TEXAS INDEPENDENCE--MR. BENTON'S SPEECH.
'Mr. Benton rose and said he should confine himself strictly to the
proposition presented in the resolution, and should not complicate
the practical question of recognition with speculations on the
future fate of Texas. Such speculations could have no good effect
upon either of the countries interested; upon Mexico, Texas, or the
United States. Texas has not asked for admission into this Union.
Her independence is still contested by Mexico. Her boundaries and
other important points in her political condition, are not yet
adjusted. To discuss the question of her admission into this Union,
under these circumstances, is to treat her with disrespect, to
embroil ourselves with Mexico, to compromise the disinterestedness
of our motives in the eyes of Europe; and to start among ourselves
prematurely, and without reason, a question which, whenever it
comes, cannot be without its own intrinsic difficulties and
perplexities.
"Since the three months that the affairs of Texas have been the
subject of repeated discussion in this chamber, I have imposed
on myself a reserve, not the effect of want of feeling, but the
effect of strong feeling, and some judgment combined, which has
not permitted me to give utterance to the general expression of
my sentiments. Once only have I spoken, and that at the most
critical moment of the contest, and when the reported advance of
the Mexicans upon Nacogdoches, and the actual movement of General
Gaines and our own troops in that direction, gave reason to
apprehend the encounter of flags, or the collision of arms, which
might compromise individuals or endanger the peace of nations. It
was then that I used those words, not entirely enigmatical, and
which have since been repeated by some, without the prefix of their
important qualifications, namely; that while neutrality was the
obvious line of our duty and of our interest, yet there might be
emergencies in which the obligation of duty could have no force, and
the calculations of interest could have no place; when, in fact,
a man should have no head to think! nothing but a heart to feel!
and an arm to strike! and I illustrated this sentiment. It was
after the affair of Goliad, and the imputed order to unpeople the
country, with the supposititious case of prisoners assassinated,
women violated, and children slaughtered; and these horrors to be
perpetrated in the presence or hearing of an American army. In
such a case I declared it to be my sentiment--and I now repeat it,
for I feel it to be in me--in such a case, I declared it to be my
sentiment, that treaties were nothing, books were nothing, laws were
nothing! that the paramount law of God and nature was every thing!
and that the American soldier, hearing the cries of helplessness
and weakness, and remembering only that he was a man, and born of
woman, and the father of children, should fly to the rescue, and
strike to prevent the perpetration of crimes which shock humanity
and dishonor the age. I uttered this sentiment not upon impulsion,
but with consideration; not for theatrical effect, but as a rule
for action; not as vague declamation, but with an eye to possible
or probable events, and with a view to the public justification of
General Gaines and his men, if, under circumstances appalling to
humanity, they should nobly resolve to obey the impulsions of the
heart instead of coldly consulting the musty leaves of books and
treaties.
"Beyond this I did not go, and, except in this instance, I do not
speak. Duty and interest prescribed to the United States a rigorous
neutrality; and this condition she has faithfully fulfilled.
Our young men have gone to Texas to fight; but they have gone
without the sanction of the laws, and against the orders of the
Government. They have gone upon that impulsion which, in all time,
has carried the heroic youth of all ages to seek renown in the
perils and glories of distant war. Our foreign enlistment law is
not repealed. Unlike England, in the civil war now raging in Spain,
we have not licensed interference by repealing our penalties: we
have not stimulated action by withdrawing obstacles. No member of
our Congress, like General Evans in the British Parliament, has
left his seat to levy troops in the streets of the metropolis,
and to lead them to battle and to victory in the land torn by
civil discord. Our statute against armaments to invade friendly
powers is in full force. Proclamations have attested our neutral
dispositions. Prosecutions have been ordered against violators of
law. A naval force in the gulf, and a land force on the Sabine,
have been directed to enforce the policy of the government; and
so far as acts have gone, the advantage has been on the side of
Mexico; for the Texian armed schooner Invincible has been brought
into an American port by an American ship of war. If parties and
individuals still go to Texas to fight, the act is particular, not
national, compromising none but the parties themselves, and may
take place on one side as well as on the other. The conduct of
the administration has been strictly neutral; and, as a friend to
that administration, and from my own convictions, I have conformed
to its policy, avoiding the language which would irritate, and
opposing the acts which might interrupt pacific and commercial
communications. Mexico is our nearest neighbor, dividing with us
the continent of North America, and possessing the elements of a
great power. Our boundaries are co-terminous for more than two
thousand miles. We have inland and maritime commerce. She has mines;
we have ships. General considerations impose upon each power the
duties of reciprocal friendship; especial inducements invite us to
uninterrupted commercial intercourse. As a western senator, coming
from the banks of the Mississippi, and from the State of Missouri,
I cannot be blind to the consequences of interrupting that double
line of inland and maritime commerce, which, stretching to the mines
of Mexico, brings back the perennial supply of solid money which
enriches the interior, and enables New Orleans to purchase the vast
accumulation of agricultural produce of which she is the emporium.
Wonderful are the workings of commerce, and more apt to find out its
own proper channels by its own operations than to be guided into
them by the hand of legislation. New Orleans now is what the Havana
once was--the entrepot of the Mexican trade, and the recipient of
its mineral wealth. The superficial reader of commercial statistics
would say that Mexico but slightly encourages our domestic industry;
that she takes nothing from our agriculture, and but little from our
manufactures. On the contrary, the close observer would see a very
different picture. He would see the products of our soil passing
to all the countries of Europe, exchanging into fine fabrics, and
these returning in the ships of many nations, our own predominant,
to the city of New Orleans; and thence going off in small Mexican
vessels to Matamoros, Tampico, Vera Cruz, and other Mexican ports.
The return from these ports is in the precious metals; and, to
confine myself to a single year, as a sample of the whole, it may
be stated that, of the ten millions and three quarters of silver
coin and bullion received in the United States, according to the
custom-house returns during the least year, eight millions and one
quarter of it came from Mexico alone, and the mass of it through
the port of New Orleans. This amount of treasure is not received
for nothing, nor, as it would seem on the commercial tables, for
foreign fabrics unconnected with American industry, but, in reality,
for domestic productions changed into foreign fabrics, and giving
double employment to the navigation of the country. New Orleans
has taken the place of the Havana; it has become the entrepot of
this trade; and many circumstances, not directed by law, or even
known to lawgivers, have combined to produce the result. First, the
application of steam power to the propulsion of vessels, which,
in the form of towboats, has given to a river city a prompt and
facile communication with the sea; then the advantage of full and
assorted cargoes, which brings the importing vessel to a point where
she delivers freight for two different empires; then the marked
advantage of a return cargo, with cheap and abundant supplies,
which are always found in the grand emporium of the great West;
then the discriminating duties in Mexican ports in favor of Mexican
vessels, which makes it advantageous to the importer to stop and
transship at New Orleans; finally, our enterprise, our police, and
our free institutions, our perfect security, under just laws, for
life, liberty, person and property. These circumstances, undirected
by government, and without the knowledge of government, have given
to New Orleans the supreme advantage of being the entrepot of the
Mexican trade; and have presented the unparalleled spectacle of the
noblest valley in the world, and the richest mines in the world,
sending their respective products to meet each other at the mouth
of the noblest river in the world; and there to create in lapse of
time, the most wonderful city which any age or country has ever
beheld. A look upon the map of the great West, and a tolerable
capacity to calculate the aggregate of geographical advantages, must
impress the beholder with a vast opinion of the future greatness
of New Orleans; but he will only look upon one half of the picture
unless he contemplates this new branch of trade which is making the
emporium of the Mississippi the entrepot of Mexican commerce, and
the recipient of the Mexican mines, and which, though now so great,
is still in its infancy. Let not government mar a consummation
so auspicious in its aspect, and teeming with so many rich and
precious results. Let no unnecessary collision with Mexico interrupt
our commerce, turn back the streams of three hundred mines to the
Havana, and give a wound to a noble city which must be felt to the
head-spring and source of every stream that pours its tribute into
the King of Floods.
"Thus far Mexico has no cause of complaint. The conduct of our
government has been that of rigorous neutrality. The present
motion does not depart from that line of conduct; for the proposed
recognition is not only contingent upon the _de facto_ independence
of Texas, but it follows in the train, and conforms to the spirit,
of the actual arrangements of the President General Santa Anna,
for the complete separation of the countries. We have authentic
information that the President General has agreed to an armistice;
that he has directed the evacuation of the country; that the
Mexican army is in full retreat; that the Rio Grande, a limit far
beyond the discovery and settlement of La Salle, in 1684, is the
provisional boundary; and that negotiations are impending for the
establishment of peace on the basis of separation. Mexico has had
the advantage of these arrangements, though made by a captive chief,
in the unmolested retreat and happy extrication of her troops from
their perilous position. Under these circumstances, it can be no
infringement of neutrality for the Senate of the United States to
adopt a resolution for the contingent and qualified acknowledgment
of Texian independence. Even after the adoption of the resolution,
it will remain inoperative upon the hands of the President until he
shall have the satisfactory information which shall enable him to
act without detriment to any interest, and without infraction of any
law.
"Even without the armistice and provisional treaty with Santa
Anna, I look upon the separation of the two countries as being
in the fixed order of events, and absolutely certain to take
place. Texas and Mexico are not formed for union. They are not
homogeneous. I speak of Texas as known to La Salle, the bay of St.
Bernard--(Matagorda)--and the waters which belong to it, being
the western boundary. They do not belong to the same divisions
of country, nor to the same systems of commerce, nor to the same
pursuits of business. They have no affinities--no attractions--no
tendencies to coalesce. In the course of centuries, and while
Mexico has extended her settlements infinitely further in other
directions--to the head of the Rio Grande in the north, and to
the bay of San Francisco in the northwest; yet no settlement had
been extended east, along the neighboring coast of the Gulf of
Mexico. The rich and deep cotton and sugar lands of Texas, though
at the very door of Mexico, yet requiring the application of a
laborious industry to make them productive, have presented no
temptation to the mining and pastoral population of that empire.
For ages this beautiful agricultural and planting region had lain
untouched. Within a few years, and by another race, its settlement
has begun; and the presence of this race has not smoothed, but
increased, the obstacles to union presented by nature. Sooner or
later, separation would be inevitable; and the progress of human
events has accelerated the operation of natural causes. Goliad
has torn Texas from Mexico; Goliad has decreed independence; San
Jacinto has sealed it! What the massacre decreed, the victory has
sealed; and the day of the martyrdom of prisoners must for ever be
regarded as the day of disunion between Texas and Mexico. I speak
of it politically, not morally; that massacre was a great political
blunder, a miscalculation, an error, and a mistake. It was expected
to put an end to resistance, to subdue rebellion, to drown revolt
in blood, and to extinguish aid in terror. On the contrary, it has
given life and invincibility to the cause of Texas. It has fired
the souls of her own citizens, and imparted to their courage the
energies of revenge and despair. It has given to her the sympathies
and commiseration of the civilized world. It has given her men and
money, and claims upon the aid and a hold upon the sensibilities
of the human race. If the struggle goes on, not only our America,
but Europe will send its chivalry to join in the contest. I repeat
it; that cruel morning of the Alamo, and that black day of Goliad,
were great political faults. The blood of the martyr is the seed of
the church. The blood of slaughtered patriots is the dragon's teeth
sown upon the earth, from which heroes, full grown and armed, leap
into life, and rush into battle. Often will the Mexican, guiltless
of that blood, feel the Anglo-American steel for the deed of that
day, if this war continues. Many were the innocent at San Jacinto,
whose cries, in broken Spanish, abjuring Goliad and the Alamo, could
not save their devoted lives from the avenging remembrance of the
slaughtered garrison and the massacred prisoners.
"Unhappy day, for ever to be deplored, that Sunday morning, March
6, 1836, when the undaunted garrison of the Alamo, victorious in
so many assaults over twenty times their number perished to the
last man by the hands of those, part of whom they had released on
parole two months before, leaving not one to tell how they first
dealt out to multitudes that death which they themselves finally
received. Unhappy day that Palm Sunday, March 27, when the five
hundred and twelve prisoners at Goliad, issuing from the sally port
at dawn of day, one by one, under the cruel delusion of a return
to their families, found themselves enveloped in double files of
cavalry and infantry, marched to a spot fit for the perpetration of
the horrid deed--and there, without an instant to think of parents,
country, friends, and God--in the midst of the consternation of
terror and surprise, were inhumanly set upon, and pitilessly put
to death, in spite of those moving cries which reached to heaven,
and regardless of those supplicating hands, stretched forth for
mercy, from which arms had been taken under the perfidious forms of
a capitulation. Five hundred and six perished that morning--young,
vigorous, brave, sons of respectable families, and the pride of
many a parent's heart--and their bleeding bodies, torn with wounds,
and many yet alive, were thrown in heaps upon vast fires, for the
flames to consume what the steel had mangled. Six only escaped,
and not by mercy, but by miracles. And this was the work of man
upon his brother; of Christian upon Christian; of those upon those
who adore the same God, invoke the same heavenly benediction, and
draw precepts of charity and mercy from the same divine fountain.
Accursed be the ground on which the dreadful deed was done! Sterile,
and set apart, let it for ever be! No fruitful cultivation should
ever enrich it; no joyful edifice should ever adorn it; but shut
up, and closed by gloomy walls, the mournful cypress, the weeping
willow, and the inscriptive monument, should for ever attest the
foul deed of which it was the scene, and invoke from every passenger
the throb of pity for the slain, and the start of horror for the
slayer. And you, neglected victims of the Old Mission and San
Patricio, shall you be forgotten because your numbers were fewer,
and your hapless fate more concealed? No! but to you also justice
shall be done. One common fate befell you all; one common memorial
shall perpetuate your names, and embalm your memories. Inexorable
history will sit in judgment upon all concerned, and will reject
the plea of government orders, even if those orders emanated from
the government, instead of being dictated to it. The French National
Convention, in 1793, ordered all the English prisoners who should
be taken in battle to be put to death. The French armies refused to
execute the decree. They answered, that French soldiers were the
protectors, not the assassins of prisoners; and all France, all
Europe, the whole civilized world, applauded the noble reply.
"But let us not forget that there is some relief to this black
and bloody picture--some alleviation to the horror of its
appalling features. There was humanity, as well as cruelty, at
Goliad--humanity to deplore what it could not prevent. The letter
of Colonel Fernandez does honor to the human heart. Doubtless many
other officers felt and mourned like him, and spent the day in
unavailing regrets. The ladies, Losero and others, of Matamoros,
saving the doomed victims in that city, from day to day, by their
intercessions, appear like ministering angels. Several public
journals, and many individuals, in Mexico, have given vent to
feelings worthy of Christians, and of the civilization of the age;
and the poor woman on the Gaudaloupe, who succored and saved the
young Georgian (Hadaway), how nobly she appears! He was one of the
few that escaped the fate of the Georgia battalion sent to the
Old Mission. Overpowered by famine and despair, without arms and
without comrades, he entered a solitary house filled with Mexican
soldiers hunting the fugitives of his party. His action amazed them;
and, thinking it a snare, they stepped out to look for the armed
body of which he was supposed to be the decoy. In that instant
food was given him by the humane woman, and instant flight to the
swamp was pointed out. He fled, receiving the fire of many guns
as he went; and, escaping the perils of the way, the hazards of
battle at San Jacinto, where he fought, and of Indian massacre in
the Creek nation, when the two stages were taken and part of his
travelling companions killed, he lives to publish in America that
instance of devoted humanity in the poor woman of the Gaudaloupe.
Such acts as all these deserve to be commemorated. They relieve the
revolting picture of military barbarity--soften the resentments of
nations--and redeem a people from the offence of individuals.
"Great is the mistake which has prevailed in Mexico, and in some
parts of the United States, on the character of the population which
has gone to Texas. It has been common to disparage and to stigmatize
them. Nothing could be more unjust; and, speaking from knowledge
either personally or well acquired (for it falls to my lot to know,
either from actual acquaintance or good information the mass of its
inhabitants), I can vindicate them from erroneous imputations, and
place their conduct and character on the honorable ground which they
deserve to occupy. The founder of the Texian colony was Mr. Moses
Austin, a respectable and enterprising native of Connecticut, and
largely engaged in the lead mines of Upper Louisiana when I went to
the Territory of Missouri in 1815. The present head of the colony,
his son, Mr. Stephen F. Austin, then a very young man, was a member
of the Territorial Legislature, distinguished for his intelligence,
business habits, and gentlemanly conduct. Among the grantees we
distinguish the name of Robertson, son of the patriarchal founder
and first settler of West Tennessee. Of the body of the emigrants,
most of them are heads of families or enterprising young men, gone
to better their condition by receiving grants of fine land in a
fine climate, and to continue to live under the republican form of
government to which they had been accustomed. There sits one of
them (pointing to Mr. Carson, late member of Congress from North
Carolina, and now Secretary of State for Texas). We all know him;
our greetings on his appearance in this chamber attest our respect;
and such as we know him to be, so do I know the multitude of those
to be who have gone to Texas. They have gone, not as intruders, but
as grantees; and to become a barrier between the Mexicans and the
marauding Indians who infested their borders.
"Heartless is the calumny invented and propagated, not from this
floor, but elsewhere, on the cause of the Texian revolt. It is said
to be a war for the extension of slavery. It had as well be said
that our own Revolution was a war for the extension of slavery.
So far from it, that no revolt, not even our own, ever had a more
just and a more sacred origin. The settlers in Texas went to live
under the form of government which they had left behind in the
United States--a government which extends so many guarantees for
life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, and which
their American and English ancestors had vindicated for so many
hundred years. A succession of violent changes in government,
and the rapid overthrow of rulers, annoyed and distressed them;
but they remained tranquil under every violence which did not
immediately bear on themselves. In 1822 the republic of 1821 was
superseded by the imperial diadem of Iturbide. In 1823 he was
deposed and banished, returned and was shot, and Victoria made
President. Mentuno and Bravo disputed the presidency with Victoria;
and found, in banishment, the mildest issue known among Mexicans
to unsuccessful civil war. Pedraza was elected in 1828; Guerrero
overthrew him the next year. Then Bustamente overthrew Guerrero;
and, quickly, Santa Anna overthrew Bustamente, and, with him, all
the forms of the constitution, and the whole frame of the federative
government. By his own will, and by force, Santa Anna dissolved
the existing Congress, convened another, formed the two Houses
into one, called it a convention; and made it the instrument for
deposing, without trial, the constitutional Vice-President, Gomez
Farias, putting Barragan into his place, annihilating the State
governments, and establishing a consolidated government, of which
he was monarch, under the retained republican title of President.
Still, the Texians did not take up arms: they did not acquiesce,
but they did not revolt. They retained their State government in
operation, and looked to the other States, older and more powerful
than Texas, to vindicate the general cause, and to re-establish the
federal constitution of 1824. In September, 1835, this was still
her position. In that month, a Mexican armed vessel appeared off
the coast of Texas, and declared her ports blockaded. At the same
time, General Cos appeared in the West with an army of fifteen
hundred men, with orders to arrest the State authorities, to disarm
the inhabitants, leaving one gun to every five hundred souls; and
to reduce the State to unconditional submission. Gonzales was the
selected point for the commencement of the execution of these
orders; and the first thing was the arms, those trusty rifles
which the settlers had brought with them from the United States,
which were their defence against savages, their resource for
game, and the guard which converted their houses into castles
stronger than those 'which the king cannot enter.' A detachment
of General Cos's army appeared at the village of Gonzales, on the
28th of September, and demanded the arms of the inhabitants; it
was the same demand, and for the same purpose, which the British
detachment, under Major Pitcairn had made at Lexington, on the
19th of April 1775. It was the same demand! and the same answer
was given--resistance--battle--victory! for the American blood was
at Gonzales as it had been at Lexington; and between using their
arms, and surrendering their arms, that blood can never hesitate.
Then followed the rapid succession of brilliant events, which, in
two months, left Texas without an armed enemy in her borders, and
the strong forts of Goliad and the Alamo, with their garrisons and
cannon, the almost bloodless prizes of a few hundred Texian rifles.
This was the origin of the revolt; and a calumny more heartless can
never be imagined than that which would convert this just and holy
defence of life, liberty, and property, into an aggression for the
extension of slavery.
"Just in its origin, valiant and humane in its conduct, sacred
in its object, the Texian revolt has illustrated the Anglo-Saxon
character, and given it new titles to the respect and admiration of
the world.
"It shows that liberty, justice, valor--moral, physical, and
intellectual power--discriminate that race wherever it goes. Let
our America rejoice, let Old England rejoice, that the Brassos and
Colorado, new and strange names--streams far beyond the western
bank of the Father of Floods--have felt the impress, and witnessed
the exploits of a people sprung from their loins, and carrying
their language, laws, and customs, their _magna charta_ and its
glorious privileges, into new regions and far distant climes. Of the
individuals who have purchased lasting renown in this young war, it
would be impossible, in this place to speak in detail, and invidious
to discriminate; but there is one among them whose position forms
an exception, and whose early association with myself justifies and
claims the tribute of a particular notice. I speak of him whose
romantic victory has given to the Jacinto[11] that immortality in
grave and serious history which the diskos of Apollo had given to
it in the fabulous pages of the heathen mythology. General Houston
was born in the State of Virginia, county of Rockbridge: he was
appointed an ensign in the army of the United States, during the
late war with Great Britain, and served in the Creek campaign
under the banners of Jackson. I was the lieutenant colonel of the
regiment to which he belonged, and the first field officer to whom
he reported. I then marked in him the same soldierly and gentlemanly
qualities which have since distinguished his eventful career: frank,
generous, brave; ready to do, or to suffer, whatever the obligations
of civil or military duty imposed; and always prompt to answer the
call of honor, patriotism, and friendship. Sincerely do I rejoice in
his victory. It is a victory without alloy, and without parallel,
except at New Orleans. It is a victory which the civilization of
the age, and the honor of the human race, required him to gain:
for the nineteenth century is not the age in which a repetition
of the Goliad matins could be endured. Nobly has he answered the
requisition; fresh and luxuriant are the laurels which adorn his
brow.
[11] Hyacinth; hyacinthus; huakinthos; water flower.
"It is not within the scope of my present purpose, to speak of
military events, and to celebrate the exploits of that vanguard
of the Anglo-Saxons who are now on the confines of the ancient
empire of Montezuma; but that combat of the San Jacinto! it must
for ever remain in the catalogue of military miracles. Seven
hundred and fifty citizens, miscellaneously armed with rifles,
muskets, belt pistols, and knives, under a leader who had never seen
service, except as a subaltern, march to attack near double their
numbers--march in open day across a clear prairie, to attack upwards
of twelve hundred veterans, the élite of an invading army of seven
thousand, posted in a wood, their flanks secured, front intrenched;
and commanded by a general trained in civil wars, victorious in
numberless battles; and chief of an empire of which no man becomes
chief except as conqueror. In twenty minutes, the position is
forced. The combat becomes a carnage. The flowery prairie is stained
with blood; the hyacinth is no longer blue, but scarlet. Six hundred
Mexicans are dead; six hundred more are prisoners, half wounded; the
President General himself is a prisoner; the camp and baggage all
taken; and the loss of the victors, six killed and twenty wounded.
Such are the results, and which no European can believe, but those
who saw Jackson at New Orleans. Houston is the pupil of Jackson; and
he is the first self-made general, since the time of Mark Antony,
and the King Antigonus, who has taken the general of the army and
the head of the government captive in battle. Different from Antony,
he has spared the life of his captive, though forfeited by every
law, human and divine.
"I voted, in 1821, to acknowledge the absolute independence of
Mexico; I vote now to recognize the contingent and expected
independence of Texas. In both cases, the vote is given upon the
same principle--upon the principle of disjunction where conjunction
is impossible or disastrous. The Union of Mexico and Spain had
become impossible; that of Mexico and Texas is no longer desirable
or possible. A more fatal present could not be made than that of
the future incorporation of the Texas of La Salle with the ancient
empire of Montezuma. They could not live together, and extermination
is not the genius of the age; and, besides, is more easily talked of
than done. Bloodshed only could be the fruit of their conjunction;
and every drop of that blood would be the dragon's teeth sown upon
the earth. No wise Mexican should wish to have this Trojan horse
shut up within their walls."