Speech of Mr. Corwin, of Ohio, on the Mexican War ; delivered in the Senate of the United States, February 11, 1847

8PEECH

OF

MR. COEWIN, OF OHIO

ON

THE MEXICAN WAR.

Deliveebd in tue Senate of the United States, February 11, 1847.

Mr. President ; I am not now about to perform the useless task of survey-
ing the whole field of debate occupied in this discussion. It has been carefully
reaped, and by vigilant and strong hands ; and yet, Mr. President, there is a part
of that field which promises to reward a careful gleaner with a valuable sheaf or
two, which deserve to be bound up before the whole harvest is gathered. And
still this so tempting prospect could not have allured me into this debate, had
that motive not been strengthened by another, somewhat personal to myselfj
and still more interesting to those I represent. Anxious as I know all are to
act, rather than debate, I am compelled, for the reasons I have assigned, to so-
licit the attention of the Senate. I do this chiefly that I may discharge the
humble duty of giving to the Senate, and through this medium to my constitu-
ents, the motives and reasons which have impelled me to occupy a position, al-
ways undesirable, but in times like the present, painfully embarrassing.

I have been compelled, from convictions of duty which I could not disregard,
to differ, not merely with those on the other side of the chamber, with whom I
seldom agree, but also to separate, on one or two important questions, from a
majority of my friends on this side — ^those who compose here that Whig party,
of which I suppose I may yet call myself a member.

Diversity of opinion on most subjects affecting human affairs is to be expec-
ted. Unassisted mind, in its best estate, has not yet attained to uniformity,
much less to absolute certainty, in matters belonging to the dominion of specula-
tive reason. This is peculiarly and emphatically true, where we endeavor to
deduce from the present, results, the accomplishment of which reach far into the
future, and will only clearly develope themselves in the progress of time. From
the present state of the human mind this is a law of intellect quite as strong as-
necessity. And yet after every reasonable allowance for the radical difference in
intellectual structure, culture, habits of thought, and the application of thought
to things, the singularly opposite avowals made by the two Senators on the other
aide of the chamber, (I mean the Senator from South Carolina, Mr. Calhoun,
and the Senator from Michigan, Mr. Cass,) must have struck all who heard
them, as a curious and mournful example of the truth of which I have spoken.
The Senator from Michigan, (Mr. Cass,) in contemplating the present aspects
and probable future course of our public affairs, declared, that he saw nothing
to alarm the fears or depress the hopes of the patriot. To his serene, and as
I fear, too apathetic mind, all is calm ; the sentinel might sleep securely on his
watch-tower. The ship of State seems to hira to expand her sails under a
Towers, print, opposite Intelligencer office.

clear sky, and move on, with prosperous gales, upon a smooth sea. He admon-
ishes all not to anticipate evil to come, but to fold their hands and close their
eyes in quietude, ever mindful of the consolatory text, " sufficient unto the day
is the evil thereof." But the Senator from South Carolina, (Mr. Calhoun,)
summoning from the depths of his thoughtful and powerful mind all its energies,
and looking abroad on the present condition of the Republic, is pained with
fearful apprehension, doubt, distrust, and dismay. To his vision, made strong by
a long life of careful observation, made keen by a comprehensive view of past
history, the sky seems overcast with impending storms, and the dark future is
shrouded in impenetrable gloom. When two such minds thus differ, those less
familiar with great subjects affecting the happiness of nations may well
pause, before they rush to a conclusion on this, a subject which, in all its-
bearings, immediate and remote, affects certainly the present prosperity, and
probably the liberty, of two Republics, embracing together nearly thirty mil»
lions of people. Mr. President, it is a fearful responsibility we have assumed ;;
engaged in flagrant, desolating war with a neighboring ^Republic, to us, thirty
millions of God's creatures look up for that moderated wisdom which, if possi-
ble, may stay the march of misery and restore to them, if it may be so, mutual
feelings of good will, with all the best blessings of peace.
. I sincerely wish it were in my power to cherish those placid convictions of
security which have settled upon the mind of the Senator from Michigan. So
far from this, I have been, in common with the Senator from South Carolina,
oppressed with melancholy forebodings of evils to come, and not unfrequently by
a conviction that each step we take in this unjust war, may be the last in our
career ; that each chapter we write in Mexican blood, may close the volume
0f our history as a free people. Sir, I am the less inclined to listen to the siren
song the Senator from Michigan sings to his own soul, because I have heard its
notes before. I know the country is at this moment suffering from the fatal
apathy into which it was lulled a few years ago. Every one must recall to his>
mind, with pleasing regret, the happy condition of the country in 1843, when^
tliat other question, the prelude to this, the annexation of Texas, was agitated^
here ; we remember how it attracted the attention of the whole Union ; we re-
member that the two great leaders of the two great parties agreeing in scarcely
a,ny other opinion, were agreed in that. They both predicted that if Texas were
annexed, war with Mexico would be the probable result. We were told then
by others, as now by the Senator from Michigan, that all was well, all was-
calm, that Mexico would not fight, or if she would, she was too weak to wage-
the struggle with any effect upon us. The sentinel was then told to sleep upon
Ijis watch-tower; " sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," was sung to us-
then in notes as soft and sweet as now. Mr. President, "the day" has come,
and with it has come war, the most direful curse wherewith it has pleased God'
to afflict a sinful world. Such have been the fatal effects of lulling into apathy
the public mind, on a subject which agitated it, as well it might, to its profound-
est depths.

' I repeat, sir, the day has come, as was then predicted, and the evil predicted-
has come with it. We are here, sir, now, not as then, at peace with all ih&
world — not now, as then, with laws that brought into your treasury every-
thing adequate to its wants — not now, as then, free from debt and the apprehen-
sion of debt and taxation, its necessary consequence. But we are here with a
treasury that is beggared — that lifls up its imploring hands to the monopolists
and capitalists of the country— that sends out its notes and " promises to pay "
into every mart and every market in the world — begging for a pittance from
every hand to help to swell the amount now necessary to extricate us from a
war — inevitable, as it now seems it was, from that very act which was adopted
under such flattering promises two years ago. Mr. President, it is no purpose-

of mine to arraign the conduct of the United States upon that occasion. It is no
purpose of mine to treat this young and newly adopted sister — the State of Texas
— as an alien or stranger in this family of Republics. I allude to this only to
show, how little reliance is to be placed upon those favorable anticipations in
which gentlemen indulge with regard to consequences which may How from
measures, to which they are strongly wedded, either by feeling or party attach-
ment.

Is there nothing else in our history of even the past year to justify the Senator
from South Carolina in the pregnant declaration, that in the whole period of his
public life, comprehending the most eventful in ihe history of the Republic, there
had never been a time when so much danger was threatened to the interests, hap-
piness, and liberties of the people. Sir, ifany one could sit down, free from the ex-
citements and biases which belong to public affairs — could such an one betake him-
self to those sequestered solitudes, where thoughtful men extract the philosophy of
history from its facts, I am quite sure no song of " all's well " would be heard
from his retired cell. No, sir, looking at the events of the last twelve months,
and forming his judgment of these by the suggestions which history teaches,
and which she alone can teach, he would record another of those sad lessons
which, though often taught, are, I fear, forever to be disregarded. He would
speak of a Republic, boasting that its rights were secured, and the restricted
powers of its functionaries bound up in the chains of a written Constitntion ; he
would record on his page, also, that such a people, in the wantonness of strength
or the fancied security of the moment, had torn that written Constitution to
pieces, scattered its fragments to the winds, and surrendered themselves to the
usurped authority of ONE MAN.

He would find written in that Constitution, Congress shall have power to de-
clare war; he would find every where in that old charter, proofs clear and strong,
that they who framed it intended that Congress, composed of two Houses, the
representatives of the States and the people, should, (ifany were pre-eminent,)
be the controlling power. He would find there a President designated, whose
general and almost exclusive duty it is to execute, not to make the law. Turn-
ing h"om this to the history of the last ten months, he would find that the Presi-
dent alone, without the advice or consent of Congress, had, by a bold usurpation,
made war on a neighboring Republic ; and what is quite as much to be deplored,
that Congress, whose high powers were thus set at naught and defied, had, with
ready and tame submission, yielded to the usurper the wealth and power of
the nation to execute his will, as if to swell his iniquitous triumph over the very
Constitution which he and they had alike sworn to support.

Ifany one should inquire for the cause of a war in this country, where should
he resort for an answer ? Surely to the journals of both Houses of Congress,
since Congress alone has power to declare war ; yet although we have been
engaged in war for the last ten months, a war which has tasked all the fiscal
resources of the country to carry it forward, you shall search the records and
the archives of both Houses of Congress in vain for any detail of its causes,
any resolve ©f Congress that war shall be waged. How is it, then, that a peace-
ful and peace-loving people, happy beyond the common lot of man, busy in every
laudable pursuit of life, have been forced to turn suddenly from these and plunge
into the misery, the vice, and crime which ever have been and ever shall be the
attendant scourges of war? The answer can only be, it was by the act and
will of the President alone, and not by the act or will of Congress, the war-mak-
ing department of the Government.

Mr. President, wag it not due to ourselves, to the lofty character for peace as
well as probity which we profess to be ours, and which till recently we might
justly claim — was it not due to the civilization of the age, that we, the represen-
tatives of the States and the people, should have set forth the causes which

might impel us to invoke the fatal arbitrament of war, before we madly rushed
upon it ? Even the Senator from South Carolina, attached as he has been hj
party ties to the President, and therefore, as we may suppose, acquainted with
his motives for his wal* with Mexico, was compelled to say the other day in de-
bate, that, up to that hour, the causes of this war were left to conjecture. The
reason of this singular anomaly, sir, is to be. found in the fact that the President
and not Congress declared and commenced this war. How is this, Mr. Presi-
dent ? How is it that we have so disappointed the intentions of our fathers,
and the hopes of all the friends of written Constitutions ? When the makers of
that Constitution assigned to Congress alone, the most delicate and important
power — to declare war — a power more intimately affecting the interests, immedi-
ate and remote, of the people, than any which a government is ever called onto
exert — when they withheld this great prerogative from the Executive and confided
it to Congress alone, they but consulted in this, as in every other work of their
hands, the gathered wisdom of all preceding times. Whether they looked t@ the
stern despotisms of the ancient Asiatic world, or the military yoke of imperial
Rome, or the feudal institutions of the middle ages, or the more modern mon-
archies of Europe, in each and all of these, where the power to wage war was
held by one or by a few, it had been used to sacrifice, not to protect the many.
The caprice or ambition of the tyrant had always been the cause of bloody and
wasting war, while the subject millions had been treated by their remorseless
masters, only as "tools in the hands of him who knew how to use them." They
therefore declared, that this fearful power should be confided to those who rep-
resent the people, and those who here in the Senate represent the sovereign
States of the Republic. After securing this power to Congress, they thought it safe
to give the command of the armies in peace and war to the President. We shall
see hereafter, how by an abuse of his power as commander-in-chief, the President
has drawn to himself that of declaring war, or commencing hostilities with a
people with whom we were on terms of peace, which is substantially the same.

The men of former times took very good care that your standing army should
be exceedingly small, and they who had the most lively apprehensions of invest-
ing in one man the power to command the army, always inculcated upon
the minds of the people, the necessity of keeping that army within limits, just
as small as the necessity of the external relations of the country would possibly
admit. It has happened, Mr. President, that when a little disturbance on your
Indian frontier took place. Congress was invoked for an increase of your mili-
tary force. Gentlemen came here who had seen partial service in the armies
ef the United States. They tell you that the militia of the country is not to be
relied upon — that it is only in the regular army of the United States, that you
are to find men competent to fight the battles of the country, and from time to
time when that necessity has seemed to arise, forgetting this old doctrine, that
a large standing army in time of peace was always dangerous .to human liberty,
we have increased that army from six thousand up to about sixteen thousand
men. Mr. President, the other day, we gave ten regiments more ; and
lor not giving it within the quick time demanded by our master, the commander-
in-chief, some minion — I know not who, for I have not looked into this matter
until this morning — feeding upon the fly-blown remnants that fall from the Execu-
tive shambles and lie putrifying there, has denounced us as Mexicans, and called
the American Republic to take notice, that there was in the Senate, a body of men
chargeable with incivism — Mexicans in heart — traitors to the United States^

I trust, Mr. President, that our master will be appeased by the facility with
which, immediately after that rebuke of his minion, the Senate acted upon the
bill and gave him the army which he required. I trust that he will now forget
that law which, as commander-in-chief of the army of the United States and
President of this great North American Republic for the time being, he promulga-

ted to us in the message, and those commands which he was pleased to deliver at
the opening of this session to his faithful and humble servitors in both branches of
the American Congress, admonishing us that we would be considered as giving
** aid and comfort" to his enemy — not ours ! — his — if one word should be said
unfavorable to the motives which have brought the royal will to the conclusion
that he would precipitate this Repul)lic into a war with Mexico ! I trust his Ma-
jesty, in consideration of our faithful services in augmenting the forces of the
Republic agreeably to the commands which we have received from the throne,
will be induced to relax a little when ho comes to execute that law of treason,
upon one at least so humble as myself! I do remember, Mr. President — you will
remember, Mr. President — your recollection of history will furnish you with a
case which will, I think, operate in my favor in a question of that sort.

Some time in the history of the royal Tudors in England, when a poor Eng-
lishman, for differing from His Majesty, or Her Majesty, on some subject — it
might be religious faith — was condemned to be hanged and quartered and em-
boweled, out of special grace, in a particular case where penitence was express-
ed, the hangman was admonished to give the culprit time to choke before he began
to chop up his limbs and take out his bowels !

Now, Mr. President, I have already stated that I do not intend to occupy the
Senate with a discussion of those varieties of topics which naturally enforce
themselves upon my attention in considering this subject. It must have occured
to every body how utterly impotent the Congress of the United States now is for
any purpose whatever, but that of yielding to the President every demand which
he makes for men and money, unless they assume that 07ily position which is
left — that which in the history of other countries, in times favorable to human
liberty, has been so often resorted to as a check upon arbitrary power — with-
holding money, refusing to grant the services of men when demanded for purposes
which are not deemed to be proper.

When I review the doctrines of the majority here, and consider their applica-
tion to the existing war, I confess I am at a loss to determine whether the world
is to consider our conduct as a ridiculous farce, or be lost in amazement at such
absurdity In a people calling themselvefree. The President, without asking the
the consent of Congress, involves us in war, and the majority here, without re-
ference to the justice or necessity of the war, call upon us to grant men and
money at the pleasure of the President, who they say, is charged with the duty of
carrying on the w^ar and responsible for its result. If we grant the means thus
demanded, the President can carry forward this war for any end, or from any
motive, without limit of time or place.

With these doctrines for our guide, I will thank any Senator to furnish me,
with any means of escaping from the prosecution of this or any other war, for
an hundred years to come, if it please the President who shall be, to continue it
so long. Tell me, ye who contend that being in war, duty demands of Congress
for its prosecution, all the money and every able-bodied man in America to carry
it on if need be, who also contend that it is the right of the President, without the
control of Congress, to march your embodied hosts to Monterey, to Yucatan, to
Mexico, to Panama, to China, and that under penalty of death to the officer who
disobeys him — tell me, I demand it of you, tell me, tell the American people,
tell the nations of Christendom, what is the' difference between your American
democracy and the mOst odious, most hateful despotism, that a merciful God has
ever allowed a nation to be afflicted with since government on earth began ? You
may call this free government, but it is such freedom, and no other, as of old was
established at Babylon, at Susa, at Bactriana, or Persepolis. Its parallel is
scarcely to be found when thus falsely understood, in any even the worst forms
of civil polity in modern times. Sir, it is not so, such is not your Constitution, it
is something else, something other and better than this. •

I have looked at this subject with a painful endeavor to come to the conclu-
sion if possible, that it was my duty, as a Senator of the United States, finding
the country in war, to " fight it out," as we say in the common and popular
phrase of the times, to a just and honorable peace ! I could very easily con-
cede that to be my duty if I found my country engaged in a just war — in a war
necessary even to protect that fancied honor of which you talk so much. I then
should have some apology in the judgment of my country, in the determination
of my conscience, and in that appeal which you, and I, and all of us must soon
be required to make before a tribunal, where this vaunted honor of the Republic,
I fear me, will gain but little credit as a defence to any act we may perform here
in the Senate of the United Stales.

But when I am asked to say whether I will prosecute a war, I cannot answer
that question, yea or nay, until I have determined whether that was a necsssary
war ; and I cannot determine whether it was necessary until I know how it was
that my country was involved in it. And it is to that particular point, Mr. President
— without reading documents, but referring to a few facts which 1 understand
not to be denied on either side of this chamber — that I wish to direct the atten-
tion of the American Senate, and so far as may be, that of any of the noble and
honest-hearted constituents whom I represent here. I know, Mr. President, the
responsibility which 1 assume in undertaking to determine that the President of
the United States has done a great wrong to the country, whose honor and
whose interest he was required to protect. I know the denunciations which
await every one who shall dare to put himself in opposition to that high power
— that idol god — which the people of this country have made to themselves and
called a President.

But it is my very humility which makes me bold. I know, sir, that he who
was told in former time how to govern a turbulent people was advised to cut off
the tallest heads. Mine will escape ! Still, holding a seat here, Mr. President,
and finding it written in the Constitution of my country that I had the power to
grant to the President at his bidding, or not, as I pleased, men and money, I did
conceive that it became my duty to ascertain whether the President's request
was a reasonable one — whether the President wanted these men and this money
for a proper and laudable purpose or not ; and with these old-fashioned ideas —
quite as unpopular I fear with some on this side of the Chamber as we find
them to be on the other — I set myself to this painful investigation. I found not
quite enough along with me to have saved the unrighteous city of old.

There were not five of us, but only three ! And when these votes were called,
and I was compelled to separate myself from almost all around me, I could have
cried as did the man of Uz in his affliction in the elder time — " What time my
friends wax warm they vanish, when it is hot they are consumed out of their
places !"

I could not leave the position in which it had pleased the State of Ohio to
place me, and I returned again and again to the original and primary and impor-
tant inquiry — how is it that my country is involved in this war ? I looked to the
President's account of it, and he tells me it was a war for the defence of the
territory of the United States. I found it written in that message, Mr. Presi-
dent, that this war was not sought nor forced upon Mexico hy the people of the
United States. I shall make no question of history or the truth of history with
my master, the commander-in-chief, upon that particular proposition. On the
contrary, I could verify every word that he thus utters. Sir, I know that the
people of the United States neither sought nor forced Mexico into this war, and
yet I know that the President of the United States, with the command of your
standing army, did seek that war, and that he forced war upon Mexico. I ana
not about to afflict the Senate with a detail of testimony on that point. I will
simply state facts which few I trust will be found to deny.

One of the facts, Mr. President, is this : That in the year of grace, 1836, the
battle of San Jacinto was fought. Does any body deny that ? No one here will
doubt that fact. The result of that battle was that a certain district of country,
calling itself Texas, declared itself a free and independent Republic. I hope
the Senate will pardon me for uttering a thought or two which strike me just
now while I see the Senator from Texas, the leader of the men who achieved
that victory, before me. I wish to say a word or two about the great glory, the
historical renown, that is to come to the people of the United States by the vic-
tories which we shall obtain over the arms and forces of the Republic of Mex-
ico. I suppose, Mr. President, like all other boys, in my early youth, when I
had an opportunity of looking at a book called history, those which spoke of
bloody battles and desolating wars were most likely to attract my attention, and
with very limited means of ascertaining that portion of the history of the human
race, it nevertheless has impressed itself very vividly upon my mind that there
have been great wars, and, as the old maxim has it, " many brave men, before
Agamemnon."

Sir, the world's annals show very many ferocious sieges, and battles, and on-
slaughts, before San Jacinto, Palo Alto, or Monterey. Generals of bloody re-
nown have frightened the nations before the revolt of Texas, or our invasion
of Mexico; and I suppose we Americans might properly claim some share in
this martial reputation, since it was won by our own kindred, men clearly de-
scended from Noah, the great "propositus " of our family, with whom we all
claim a rery endearing relationship. But I confess I have been somewhat sur-
prised of late that men, read in the history of man, who knew that war has been
his trade for six thousand years, (prompted I imagine by those " noble instincts"
spoken of by the Senator from Michigan,) who knew that the first man born of
woman was a hero of the first magnitude, that he met his shepherd brother in
deadly conflict, and most heroically beat out his brains with a club — I say sir, I
-am somewhat puzzled when I hear those who knew all these things well, never-
theless shouting paeans of glory to the American name, for the few deeds of
death which our noble little army in Mexico have as yet been able to achieve.

But sir, let me recur again to the battle of San Jacinto. The Senator from
Texas, (General Houston,) now in his seat, commanded there. His army con-
sisted of about seven hundred and fifty men. These were collected from all
parts of the United States, and from the population of Texas, then numbering
about ten thousand souls. With this army, undisciplined, badly armed, and in-
differently furnished in all respects, the Senator from Texas conquered a Mexi-
can army of about 3,500 men, took their commander, Sa*ta Anna, then President
of Mexico, prisoner, with the whole of his forces. Texas declared her inde-
pendence, and alone maintained it against the power of Mexico for seven years,
and since that time has been a State under the shield of our protection.
It is against this same Mexico, that twenty millions of Anglo-Saxon Americans
send forth their armies. The great North American Republic buckles on her
armor, and her mighty bosom heaves with the '"'' gaudia certaminis,^^ as she
marches under her eagle banners to encounter a foe, who ten years ago, was
whipped by an army of seven hundred and fifty undisciplined militia, and bereft
of a territory larger than the Empire of France, which her conqueror held in
her despite for seven years, and then quietly transferred her territory and power
to you. Sir, if the joint armies of the United States and Texas are to acquire
renown by vanquishing Mexico, what honors are too great to be denied to Texas
for her victory over this Mexico ten years ago. If, by vanquishing such a foe
you are to win renown in war, what laurels should you not wreathe around the
brows of those who fought at San Jacinto, especially when history tells of the
killed and wounded in the latter fight, she records that just three were killed in
mortal combat, whilst two died of their wounds " when the battle was done ! ! !"

8

Oh, Mr. President, does it indeed become this great Republic to cherish the
heroic wish to measure arms with the long since conquered, distracted, anarchic^
and miserable Mexico.

• Mr. President, I trust we shall abandon the idea, the heathen, barbarian no-
tion, that our true national glory is to be won, or retained, by military prowess
or skill, in the art of destroying life. And, whilst I cannot but lament for the
permanent and lasting renown of my country, that she should command the?
service of her children in what I must consider, wanton, unprovoked, unneces-
sary, and therefore, unjust war, I can yield to the brave -soldier, whose trade
is war, and whose duty is obedience, the highest meed of praise for his courage,,
his enterprise and perpetual endurance of the fatigues and horrors of war. I
know the gallant men who are engaged in fighting your battles possess personal
bravery equal to any troops, in any land, any where engaged in, the business of
war. I do not believe we are less capable in the art of destruction than others,
or less willing, on the slightest pretext, to unsheath the sword, and consider "re-
venge a virtue."- I could wish also, that your brave soldiers, whilst they bleed
and die on the battle-field might have (what in this war is impossible) the con-
solation to feel and know, that their blood flowed'in defence of a great right,,
that their lives were a meet sacrifice to an exalted principle!

But sir, I return to our relations with Mexico. Texas, I have shown, baving
won her independence and torn from Mexico aboiit one-fourth part of her terri-
tory, comes to the United State, sinks her national character, into the less ele-
yated but more secure position, of one of the United States of America. The
revolt of Texas, her successful war with Mexico, and the consequent loss of a
raluable province, all inured to the ultimate benefit of our government and our
country.. While Mexico was weakened and humbled, we in the same proportion
were strengthened and elevated — all this was done against the wish, the interestj,
and the earnest remonstsance of Mexico.

Every one can feel, if he will examine himself for a moment, what must have
been the mingled emotions of pride, humiliation, and bitter indignation, which
raged in the bosoms of the Mexican people, when they saw one of therr fairest
provinces t^rn from them by a revolution, moved by a foreign people ; and that
province, by our act and our consent, annexed to the already enormous expanse
of our territpiy. It is idle, Mr. President, to suppose that the Mexican people
would not feel as deeply for the dismemberment and disgrace of their country
as you would for the dismemberment of this Union of ours. Sir, there is not a
race, nor tribe, nor people on the earth, who have an organized, social, or politi-
cal existence, who ^iiave clung with more obstinate affection to every inch of
soil they could call their own, than this very Spanish, this Mexican, this Indian
race, in that country. So strong and deep is this sentiment in the heart of that
half savage, half civilized race, that it has become,^ not merely an opinion, a
principle, but with them an unreasoning fanaticism. So radi<^ally deep and.
strong has this idea rooted itself into the Mexican mind, that I learn recently, it has
been made a part of the new fundamental law, that not an inch of Mexican soil
shall ever be alienated to a foreign power, that her territory shall remain entire
as long as her Republic endures; that, if one of her limbs be forcibly severed
from her, death shall ensue unless that limb shall be reunited to the parent trunk.
With such a people, not like you, as you fondly, and I fear vainly boast your-
selves, a highly civilized, reasoning, and philosophical race, but a people who
upon the fierce barbarism of the old age have engrafted the holy sentiments of
patriotism of a later birth ; with just such a people, the pride of independence
and the love of country combine to inflame and sublimate patriotic attachment
into a feeling dearer than life, stronger than death.

What were the sentiments of such a people towards us when they learned^
that at the battle of San Jacinto there were only seventy-five men of their owa

country, out of the seven hundred and fifty who conquered them on that day ; and
that e\ery other man of that conquering army, who fought that battle and dismem-
bered their Republic of one-fourth part of its territory, had but recently gone
there from this country, was fed by our people, and armed and equipped in the
United States to do that very deed.

I do not say that Mexico had a right to make war upon us, because our citizens
chose to seek their fortunes in the fields of Texas. I do nol say she had a
right to treat you as a belligerent power, because you permitted your citizens to
march in battalions and regiments from your shores, for the avowed purpose of
insurrectionary war in Texas — but I was not alone at the time in expressing my
astonishment, that all this did not work an open rupture between the two Re-
publics at that time. We all remember your proclamations of neutrality — we
know that in defiance of these, your citizens armed themselves and engaged in
the Texan revolt ; and it is true that without such aid Texas would this day have
been, as she then was, an integral portion of the Mexican Republic. Sir, Mexi-
cans knew this then, they knew it, when seven years after, you coolly took this
province under your protection and made it your own. Do you wonder, there-
fore, after all this, that when Texas did thus forcibly pass away from them and
come to us, that prejudice amounting to hate, resentment implacable as re-
venge towards us, should seize and possess and madden the entire population of
a country thus weakened, humbled, contemned.

Mr. President,how would the fire of indignation have burned in every bosom here
if the Government of Canada, with the connivance of the Crown of England, had
permitted its people to arm themselves, or it might lie, had allowed its regiments
of trained mercenary troops stationed there to invade New York, and excite her
to revolt, telling them that the Crown of England was the natural and paternal
ruler of any people desiring to be free and happy — that your government was
weak, factions, oppressive — that man withered under its baleful influence — that
your stars and stripes were only emblems of degradation, and symbols of fac-
tion— that England's lion, rampant on his field of gold, was the appropriate em-
blem of power, and symbol of national glory — and they succeeded in alienating
the weak or wicked of youf people from you — should we not then have w^aged
exterminating war upon England, in every quarter of the globe, where her peo-
ple were to be found.

If, sir, I say, old mother England had sent her children forward to you with
such a purpose and message as that, and had severed the State of New York
from you, and then, for some difficulty about the boundary along between it iand
Pennsylvania and New Jersey, running up some little tide-creek here, and going
off a little degree or two there, should have, said, " We have a dispute about
this boundary; we have some forty thousand regular troops planted upon the
boundary, and I wish you to understand that I am very strong — that Ihave not
only thirty millions of people upon the soil of Great Britain that own my sove-
reign sway, but away upon the other side of the globe, right under you, there
the Lion of England commands the obedience of a hundred and twenty millions
more. It becomes you, stra<rgling Democrats, here in this new world, to be a
little careful how you treat me. You are not Celts exactly — nor are you quite
•Anglo Saxons; but you are a degenerate, an alien, a sort of bastard race. I
have taken your New York ; I will have your Massachusetts." And all this is
submitted to the American Senate, and we are gravel}'^ discussing what ought to
f'be done. Would we be likely to ratify a treaty between New York and the
Crown of England, permitting New York to become a part of the colonial pos-
sessions of England ?

I should like to hear my collea2:ue (Mr. Allen) speak to such a ques-
tion as that. I should like to hear the voice of this Democracy that you talk
about, called upon to utter its tones on a question like that. If he who last

10

year was so pained lest an American citizen away — God knows where ! — in
some latitude beyond the Rocky Mountains — should be obedient to British law —
if he whose patristic and republican apprehension was so painfully excited lest
the right of habeas corpus and trial by Jury, which every Englishman carries
with him in his pocket wherever he goes, should be made to bear upon an
American citizen — were called upon to speak upon such a proposition as that
which I have supposed, I should certainly like to hear how he would treat it. —
Yet, the question being reversed, that is precisely the condition in which Mexico
stood towards you after San Jacinto was fought, and on the day Texas was an-
nexed.

Your people did go to Texas. I remember it well. They went to Texas to
fight for their rights. They could not fight for them in their own country.
Well, the'y fought for their rights. They conquered them ! They " conquered a
peace ! They were your citizens — not Mexicans. They were recent emigrants
to that country. They went there for the very purpose of seizing on that
country, and rnaking it a free and independent Republic, with the view, as some
of them said, of bringing it into the American Confederacy in due time. Is
this poor Celtic brother of yours in Mexico — is the Mexican man sunk so low
that he cannot hear what fills the mouth and ear of rumor all over this country ?
He knows that this was the settled purpose of some of your people. He knows
that your avarice had fixed its eagle glance on these rich acres in Mexico,
and that your proud power counted the number that could be brought against
you, and that your avarice and your power together marched on to the subjuga-
tion of the third or fourth part of the Republic of Mexico, and took it from her.
We knew this, and knowing it, what should have been the feeling and sentiment
in the mind of the President of the United States towards such a people — a peo-
ple at least in their own opinion so deeply injured by us as were these Mexicans.

The Republic of Texas comes under the Government of the United States,
and it happens that the Minister resident at your Court — and it is a pretty res-
pectable Court, Mr. President — we have something of a King — not for life it is
true, but a quadrennial sort of a monarch, who does very much as he pleases —
the Minister resident at that Court of yours stated* at the time that this revolted
Province of Texas was claimed by Mexico, and that if you received it as one
of the sovereign States of this Union, right or wrong, it was impossible to rea-
son with his people about it — they would consider it as an act of hostility. Did
you consult the national feeling of Mexico then ?

The President has now to deal with a people thus humbled, thus irritated. It
was his duty to concede much to Mexico, everything but his country's honor or
lier rights. Was this done? Not at all I Mexico and her Minister were alike
spurned as weak and trivial things, whose complaints you would not hear or
heed ; and when she humbly implored you not to take this province, declared
that it might disturb the peace subsisting between us, you were still inexorable.
During this time, she was forcing loans from her citizens to pay the debt she
owed yours, fulfilling her treaties with you by painful exactions from her own
people. She begged of you to let Texas alone. If she were independent, let
her enjoy her independence. If free, let her revel in her new-born liberty, in
defiance of Mexico, as she alleged she would and could. Your stern reply was,
No ! we will, at your expense, strengthen our own arm, by uniting to ourselves
that which has been severed from you by our own citizens ; we will take Texas;
wo will throw the shield of our Constitution over her rights, and the sword of
our power shall gleam like that at Eden, " turning every way," to guard her
against fiirther attack.

Her Minister, his remonstrance failing, leaves you. He tells you that he can-
not remain, because you had created, by this act, hostile relations with his Gov-
ernment. At last you are informed that Mexico will receive a Commissioner

11

I

to treat of this Texan boundary, if you will condescend to negotiate. Instead of
sending a Commissioner to treat oi' that, the then only difficult question between
the two Republics, you send a full Minister, and reiquire that he shall be re-
ceived as such. If he could not be styled Minister Plenipotentiary, and so ac-
credited, why then we must fight, and not negotiate for a boundary. The then
Mexican President, the representative of some faction only, was tottering to his
fall. His Minister besought Mr. Slidell not to press his reception then. He
was told that the excited feelings of the Mexican people were such that he must
delay for a time. To this petition what answer is returned ? You shall receive
me now ; you shall receive me as Minister and not as Commissioner; you shall
receive me as though the most pacific relations existed between the two countries.
Thus, and not otherwise, shall it be. Such was the haughty, imperious tone of
Mr. Slidell, and he acted up only to the spirit of his instructions. Let any one
peruse the correspondence I have referred to, and he will see that I have truly
represented its spirit, be its letter what it may. This is done under the instruc-
tions of a cabinet here, who represented themselves in our public documents, as
sighing, panting for peace ; as desiring, above all things, to treat these distracted,
contemned Mexicans in such a way, that not the shadow of a complaint against
us shall be seen. From this correspondence it is perfectly clear, that if Mr.
Slidell had been sent in the less ostentatious character of " Commissioner,^^ to
treat of the Texas boundary, that treaties and not bullets would have adjusted
the question. But this was not agreeable to the lofty conceptions of the Presi-
dent. He preferred a vigorous war to the tame process of peaceful adjustment.
He now throws down the pen of the diplomat, and grasps the sword of the war-
rior. Your army, with brave old "Rough and Ready" at its head, is ordered to
pass the Nueces, and advance to the east bank of the Rio Grande. There, sir,
between these two rivers, lies that slip of territory, that chapparal thicket, inter-
spersed with Mexican haciendas, out of which this wasteful, desolating war
arose. Was this territory beyond the river Nueces in the State of Texas ?

Now I have said, that I would not state any disputable fact. It is known to every
man who has looked into this subject, that a revolutionary government can claim
no jurisdiction anywhere when it has not* defined and exercised its power with
the sword. It was utterly indifierent to Mexico and the world what legislative
enactments Texas made. She extended her revolutionary government and her
revolutionary dominion not one inch beyond the extent to which she had carried
the power of Texas in opposition to the power of Mexico.

It is therefore a mere question of fact ; and how will it be pretended that that
country, lying between the Nueces and the Del Norte, to which your army was
ordered, and of which it took possession, was subject to Texian law and not Mex-
ican law ? What did your General find there ? What did he write home ?
Do you hear of any trial by jury on the east bank of the Rio Grande — of Anglo-
Saxons making cotton there witl^ their negroes ? No ! You hear of Mexicans
residing peacefully there, but fleeing from their cotton-fields at the approach of
your army — no slaves, for it had been a decree of the Mexican Government,
years ago, that no slaves should exist there. If there wer^ a Texas population
on the east bank of the Rio Grande, why did not General Taylor hear some-
thing of those Texians hailing the advent of the American army, coming to pro-
tect them from the ravages of the Mexicans, and the more murderous onslaughts
of the neighboring savages?

Do you hear anything of that ? No ! On the contrary the population fled
at the approach of your army. In God's name, I wish to know if it has come to
this, that when an American army goes to protect American citizens on Ameri-
can territory, they flee from it, as if from the most barbarous enemy? Yet such
is the ridiculous assumption of those who pretend that, on the east bank of the Rio
Grande, where your arms took possession, there were Texas population, Texas

1?

power, Texas laws, and American United States power and law ! No, Mr.
President, when I see that stated in an Executive document, written by the fin-
ger of a President of the United States, and when you read in those documents,
with which your tables groan, the veracious account of that noble old General
Taylor, of his reception in that country, and of those men — to use the language
of one of his officers — fleeing before the invaders ; when you compare these two
documents together, is it not a biting sarcasm upon the sincerity of public men
— a bitter satire upon the gravity of all public affairs 1

Can it be, Mr. President, that the honest, generous. Christian people of the
United States will give countenance to this egregious, palpaple misrepresenta-
tion of fact — this bold falsification of history ? Shall it be written down in your
public annals, when the world looking on and you yourselves know, that Mexico
and not Texas, possessed this territory to which your armies marched 1 As
Mexico had never been dispossessed by Texan power, neither Texas nor your go-
vernment had any more claim to it than you now have to California, that other
possession of Mexico over which your all-grasping avarice has already extended
its remorseless dominion.

Mr. President, there is absent to-day a Senator from the other side of the
House whose presence would afford me, as it always does, but particularly on
this occasion, a most singular gratification. I allude to the Senator from Mis-
souri who sits furthest from me, (Mr. Benton.) I remember, Mr. President,
he arose in this body and performed a great act of justice to himself and to his
country — of justice to mankind, for all men are interested in the truths of his-
tory—when he declared it to be his purpose, for the sake of the truth of history,
to set right some gentlemen, on the other side of the House, in respect to the
territory of Oregon, which then threatened to disturb the peace of this Republic
with the kingdom of Great Britain. I wish it had pleased him to have per-
formed the same good offices on this occasion.

I wish it had been so, if he could have found it consonant with his duty to his
country, that now, while engaged with an enemy whom we have no reason to
fear, as being ever able to check our progress or disturb our internal peace, for
the sake of justice, as then he did for the sake of justice and the interest and
peace of those two countries, England and America, he had come forward to
settle the truth of history in respect to the territorial boundary of Texas, which
our President said was the Rio Bravo — the " Rio del Norte," as it is sometimes
called. I express this wish for no purpose of taunting the Senator from Mis-
souri, or leading him to believe that I would draw his name into the discussion
for any other than the most sacred purposes which can animate the human bo-
S0m — that of having truth established ; for I really believe that that is true which
the Senator from Michigan stated yesterday that the worst said in the Senate is,
that rxiuch might be said on both sides ! I cannot view it in that way. Much
may be said, much talk may be had on both sides on any question, but that this
is a disputable matter about which a man could apply. his mind for an hour and
still be in doubt, is to me an inscrutable mystery.

I wish to invoke the authority of the Senator from Missouri. When about to
receive Texas in the United States he offered a resolution to this effect :

*' That the incorporation of the left bank of the Rio d-el Norte (Rio Grande) into the Ameri-
can Uuion, by virtue of a treaty with Texas, comprehending, as the said incorporation would do,
a part of the Mexican departments of New Mexico, Chihuahua, Coahuila and Tamaulipas,
WOULD BE AN ACT OF DIRECT AGGRESSION ON MEXICO, /or all the consequen-
ces of which the United States would stand responsible."

I beg, Mr. President, to add to this another authority which I am sure will
not be contradicted by any calling themselves Democrats. In the summer of
1844, iMr. Silas Wright, in an elaborate address delivered at Watertown, N. Y^
said :

13

*' There is another subject on which I feel bound to speak a word — I allude to the proposition
to annex Texas to the territory of this republic. I felt it my duty to vote as Senator and
did vote against the ratification of the treaty for the annexation. I believed that the treaty,
from the boundaries that must be implied from it, if Mexico would not treat with us, embraced a
country to which Texas httd no claim — over which she had never asserted jurisdiction, and
which she had no right to cede. On this point I should give a brief explanation.

" The treaty ceded Texas by name without an effort to describe a boundary. The Congress
of Texas had passed an act declaring, by metes and bounds, what was Texas within their power
and jurisdiction. It appeared to me then, if Mexico should tell us, " We don't know you — we
have no treaty to make with you" — and we were left to take possession by force, we must take
the country as Texas had ceded it to us — and in doing that or forfeiting our own honor, we
must do injustice to Mexico, and take a large portion of New Mexico, the people of which
have never been under the jurisdiction of Texas; this to me was an insurmountable barrier—
I could jiot place the country in that position,"

How did your officers consider this question 1 While in camp opposite to
Matamoras, being then on the loft bank of the Rio Grande, between the latter
river and the Nueces, a most respectable officer writes thus to his friend in New
York :

" Camp opposite Matamoras, April 19, 1846.

Our situation here ia an extraordinary one. Right in the enemy's country , actually occupying
their corn and cotton fields, the people of the soil leaving their homes, and we, with a small
handful of men, marching, with colors flying and drums beating, right under the guns of one of
their principal cities, displaying the star-spangled Banner as if in defiance, under their very
nose, and they with an army twice our size, at least, sit quietly down, and make not the least re-
sistance, not the first effort to drive the invaders off. There is no parallel to it."

Sir, did this officer consider himself in Texas ? Were they our own Texian citi-
zens, who, in the language of the letter, " did not make the first effort to drive
the invaders q^." If it had been Texas there, would that State consider it inva-
sion, or her people fly from your standard ? " The people of the soil leaving
their homes V^ Who were those ^^ people of the soil ?" Sir, they were Mexi-
cans, never conquered by Texas, and never subject to her laws, and, therefore,
never transferred by annexation, to your dominion; and, therefore, lastly, your
army, by order of the President, without the consent or advice of Congress, made
war on Mexico, by invading her territory in April, 1846.

Mr. President, the Senator from Missouri was right. *• The incorporation of
the left bank of the Rio Grande into the American Union," was "an act of di-
rect aggression on Mexico," as his resolution most truthfully alleged. We, or
at least the President, has attempted to incorporate the left bank of the Rio del
Norte, or the Rio Grande, into the Union, and the consequence, the legitimate
consequence, war, has come upon us. The President, in his message, asserts
the boundary of Texas to be the Rio Grande. The Senator from Missouri as-
serts the lefl bank of that river to be Mexican territory. Sir, it is not for me,
who stand here an humble man, who pretend, not to be one of those Pharisees
who know all the law and obey it, but who like the poor Publican, would stand
afar off and smite my breast, and say God be merciful to me a poor Whig. When
the annointed High Priests in the Temple of Democracy differ on a point of fact,
it is not for me, to decide between them. Is it for me to say that the Senator
from Missouri was ignorant and the President omniscient ? Is it for me to say
that the President wai right and the Senator from Missouri wrong 1 If it were
true that Texian laws had been, since 1836, as the President's action seems to
declare, how happened it that when General Taylor went to Point Isabel, the
people set fire to their houses and fled the place 1 And how did it happen that
there was a custom-house there, there, in Texas, as you now allege. A Mexi-
can custom-house in Texas, where, erer since 1836, and for one whole year after
the State of Texas became yours, a Mexican officer collected taxes of all who
traded there, and paid these duties into the Mexican treasury ! Sir, is it credible
that this State of Texas allowed Mexican laws and Mexican power to exist with-
in her borders for seren years after her independence ? I should think a people

14

«o prompt to fight for their rights, might have burned some powder for the ex-
pulsion of Mexican usurpers fi-om Texian territory. Sir, the history of this coun-
try is full of anomalies and contradictions. What a patriotic, harmonious people I
When Taylor comes to protect them, they fire their dwellings and fly ! Wher*
you come in peace, bristling in arms for protection only, your eagle spreading its
wings to shield from harm all American citizens — what then happens ? Why,
according to your own account, these Anglo-Saxon Republicans are so terrified at
the sight of their country's flag, that they abandon their homes, and retreat before
your army, as if some Nomad tribe had wandered thither to enslave their fami-
lies and plunder their estates !

All this mass of undeniable fact, known even to the careless reader of the
public prints, is so utterly at war with the studiously contrived statements in your
cabinet documents, that I do not wonder at all, that an amiable national pride,
however misplaced here, has prevented hitherto, a thorough and fearless investi-
gation of their truth. Nor, sir, would I probe this fsculent mass of misrepre-
sentation, had I not been compelled to it, in defence of votes which I was
obliged to record here, within the last ten days. Sir, with my opinions as to
facts connected with this subject, and my deductions, unavoidable from them, I
should have been unworthy the high-souled State I represent, had I voted men
and money to prosecute further a war commenced, as it now appears, in aggres-
sion, and carried on by repetition only of the original wrong. Am I mistaken
in this ? If I am, I shall hold him the dearest friend I can own in any relation
of life, who shall show me my error. If I am wrong in this question of fact,
show me how I err, and gladly will I retrace my steps — satisfy me that my
country was in peaceful and rightful possession between the Nueces and Rio
Grande, when General Taylor's army was ordered there — show me that at Palo*
Alto and Resacafde las Palmas, blood was shed on American soil in American
possession, and then tor the defence of that possession — I will vote away the?
last dollar that power can wring from the people, and send every man able to
bear a musket, to the ranks of war. But until I shall be thus convinced, duty
to myself, to truth, to conscience, to public justice, requires that I persist in
every lawful opposition to this war.

While the American President can command the army, thank Heaven I can
command the purse. While the President, under the penalty of death, can com-
mand your officers to proceed, I can tell them to come back, or the President can
supply them as he may. He shall have no funds from me in the prosecution of
a war which I cannot approve. That I conceive to be' the duty of a Sena-
tor. I am not mistaken in that. If it be my duty to grant whatever the Presi-
dent demands, for what am I here ? Have I no will upon the subject ? Is it not
placed at my discretion, understanding, judgment ? Have an American Senate
and House of Representatives nothing to do but obey the bidding of the Presi-
dent, as the army he commands is compelled to obey under penalty of death ?
No ! The Representatives of the Sovereign people and Sovereign States- — were
never elected for such puposes as that.

Have Senators reflected on the great power which the command of armies?
in war confers upon any one, but especially on him who is at once the civil and
military chief of the government ? It is very well that we should look back to-
see how the friends of popular rights regarded this subject in former times.
Prior to the revolution of 1688 in England, all grants of money by Parliament
were general. Specific appropriations before that period were unknown. The
King could, out of the general revenues, appropriate any or all of them to any war,,
or other object, as best suited his own unrestrained wishes. Hence, in the last
struggle with the first Charles, the Parliament insisted that he should yield up
the command of the army raised to' quell the Irish rebellion, to such person as
Parliament should choose. The men of that day saw that with the unrestricted

I

15

<;ontrol of revenue, and the power to name the commander of the army, the King
was master of^ the liberties of the people. Wherefore, Charles, afler he had
yielded up almost every other kingly prerogative, was, (in order to secure Parlia-
ment and the people against military rule,) required to give up the command
of the forces. It was his refusal to do this, that brought his head to the block*
" Give up the command of the army!" was the last imperative demand of the
foes of arbitrary power then. What was the reply of that unhappy representa-
tive of the doomed race of the Stuarts ? " Not for an hour, by God," was the
stern answer. Wontworth had always advised his royal master never to yield
up the right to command the army ; such too was the counsel of the Queen,
whoso notions of kingly power were all fashioned afler the most despotic models.
This power over the army by our Constitution is conceded to our King. Give him
money at his will, as we are told we must, and you have set up in this Republic just
such a tyrant as him, against whom the friends of English liberty were compelled
to wage war. It was a hard necessity, but still it was demanded as the only secu-
rity for any reasonable measure of public liberty. Such men as Holt and Somers,
had not yet taught the people of England, the secret of controlling arbitrary
power by specitic appropriations of money, and withholding these, when the
King proclaimed his intention, to use the grant for any purpose, not approved by
the Commons, the true representatives of popular rights in England.

When in 1688, this doctrine of specific appropriations became a part of the
British Constitution, the King could safely be trusted with the control of the army.
If war is made there by the Crown, and the Commons do not approve of it, re-
fusal to grant supplies is the easy remedy — one, too, which renders it impossible
for a King of England to carry forward any war which may be displeasing to
the English people. Yes, sir, in England, since 1688, it has not been in the
power of a British Sovereign to do that, which in your boasted Republic, an
American President, under the auspices of what you call Democracy, has done —
make war, without consent of the legislative power. In England supplies are at
once refused, if Parliament does not approve the objects of the war. Here, we
are told, we must not look to the objects of the war, being in the war — made by
the President — we must help him to fight it out, should it even please him to carry it
to the utter extermination of the Mexican race. Sir, I believe it must proceed
to this shocking extreme, if you are by war, to "conquer a peace." Here then is
jour condition. The President involves you in war without your consent. Be-
ing in such a war, it is demanded as a duty, that we grant men and money to
carry it on. The President tells us he shall prosecute this war, till Mexico pays
us, or agrees to pay us, all its expenses. I am not willing to scourge Mexico
thus ; and the only means left me is to say to the commander-in-chief, " Call
home your army — I will feed and clothe it no longer — ^yoa have whipped Mex-
ico in three pitched battles — this is revenge enough — this is punishment enough."

The President has said he does not expect to hold Mexican territory by con-
quest. Why then conquer it ? Why waste thousands of lives and millions of
money fortifying towns and creating governments, if, at the end of the war, you
retire from the graves of your soldiers and the desolated country of your foes,
only to get money from Mexico for the expense of all your toil and sacrifice ?
Who ever heard, since Christianity was propagated amongst men, of a nation
taxing its people, enlisting its young men, and marching off two thousand miles
to fight a people merely to be paid for it in money I What is this but hunting a
market for blood, selling the lives of your young men, marching them in regiments
to be slaughtered and paid for, like oxen and brute beasts ? Sir, this is, when
stripped naked, that atrocious idea first promulgated in the President's message
and now advocated here, of fighting on till we can get our indemnity for the past
as well as the present slaughter. We have chastised Mexico, and if it were worth
while to do so, we have, I dare say, satisfied the world that we can fight. What

16

Uow ! Why, the mothers of America are asked to send another of their sons to
blow out the brains of Mexicans because they refuse to pay the price of the first
who fell there, fighting for glory ! And what if the second fall too 1 The Ex-
ecutive, the parental reply, is, "we shall have him paid for, we shall get full in-
demnity !" Sir, I have no patience with this flagitious notion of fighting for
indemnity, and this under the equally absurd and hypocritical pretence of securing
an honorable peace. An honorable peace ! If you have accomplished the ob-
jects of the war, (if indeed you had an object which you dare to avow,) cease to
iight, and you will have peace. Conquer your insane love of false glory, and
you will "conquer a peace." Sir, if your commander-in-chief will not do this,,
I will endeavor to compel him, and as I find no other means, I shall refuse sup-
plies— without the money of the people, he cannot go further. He asks me for
that money ; I wish him to bring your armies home, to cease shedding bloodybr
money ; if he refuses, I will refuse supplies, and then I know he must, he will
cease his further sale of the lives of my countrymen. May we not, ought we
not now to do this ? I can hear no reason why we should not, except this, it
is said that we are in war, wrongfully it may be, but, being in, the President is
responsible, and we must give him the means he requires ! He responsible !;
Sir, we, we are responsible, if having the power to stay this plague we refuse to
do so. When it shall be so — when the American Senate and the American House
of Representatives can stoop from their high position, and yield a dumb compliance
with the behests of a President, who is for the time being commander of your
army ; when they will open the treasury with one hand, and the veins of all the
soldiers in the land with the other, merely because the President cpmmands,
then, sir, it matters little how soon some Cromwell shall come into this Hall and .
say, " the Lord hath no further need of you here." When we fail to do the
work " whereunto we were sent," we shall be, we ought to be removed, and give
place to others who will. The fate of the barren fig tree will be ours — Christ
cursed it and it withered.

Mr. President, I dismiss this branch of the subject and beg the indulgence of
the Senate to some reflections on the particular bill now under consideration.
I voted for a bill somewhat like the present at the last session — our army was
then in the neighborhood of our line. I then hoped that the President did sin-
cerely desire a peace. Our army had not then penetrated far into Mexico, and
I did hope that with the two millions then proposed, we might get peace, and
avoid the slaughter, the shame, the crime, of an aggressive, unprovoked war.
But now you have overrun half of Mexico, you have exasperated and irritated her
people, you claim indemnity for all expenses incurred in doing this mischief, and
boldly ask her to give up New Mexico and California ; and, as a bribe to her
patriotism, seizing on her property, you offer three millions to pay the soldiers
she has called out to repel your invasion, on condition that she will give up to
you at least one-third of her whole territory. This is the modest— I should
say, the monstrous proposition now before us, as explained by the Chairman of
the Committee on Foreign Relations, (Mr. Seviek,) who reported the bill. 1
cannot now give my assent to this.

But sir, I do not believe you will succeed. I am not informed of your pros-
pects of success with this measure of peace. The Chairman of the Commit-
tee of Foreign Relations tells us that he has every reason to believe that peace
can be obtained if we grant this appropriation. What reason have you, Mr.
Chairman, for that opinion ? " Facts which I cannot disclose to you — corres-
pondence which it would be improper to name here — facts which I know, but
which you are not permitted to know, have satisfied the Committee, that peace
may be purchased, if you will but grant these three millicns of dollars," New,
Mr. President, I wish to know if I am required to act upon such opinions of the
Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, foimed vp('Xk fac* which he

11"

refiiaes to disclose to me ? No ! I must know the facts before I can form my judg:-
ment. But I am to take it for granted that there must be some prospect of an end
to this dreadful war — for it is a dreadful war, being, as I believe in my con-
science it is, an unjust war. Is it possible that for three millions you can pur-
chase a peace with Mexico ? How ? By the purchase of California ? Mr.
President, I know not what facts the Chau'man of the Committee on Foreign
Affairs may have had access to. I know not what secret agents have been
whispering into the ears of the authorities of Mexico ; but of one thing I am
certain, that by a cession of California and New Mexico you never can purchase
a peace with her.

You may wrest provinces from Mexico by war — ^you may hold them by the
right of the strongest — you may rob her, but a treaty of peace to that effect with
the people of Mexico, legitimately and freely made, you never will have ! I
thank God that it is so, as well for the sake of the Mexican people as ourselves,
for unlike the vSenator from Alabama, (Mr. Bagby,) I do not value the life of a
citizen of the United States above the lives of an hundred thousand Mexican
women and children — a rather cold sort of philanthropy in my judgment. For the
sake of Mexico then, as well as our own country, I rejoice that it is an impos-
sibility, that you can obtain by treaty from her those territories, under the existing
state of things.

I am somewhat at a loss to know, on what plan of operations gentlemen having
charge of this war intend to proceed. We hear much said of the terror of your arms»
The affrighted Mexican, it is said, when you shall have drenched his country in
blood, will sue for peace, and thus you will indeed " conquer peace." This is the
heroic and savage tone in which we have heretofore been lectured by our friends
on tlie other side of the chamber, especially by the Senator from Michigan, (Gen.
Cass.) But suddenly the Chairman of the Committe on Foreign Relations comes
to us with the smooth phrase of diplomacy, made potent by the gentle suasion of
gold. The Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs calls for thirty mil-
lions of money and ten thousand regular troops ; these we are assured shall
" conquer peace," if the obstinate Celt refuses to treat till we shall whip him
in another field of blood. What a delightful scene in the 19th century of the Chris»
tian era ? What an interesting sight to see these two representatives of war and
peace moving in grand procession through the Halls of the Montezumas ! The
Senator from Michigan, (General Cass,) red with the blood of recent slaughter,
the gory spear of Achilles in his hand, and the hoarse clarion of war in his
mouth, blowing a blast " so loud and deep " that the sleeping echoes of the lofly
Cordilleras start from their caverns and return the sound, till every ear from Pan-
ama to Santa Fe is deafened with the roar. By his side, with "modest mein
and downcast look," comes the Senator from Arkansas, (Mr. Sevier,) covered
from head to foot with a gorgeous robe, glittering and embossed with three mil-
lions of shining gold, putting to shame, " the wealth of Ormus or of Ind." Tii©
olive of Minerva graces his brow, in his right hand is the delicate Rebeck, from
which are breathed in Lydian measure, notes " that tell of naught but love and
peace." I fear very much, you will scarcely be able to explain to the simple,
savage mind of the half-civilized Mexicans, the puzzling dualism of this scene,
at once gorgeous and grotesque. Sir, I scarcely understand the meaning of all
this myself. If we are to vindicate our rights by battles — m bloody fields of war
— let us do it. If that is not the plan, why then let us call back our armies into
our own territory, and propose a treaty with Mexico, based upon the proposition
that money is better for her and land is better for us. Thus we can treat Me:x-
ico like an equal, and do honor to ourselves. But what is it you ask? You
have taken from Mexico one-fourth of her territory, and you now propose to run
a line comprehending about another third, and for what ? I ask, Mr. President,
for what ? What has Mexico got from' you, for parting with two-thirds of her

18

domain ? She has given you ample redress for every injury of which you have
complained. She has submitted to the award of your Commissioners and up to
the time of the rupture with Texas faithfully paid it. And for all that she has
lost, (not through or by you, but which loss has been your gain,) what requital
do we, her strong, rich, robust neighbor make? Do we send our missionaries
there, " to point the way to heaven ?" Or do we send the schoolmasters to pour
day-light into her dark places, to aid her infant strength to conquer freedom, and
reap the fruit of the independence herself alone had won ? No, no, none of this
do we. But we send regiments, storm towns, and our colonels prate of liberty
in the midst of the solitudes their ravages have made. They proclaim the empty
forms of social compact to a people, bleeding and maimed with wounds received
in defending their hearth stones, against the invasion of these very men who
shoot them down, and then exhort them to be free. Your chaplains of the navy
throw aside the new Testament and seize a bill of rights. The Rev. Don Wal-
ter Colton I see, abandons the sermon on the mount, and betakes himself to
Blackstone and Kent, and is elected a Justice of the Peace ! He takes military pos-
session of some town in California, and instead of teaching the plan of the atone-
ment and the way of salvation to the poor, ignorant Celt, he presents Colt's pis-
tol to his ear, and calls on him to take " trial by jury and habeas corpus," or
nine bullets in his head. Oh! Mr. President, are you not the lights of the earth,
if not its salt? You, you are indeed opening the eyes of the blind in Mexico,
with a most emphatic and exoteric power. Sir, if all this were not a sad, mourn-
flil truth, it would be the very " ne plus ultra" of the ridiculous.

But sir let us see what, as the Chairman of the Committee of Foreign Rela-
explains it, we are to get by the combined processes of conquest and treaty.

What is the territory, Mr. President, which you propose to wrest from Mexi-
co ? It is consecrated to the heart of the Mexican by many a well-fought battle,
with his old Castillian master. His Bunker Hills and Saratogas and Yorktowns
are there ! The Mexican can say, " There I bled for liberty ! and shall I sur-
render that consecrated home of my affections to the Anglo-Saxon invaders ?
What do they want with it ? They have Texas already. They have possessed
themselves of the territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. What else
do they want ? To what shall I point my children as memorials of that indepen-
dence, which I bequeath to them, when those battle-fields shall have passed from
my possession?"

Sir, had one come and demanded Bunker Hill of the people of Massachusetts,
had England's Lion ever showed himself there, is there a man over 13 and un-
der 90 who would not have been ready to meet him — is there a river on this
Continent that would not have run red with blood — is there a field but would
have been piled high with the unburied bones of slaughtered Americans before
these consecrated battle fields of liberty should have been wrested from us ? But
this same American goes into a sister Republic, and says to poor, weak Mex-
ico, " Give up your territory — you are unworthy to possess it — I have got one
half already — all I ask of you is to give up the other !" England might as well
in the circumstances I have described, have come and demanded of us "Give
up the Atlantic slope — give up this trifling territory from the Alleghany Mountains
to the sea; it is only from Maine to St. Mary's-^-only about one-third of your
Republic, and the least interesting portion of it." What would be the response ?
They would say, we must give this up to John Bull. Why? " He wants room.'*
The Senator from Michigan says he must have this. Why, my worthy Christian
brother, on what principle of justice ? "I want room!"

Sir, look at this pretence of want of room. With twenty millions of people you
have about one thousand millions of acres of land, inviting settlement by every
conceivable argument — bringing them down to a quarter of a dollar an acre, and
allowing every man to squat where he pleases. But the Senator from Michigam

>9

says we will be two hundred millions in a lew years, and we want^room. If I
were a Mexican I would tell you, " Have you not room in your own country to
bury your dead men ? If you come into mine we will greet you with bloody
hands, and welcome you to hospitable graves."

Why, says the Chairman of this Committee of Foreign Relations, it is the
most reasonable thing in the world ! We ought to have the Bay of San Fran-
cisco. Why ? Because it is the best harbor on the Pacific ! It has been ray
fortune, Mr. President to have practised a good deal in criminal courts in the
course of my life, but I never yet heard a thief, arraigned for stealing a horse, plead
that it was the best horse that he could find in the country \ We want Califor-
nia. What for ? Why, says the Senator from Michigan, we will have it ; and
the Senator from South Carolina, with a very mistaken view, I think, of policy,
— says, you can't keep our people from going there. I don't desire to prevent
them. Let them go and seek their happiness in whatever country or clime it
pleases them.

All I ask of them is, not to require this government to protect them with that
banner consecrated to war waged for principles — eternal, enduring truth. Sir, it
is not meet that our old flag should throw its protecting folds over expeditions for
lucre or for land. But you still say you want room for your people. Thi«
has been the plea of every robber-chief from Nimrod to the present hour. I
dare say when Tamerlane descended from his throne built of seventy thousand
human skulls, and marched his ferocious battalions to further slaughter, I dare
say he said, " I want room." Bajazet was another gentleman of kindred tastes
and wants with us Anglo Saxons — he "wanted room." Alexander, too, the mighty
*' Macedonian madman," when he wandered with his Greeks to the plains of In-
dia, and fought a bloody battle on the very ground where recently England and
the Sikhs engaged in strife for " room," was no doubt in quest of some Califor-
nia there. Many a Monterey had he to storm, to get "room." Sir, he made
quite as much of that sort of history as you ever will. Mr. President, do you
remember the last chapter in that history ? It is soon read. Oh, I wish we
could but understand its moral. Ammon's son, (so was Alexander named,) after
all his victories, died drunk in Babylon ! The vast empire he conquered to
*' get room," became the prey of the Generals he had trained ; it was disparted,
torn to pieces, and so ended. Sir, there is a very significant appendix ; it is
this. The descendants of the Greeks, of Alexander's Greeks, are now governed
by a descendant of Attilla ! Mr. President, while we are fighting for room,
let us ponder deeply this appendix. I was somewhat amazed the other day, to
hear the Senator from Michigan declare that Europe had quite forgotten us, till
these battles waked them up. I suppose the Senator feels grateful to the Presi-
dent for " waking up" Europe. Does the President, who is, I hope, read in
civic as well as military lore, remember the saying of one who had pondered
upon history long, long too upon man, his nature and true destiny? Montesquieu did
not think highly of this way of " waking up." " Happy," says he, " is that
nation whose annals are tiresome."

The Senator from Michigan has a different view of this. He thinks that a

....
nation is not distinguished until it is distinguished in war. He fears that the

slumbering faculties of Europe, have not been able to ascertain, that there are
twenty millions of Anglo Saxons here — making railroads and canals, and speed-
ing all the arts of peace to the utmost accomplishment of the most refined civi-
lization ! They do not know it ! And what is the wonderful expedient which
this Democratic method of making history would adopt in order to make us
known ? Storming cities, desolating peaceful happy homes, shooting men — ay©
sir, such is war — and shooting women too.

Sir, I have read in some account of your battle of Monterey, of a lovely Mexi-
can girl, who, with the benevolence of an angel in her bosom, and the robust

20

courage of a hero in her heart, was busily engaged during the bloody conflict,
amid the crash of falling houses, the groans of the dying and the wild shriek of
battle, in carrying water to slake the burning thirst of the wounded of either
host. While bending over a wounded American soldier, a cannon ball struck her
and blew her to atoms ! Sir, I do not charge my brave, generous-hearted
countrymen who fought that fight with this. No, no — we who send them, we
who know that scenes like this, which might send tears of sorrow " down Plu-
to's iron cheek," are the invariable, inevitable attendants on war, we are ac-
countable for this ; and this — this is the way we are to be made known to Eu-
rope. This-^— this is to be the undying renown of free Republican America !
" She has stormed a city — killed many of its inhabitants of both sexes^ — she has
room !" So it will read. Sir, if this were our only history, then may God of
his mercy grant that its volume may speedily come to a close.

Why is it, sir, that we of the United States, a people of yesterday, compared
with the older nations of the world, should be waging war for territory, for "room*?"
Look at your country, extending from the Alleghany Mountains to the Pacific
Ocean, capable itself of sustaining in comfort a larger- population than will be
in the whole Union, for one hundred years to come. Over this vast expanse of
territory your population is now so sparse, that I believe we provided at the last
session, a regiment of mounted men to guard the mail, fi*om the frontier of Mis-
souri to the mouth of the Columbia ; and yet you persist in the ridiculous asser-
tion, "I want room." One would imagine from the frequent reiteration of the
complaint, that you had a bursting, teeming population, whose energy was par-
alized, whose enterprise was crushed, for want of space. Why should we be
so weak or wicked as to offer this idle apology, for ravaging a neighboring re-
public ? It will impose on no one at home or abroad.

Do we not know, Mr. President, that it is a law, never to be repealed, that
falsehood shall be short lived ? Was it not ordained of old, that truth only shall
abide forever ? Whatever we may say to day, or whatever we may write in our
books, the stern tribunal of history will review it all, detect falsehood, and bring
us to judgment before that posterity, which shall bless or curse us, as we msiy
act now, wisely or otherwise. We may hide in the grave, (which awaits us all,)
in vain ; we may hope there, like the foolish bird that hides its head in the sand, in
the vain belief that its body is not seen, yet even there, this preposterous excuse of
want of " room," shall be laid bare, and the quick-coming future will decide, that
it was a hypocritical pretence, under which we sought to conceal the avarice,
which prompted us to covet and to seize by force, that which was not ours.

Mr- President, this uneasy desire to augment our territory,' has depraved the
moral sense, and blunted the otherwise keen sagacity of our people. What has
been the fate of all nations who have acted upon the idea, that they must ad-
Tance ! Our young orators cherish this notion with a fervid, but fatally mistaken
zeal. . They call it by the mysterious name of "destiny." • "Our destiny," they
say,is "onward," and hence they argue, with ready sophistryjthe propriety of seiz-
ing upon any territory and any people, that may lay in the way of our " fated"
advance. Recently these Progressives have grown classical: some assiduous stu-
dent . of antiquities has helped them to a patron saint. They have wandered
back into the desolated Pantheon, and there, amongst the Polytheistic relics of
that "pale mother of dead empires," they have found a God whom these Romans,^
centuries gone by, baptized "Terminus."

Sir, I have heard much and read somewhat of this gentleman Terminus.
Alexander, of whom I have spoken. Was a devotee of this divinity. We have
seen the end of him and his empire. It was said" to be an attribute of this God
that he must always advance, and never recede. So both republican and im-
perial Rome believed. It was, as they said, their destiny. And for a while it
did seem to be even so. Roman Terminus did advance. Under the eagles of

Rome he was carried from his home on the Tiber, to the furthest East on one
hand, and to the far West, amongst the then barbarous tribes of western Europe,
on the other. But at length the time came, when retributive justice had become
*' a destiny." The despised Gaul calls out to the contemned Goth, and Attilla
with his Huns, answers back the battle shout to both. The " blue-eyed nations
of the North," in succession or united, pour forth their countless hosts of war-
riors upon Rome and Rome's always-advancing God Terminus. And now the
battle-axe of the barbarian strikes down the conquering eagle of Rome. Ter-
minus at last recedes, slowly at first, but finally he is driven to Rome, and from
Rome to Byzantium. Whoever would know the further fate of this Roman
Deity, so recently taken under the patronage of American Democracy, may find
ample gratification of his curiosity, in the luminous pages of Gibbon's "Decline
and Fall." Such will find, that Rome thought as you now think, that it was her
destiny to conquer provinces and nations, and no doubt she sometimes said as
you say, " I will conquer a peace." And where now is she, the Mistress of the
World ? The spider weaves his web in her palaces, the owl sings his watch-
song in her towers. Teutonic power now lords it over the servile remnant,
the miserable memento of old and once omnipotent Rome. Sad, very sad, are
the lessons which time has written for us. Through and in them all, I se©
nothing but the inflexible execution of that old law, which ordains as eternal,
that cardinal rule, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods, nor any thing
which is his." Since I have lately heard so much about the dismemberment of
Mexico, I have lopked back to see how, in the course of events, which some
call " Providence," it has fared with other nations, who engaged in this work
of dismemberment. I see that in the latter half of the eighteenth century,
three powerful nations, Russia, Austria and Prussia, united in the dismember-
ment of Poland. They said, too, as you saj, " it is our destiny." They
*' wanted room." Doubtless each of these thought, with his share of Poland,
his power was too strong ever to fear invasion, or even insult. One had his
California, another his New Mexico, and the third his Vera Cruz. Did thej
remain untouched and incapable of harm ? Alas ! No — far, very far, from it.
Retributive justice must fulfil its destiny too. A very few years pass off, and
we hear of a new man, a Corsican lieutenant, the self-named " armed soldier
of Democracy," Napoleon. He ravages Austria, covers her land with blood,
drives the Northern Caesar from his capital, and sleeps in his palace, Austria
may now remember how her power trampled upon Poland. Did she not pay
dear, very dear, for her California?

But has Prussia no atonement to make t You see this same Napoleon, the
blind instrument of Providence, at work there. The thunders of his cannon at
Jena proclaim the work of retribution for Poland's wrongs ; and the successors
of the Great Frederick, the drill-sergeant of Europe, are seen flying across the
sandy plain that surrounds their capitol, right glad if they may escape captivity
or death. But how fares it with the Autocrat of Russia ? Is he secure in his
share of the spoils of Poland? No. Suddenly we see, sir, six hundred thousand
armed men marching to Moscow. Does his Vera Cruz protect him now ? Far
from it. Blood, slaughter, desolation spread abroad over the land, and finally
the conflagration of the old commercial metropolis of Russia, closes the retribu-
tion, she must pay for her share in the dismemberment of her weak and impotent
neighbor Mr. President, a mind more pronejto look for the judgments of
Heaven in the doings of men than mine, cannot fail in this to see the Providence
of God, When Moscow burned it seemed as if the earth was lighted up, that the
Nations might behold the scene. As that mighty sea of fire gathered and heaved
and rolled upwards, and yet higher, till its flames licked the stars, and fired the
whole Heavens, it did seem as though the God of the Nations was writing in
characters of flame on the front of his throne, that doom that shall fall upon the

22

the strong nation, which tramples in scorn upon the weak. And what fortune
awaits Him, the appointed executor of this work, when it was all done ? He,
too, conceived the notion that his destiny pointed onward to universal dominion.
France was too small — Europe, he thought, should bow down before him. But
as soon as this idea took possession of his soul, he too becomes powerless. His
Terminus must recede too. Right there, while he witnessed the humiliation, and
doubtless meditated the subjugation of Russia, He who holds the winds in his
fist, gathered the snows of the north and blew them upon his six hundred thou-
sand men; they fled — they froze — they perished. And now the mighty Napoleon,
who had resolved on universal dominion, he too is summoned to answer for the
riolation of that ancient law, " thou shalt not covet any thing which is thy
neighbors." How is the mighty fallen. He, beneath whose proud footstep
Europe trembled, he is now an exile at Elba, and now finally a prisoner on the
rock of St. Helena, and there on a barren island, in an unfrequented sea, in the
crater of an extinguished volcano, there is the death-bed of the mighty conquer-
or. All his annexations have come to that ! His last hour is now come, and
he, the man of destiny, he who had rocked the world as with the throes of an
earthquake, is now powerless, still — even as the beggar, so he died. On the
wings of a tempest that raged with unwonted fury, up to the throne of the only
Power that controlled him while he lived, went the fiery soul of that wonderful
warrior, another witness to the existence of that eternal decree, that they who
do not rule in righteousness, shall perish from the earth. He has found
" room" at last. And France, ^5 Ae too ^has found "room." Her "eagles"
now no longer scream along the banks of the Danube, the Po, and the Borys-
thenes. They have returned home, to their old eyrie, between the Alps, the
Rhine, and the Pyrinees ; so shall it be with yours. You may carry them to the
loftiest peaks of the Cordilleras, they may wave with insolent triumph in the
Halls of the Montezumas, the armed men of Mexico may quail before them,
but the weakest hand in Mexico, uplifted in prayer to the God of Justice, may
call down against you a Power, in the presence of which, the iron hearts of your
warriors shall be turned into ashes.

Mr. President, if the history of our race has established any truth, it is but a
confirmation of what is written, " the way of the transgresssor is hard." Inor-
dinate ambition, wantoning in power, and spurning the humble maxims of jus-
tice has — ever has — and ever shall end in ruin. Strength cannot always tram-
ple upon weakness — ^the humble shall be exalted — the bowed down will at length
be lifted up. It is by faith in the law of strict justice, and the practice of its
precepts, that nations alone can be saved. All the annals of the human race, sacred
and profane, are written over with this great truth, in characters of linng light.
It is my fear, my fixed belief, that in this invasion, this war with Mexico, we have
forgotten this vital truth. Why is it, that we have been drawn into this Avhirlpool of
war ? How clear and strong was the light that shone upon the path of duty a year
ago ! The last disturbing question with England was settled — our power ex-
tended its peaceful sway from the Atlantic to the Pacific ; from the Alleghanies
we looked out upon Europe, and from the tops of the Stony Mountains we could
descry the shores of Asia ; a rich commerce with all the nations of Europe
poured wealth and abundance into our lap on the Atlantic side, while an unoc-
cupied commerce of three hundred millions of Asiatics waited on the Pacific for
our enterprise to come and possess it. One hundred millions of dollars will be
wasted in this fruitless war. Had this money of the people been expended in
making a railroad from your Northern Lakes to the Pacific, as one of your citi-
zens has begged of you in vain, you would have made a highway for the world
between Asia and Europe. Your capitol then would be within thirty or forty
days traveLof any and every point on the map of the civilized world. Through
this great axtery of trad^, you would have carried through the heart of your

Its

own country, the teas of China, and the spices of India, to the markets of Eng-
land and France. Why, why, Mr. President, did we abandon the enterprises of
peace, and betake ourselves to the barbarous achievements of war ? Why did
wo " forsake this fair and fertile field to batten on that moor."

But, Mr. President, if further acquisition of territory is to be the result either
of conquest or treaty, then I scarcely know which should be preferred, eternal
war with Mexico, or the hazards of internal commotion at home, which last I
fear may come if another province is to be added to our territory. There is one
topic connected with this subject which I tremble when I approach, and yet I
cannot forbear to notice it. It meets you in every step you take. It threatens
you which way soever you go in the prosecution of this war. I allude to the
question of slavery. Opposition to its further extension, it must be obvious to
every one, is a deeply-rooted determination with men of all parties in what we
call the non-slave-holding States. New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, three
of the most powerful, have already sent their legislative instructions here — so
it will be, I doubt not, in all the rest. It is vain now to speculate about the
reasons for this. Gentlemen of the South may call it prejudice, passion, hypoc-
risy, fanaticism. I shall not dispute with them now on that point. The great
fact that it is so, and not otherwise, is what it concerns us to know. You nor I
cannot alter or change this opinion if we would. These people only say, we
will not, cannot consent that you shall carry slavery where it does not already
eiist. They do not seek to disturb you in that institution, as it exists in your
States. ^Enjoy it if you will, and as you will. This is their language, this
their determination. How is it in the South ? Can it be expected that they
should expend in common, their blood and their treasure, in the acquisition of
immense territory, and then willingly forego the right to carry thither their
slaves, and inhabit the conquered country if they please to do so ? Sir, I know
the feelings and opinions of the South too well to calculate on this. Nay, I
believe they would even contend to any extremity for the mere right, had they no
wish to exert it. I believe (and I confess I tremble when the conviction presses
upon me) that there is equal obstinacy on both sides of this fearful question.
If then, we persist in war, which if it terminate in any thing short of a mere
wanton waste of blood as well as money, must end (as this bill proposes) in the
acquisition of territory, to which at once this controversy must attach — this bill
would seem to be nothing less than a bill to produce internal commotion. Should
we prosecute this war another moment, or expend one dollar in the purchase or
conquest of a single acre of Mexican land, the North and the South are brought
into collision on a point were neither will yield. Who can forsee or foretell the
result ! Who so bold or reckless as to look such a conflict in the face unmoved !
I do not envy the heart of him who can realize the possibility of such a conflict
without emotions too painful to be endured. Why then shall we, the representa-
tives of the Sovereign States of this Union — the chosen guardians of this con-
federated Republic, why should we precipitate this fearful struggle, by continu-
ing a war the results of which must be to force us at once upon it ? Sir, rightly
considered, this is treason, treason to the Union, treason to the dearest interests,
the loftiest aspirations, the most cherished hopes of our constituents. It is a
crime to risk the possibility of such a contest. It is a crime of such infernal
hue, that every other in the catalogue of iniquity, when compared with it,
whitens into virtue. Oh, Mr. President, it does seem to me, if Hell itself could
yawn and vomit up the fiends that inhabit its penal abodes, commissioned to dis-
turb the harmony of this world, and dash the fairest prospect of happiness that
ever allured the hopes of men, the first step in the consumationof this diabolical
purpose would be, to light up the fires of internal war, and plunge the sister States
of this Union into the bottomless gulf of civil strife. We stand this day on the
crumbling brink of that gulf — we see its bloody eddies wheeling and boiling be-

M

fore us — shall we not pause before it be too late 1 How plain again is here the
path, I may add the only way of duty, of prudence, of true patriotism. Let u«
abandon all idea of acquiring further territory, and by consequence cease at
once to prosecute this war. Let us call home our armies, and bring them-at
once within our own acknowledged limits. Show Mexico that you are sincere
when you say you desire nothing by conquest. She has learned that she cannot
encounter you in war, and if she had not, she is too weak to disturb you here.
Tender her peace, and my life on it, she will then accept it. But whether she
shall or not, you will have peace without her consent. It is your invasion that
has made war, your retreat will restore peace. Let us then close forever the ap-
proaches of internal feud, and so return to the ancient concord and the old ways
of national prosperty and permanent glory. Let us here, in this temple conse-
crated to the Union, perform a solemn lustration ; let us wash Mexican blood
from our hands, and on these altars, in the presence of that image of the Father
of his Country that looks down upon us, swear to preserve honorable peace with
all the world, and eternal brotherhood with each other.

^1

7/.^60f.^g4.^:>76?OO