Decease of, 569;
eulogium by Col. Benton, 569;
early life, 569;
lawyer in lower Mississippi, 570;
Senator, 570;
his example, 570;
remarks, 571.
PORTER, COMMODORE.--Decease of, 491;
his career--an illustration of the benefits of the cruising
system, 491;
ardor for the service, 492;
the Essex frigate, 492;
her cruise towards the Grand Banks, 492;
capture of the Alert, 492;
cruise to Brazil, 493;
cruise in the Pacific Ocean, 493;
Valparaiso, 493;
prizes taken, 494, 495, 496;
capture of the Essex, 497;
end of the cruise, 498;
incidents of Porter's personal history, 498;
resignation, 498;
cause, 498;
features of his character, 499.
PORTER, JAMES MADISON.--Secretary at war, 579.
_Presidency._--Bold intrigue for. _See Texas annexation._
_Presidential election of 1840._--The candidates, 204;
availability sought for by the opposition, 204;
Clay not available, 204;
submits himself to a convention, 204;
rule of the convention, 204;
the process, 204;
an embittered contest foreseen, 205;
influence of the money power, 205;
mode of operating, 205;
inducements addressed to the people, 205;
mass conventions, 205;
one at Dayton, Ohio, 205;
description, 206;
election carried by storm, 206;
result, 206;
belief of fraudulent votes, 207.
_of 1844._--The candidates, 625;
the votes, 625;
the popular vote, 625;
causes of the difference in the popular vote, 626;
aid of Silas Wright, 626;
aid from the withdrawal of Mr. Tyler, 626.
_of 1848._--Proceedings of the Baltimore convention, 722;
difficulties in the convention, 722;
the candidates, 722;
a third convention at Buffalo, 723;
three principles laid down, 723;
remarks on the unfortunate acceptance of Van Buren, 723;
result, 723;
its moral, 724.
_Public Lands._--New States bound by contract not to interfere with
the primary disposition of the public lands, nor to tax them
while remaining unsold, nor for five years thereafter, 125.
_The Graduation Bill_, 126;
proposed for twelve years, 126;
reduction of price the principal feature, 126;
favorable auspices under which the bill comes, 126;
its original provisions, 126;
a measure emphatically for the benefit of the agricultural
interest, 126;
bill passed in the Senate and failed in the House, 126.
Pre-emptive system, 127;
to secure the privilege of first purchase to the settler on any
lands, 127;
moved to exclude unnaturalized foreigners from its benefits, 127;
remarks of Senator Benton, 127;
it proposes to make a distinction between aliens and citizens in
the acquisition of property, 127;
who are the aliens it was proposed to affect, 127;
motion rejected, 127;
bill passed, 127.
_Taxation of Public Land when sold._--Early sales on credit, 127;
time of exemption from taxation, 128;
change in 1821 to the cash system, 128;
modifications proposed, 128;
bill passed the Senate, 128.
PRESTON, WILLIAM, on the annexation of Texas, 94;
on the slavery resolutions, 139.
PRESTON, WILLIAM B., Secretary of the Navy, 737.
_Princeton Steamship_, explosion of her gun. (See explosion.)
PROFFIT, GEORGE H., His nomination rejected in the Senate 630.
R
_Recess Committees, refusal of the House to allow._--The
proposition, 304;
adopted, 304;
reconsideration moved, 304;
carried, 304;
laid on the table, 304;
a modification attempted, 304;
question raised on the words "to sit during recess," 305;
no warrant found in the constitution, 305;
practical reasons against it, 305;
laid on the table finally, 305.
_Revolt in Canada._--Its commencement, 276;
and progress, 276;
excitement on the border line, 276;
steps taken by the President, 277;
the fidelity and sternness with which all these lawless
expeditions were suppressed by Van Buren, 277;
he discharged all the duties required, 277;
neutral relations preserved in the most trying circumstances,
278;
whole affair over, but the difficulty revived by an unexpected
circumstance, 278;
stand made by insurgents on Navy Island, 278;
supplies carried by a small steamboat, 278;
attacked and destroyed when moored to the American shore, 278;
affidavit of the captain, 278;
report of the British officer, 279;
adds the crimes of impressment and abduction to all the other
enormities, 279;
state of the parties reversed, 279;
part of the United States now to complain, 279;
communication of Mr. Forsyth to Mr. Fox, 279;
message of President Van Buren to Congress, 279;
extracts, 279;
feeling in Congress, 280;
action of Congress, 280;
British government refrains from assuming the act, 280;
extract from Capt. Drew's report, 280;
reply of McNab to the letter of District Attorney Rogers, 280;
remarks of Mr. Fillmore on the reading of the letter, 281;
answer to our demand for redress, 281;
at near the close of Van Buren's administration the British
government had not assumed the act of Capt. Drew, and had
not answered for that act, 281;
inquiries in the House of Commons relative to it, 282;
an important event, 282;
arrest of McLeod, 282;
a demand from the British Minister for his release, 282;
extract, 282;
reply of the American Secretary, Mr. Forsyth, 283;
extract, 283;
British government takes its stand relative to the Caroline after
the Presidential election of 1840, 283;
queries in the House of Commons, 284;
remarks of Mr. Hume, 284;
admission of Palmerston, 284;
testimony of McNab, 285;
remarks, 285;
triumph of Palmerston policy, 286;
finale of the case, 286;
proceedings in the case, 286;
action of the administration, 286;
discussion in the House on this action, 287;
remarks of Mr. Ingersoll, 287;
"this in its national aspect is precisely the same as if it had
been perpetrated in a house," 287;
demand of the British, 287;
Mr. Fox's letter is a threatening one, 287;
a deplorable lapse from the position Mr. Webster first assumed,
288;
our position is false, lamentably false, 288;
never did man lose a greater occasion than Mr. Webster cast away,
288.
Success of the British Ministry in this experiment, 289;
another trial, 289;
Mr. Adams in defence of the administration, 289;
Mr. Cushing on the same side, 289;
remarks on their speeches, 290;
the case of the Poles and of the Hungarians, 290;
Butler's reply to Cushing, 290;
the fashion of the friends of Webster, 291.
Speech of Senator Benton, 291;
"the history of our country full of warning to those who take the
side of a foreign country against their own, 291;
humiliating to see Senators of eminent ability consulting books to
find passages to justify an outrage upon their own country,
292;
what is the case before us? 293;
a statement, 293;
further statement, 294;
a conclusive point settled, 294;
position of the British Ministry known on March 4th, 295;
action of the new administration, 295;
letter of Mr. Fox, 295;
instructions of Mr. Webster to the Attorney General, 295;
extract, 295;
proceedings of the Attorney General, 296;
duties of the Attorney General, 296;
the correctness and propriety of the answer given to Mr. Fox the
main point in the case, 297;
the instructions erroneous in point of law, derogatory to us in
point of character, and tending to the degradation of the
republic, 298;
the law of nations, 298;
derogatory to our character, 299;
example of Walpole's foreign policy, 300;
the instructions to the Attorney General most unfortunate and
deplorable, 300;
the letter to Mr. Fox from the Secretary of State, 301;
an unfortunate production, 301;
its faults fundamental and radical, 302;
abandonment of our claim, 302;
further remarks," 303, 304.
RIVES, WILLIAM C., in defence of the veto of the bank bill, 322;
on the disorder in the Senate gallery, 351-352.
RODGERS, COMMODORE, _decease of_.--His appearance, 144;
hero, by nature, 144;
sketch of his life, 144;
American cruisers in the last war, 145;
views of the Government on the employment of the public vessels,
145;
Rodgers opinion, 146;
his naval exploits, 146;
his humanity, 147;
feelings at the death of Decatur, 147;
death, 148.
S
_Salt._--Speech of Mr. Benton, 176;
perhaps the most abundant substance of the earth, 176;
the universality of the tax on it, 177;
a salt tax was not only politically, but morally wrong, 177;
a tax upon the entire economy of nature and art, 177;
determination to effect its repeal, 178.
SANTA ANNA.--His remark relative to Commander McKenzie.
_His downfall._--His return expected to secure a peace with
Mexico, 709;
the sword, and not the olive branch, returned to Mexico, 709;
capture of Mexico put an end to his career, 710;
in three months, the treaty signed, 710;
the acquisitions, 710;
the payments, 710;
a singular conclusion of the war, 710;
the treaty a fortunate event, 710;
manner in which those who served the Government fared, 711.
SAUNDERS, ROMULUS M., moves the adoption of the two-thirds rule in
the democratic convention, 591.
SCHLOSSER, Harbor of the steamboat Caroline, 278.
SEWARD'S, WILLIAM H., answer to the interrogatories of an
anti-slavery meeting, 776.
SLADE, WILLIAM, on abolition petitions, 150.
_Slavery agitation, progress of._--Movements for and against
slavery, in the session of 1837-'38, 134;
memorial from Vermont against the annexation of Texas, and for the
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, 134;
petitions, &c., 134;
little excuse, 134;
state of the case, 134;
residence of the petitioners, 134;
subject of the petitions disagreeable, 134;
leading to an inevitable separation of the States, 134;
remarks of Mr. Calhoun, 134;
question on the most judicious mode of treating these memorials,
135;
the course adopted, to lay the question of reception on the
table, 135;
Calhoun endeavors to obtain, from the Senate, declarations which
should cover all the questions of federal power over the
institution of slavery, 135;
his resolutions, 135;
the fifth, 135;
the dogma of "no power in Congress to legislate upon the existence
of slavery in territories," had not then been invented, 135;
reference to the Missouri Compromise line, 136;
Calhoun's remarks on this compromise, 136;
remarks, 136;
Clay's substitute, 137;
further proceedings, 137;
repugnance of the Senate to the movement, 138;
remarks of senators on the tendency of the resolutions to
aggravate the excitement, 138;
justification of Calhoun, 139;
action of the Senate and the House, 140;
the important part of the debate, 140;
remarks on Calhoun's views of the Missouri Compromise, 140.
Remarks of Calhoun on the ordinance of 1787, in the Oregon bill,
141;
three propositions laid down by him, 141;
their conflict with the power exercised by Congress,
in the establishment of the Missouri Compromise, 141;
his views in the Cabinet, 141;
old writings produced, 141;
denial of Mr. Calhoun that Monroe's Cabinet was consulted on the
subject, 142;
circumstances favoring the denial, 142;
views of Calhoun in 1820, in 1837-'38, and in 1847-'48, 142;
changes in his opinions on the constitutional power of Congress,
143;
remarks, 143;
records of the Department of State, 143.
In the House, a most angry and portentous debate, 150;
motion on the subject of petitions and memorials, 150;
manner in which it is advocated, 150;
course of Mr. Slade, 150;
suggestion of Legare, 150;
excited action of the House, 150;
further excitement, Wise requests his colleagues to retire with
him, 151;
the invitation renewed by Rhett, 151;
McKay interposes the objection that heads Slade, 151;
question on leave taken, 152;
adjournment moved and carried, 152.
Invitation to Southern members to meet together, 152;
the meeting, 152;
result, 153;
amendment of the rules, 153;
vote, 153;
remarks, 154;
prominent members for the petitions, 154.
_Abolitionists classified by Mr. Clay._--Speech of Mr. Clay, 154;
"the most judicious course to be pursued with abolition petitions,
154;
difference in the form of proceeding, 155;
three classes of persons opposed to the continued existence of
slavery, 155;
the attempt to array one section of the Union against another, 155;
the means employed for the end, 156;
the spirit of abolitionism has displayed itself at three epochs of
our history, 156;
further remarks, 156."
Calhoun's resolutions, 696;
the real point of complaint, 696;
speech of Mr. Calhoun, 696;
extract, 696;
never voted upon, 697;
"firebrand," 697;
commencement of the slavery agitation founded upon the dogma of
"no power in Congress to legislate upon slavery in the
territories," 697;
position of Mr. Calhoun up to this time, 697;
further remarks, 697;
the resolutions characterized
as nullification, 697.
_Disunion_ letter of Mr. Calhoun to a member of the Alabama
Legislature, 698;
disavows the design of a dissolution of the Union, and at the
same time proves it, 698;
opening paragraph, 698;
"_to force_ the issue," 698;
notices the act of the Pennsylvania Legislature, 698;
his secret views of the Wilmot proviso, 699;
measures of retaliation suggested, 699; further extracts, 700;
a further feature in the plan of forcing the issue, 700;
a Southern Convention, 700;
the letter furnishes the key to unlock Calhoun's whole system of
slavery agitation, 700.
Special message of President Polk, 712;
a delusive calculation, 713;
a new dogma invented, 713;
the slavery part of the Constitution extends itself to
territories, 713;
broached by Mr. Calhoun, 713;
remarks, 714;
remarks of Mr. Calhoun on the Missouri case, 714;
his error exposed, 714;
passed by the South, 714;
remarks of Mr. Calhoun on the dissolution of the Union, 715;
remarks of Mr. Benton, 715.
_Extension of the Constitution._--The territories without a
government, 729;
motion of Mr. Walker of Wisconsin as an amendment to the
appropriation bill, 729;
a disorderly motion, 729;
an amendment inserting an extension of the Constitution, 729;
remarks of Mr. Webster, 729;
reply of Mr. Calhoun, 730;
the Constitution made for States, not Territories, 731;
examination of Calhoun's position, 731;
debate takes a slavery turn, 732;
bill passed after midnight on the last day of the session, 732;
declining to vote, 732;
remarks, 732;
"forcing the issue," 733.
Nightly meetings of members from the slave States, 733;
Calhoun at the bottom of the movement, 733;
his manifesto superseded by a new address in the grand committee,
733;
replaced, 733;
changed from the original draft, 734;
saluted as the second Declaration of Independence, 734;
remarks, 734;
extracts, 734;
emancipation held to be certain, if not prevented, 735;
the means of prevention, 735;
takes the attitude of self-defence, 735;
further contents of the manifesto, 736;
last speech of Mr. Calhoun, 744;
read by Mr. Mason, 744;
first cause of the slavery disease, the ordinance of 1787, 744;
the second, the Missouri Compromise, 744;
third, slavery agitation, 744;
history of the agitation, 744;
process of disruption going on, 745;
successive blows required to snap the cords asunder, 745;
extract, 745;
the last cord, 746;
extracts, 746;
the remedy, 746.
_Slaves, American, liberation of in British Colonies._--Three
instances of this kind had occurred, 182;
details of each, 182;
redress obtained from Great Britain in the first two cases, 182;
resolution offered on the subject by Mr. Calhoun, 182;
can a municipal regulation of Great Britain alter the law of
nations? 183;
Calhoun's argument, 183;
referred, 183.
_Slaves, Fugitive._--History of the slave recovery clause, 773;
act of 1793, 773;
third section, 773;
a fair interpretation of the Constitution, 773;
the penal section, 774;
the law of Pennsylvania, 774, 777;
the act of New York, 775;
Marcy's reply to an anti-slavery meeting, 775;
Seward's reply to the interrogatories of the same meeting, 776;
sentence on a citizen of Maryland for recapturing his slave in
Pennsylvania, 778;
decision of the Supreme Court, 778;
a bill reported on the subject of fugitive slaves, 778;
proviso in favor of a jury trial rejected, 779;
sentiments of Mr. Cass, 779;
further remarks, 780.
SMITH, GEN. SAMUEL, decease of, 176;
forty years in Congress, 176;
industry, 176;
punctuality, 176;
characteristics, 176;
long life and service, 176.
SMITH, WILLIAM, declines the appointment of Judge of the Supreme
Court, 9.
_Somers, Brig, alleged Mutiny on Board._--Manner of entering the
harbor of New York, 523;
astonishment of the public at the news, 523;
the vessel and her crew, 523;
how first communicated, 523;
ridicule the only answer first given, 524;
further relative to the first discovery, 524, 525;
means for arrest of the suspected, 525;
the arrest, 516;
treatment, 526;
evidences sought for, 527;
further arrests, 528;
the turning point of the case, 529;
suspicious circumstances, 530;
interrogatories, 530;
facts, 531;
treatment of the prisoners, 532;
the handspike sign, 532;
missing their muster, 533;
the African knife, 533;
the battle-axe alarm, 534;
letter of the commander to the officers, 534;
council of officers, 535;
testimony before the council, 535;
incidental circumstances, 536;
new arrests, 537;
the way in which three men were doomed to death, 537;
trial of Governor Wall at Old Bailey, 537;
further proceedings, 538, 539;
informing the prisoners of their fate, 540;
their conduct, 540, 541, 542, 543, 544, 545;
the executions, 546;
report of the confessions false upon its face, 547;
the cases of Small and Cromwell, 548;
death and innocence of the men, 549;
conclusion of the execution, 549;
speech of the commander, 550;
speech on the Sunday following, 551;
the letter in the Bible, 551;
four men in irons, 551;
interval after the execution, 552;
evidence of Gansevoort, 552;
conclusion of the report, 553;
the purser's steward, 554;
Sergeant Garty, 555;
the commander's clerk, 556;
recommendations for reward and promotion, 556;
proceedings of the court-martial, 557;
precipitation, 557;
the reason, 557;
the composition of the court, 558;
end of the prosecutions, 559.
The real design of Spencer, 559;
the case of Lieut. Col. Wall of the British service, 560;
subsequent career of Commander Mackenzie, 561;
remark of Santa Anna, 561;
the work of fourteen years, 561.
_South Sea scheme_, its origin, and pretensions, 378.
_Specie circular_, its issue, 14.
SPENCER, JOHN C., Secretary of War, 356;
Secretary of the Treasury, 569.
STRANGE, ROBERT, on the slavery resolutions, 139.
STUART, A. H., on the veto of the provisional tariff, 415; Secretary
of the Interior, 768.
_Supreme Court._--Its Judges, Clerk, Attorney Generals, Reporters,
and Marshals, during the period from 1820, to 1850, 787.
T
TAPPAN, BENJAMIN, vindicates the martial law at New Orleans, 500;
statement of the declarations of Mr. Polk, relative to the mode of
Texas annexation, 636.
_Tariff, specific duties abolished by the Compromise._--Distinction
between specific and ad valorem duties, 189;
statements relative to the practical operation of the ad valorem
system, 189;
examples of injurious operation, 189;
losses in four years on three classes of staple goods, 189.
_Sugar and Rum drawbacks, their abuse._--Motion for leave to bring
in a bill to reduce the drawbacks allowed on sugar and rum,
190;
Benton's objections to the act of 1833, 190;
facts relative to the drawback on sugar, 191;
operation of the act on the sugar duties, 191;
tables, 191, 192;
effect of the compromise act on the article of rum, 193.
_Fishing Bounties and their allowance._--Motion for leave to
introduce a bill to reduce the fishing bounties, &c., 194;
it is asked whether these allowances are founded on the salt duty,
and should rise or fall with it, 194;
proofs,--;
the original petition and acts of Congress, 194;
numerous acts referred to, 194, 195;
defects of the compromise act, 196;
mischiefs resulting from the act, 197;
the whole revenue of sugar, salt, and molasses, is delivered over
annually to a few persons in the United States, 197;
amount taken under these bounties, 198.
_Tariff Compromise, infringement of._--Errors of opinions respecting
the act of 1833, 307;
agency of John M. Clayton and Robert P. Letcher, 307;
composed of two parts, 307;
neither lived out its allotted time, 307;
regulation of the tariff taken out of the hands of the Government
by a coalition between Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun, and a bill
concocted as vicious in principle as it was selfish and
unparliamentary in its conception and execution, 308;
foresight of the results, 308;
a cry of danger to the Union carried it, 308;
calls of the Secretary of the Treasury for loans, 308;
revenue expected under the reduced duties of the compromise on
half what was needed, 308;
statement of Mr. Fillmore, 308;
proposed to abrogate the compromise, 309;
complaints of the opposition, 309;
remarks of Mr. Gilmer, 309;
the compromise contemplated only revenue duties, 309;
it is said the law is not binding, 309;
wait until sufficient information is obtained to enable us to act
judiciously, 309;
Ingersoll's sarcastic taunts of the two chiefs of the compromise,
310;
Pickens' remarks against the abrogation of the compromise, 310;
passage of the new bill through the House, 311;
cost of collecting ad valorem duties, 311.
Bill in the Senate, 311;
Clay proposes to go on with the bill, 311;
Calhoun proposes to delay a few days, 311;
remarks, 311, 312;
remarks of Mr. Benton, 312;
the present occasion illustrated the vicious and debauching
distribution schemes, 312;
motion to include sumach in the dutiable articles, 312;
remarks of Clay, 313;
reply of Calhoun, 313;
origin of the term Whig in this country, 314;
duty imposed on sumach, 315.
Proposed to make salt a free article, 315;
annihilate the American works engaged in the manufacture, 315;
affects two great portions of the community in a very different
manner, 315;
the consumers of the domestic and the imported article, 315;
amount of revenue collected from salt, 316;
the whole system will have to be revised, 316;
the universality of its use is a reason for its taxation, 316;
vote on, 316;
a combination of interests
has kept up the tax, 316;
amount of revenue from the duty, 316.
Moved to exempt tea and coffee, 316;
carried, 316;
bill passed on the general ground that the Government must have
revenue, 316;
defect of the compromise in making no provision for the reduction
of drawbacks on sugars, &c., 316;
attempts to amend and failure, 317;
carried in the present bill, 317;
the bounty to the fisheries claimed as a right, 317;
further remarks, 317.
Low state of the treasury and the credit of the Government, 413;
the result of three measures forced upon the previous
administration by the opposition, and the aid of temporizing
friends, 413;
these measures, the compromise act, the distribution of the
surplus revenue, and the surrender of the land revenue to
the States, 413;
remarks, 413;
a retributive justice in this calamitous visitation, 413;
it fell upon the authors of the measure, 413;
a _provisional_ tariff passed, 414;
vetoed, 414;
reasons, 414;
remarks, 414;
deplorable condition of the administration, 414;
remarks of Fillmore on the endeavor of the President to get back,
even temporarily, the land revenue, 415;
Stuart asserts that the land distribution bill was an intended
part of the compromise from the beginning, 415;
extract, 415;
remarks of Carruthers, 416;
second bill, similar to the first, passed and vetoed, 416;
veto referred to a Committee of Thirteen, 416;
three reports, 416;
extract, 416;
the compromise and the land distribution were the
stumbling-blocks, 417;
both sacrificed together, 417;
manner in which it was done, 417.
TAYLOR, ZACHARY, candidate for President, 722;
elected, 723;
his inauguration, 737;
his cabinet,--; his message, 740;
dangers of the Union, 740;
the claim of Texas, 740;
governments for the territories, 741;
reference to 741;
remark of Calhoun, 741;
Cuba, 741;
denunciation of unlawful expeditions, 741.
Decease of, 765;
occasion of his death, 765;
first President elected on a reputation purely military, 765;
deficiency of political wisdom, 765;
the Texas boundary, 765;
his death a public calamity, 765.
_Texas, proposed annexation of._--Application of that republic, 94;
an insuperable objection, 94;
Texas was at war with Mexico, and to annex her was to annex the
war, 94;
resolution for a legislative expression in favor of the measure,
as a basis for a tripartite treaty, 94;
remarks of Mr. Preston, 94;
"the lead taken by Texas, 95;
all hostile purposes and ill-temper towards Mexico disavowed, 95;
the treaty of 1819 a great oversight, 95;
a mistake of the committee, 95;
it is supposed there is a sort of political impossibility
resulting from the nature of things to effect the proposed
union, 96;
there is no point of view in which any proposition for annexation
can be considered, that any serious obstacle in point of
form presents itself," 96;
resolution laid on the table, 97.
_Presidential Intrigue._--Letter of Mr. Gilmer, in a Baltimore
newspaper, urging immediate annexation as necessary to
forestall the designs of Great Britain, 581;
these alleged designs, 581;
no signs, 581;
nothing in the position of Mr. Gilmer to make him a prime mover,
581;
a counterpart of the movement of Mr. Calhoun in the Senate of
1836, 582;
finger of Mr. Calhoun suspected, 582;
its progress, 582;
Webster inflexibly opposed, accosting of Aaron V. Brown, 582;
reply of Senator Benton, 582.
Letter from General Jackson in the Richmond Enquirer, 583;
history of this letter, 583;
Calhoun a candidate for the Presidency in 1841-2, 583;
annexation the issue, 583;
importance of the favor of General Jackson to secure the success
of the scheme, 583;
manner of approaching him, 583;
its success, 584;
mediums of transmission of Gilmer's letter, 584;
Jackson's answer sent to Brown, 584;
delivered to Gilmer, 584;
his expressions in the capitol, 584;
the state of the game, 584;
object now to gain time before the meeting of the convention, 585;
the Whigs induced to postpone their convention, 585;
discovery of the movements, 586;
denounced, 586;
explosion of the great gun on board the Princeton, 586;
the publication of Jackson's letter with change of date, 587;
interrogation of the candidates, 587;
reply of Van Buren, 587;
position of Calhoun, 587;
position of Mr. Clay, 587;
steps taken to obtain Van Buren's answer, 588;
necessity to obtain something from London to bolster up the
accusation of that formidable abolition plot which Great
Britain was hatching, 589;
the manner in which it was accomplished, 589;
Calhoun's letter to Lord Aberdeen, 589;
annexation conducted with a double aspect, 590;
failure of the annexation intrigue for the Presidency, 590;
further developments, 590;
position of the candidates, 590.
_See Democratic Convention._
_Secret Negotiation._--A paragraph in the President's message,
599;
intended to break the way for the production of a treaty of
annexation covertly conceived and carried on with all the
features of an intrigue, 600;
its adoption to be forced for the purpose of increasing the area
of slavery, or to make its rejection a cause of disunion,
600;
the scheme presents one of the most instructive lessons of the
workings of our government, 600;
early views of Mr. Calhoun contrasted with his later ones, 600.
Speech of Senator Benton, 600;
"a map and memoir sent to the Senate, 600;
let us look at our new and important proposed acquisitions, 601;
the treaty in all that relates to the Rio Grande is an act of
unparalleled outrage on Mexico, 602;
the President says we have acquired a title by his signature to
the treaty, wanting only the action of the Senate to
perfect it, 602;
war with Mexico is a design and an object with it from the
beginning, 602;
another evidence the letter of the present Secretary of State to
Mr. Green, 602;
the war is begun, 603;
and by orders issued from the President, 603;
the unconstitutionally of the war with Mexico, 603;
its injustice, 603;
this movement founded on a weak and groundless pretext, 604;
resolution relative to the author of a private letter, 605;
the letter of the Secretary of State to Mr. Murphy, 605;
commencement of the plan, 606;
details in its progress, 606, 607;
treaty sent to the Senate and delayed forty days, 608;
reasons, 608;
the messenger to Mexico, 609;
instructions, 609, 610;
disavowal of Great Britain of all designs against slavery in
Texas, 611;
Southern men deprived us of Texas and made it
non-slaveholding in 1819, 612;
object of Mr. Tyler," 613.
_Texas or Disunion._--The projected convention at Nashville, 613;
a strange collection anticipated, 613;
what if disunion should appear there, 613;
nullification and disunion are revived, and revived under
circumstances which menace more danger than ever, 614;
intrigue and speculation co-operate, but disunion is at the
bottom, 614;
secession is the more cunning method of dissolving the Union,
614;
the intrigue for the Presidency was the first act of the drama,
the dissolution of the Union the second, 615;
the rejected treaty compared to the slain Cæsar, 615;
the lesson of history, 615;
all elective governments must fail unless elections can be taken
out of the hands of politicians and restored to the people,
616.
_Violent Demonstrations in the South._--Soon as the treaty was
rejected and the nominating convention had acted, the
disunion aspect manifested itself, 616;
the meeting at Ashley, in Barnwell district, 616;
views of the meeting, 616;
resolutions, 617;
meeting at Beaufort, 617;
resolutions, 617;
meeting in Williamsburg district, S. C., 617;
Texas or disunion the standing toast, 617;
general convention at Richmond and at Nashville spoken of, 617;
repelled by citizens of those cities, 617;
counter meeting at Nashville, 617;
resolutions, 618;
the movement brought to a stand, its leaders paralyzed, and the
disunion scheme suppressed for the time, 618.
_Rejection of the Treaty._--Rejected by a vote of two to one
against it, 619;
the vote, 619;
annexation desirable, 619;
bill introduced by Mr. Benton to authorize the President to open
negotiations with Mexico and Texas, 619;
speech, 619;
an honest mass desire to get back Texas, 620;
the wantonness of getting up a quarrel with Great Britain exposed,
620;
the course of Mr. Calhoun, 621;
the folly of any apprehension shown by the interest which Great
Britain has in the commerce of Mexico, 621;
the magnitude and importance of our growing trade with Mexico, the
certainty that her carrying trade will fall into our hands,
&c., are reasons for the cultivation of peace with her, 621;
political and social considerations and a regard for the character
of republican government, were solid reasons for the
annexation without breaking peace with Mexico, 622;
remarks on the course of annexation, 623;
resolutions offered by Mr. Benton, 623, 624.
_Legislative admission of._--Words of the joint resolution, 632;
the anomaly presenting free and slave territory in the same State,
632;
passed, 633;
members from both sections voted for these resolutions, and
thereby asserted the right of Congress to legislate on
slavery in territories, 633;
resolutions sent to the Senate, 633;
gratification of Mr. Buchanan with them, 633;
his remarks, 633;
the Missouri Compromise line, 633;
solid ground upon which the Union rested, 634;
Mr. Benton's bill, 634;
his remarks on the bill, 634;
the joint resolution from the House and the bill of the Senate
combined, and the President authorized to act under them
as he thought best, 635;
Missouri Compromise reaffirmed, 636;
astonishment of Congress to hear that Tyler had undertaken the
execution of the act, 636;
views and purposes of President Polk, 636;
statement of Mr. Tappan, 636;
statement of Mr. Blair, 637;
the possibility that Mr. Calhoun would cause Mr. Tyler to
undertake the execution of the act repulsed as an impossible
infamy, 638;
remarks of Senators, 638;
the results, 638.
_Thirty Years' View._--Concluding remarks, 787.
THOMAS, FRANCIS, on the Pension act of 1837, 269.
THOMPSON, R. W., reply to Mr. Cushing, 505.
TRIST, NICHOLAS P., Commissioner to Mexico, 704.
TYLER, JOHN, candidate for the Vice-Presidency, 204.
_Administration._--His absence in Virginia, 211;
interregnum in the government, 211;
repairs to Washington, takes the oath and reappoints the Cabinet,
211;
address in the nature of an inaugural issued, 211;
remarks on his predecessor, 211;
two blemishes seen in the paragraph, 212;
other points of bad taste, 212;
another extract, 212;
remarks, 212;
extract relative to a bank, 212;
circumstances and declarations which led to an inference of his
opinion relative to a bank, 213.
Message, 215;
grant of money to President Harrison's family recommended, 215;
considered without the pale of the constitution and of dangerous
precedent, 215;
Harrison's fidelity, 216;
Congress would not have been called by President Tyler, 216;
compromise of 1833, 216;
remarks, 216;
fiscal agent recommended, 217;
Hamilton's reasons for a national bank, 217;
a grant of money to the States recommended, 217;
extract, 217;
the President's early views on the constitution, 218;
change, 218;
remarks, 218;
programme of measures in the form of a resolve offered by Mr.
Clay, 219;
remark of Mr. Cushing, 219.
_Resignation of the Cabinet._--Occurred two days after the
second veto message, 353;
the impelling circumstance a letter, 353;
allusion to this letter by Mr. Ewing, 354;
reasons of the resignation, 354;
statement of Mr. Ewing, 354;
statement of Mr. Badger, 354;
statement of Mr. Bell, 355;
statement of Mr. Crittenden, 356;
Webster's reasons for not resigning his seat in President Tyler's
Cabinet, 356;
influences upon Webster, 356;
new Cabinet, 356.
_Repudiated by the Whig Party._--Denounced in both Houses of
Congress, 357;
formal meeting of the Whigs, 357;
resolutions, 357;
report of Committee, 357;
how cherished hopes were frustrated, 357;
extract, 357;
loss by the conduct of the President, 358;
what is to be the conduct of the party in such unexpected and
disastrous circumstances? 358;
establish a permanent separation of the Whig party from Mr. Tyler,
359;
course recommended to be pursued, 359;
a new victory promised at the next election, 359;
manifesto announced by Mr. Cushing by a counter manifesto, 359;
justification of the President for changing his course on the
fiscal corporation bill, 359;
thrust at Mr. Clay, 359;
the design, 360;
relations of Clay and Webster, 360;
extracts from Cushing's manifesto, 360;
interest of the President in the second bill, 361;
further details, 361;
the results, 362.
_End and results of the Extra Session._--Replete with disappointed
expectations and nearly barren of permanent results, 372;
defection of Mr. Tyler not foreseen, 373;
repealability the only remedy thought of, for the law creating a
bank, 373;
other acts of the session, 373;
three only remain, 377;
a triumphant session to the democracy, 373.
_First Annual Message._--Acquittal of McLeod the first subject
mentioned, 373;
remarks on the Caroline, 374:
condition of the finances, 374;
new plan of a fiscality, 374;
remarks of Mr. Benton on this plan, 375;
reference to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, 376.
_Separation from the Whig Party._--Effort to detach the Whig
party from Mr. Clay, 417;
its failure, 418;
impeachment suggested, 418;
the protest of Mr. Tyler, 418;
difference from the case of General Jackson, 418;
remarks of Mr. Adams, 418;
remarks of Mr. Botts, 419;
introduces resolutions of the Senate in 1834 on the case of
President Jackson, 419;
passage in the House, 419.
_Message at the Session 1842-3._--The treaty with Great Britain
the prominent topic of the forepart of it, 460;
in public opinion it was really a British treaty, 460;
important subjects omitted, 460;
the Oregon Territory, 460;
excuses in the Message for omitting to settle it, 460;
extract, 460;
the excuse lame and insufficient, 460;
termination of the Florida war, 461;
a government bank a prominent object and engrossing feature, 461;
its features, 461;
impossible to carry a passion for paper money farther than
President Tyler did, 461;
the low state of the public credit, the impossibility of making a
loan, and the empty state of the Treasury, were the next
topics, 462;
extract, 462;
the low and miserable condition to which the public credit had
sunk at home and abroad, 462;
remarks, 463.
Second Annual Message, 565;
remarks on the Oregon territorial boundary, 565;
error of the Message in saying the United States had always
contended for 54° 40' as the limit, 565;
always offered the parallel of 49°, 566;
prospective war with Mexico shadowed forth, 566;
reference to the exchequer scheme, 566;
regret at its rejection, 566;
extract, 566;
his sighings and longings for a national paper currency, 567;
reconstruction of his Cabinet, 569.
_The President and Senate._--Mr. Tyler without a party, 629;
incessant rejection of his nominations by the Senate, and the
pertinacity of their renewal, 629;
case of Mr. Cushing, 629;
the case of Mr. Wise, 630;
the case of George H. Proffit, 630;
case of David Henshaw, 630.
_His last message._--Texas was the prominent topic of this
message, 631;
Mr. Calhoun the master-spirit, 631;
speculations gave the spirit in which the Texas movement was
conducted, 631;
conduct and aspect towards Mexico, 631.
U
UNDERWOOD, JOSEPH R., on the bill for the relief of Mrs. Harrison,
259.
UPSHUR, ABEL P., Secretary of the Navy, 356;
Secretary of State, 562;
killed on board the Princeton, 568.
V
_Van Buren's Administration._--Inauguration, 7;
subjects of his address, 7;
extract relative to the foreign policy of the country, 7;
remarks, 7;
the subject of slavery, 8;
remarks of the inaugural upon, 8;
declaration to sanction no bill which proposed to interfere with
Slavery in the States, or to abolish it in the District of
Columbia while it existed in the adjacent States, 9;
the only point of fear at this time, 9;
the Cabinet, 9;
extra session of Congress, 29;
the Message, 29;
good effects of the specie order, 30;
objections to any bank of the United States, 30;
total and perpetual dissolution of the government from all
connection with banks, 30;
remarks on the recent failure of all the banks, 30;
the foundation of the Independent Treasury, 31;
recommended to subject the banks to the process of bankruptcy,
31;
four cardinal recommendations, 31;
cause of the extra session stated, 31;
recommendation, 31.
_Attacks on the Message._--The answers to Messages in former days,
32;
the change when made, 32;
its effects, 32;
assaults upon the message under thirty-two heads, equal to the
points of the compass, 33;
assailants, 33;
defenders of the administration, 33;
the treasury note bill, 33;
remarks of Mr. Webster, 33;
paper money, 33;
remarks of Mr. Benton, 34;
extracts, 34;
neither a paper money bill nor a bill to lay the foundation for a
national debt, 34;
treasury notes for circulation and treasury notes for investment,
34;
their distinctive features, 34;
such issues of dangerous tendency, 34;
passed the Senate, 35;
in the House notes reduced to $50, 35;
in the Senate motion to restore amount to $100, remarks of Mr.
Clay in favor, 35;
charged as being a government bank, 35;
remarks of Mr. Webster, 36;
motion lost, 36.
First regular session, 65;
the message, 65;
confined to home affairs, 65;
resurrection notes, 65;
extract from the message on this point, 66;
graduated prices recommended for the public lands, 66;
a prospective pre-emption act, 66;
extract, 66;
subsequently adopted, 67.
Message at first session of the twenty-sixth Congress, 162;
extracts, 162;
other motives than a want of confidence under which the banks seek
to justify themselves, 162;
dangerous nature of the whole banking system, from its chain of
mutual dependence and connection, 162;
a financial crisis commencing in London extends immediately to our
great Atlantic cities, 162;
extracts, 163;
the disconnection produced by the delinquencies of the banks, 163;
beneficial operation of the pre-emption system, 163;
effect of renewed negotiations with the Florida Indians, 164.
Conclusion, 207;
measures of his administration, and their effect, 207;
general harmony, 207;
no offence given to North or South, 207;
bank suspensions, 207;
insurrection in Canada, 207;
case of the Caroline, 208;
increase of votes in his favor over the first election, 208;
candidate for the Presidency, 203;
candidate for President, 723.
_Vote_ on the hard money clause of the independent treasury bill,
124;
do. on the bill, 125;
on Clay's substitute slavery resolution, 137;
on the rule relative to abolition petitions, 153;
on the Speaker, 161;
relative to distribution of the land revenue, 172;
on the repeal of the Sub-treasury, 220;
on the bankrupt bill, 229;
on the distribution bill, 245, 246;
on the hour rule in the House, 247;
on the bill for the relief of Mrs. Harrison, 259-262;
on the motion to repeal the pension act of 1837, 267;
on the action of the Administration in the McLeod affair, 291;
on making salt free, 316; on the vetoed bank bill, 328;
on the amendments to the second bill, 338, 339, 340;
on short exchange bills, 341;
on the resolutions of the Senate on the protest of Gen. Jackson as
applied to the protest of President Tyler, 419;
on the increase of the navy, 455;
on the Oregon settlement bill, 477;
on the motion to give notice to terminate the joint occupation of
Oregon, 625;
on the resolution admitting Texas, 635;
to terminate the joint occupation of Oregon, 674;
of the Senate on the request of the President, for advice relative
to Oregon, 676;
on the Oregon treaty, 676;
on Douglass's motion to extend the Missouri compromise line, 711;
on the resolution of Mr. Clay relative to New Mexico, 744;
on the admission of California, 769.
W
WALKER, PERCY, on the disturbance in the Senate gallery, 352.
WALKER, ROBERT J., Secretary of the Treasury, 650.
_War with Mexico: its cause._--Calhoun the author of the war, 639;
the Senator from South Carolina in his effort to throw the blame
of the war upon the President, goes no further back in
search for causes than the march on the Rio Grande, 640;
the cession of Texas to Spain is the beginning point in the chain
of causes that led to this war, 640;
direct proofs of the Senator's authorship of the war, 641;
ten years ago he was for plunging us in instant war, 641;
the peace of the country was then saved, but it was a respite
only, 641;
Congress of 1836 would not admit Texas, 642;
the letter of the Texan minister reveals the true state of the
Texan question in January, 1844, and the conduct of all
parties in relation to it, 642;
the promise was clear and explicit to lend the army and navy to
the President of Texas to fight the Mexicans, while they
were at peace with us, 643;
detachments sent to the frontier, 643;
honor required us to fight for Texas if we intrigued her into a
war, 643;
the treaty of annexation was signed, and in signing it the
Secretary knew that he had made war with Mexico, 644;
the alternative resolutions adopted by Congress in the last days
of the session of 1844-45, and in the last moments of Mr.
Tyler's administration, 645;
instructions to newspapers, 647;
authorship of the war, 647;
further remarks, 649.
Commencement of hostilities, 679;
effect of the hostilities, 679;
country fired for war, 679;
Calhoun opposed to the war, although his conduct had produced it,
679;
claims upon Mexico and speculations in Texas land scrip were a
motive with some to urge on a war, 680;
it was said the war would close in ninety or one hundred and
twenty days, 680;
an intrigue laid for peace before the war was declared, 680;
the return of the exiled chief Santa Anna, 680;
a secret that leaked out, 680;
the manner, 680;
explanation of the President, 681;
two millions asked of Congress as a means to terminate the war,
681;
extract from the confidential message, 681;
this intrigue for peace a part of the war, 682;
an infinitely silly conception, 682;
consequences of Santa Anna's return, 682.
_Conquest of New Mexico._--Conquered without firing a gun, 683;
how it was done, 683;
details, 683;
the after-clap, 683;
cause and results of the insurrection, 683;
career of Magaffin, 683;
his services and final escape, 684;
his reward, and the manner of obtaining it, 684.
_Doniphan's Expedition._--Address of Col. Benton to the returning
volunteers, 684;
the wonderful march, 685;
meeting and parting with savage tribes, 685;
the march upon Chihuahua, 685;
its capture, 686;
the starting point of a new expedition, 686;
the march to Monterey, 686;
the march to Matamoras, 687;
the expedition made without Government orders, 687;
advice of
Senator Benton to the President, 687;
not a regular bred officer among them, 688.
Senator Benton looks over the President's message at the latter's
request, 693;
objects to the recommendation to cease the active prosecution of
the war, 693;
reasons of the objection, 693;
the project had been adopted in the cabinet, 693;
Mr. Benton meets with the cabinet, 693;
cabinet obstinate, 693;
the President overrules them, 693;
reading of the message in the Senate, 694;
Mr. Calhoun mystified, 694;
Mr. Calhoun's proposed line of occupation, 694.
WEBSTER, DANIEL, his reception in New York, 12;
his speech at New York, 13;
on the Treasury note bill, 33;
on the deposit act, 36;
on bank resumption, 84;
Secretary of State, 209;
his letter to Senators Choate and Bates respecting President
Tyler's views of the second bank bill, 348;
reasons for not resigning his seat in President Tyler's Cabinet,
356;
retires from Tyler's Cabinet, 562;
the progress of the scheme for the annexation of Texas, 562;
Webster an obstacle to the negotiation, 562;
a middle course fallen upon to get rid of him, 562;
resigns, 562;
on extending the constitution to territories, 730, 731;
Secretary of State, 768.
WHITE, HUGH LAWSON, his resignation, 184;
occasion, 184;
birth and career, 184;
closing of his career, 184;
his death, 184;
eulogium, 185;
reason of his losing favor at home, 185;
influence upon Mrs. White, 185;
remark of a member of Congress, 185;
remarks, 185.
_Whig._--Adoption of the name by a party in this country, 314;
manifesto against Mr. Tyler, 357.
WICKLIFFE, CHARLES A., Postmaster, 356;
Postmaster General, 569.
WILKINS, WILLIAM, Secretary at War, 569.
WILLIAMS, LEWIS, decease of, 396;
character, 396;
Adams's motion of funeral honors to his memory, 396;
Clay's motion of funeral honors to his memory in the Senate, 396;
the father of the House, 397.
WILLIAMS, RUEL, moves to repeal the pension act of 1837, 266.
_Wilmot Proviso._--Measures taken to obtain peace with Mexico, 694;
three millions asked for to negotiate a boundary and acquire
additional territory, 694;
Wilmot proviso moved, 695;
an unnecessary measure, 695;
answer no purpose but to bring on a slavery agitation, 695;
seized upon by Mr. Calhoun, 695;
slavery agitation a game played by the abolitionists on one side,
and disunionists on the other, 695;
letter of Mr. Calhoun, 695;
proviso not passed, 696.
WINTHROP, ROBERT C., chosen Speaker, 703;
raises the question of reception of the protest of Southern
Senators on the admission of California, 770.
WISE, HENRY A., his nomination rejected in the Senate, 630.
WOODBURY, LEVI, Secretary of the Treasury, 9;
on the bill for the relief of Mrs. Harrison, 260;
on naval expenditures, 454.
WRIGHT, SILAS, a sacrifice of feeling to become Governor, 626;
refuses a seat in the Cabinet, 650.
Decease of, 700;
its suddenness, 701;
his career of honor, 701;
his mind, 701;
his port in debate, 701;
his prominent trait, 701;
his candor, 701;
his integrity, 701;
temper, 702;
manners, 702;
mode of life, 702.
Y
YOUNG, WILLIAM, on the nomination of Van Buren, 598.
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* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as
printed.
Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where
the missing quote should be placed.
The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the
transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Page 131: Missing closing bracket was supplied: "conviction that the
South (in its great staples) furnished the basis for these imports;"
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2) - or, A History of the Working of the American Government - for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850" ***
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