WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.--HIS DEATH.--
VICE-PRESIDENT JOHN TYLER SUCCEEDS.--REMARKS OF MR. ADAMS ON THE
OCCASION.--HIS SPEECH ON THE CASE OF ALEXANDER M'LEOD.--HIS VIEWS
CONCERNING COMMONPLACE BOOKS.--HIS LECTURE ON CHINA AND CHINESE
COMMERCE.--REMARKS ON THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY, AND HIS DUTY IN RELATION
TO IT.--HIS PRESENTATION OF A PETITION FOR THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION,
AND THE VOTE TO CENSURE HIM FOR DOING IT.--HIS THIRD REPORT ON MR.
SMITHSON'S BEQUEST.--HIS SPEECH ON THE MISSION TO MEXICO.
On the 4th of March, 1841, William Henry Harrison, of Ohio, was
inaugurated President of the United States, and John Tyler, of Virginia,
Vice-President; each of whom had two hundred and thirty-four out of two
hundred and ninety-four votes,--the whole number,--and Martin Van Buren,
the only other candidate for the Presidency, had sixty. Mr. Adams
remarked that this inauguration was celebrated with demonstrations of
popular feeling unexampled since that of Washington, in 1789, and at the
same time with so much order and tranquillity that not the slightest
symptom of conflicting passions occurred to disturb the enjoyments of
the day. Many thousands of people from the adjoining, and considerable
numbers from distant states, were assembled to witness the ceremony.
On the 4th of April, 1841,--precisely one calendar month after his
inauguration,--President Harrison died. On this occasion Mr. Adams thus
expressed himself:
"The first impression of this event here, where it occurred, is of
the frailty of all human enjoyments, and the awful vicissitudes
woven into the lot of mortal man. He had reached, but one short
month since, the pinnacle of honor and power in his own country. He
lies a lifeless corpse in the palace provided by his country for his
abode. He was amiable and benevolent. Sympathy for his suffering and
his fate is the prevailing sentiment of his fellow-citizens. The
bereavement and distress of his family are felt intensely, albeit
they are strangers here, and known scarcely to any one.
"The influence of this event upon the condition and history of the
country can scarcely be foreseen. It makes the Vice-President of the
United States, John Tyler, of Virginia, acting President of the
Union for four years, less one month.
"Tyler is a political sectarian, of the slave-driving, Virginian,
Jeffersonian school; principled against all improvement; with all
the interests and passions and vices of slavery rooted in his moral
and political constitution; with talents not above mediocrity, and a
spirit incapable of expansion to the dimensions of the station on
which he has been cast by the hand of Providence, unseen, through
the apparent agency of chance. To that benign and healing hand of
Providence I trust, in humble hope of the good which it always
brings forth out of evil. In upwards of half a century this is the
first instance of a Vice-President being called to act as President
of the United States, and brings to the test that provision of the
constitution which places in the executive chair a man never thought
of for it by anybody.
"Tyler deems himself qualified to perform the duties and exercise
the powers and office of President, on the death of President
Harrison, without any other oath than that which he has taken as
Vice-President; yet, as doubts might arise, and for greater caution,
he will take and subscribe the oath as President. May the blessing
of Heaven upon this nation attend and follow this providential
revolution in its government! For the present it is not joyous, but
grievous.
"The moral condition of this country is degenerating, and especially
through the effect of that part of its constitution which is
organized by the process of unceasing elections. The spirit of the
age and country is to accumulate power in the hands of the
multitude: to shorten terms of service in high public places; to
multiply elections, and diminish executive power; to weaken all
agencies protective of property, or repressive of crime; to abolish
capital punishments and imprisonment for debt. Slavery,
intemperance, land-jobbing, bankruptcy, and sundry controversies
with Great Britain, constitute the materials for the history of John
Tyler's administration. But the improvement of the condition of man
will form no part of his policy, and the improvement of his country
will be an object of his most inveterate and inflexible opposition."
In September, 1841, one Alexander McLeod was imprisoned at Lockport, in
the State of New York, under an indictment for murder. The following
circumstances were the occasion of these proceedings. A steamer, called
the Caroline, owned and fitted out at Buffalo, had been engaged in
aiding certain insurgents against the Canadian government with military
apparatus and provisions; and an expedition, sent by the British
authorities, had cut the Caroline out of the port of Buffalo, set her on
fire, and sent her floating over the Niagara Falls. In the fight which
occurred one of the men on board the Caroline was killed.
The excitement was general and excessive throughout the State of New
York. McLeod was the leader in this expedition, and having, after the
lapse of some time, visited that state, he was arrested, imprisoned,
indicted, and the popular voice was clamorous that he should be
_hanged_. Notwithstanding the British government had declared that he
had acted under their authority as a military man, simply obeying the
order of his superiors, a like state of feeling and purpose had
extended to Congress, and a resolution had been introduced requesting
the President to inform the House "whether any officer of the army, or
the Attorney-General, had been directed to visit the State of New York
for any purpose connected with the imprisonment or trial of Alexander
McLeod; or whether, by any executive measures, the British government
had been given to understand that McLeod would be released."
Fearing that the result of these proceedings might lead to a great and
most formidable issue of peace and war between the United States and
Great Britain, Mr. Adams took this occasion to express his views on the
subject.
"The first question which occurs to me is," he said, "what is the
object of this resolution, and for what purpose has the house been
agitated with it from the commencement of the session to this day?
The gentleman who offered it has disclaimed all party purposes; he
breathes in a lofty atmosphere, elevated high above that of party.
But what sort of comprehension had both the friends and the
opponents of the resolution put upon it? No party complexion! O, no!
No; it was patriotism--pure patriotism--patriotism pure and
undefiled! Well; I am disposed to give gentlemen on all sides of the
house credit for whatever patriotism they profess; but sure it is
that patriotism is a coat of many colors, and suited to very
different complexions; and, if it had not been for that unqualified
profession of patriotism and no party, which had rung through this
house, from every gentleman who had supported this resolution, I
should have felt bound to believe it the rankest party measure that
ever was introduced into this house.
"What is the object of this resolution? It is to make an issue with
Great Britain--an issue of right or wrong--upon the affair of
burning the Caroline. No, sir; never shall my voice be for going to
war upon that issue. I will not go to war upon an issue upon which,
when we go to a third power to arbitrate upon it, they will say we
are wrong. The issue will be decided against us. We shall be told it
is not the thing for us to quarrel about.
"I have not the time, were I possessed of the information, to give a
history of the affair of the Caroline; and it is known as much to
every member of the house as it is to me. We have heard a great deal
of talk about territorial rights, and independence, and of state
rights. But, in a question of that kind, other nations do not look
much to your state rights nor to your independence questions. They
will not talk of your independence; but they will say who is right,
and who is wrong. Who struck the first blow? I take it, will be the
main question with them. I take it that in the late affair the
Caroline was in hostile array against the British government, and
that the parties concerned in it were employed in acts of war
against it; and I do not subscribe to the very learned opinion of
the Chief Justice of the State of New York (not, I hear, the Chief
Justice, but a Judge of the Supreme Court of that state), that there
was no act of war committed. Nor do I subscribe to it that every
nation goes to war only on issuing a declaration or proclamation of
war. This is not the fact. Nations often wage war for years without
issuing any declaration of war. The question is here not upon a
declaration of war, but acts of war. And I say that, in the
judgment of all impartial men of other nations, _we_ shall be held
as a nation responsible; that the Caroline there was in a state of
war against Great Britain; for purposes of war, and the worst kind
of war,--to sustain an insurrection--I will not say rebellion,
because rebellion is a crime, and because I heard them talked of as
'patriots.' Yes; and I have heard, in the course of the discussion
here, these patriots represented as carrying on a righteous cause,
and that we ought to have assisted them; that we ought to have
given them that assistance that a nation fighting for its liberty
is entitled to from the generosity of other nations. Well, admit
that merely for a moment. If we were bound to do it, we were bound
to do it avowedly and above-board. But we disclaimed all intention
of taking any part in it; and yet there was very little disguise
about this expedition, and that this vessel was there for the
purposes of hostility against the Canadian government. I say,
therefore, that we struck the first blow; and if, instead of
pressing this matter to a war, we were to refer it to a third
power, even if it should be to a European republic,--if any such
thing is remaining,--and should say there had been an invasion of
our territory, they would ask us a question something like that
which was put to a character in a play of Molière: _Que diable
allait il faire dans cette galère?_--What the devil had we to do in
that galley?
"Now, I think the arbitrator would say, "What the devil had you to
do with that steamboat?" He would say that we struck the first blow.
Now, admit that,--and none of your state rights men can deny
it,--admit that, and all the rest follows of course. They will say
it was wrong--abstractly, if you please. Talking of abstractions, it
was wrong for an expedition to come over and burn the steamboat, and
send her over the falls. But what was your steamboat about? What had
she been doing? What was she to do the next morning? And what ought
you to do? You have reparation to make for all the men, and for all
the arms and implements of war, which we were transporting, and
going to transport, to the other side, to foment and instigate
rebellion in Canada. That is what the third party would say to us.
And it would come, in the end, after all the blood and treasure had
been wasted by a war between the two countries, to this, that we
must shake hands and drink champagne together, after having made a
mutual apology for mutual transgression. That is the way things are
settled between individuals,--'If you said so, why, I said so,'--and
thus the dispute is amicably settled. So we should have to do with
this national matter; for there is not any great difference in the
essentials of quarrelling and making up between nations and
individuals."
Mr. Adams then proceeded to another point of view in which he objected
to this resolution. He said:
"A prodigious affair has been made of this matter, as if the
government of the United States had outraged the State of New York,
because the great empire State of New York had undertaken to say
that she would _hang_ McLeod, whatever Great Britain or the general
government might do. Yes; whatever they might do, the great empire
State of New York would _hang_ McLeod! That was the language.
"What, sir, I ask, is the object of this resolution? To inquire of
the President of the United States whether any officer of the army,
or the Attorney-General of the United States, since the 4th of March
last, has visited the State of New York for any purpose connected
with the trial of Alexander McLeod. What then? Has not the President
a right to send the Attorney-General to New York on that or any
other subject? Where is the constitutional provision prohibiting him
from sending the Attorney-General to New York on that or any other
of the subjects which are before the judicial courts of that state?
Yes, the Attorney-General has been sent there, and we have his
instructions. And I have heard here, on the part of some of my forty
friends from New York, a great deal about the conscious dignity and
honor of this _Empire State_ of New York. I am not very fond of
that term 'empire state,' in the language of this Union; and I say
that if there is an 'empire state' in the Union, it is Delaware. To
be magniloquent, and talk about the empire state, may well become
the forty gentlemen who represent the state on this floor, having
reference to their own numbers, and the numbers of their
constituents, or to the extent, fertility, and beauty, of her soil;
yet this is a distinction not recognized in the constitution of the
United States. They are all, as members of this Union, equal, and
the State of Delaware has as good a right to be called the 'empire
state' as New York. Now, if my forty friends from New York choose to
call it the 'empire state,' I will not quarrel with them. It is only
as to consequences that I enter my caveat against the too frequent
use of those terms on this floor; for there is meaning in those
words, 'empire state,' when used among co-estates, more than meets
the ear.
"Suppose that it was in Delaware that such an event had occurred; do
you suppose my friend here (Mr. Rodney) from Delaware would have
offered such a resolution as this? And, by the terms of the
resolution, I should presume my friends from New York think there is
a little more dignity and power in forty representatives than only
one."
In September, 1841, a plan for a newly-invented Commonplace Book, as an
improvement upon Locke's, was brought to Mr. Adams for his
recommendatory notice; which he declined, from a general rule he had
adopted on the subject, but said he thought it might be very useful, if
a practical system of such a manual could be simplified to the intellect
and industry of common minds, which he doubted. "I had occupied and
amused a long life," said he, "in the search of such a compendious
wisdom-box, but without being able to find or make it. I had made myself
more than one of Locke's Commonplace Books, but never used any one of
them. I had learnt and practised Byrom's Shorthand Writing, but no one
could read it but myself. I had kept accounts by double
entry,--day-book, journal, and ledger, with cash-book, bank-book,
house-book, and letter-book. I had made extracts, copies, translations,
and quotations, more perhaps than other man living, without ever being
able to pack up my knowledge or my labors in any methodical order; and
now doubt whether I might not have employed my time more profitably in
some one great, well-compacted, comprehensive pursuit, adapting every
hour of labor to the attainment of some great end."
In December, 1841, Mr. Adams delivered before the Massachusetts
Historical Society a lecture on the war then existing between Great
Britain and China. The principles stated and maintained in that lecture
were so much in advance of the opinions entertained at the time, that
it is believed to have been published in but a single newspaper in this
country or in Europe, and never in a pamphlet form, except by the
proprietors of the _Chinese Repository_, published in Macao, China, in
May, 1842. Though his views were ridiculed or repudiated by many when
delivered, they are at this day acknowledged; and are made some of the
chief grounds of the justification of that invasion of the Chinese
empire now apparently in successful progress. The subject is of
preëminent importance, and is canvassed with that laborious research
and independence eminently characteristic of the author.
In this lecture, after controverting the doctrine of an eminent French
writer, who contended that there was no such thing as international law,
and that the word law is not applicable to the obligations incumbent
upon nations, on the ground that law is a rule of conduct prescribed by
a superior; and that nations, being independent, acknowledge no
superior, and have no common sovereign from whom they can receive
law,--Mr. Adams proceeds to maintain that "by the law of nations is to
be understood, not one code of laws, binding alike on all the nations of
the earth, but a system of rules varying according to the character and
condition of the parties concerned." There is a law of nations, among
Christian communities, which is the law recognized by the constitution
of the United States as obligatory upon them in their intercourse with
European states and colonies. But we have a different law of nations
regulating our intercourse with the Indian tribes on this continent;
another, between us and the woolly-headed natives of Africa; another,
with the Barbary powers; another, with the flowery land, or Celestial
empire. This last is the nation with which Great Britain is now at war.
Then, reasoning on the rights of property, established by labor, by
occupancy, and by compact, he maintains that the right of exchange,
barter,--in other words, of commerce,--necessarily follows; that a state
of nature among men is a state of peace; the pursuit of happiness man's
natural right; that it is the duty of men to contribute as much as is in
their power to one another's happiness, and that there is no other way
by which they can so well contribute to the comfort and well-being of
one another as by commerce, or the mutual exchange of equivalents. These
views and principles he thus illustrates:
"The duty of commercial intercourse between nations is laid down in
terms sufficiently positive by Vattel, but he afterwards qualifies
it by a restriction, which, unless itself restricted, annuls it
altogether. He says that, although the general duty of commercial
intercourse is incumbent upon nations, yet every nation may exclude
any particular branch or article of trade which it may deem
injurious to its own interest. This cannot be denied. But, then, a
nation may multiply these particular exclusions, until they become
general, and equivalent to a total interdict of commerce; and this,
time out of mind, has been the inflexible policy of the Chinese
empire. So says Vattel, without affixing any note of censure upon
it. Yet it is manifestly incompatible with the position which he had
previously laid down, that commercial intercourse between nations is
a moral obligation incumbent upon them all.
"The empire of China is said to extend over three hundred millions
of human beings. It is said to cover a space of seven millions of
square miles--about four times larger than the surface of these
United States. The people are not Christians, nor can a Christian
nation appeal to the principles of a common faith to settle the
question of right and wrong between them. The moral obligation of
commercial intercourse between nations is founded entirely and
exclusively upon the Christian precept to love your neighbor as
yourself. With this principle, you cannot refuse commercial
intercourse with your neighbor, because, commerce consisting of a
voluntary exchange of property mutually beneficial to both parties,
excites in both the selfish and the social propensities, and enables
each of the parties to promote the happiness of his neighbors by the
same act whereby he provides for his own. But, China not being a
Christian nation, its inhabitants do not consider themselves bound
by the Christian precept to love their neighbors as themselves. The
right of commercial intercourse with them reverts not to the
execrable principle of Hobbes, that the state of nature is a state
of war, where every one has a right to buy, but no one is obliged to
sell. Commerce becomes altogether a matter of convention. The right
of each party is only to propose; that of the other is to accept or
refuse, and to his result he may be guided exclusively by the
consideration of his own interest, without regard to the interests,
the wishes, or other wants, of his neighbor.
"This is a churlish and unsocial system; and I take occasion here to
say that whoever examines the Christian system of morals with a
philosophical spirit, setting aside all the external and historical
evidences of its truth, will find all its precepts tending to exalt
the nature of the animal man; all its purpose to be peace on earth
and good will towards men. Ask the atheist, the deist, the Chinese,
and they will tell you that the foundation of their system of morals
is selfish enjoyment. Ask the philosophers of the Grecian
schools,--Epicurus, Socrates, Zeno, Plato, Lucretius, Cicero,
Seneca,--and you will find them discoursing upon the Supreme Good.
They will tell you it is pleasure, ease, temperance, prudence,
fortitude, justice: not one of them will whisper the name of love,
unless in its gross and physical sense, as an instrument of
pleasure; not one of them will tell you that the source of all moral
relation between you and the rest of mankind is to love your
neighbor as yourself--to do unto him as you would that he should do
unto you.
"The Chinese recognize no such law. Their internal government is a
hereditary patriarchical despotism, and their own exclusive interest
is the measure of all their relations with the rest of mankind.
Their own government is founded upon the principle that as a nation
they are superior to the rest of mankind. They believe themselves
and their country especially privileged over all others; that their
dominion is the celestial empire, and their territory the flowery
land.
"The fundamental principle of the Chinese empire is anti-commercial.
It is founded entirely upon the second and third of Vattel's general
principles, to the total exclusion of the first. It admits no
obligation to hold commercial intercourse with others. It utterly
denies the equality of other nations with itself, and even their
independence. It holds itself to be the centre of the terraqueous
globe,--equal to the heavenly host,--and all other nations with whom
it has any relations, political or commercial, as outside tributary
barbarians, reverently submissive to the will of its despotic chief.
It is upon this principle, openly avowed and inflexibly maintained,
that the principal maritime nations of Europe for several centuries,
and the United States of America from the time of their acknowledged
independence, have been content to hold commercial intercourse with
the empire of China.
"It is time that this enormous outrage upon the rights of human
nature, and upon the first principle of the rights of nations,
should cease. These principles of the Chinese empire, too long
connived at and truckled to by the mightiest Christian nations of
the civilized world, have at length been brought into conflict with
the principles and the power of the British empire; and I cannot
forbear to express the hope that Britain, after taking the lead in
the abolition of the African slave-trade and of slavery, and of the
still more degrading tribute to the Barbary African Mahometans, will
extend her liberating arm to the furthest bound of Asia, and at the
close of the present contest insist upon concluding the peace upon
terms of perfect equality with the Chinese empire, and that the
future commerce shall be carried on upon terms of equality and
reciprocity between the two communities parties to the trade, for
the benefit of both; each retaining the right of prohibition and of
regulation, to interdict any article or branch of trade injurious to
itself, as for example the article of opium, and to secure itself
against the practices of fraudulent traders and smugglers. This is
the truth, and I apprehend the only question at issue between the
governments and nations of Great Britain and China. It is a general,
but I believe altogether a mistaken opinion, that the quarrel is
merely for certain chests of opium, imported by British merchants
into China, and seized by the Chinese government for having been
imported contrary to law. This is a mere incident to the dispute,
but no more the cause of war than the throwing overboard of the tea
in Boston harbor was the cause of the North American Revolution.
"The cause of the war is the pretension on the part of the Chinese
that in all their intercourse with other nations, political or
commercial, their superiority must be implicitly acknowledged, and
manifested in humiliating forms. It is not creditable to the great,
powerful, and enlightened nations of Europe, that for several
centuries they have, for the sake of a profitable trade, submitted
to these insolent and insulting pretensions, equally contrary to the
first principles of the law of nature and of revealed religion--the
natural equality of mankind--
"'_Auri sacra fames, quid non mortalia pectora cogis?_'
"This submission to insult is the more extraordinary for being
practised by Christian nations, which, in their intercourse with one
another, push the principle of equality and reciprocity to the
minutest punctilios of form."
This lecture concludes with a sketch of the treatment of Lord Macartney
by the Chinese emperor, in 1792, when sent to that court as ambassador
from Great Britain, illustrating and supporting its general argument.
The remarks of Mr. Adams upon the distinction with a very small
difference between "the bended knee" and "entire prostration," as a
token of homage,--admitted as to the first, denied as to the last, by
the British ambassador,--are characteristic.
"The narrative of Sir George Staunton distinctly and positively
affirms that Lord Macartney was admitted to the presence of the
Emperor Kienlung, and presented to him his credentials, without
performing the prostration of the Kotow--the Chinese act of homage
from the vassal to the sovereign lord. Ceremonies between superiors
and inferiors are the personification of principles. Nearly
twenty-five years after the repulse of Lord Macartney, in 1816,
another splendid embassy was despatched by the British government,
in the person of Lord Amherst, who was much more rudely dismissed,
without even being admitted to the presence of the emperor, or
passing a single hour at Pekin. A Dutch embassy instituted shortly
after the failure of that of Lord Macartney, fared no better,
although the ambassador submitted with a good grace to the
prostration of the Kotow. A philosophical republican may smile at
the distinction by which a British nobleman saw no objection to
delivering his credentials on the bended knee, but could not bring
his stomach to the attitude of entire prostration. In the discussion
which arose between Lord Amherst and the celestials on this
question, the Chinese, to a man, insisted inflexibly that Lord
Macartney had performed the Kotow; and Kiaking, the successor of
Kienlung, who had been present at the reception of Lord Macartney,
personally pledged himself that he had seen his lordship in that
attitude. Against the testimony to the fact of the imperial witness
in person, it may well be conjectured how impossible it was for the
British noble to maintain his position, which was, after all, of
small moment. The bended knee, no less than the full prostration to
the ground, is a symbol of homage from an inferior to a superior,
and if not equally humiliating to the performer, it is only because
he has been made familiar by practice with one, and not with the
other. In Europe, the bended knee is exclusively appropriated to the
relations of sovereign and subject; and no representative of any
sovereign in Christendom ever bends his knee in presenting his
credentials to another. But the personal prostration of the
ambassador before the emperor was, in the Chinese principle of
exaction, symbolical not only of the acknowledgment of subjection,
but of the fundamental law of the empire prohibiting all official
intercourse upon a footing of equality between the government of
China and the government of any other nation. All are included under
the general denomination of outside barbarians: and the commercial
intercourse with the maritime or navigating nations is maintained
through the exclusive monopoly of the Hong merchants."
At the opening of the session of Congress, on the 3d of December, 1841,
Mr. Adams thus wrote concerning his own course and the country's
prospects:
"Between the obligation to discharge my duty to the country and the
obvious impossibility of accomplishing anything for the improvement
of its condition by legislation, my deliberate judgment warns me to
a systematic adherence to inaction upon all the controverted topics
which cannot fail to be brought into debate. Upon the rule-question
(that is, refusing to receive or refer petitions on the subject of
slavery) I cannot be silent, but shall be left alone, as heretofore.
I await the opening of the session with great anxiety; more from an
apprehension of my own imprudence than from a belief that the
fortunes of the country will be much affected, for good or evil, by
anything that will be done. There is neither spotless integrity nor
consummate ability at the helm of the ship, and she will be more
than ever the sport of winds and waves, drifting between breakers
and quicksands. May the wise and good Disposer send her home in
safety!"
On the 24th of January, 1842, Mr. Adams presented the petition of
forty-five citizens of Haverhill, Massachusetts, praying that Congress
would immediately take measures peaceably to dissolve the Union of these
States. 1st. Because no Union can be agreeable which does not present
prospects of reciprocal benefits. 2d. Because a vast proportion of the
resources of one section of the Union is annually drained to sustain the
views and course of another section, without any adequate return. 3d.
Because, judging from the history of past nations, that Union, if
persisted in, in the present course of things, will certainly overwhelm
the whole nation in utter destruction. Mr. Adams moved that the petition
be referred to a select committee, with instructions to report an answer
showing the reasons why the prayer of it ought not to be granted.
The excitement the presentation of this petition produced was immediate
and intense. Mr. Hopkins, of Virginia, moved to burn it in presence of
the house. Mr. Wise, of the same state, asked the speaker if it was in
order to move to censure any member for presenting such a petition. Mr.
Gilmer, also of Virginia, moved a resolution, that Mr. Adams, for
presenting such a petition, had justly incurred the censure of the
house. Mr. Adams said that he hoped the resolution would be received and
discussed. A desultory debate ensued, and was continued until the house
adjourned. A caucus was immediately held by the opponents of Mr. Adams
among the representatives from the South and West, to take measures to
effect his expulsion. It was feared that the two thirds vote requisite
to expel a member could not be obtained. Three resolutions were
therefore prepared, the adoption of which it was deemed would in popular
effect be equivalent to an expulsion. Thomas F. Marshall, of Kentucky,
consented to present them the next day. The consideration of these
resolutions, which continued until the 5th of February, produced a
series of as violent and personal debates as perhaps the halls of
Congress ever witnessed. They were in these words:
"WHEREAS, The federal constitution is a permanent form of
government, and of perpetual obligation, until altered or modified
in the mode pointed out in that instrument; and the members of this
House, deriving their political character and powers from the same,
are sworn to support it; and the dissolution of the Union
necessarily implies the destruction of that instrument, the
overthrow of the American republic, and the extinction of our
national existence: a proposition, therefore, to the representatives
of the people, to dissolve the organic laws framed by their
constituents, and to support which they are commanded by those
constituents to be sworn before they can enter into the execution of
the political powers created by it and intrusted to them, is a high
breach of privilege, a contempt offered to this House, a direct
proposition to the legislature and each member of it to commit
perjury, and involving necessarily in its execution and its
consequences the destruction of our country, and the crime of high
treason.
"_Resolved, therefore_, That the Honorable John Quincy Adams,
member from Massachusetts, in presenting for the consideration of
the House of Representatives of the United States a petition praying
for the dissolution of the Union, has offered the deepest indignity
to the House of which he is a member, an insult to the people of the
United States, of which that House is the legislative organ; and
will, if this outrage be permitted to pass unrebuked and unpunished,
have disgraced his country, through their representatives, in the
eyes of the whole world.
"_Resolved, further_, That the aforesaid John Quincy Adams, for
this insult, the first of the kind ever offered to the government,
and for the wound which he has permitted to be aimed, through his
instrumentality, at the constitution and existence of his country,
the peace, the security, and liberty of the people of these States,
might well be held to merit expulsion from the national councils;
and the House deem it an act of grace and mercy when they only
inflict upon him their severest censure for conduct so utterly
unworthy of his past relations to the state, and his present
position. This they hereby do, for the maintenance of their own
purity and dignity. For the rest, they turn him over to his own
conscience, and the indignation of all true American citizens."
The scene which occurred, on their presentation, is thus graphically
described in the newspapers of the day:
"On the 25th of January, the whole body of Southerners came into the
House, apparently resolved to crush Mr. Adams and his cause forever.
They gathered in groups, conversed in deep whispers, and the whole
aspect of their conduct at twelve o'clock indicated a conspiracy
portending a revolution. Thomas F. Marshall, of Kentucky, rose, and,
having asked and received of Mr. Gilmer leave to offer a substitute
for his resolution of censure which was pending at the adjournment,
presented the three prepared resolutions. He assumed a manner and
tone as if he felt the historical importance of his position; spoke
with great coolness and solemnity,--a style wholly unusual with him;
assumed a solemn, magisterial air, and judicial elevation, as if he
thought, in the insolence of his conceit, that he was about to pour
down the thunder of condemnation on the venerable object of his
attack, as a judge pronouncing sentence on a convicted culprit, in
the sight of approving men and angels. Warming somewhat with the
silent, imposing attention of the vast audience before whom he
spoke, he expanded into an inflated exhibition of his own past
relations to the object of his attack, and thus represented himself
eminently qualified to act the part he had assumed of prosecutor,
judge, and executioner. When he finished, the speaker announced to
Mr. Adams that his position entitled him to the floor, bringing up
to the imagination a parallel scene: 'Then Agrippa said unto Paul,
Thou art permitted to speak for thyself.'
"Up rose, then, that bald, gray old man, his hands trembling with
constitutional infirmity and age, upon whose consecrated head the
vials of tyrannic wrath had been outpoured. Among the crowd of
slaveholders who filled the galleries he could seek no friends, and
but a few among those immediately around him. Unexcited, he raised
his voice, high-keyed, as was usual with him, but clear,
untremulous, and firm. In a moment his infirmities disappeared,
although his shaking hand could not but be noticed: trembling not
with fear, but with age. At first there was nothing of indignation
in his tone, manner, or words. Surprise and cold contempt were all.
But anon a flash of withering scorn struck the unhappy Marshall. A
single breath blew all his mock-judicial array into air and smoke.
In a tone of insulted majesty and reinvigorated spirit, Mr. Adams
then said, in reply to the audacious, atrocious charge of 'high
treason:' 'I call for the reading of the first paragraph of the
Declaration of Independence. Read it! read it! and see what that
says of the right of a people to reform, to change, and to dissolve
their government.'
"The look, the tone, the gesture, of the insulted patriot, at that
instant were most imposing. The voice was that of sovereign command.
The burthen of seventy-five winters rolled off, and he rose above
the puny things around him, who thought themselves his equals, from
being his associates.
"When the passage of the Declaration was read that solemnly
proclaims the right of reform, revolution, and resistance to
oppression, the old man thundered out, '_Read that again!_' and
he looked proudly round on the listening audience, as he heard his
triumphant vindication sounded forth in the glorious sentences of
the revolutionary Magna Charta.
"The sympathetic revulsion of feeling was intense, though voiceless.
Every drop of free, honest blood in that vast assemblage bounded
with high impulse, every fibre thrilled with excitement.
"A strong exhibition of the facts in the case, mostly in cold, calm,
logical, measured sentences, concluded the high appeal of Mr. Adams,
from the slaveholders of the present generation to the Father of
that system of revolutionary liberty with which he is the coëval and
the noblest champion. And then he sat down vindicated, victorious."
Apart from the excited interest of friends, the malign aspersions of
political enemies, and his own indignant response to the hollow tirade
of his assailants, his defence, reduced to its elements, was simply
this: that the petition was sent to him for presentation; that it was a
subject for which the signers of it had a constitutional right to
petition, and that in presenting it he had proposed that the committee
should be instructed to report reasons why it ought not to be granted.
He said that he should not enter further into his self-defence at that
time, but should wait to see the action of the house upon those
resolutions. But whenever the proper time for his defence should come,
he pledged himself to show that "a portion of the country from which the
assailants came was endeavoring to destroy the right of habeas corpus,
and of trial by jury, and all the rights in which the liberties of the
country consist;"--"that there was in that portion of country a
systematic attempt even to carry it to the dissolution of the Union,
with a continual system and purpose to destroy all the principles of
civil liberty among the free states, and by power to force the detested
principles of slavery on the free States of this Union;" a pledge which
in the course of his subsequent argument he fully redeemed.
The last of January, Mr. Adams thus expressed himself concerning these
proceedings: "My occupations during the month have been confined
entirely to the business of the house, and for the last ten days to the
defence of myself against an extensive combination and conspiracy, in
and out of Congress, to crush the liberties of the free people of this
Union, by disgracing me with the brand of censure, and displacing me
from the chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, for my perseverance
in presenting abolition petitions. I am in the midst of that fiery
ordeal, and day and night absorbed in the struggle against this attempt
at my ruin. God send me a good deliverance!"
Intemperate debates, with violence undiminished, succeeded, in which all
the topics of party censure, from the adoption of the constitution, were
collected and heaped upon Mr. Adams by Marshall, Wise, Gilmer, and
others.
On the 3d of February Mr. Adams took the floor, and spoke for two hours
in his own defence, with an eloquence and effect to which no description
can do justice. He touched the low underplot of the Committee on Foreign
Affairs with pointed severity and bitter truth, and then gave amusing
particulars of missives he had received from the South threatening him
with assassination. Among other kindly hints sent through the
post-office was a colored lithograph portrait of himself, with the
picturesque annotation of a rifle-ball on the forehead, and a promise
that such a remedy "would stop his music." He alluded to these
communications with perfect good nature, some of them being identical
with words used towards him by Mr. Gilmer. A further account of them
will be given from the correspondent of the newspapers of the day.[1]
[1] See the _Boston Courier_ and _New York American_ of the
period.
"Among the many strange impressions of these singular scenes,
nothing is more striking than the total, disgraceful ignorance
which prevails as to who John Quincy Adams _is_. That he has been
President of the United States, and had previously borne high
offices, seems occasionally to be vaguely remembered by a few of
the most intelligent of his persecutors. But of the part which he
has borne for half a century in the history of America and of the
world they know no more than they do of the Vedas and Puránas.
"The thread of this great discourse was his present and past
relations to Virginia and Virginians. After gratefully acknowledging
his infinite obligations to the great Virginians of the first age of
the federal republic, he modestly and unpretendingly recounted the
unsought exalted honors heaped upon him by Washington, Madison, and
Monroe, and detailed with touching simplicity and force some of his
leading actions in the discharge of those weighty trusts. As he went
back through the historic vista of patriotic achievements, he seemed
to renew his youth like the eagles, and rose into a still loftier
and bolder strain than in the withering retort with which he struck
down Wise and Marshall. In passing over the preliminaries of his
discourse, he chanced to fix his eye on the latter, who was moving
down one of the side aisles. Instantly, at the suggestion of the
moment, he burst forth into a beautiful appeal to the hallowed
memory of the venerated and immaculate Virginian who once bore the
name of Marshall through a long career of judicial honor and
usefulness. The general interest in this appeal to the past was
impressive. The members of the house drew together around him; even
his persecutors paid an involuntary tribute to 'the old man
eloquent.'
"Lord Morpeth was an attentive spectator and auditor of these scenes
of turbulence; and it was interesting to see a British statesman
looking up to learn from such a source the unwritten history of his
own country, as well as of Europe. For such it was, when Mr. Adams
gave the history of the movements at the court of the Emperor
Alexander, and his connection with them, which resulted in the
Russo-British alliance and in the overthrow of Napoleon. The
early-chosen favorite of Washington, the trusted counsellor of
Jefferson, the much-honored agent of Madison, the guide and chief
support of Monroe, the restorer of the purity of the Washingtonian
epoch to the Presidential chair, and for the last ten years the bold
champion of universal liberty, stood there baited by absurd charges
of perjury and treason, by insignificant beings of yesterday.
"The monument of a past age, a beacon to the present, a landmark to
the future, he towered above the little things around him. The
beautiful poetic appeal to Virginia, with which he concluded, caused
a thrill of delighted admiration in the whole assembly. The
emphasis, the pathetic intonation, touched every heart. The triumph
of Mr. Adams was complete."
On the eleventh day of this debate, Mr. Adams, in opening his defence,
said that he had been charged by his assailant with consuming an
unreasonable portion of the time of the house with his own affairs; but
he thought that six days could not be deemed an extravagant requirement
for the defence of a man situated as he was, when a great portion of
that period had been consumed by his assailants, their associates, and
others. He did not desire to be responsible for any unnecessary
consumption of the hours of debate. He wished, indeed, to state the
whole affair; and, to accomplish this, he should require a great deal
more time. He had laid out a great platform for his defence, if he was
forced to continue it; but he was willing to forego it all, provided it
could be done without sacrificing his rights, the rights of his
constituents, and those of the petitioners. He then stated that if any
gentleman would make a motion to lay the whole subject on the table, he
would forbear to proceed any further with his defence. This motion was
immediately made by Mr. Botts, of Virginia, and the house decided in
its favor, by a vote of _one hundred and six_ to _ninety-three_. The
petition from Haverhill was then taken up and refused to be received;
one hundred and sixty-six in the affirmative to forty in the negative.
On the 12th of April, 1842, Mr. Adams, as chairman of the committee on
the Smithsonian fund, made a report in the form of a bill, the object of
which was to settle three fundamental principles for the administration
and management of the fund in all after time. The bill provided, First,
that the principal fund should be preserved and maintained unimpaired,
with an income secured upon it at the rate of six per cent. a year, from
which all appropriations for the purposes of the founder should be made.
Second, that the portions of the income already accrued and invested in
state stocks should be constituted funds, from the annual income of
which an astronomical observer, with suitable assistants, should be
supported. Third, that in the future management of this fund no part of
it should be applied to any institution of education, or religious
establishment.
To the persevering spirit with which Mr. Adams on every occasion urged
upon Congress and the people of the United States the observance of
those fundamental principles which he had first asserted and which he
afterwards uninterruptedly maintained, notwithstanding a local and
interested opposition to them, may be justly attributed the preservation
of that fund, and its subsequent application to the objects of the
founder's bequest, although in his prevailing desire that an
astronomical observatory should be one of them, he did not succeed.
Connected with this report, all the previous proceedings in relation to
it were again published, for the information of Congress and the public.
On the 14th of the same month, a bill making appropriations for the
civil and diplomatic expenses of government being under consideration,
Mr. Linn, of New York, moved to strike out so much of it as related to a
minister to Mexico, expressing his belief that the object of this
mission was to bring about the annexation of Texas. A debate ensued,
which was desultory and declamatory on the part of those advocating the
appropriation. Mr. Wise, of Virginia, said that the tyrant of Mexico was
now at war with Texas; that he threatened to invade her territory, and
never stop until he had driven slavery beyond the Sabine; and that the
gentlemen opposed to the mission would let him loose his servile horde,
and yet send no minister to remonstrate or to threaten. Our citizens had
claims on that government to the amount of twelve or thirteen millions.
Ten or a dozen of our citizens--of our own native citizens--were in
degrading bondage in the mines of Mexico, or sweeping its streets; and
yet a minister to Mexico was opposed because the President and a party
in this country wished to annex Texas to the Union. It was not only the
duty of this government to demand the liquidation of our claims and the
liberation of our citizens, but to go further, and demand the
non-invasion of Texas. We should at once say to Mexico, "If you strike
Texas, you strike us." And if England, standing by, should dare to
intermeddle and ask, "Do you take part with Texas?" his prompt answer
would be, "Yes, and against you."
Mr. Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, followed on the same side, maintaining
that Texas ought to be annexed to the Union, even at the risk of a war
with Great Britain. He said that he was a man of peace, and was not
insensible to the evils of war, but he contended that they were greatly
exaggerated. He wished the British minister to understand that war would
not do us so much harm as it would his own country. In the first place,
if we chose to apply the principles of war, it paid all the state debts
at once,--two hundred millions of dollars. At all events, it suspended
the interest during the war. We had a sufficient population, the
capacity of drilling that population, and all the materials for war.
There were two vessels now within the sound of his voice to which there
was nothing in a British or French navy to be compared. Our lakes were
covered with transporting steamboats, which could easily be made
effective for harbor defence. We lived in a republican country, in an
armed nation; and he would rather take this nation as it was than the
most completely armed nation in the world. Having proceeded at great
length in this strain, stating various particulars, some of which may be
gathered from Mr. Adams' reply, he concluded by challenging opposition
to the opinion that there was no right of search in time of war, and
that such a claim was a monstrosity. The greatest question in the world,
which now agitated nearly all Christendom, was this mixed question of
the slave-trade and the right of visit and search. To statements and
arguments of this force and nature Mr. Adams made a scrutinizing and
unanswerable reply, of which the following extract will sufficiently
exhibit the power and quality.
"The gentleman from Pennsylvania began by saying that he was for
peace--for universal peace. Then followed a most learned
dissertation to prove that it was an entire mistake to suppose that
we are not now prepared for war; and to demonstrate that a nation
which goes into a war unprepared will infallibly conquer; that it
must be so; that every unarmed and unprepared nation always had
conquered its armed opposers. No; we are not unprepared for
war,--not at all,--because we have in sight of the windows of this
capitol two armed steamers; one of them, as I am informed, nearly
disabled, so that she will need, in a great measure, to be rebuilt,
leaving for our use, in case of immediate hostilities, one entire
steamer, and with that we are to burn London; and though the
gentleman readily admitted that it was possible, nay, very probable,
that New York would be burnt too, yet, as London was four or five
times as large, we should have a great balance of burning on our
side. Yes; we were to conquer Great Britain and burn London, and we
were told that it would be a very cheap price for all this to have
the city of New York burnt in turn, or burnt first. And this was an
argument _for peace_!
"What else did the gentlemen say? What else did he not say? He made
a great argument and a valorous display of zeal in relation to the
right of search. O, that--that was a point never to be conceded--no,
never. He maintained that there is no such thing as a right of
search--no such right in time of war, none in time of peace. Well, I
do agree with the gentleman partially on that one point, so far as
to believe that there is no need of our coming to an issue with
Great Britain there, and we have not as yet. After reading, as I
have done, and carefully examining the papers put forth on both
sides, I asked myself, What is the question between us? And I have
heard men of the first intelligence say that they found themselves
in the very same situation. The gentleman has made a total
misrepresentation of the demand of Great Britain in the matter. She
has never claimed the right to search American vessels--no such
thing. On the contrary, she has explicitly disclaimed any such
pretension, and that to the whole extent we can possibly demand.
What is it we do demand? Not that Great Britain should disclaim the
right to search American vessels, but we deny her the right to board
pirates who hoist the American flag. Yes; and to search British
vessels, too, that have been declared to be pirates by the laws of
nations, pirates by the laws of Great Britain, pirates by the laws
of the United States. That is the demand of our late minister to
London, whose letters are so much admired by the gentleman from
Pennsylvania. Now, it happens that behind all this exceeding great
zeal against the right of search is a question which the gentleman
took care not to bring into view, and that is the support and
perpetuation of the African slave-trade. That is the real question
between the ministers of America and Great Britain: whether
slave-traders, pirates, by merely hoisting the American flag, shall
be saved from capture.
"I say there is no such thing as an exemption from the right of
search by the laws of nations, and I challenge and defy the
gentleman to produce the proof. The right of search in time of war
we have never pretended to deny. Nay, we ourselves exercised that
right during the last war. And the Supreme Court of the United
States, in their decisions of prize cases brought before them,
sustained us in doing so, and said it was lawful according to the
laws of nations. And, indeed, we should have had a very poor chance
in a war with Great Britain, without it.
"But what is the right of search in time of peace? And how has
Congress felt, and how has the American government acted, on this
point? I have some knowledge on this subject. In the year 1817, when
I was about to return from England to the United States, Mr.
Wilberforce, then a member of the British Parliament, very
celebrated for his long and persevering exertions to suppress the
African slave-trade, wrote me a note requesting an interview. I
acceded promptly to his request; and in conversation he stated to me
that the British government had found that without a mutual right of
search between this country and that, upon the coast of Africa, it
would be impossible to carry through the system she had formed in
connection with the United States for the suppression of that
infamous traffic. I had then just signed with my own hand a treaty
declaring 'the traffic in slaves (not the African slave-trade, but
THE TRAFFIC IN SLAVES) unjust and inhuman,' and in which
both nations engaged to do all in their power to suppress it. Mr.
Wilberforce inquired of me whether I thought that a proposal for a
mutual, restricted, qualified right of search would be acceptable to
the American government. I had at that time a feeling to the full as
strong against the right of search, as it had then been exercised by
British cruisers, as ever the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr.
Ingersoll) had, in all his life. I had been myself somewhat involved
in the question as a public man. It constituted one of the grounds
of my unfortunate difference from those with whom I had long been
politically associated; and it was for the exertions I had made
against the admission of that right that I forfeited my place in the
other end of the capitol, and, which was infinitely more painful to
me, for this I had differed with men long dear to me, and to whom I
had also been dear, insomuch that for a time it interrupted all
friendly relations between us.
"The first thing I said, in reply to Mr. Wilberforce, was: 'No; you
may as well save yourselves the trouble of making any proposals on
that subject; my countrymen, I am very sure, will never assent to
any such arrangement.' He then entered into an argument, the full
force of which I felt, when I said to him, 'You may, if you think
proper, make the proposal; but I think some other mode of getting
over the difficulty must be resorted to; for the prejudices of my
country are so immovably strong on that point, that I do not believe
they will ever assent.'
"I returned home, and, under the administration of Mr. Monroe, I
filled the office of Secretary of State; and in that capacity I was
the medium through which the proposal of the British government was
afterwards made to the United States to arrange a special right of
search for the suppression of the slave-trade. This proposition I
resisted and opposed in the cabinet with all my power. And I will
say that, although I was not myself a slaveholder, I had to resist
all the slaveholding members of the cabinet, and the President also.
Mr. Monroe himself was always strongly inclined in favor of the
proposition, and I maintained the opposite ground against him and
the whole body of his official advisers as long as I could.
"At that time there was in Congress, and especially in the House, a
spirit of concession, which I could not resist. From the year 1818
to the year 1823, not a session passed without some movement on this
point, and some proposition made to request the President to
negotiate for the mutual concession of this right of search. I
resisted it to the utmost; and so earnest did the matter become,
that, on one occasion, at an evening party in the President's house,
in a conversation between myself and a distinguished gentleman of
Virginia,--a principal leader of this movement, now living, but not
now a member of this house,--words became so warm that what I said
was afterwards alluded to by another gentleman of Virginia, in an
address to his constituents, against my election as President of the
United States. It was made an objection against me that I was an
enemy to the suppression of the slave-trade. That address and my
reply to it are in existence, and the latter in the hands of a
gentleman of Virginia now in this house, and who can correct me if I
do not state the matter correctly. The address was written, and
would have been published, with an allusion to what I had said in
the conversation (which the writer heard, although it was not
addressed to him), but the gentleman with whom I was conversing went
to him, and told him that if he did refer in print to that private
conversation, he would never speak to him; and so it was suppressed.
I state these facts, sir, that I may set myself right on this
question of the right of search.
"At that time a gentleman, who was the leader of one of the parties
in this house, had endeavored from year to year to prevail with the
house to require of the President a concession of the right asked.
I name him to honor him; for he was one of the most talented,
laborious, eloquent, and useful men upon this floor. I allude to
Charles Fenton Mercer, of Virginia. Session after session, he
brought forward his resolution; and he continued to press it,
until, finally, in 1823, he brought the house by yeas and nays to
vote their assent to it; and, strange to say, there were but nine
votes against it. The same thing took place in the other house. The
joint resolution went to the President, and he accordingly entered
into the negotiation. It was utterly against my judgment and
wishes; but I was obliged to submit, and I prepared the requisite
despatches to Mr. Rush, then our minister at the court of London.
When he made his proposal to Mr. Canning, Mr. Canning's reply was,
'Draw up your convention, and I will sign it.' Mr. Rush did so, and
Mr. Canning, without the slightest alteration whatever,--without
varying the dot of an _i_, or the crossing of a _t_,--did affix to
it his signature; thus assenting to our own terms in our own
language.
"The convention came back here for ratification; but, in the mean
time, another spirit came over the feelings of this house, as well
as of the Senate. A party had been formed against the administration
of Mr. Monroe; the course of the administration was no longer
favored, and the house came out in opposition to a convention drawn
in conformity to its own previous views.
"But now, as I do not wish to intrude on the attention of this
committee a single moment longer than is necessary, I will pass over
the rest of what I might say on this subject, and recur, in a few
observations, to the other war-trumpet which we have heard within
the last two days.
"They unite in one purpose, though they seem to be pursuing it by
different means. The gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wise), confining
his observations to our relations with Mexico, also urges us to war
with the same professions of a disposition for peace as were so
often repeated by the gentleman from Pennsylvania in regard to Great
Britain. He does not immediately connect the questions of war with
Mexico and war with Great Britain, but apparently knows and feels
that they are in substance and in fact but one and the same
question; and that, so surely as we rush into a war with Mexico, we
shall shortly find ourselves in a war with England. The gentleman
appeared entirely conscious of that; and I hope that no member of
this committee will come to the conclusion that it is possible for
us to have a war with Mexico without at the same time going to war
with Great Britain. On that subject I will venture to say that the
minister from England has no instructions. That is not one of the
five points on which the gentleman from Pennsylvania tells us our
controversy with England rests, and the surrendering of which is to
open to that minister so easy a road to an earldom. The war with
Mexico is to be produced by different means, and for different
purposes. I think the gentleman from Virginia, in his speech, rested
the question of the war with Mexico upon three grounds: 1st, That
our citizens had claims against the Mexican government to the amount
of ten or twelve millions; 2d, That some ten or twelve of our
citizens had been treated with great severity, and suffered disgrace
and abuse from the Mexican government, having been made slaves, and
compelled to work at cleansing the streets; that these citizens were
detained in servitude, while one British subject had been promptly
released on the first demand of the British minister there; and, 3d,
That a war with Mexico would accomplish the annexation of Texas to
the Union. The gentleman was in favor of war, not merely for the
abstract purpose of annexing Texas to the Union, but he was for war
by peremptorily prohibiting Santa Anna from invading Texas.
"I will take up these reasons in order. And, first, as to going to
war for the obtaining of these ten or twelve millions of dollars,
being the claims of our own citizens on Mexico. This seems a very
extraordinary reason, when, according to the doctrine of the
gentleman from Pennsylvania, a state of war at once extinguishes all
national debts. If we go to war with Mexico, her debts to our
citizens will be expunged at once, if the doctrine of the gentleman
from Pennsylvania be true. He did, to be sure, qualify the position
by saying that war would at least suspend the payment of interest.
If so, then it would equally suspend interest in the case of Mexico.
The arguments of the two war gentlemen happen to cross each other,
though they are directed to the same end. One of them will have us
go to war with Mexico to recover twelve millions of dollars; the
other would have us go to war with England to wipe out a debt of two
hundred millions. I will not compare the arguments of the two
gentlemen together; but I will say, in regard to the doctrine of the
gentleman from Pennsylvania, that it has quite too much of
repudiation in it for my creed. I do not think that a war with
England would extinguish these two hundred millions, but that, on
the contrary, Great Britain would be likely to say to us, 'We will
go to war to recover the money you owe us,' That is one of the
questions which we must settle if we go to war, but which we might
otherwise, at least for a time, stave off. But, if we go to war,
what must be the effect of the peace that follows? We must pay our
two hundred millions, with the interest. As to our debt from Mexico,
I believe the way to recover it is not to go to war for it; for war,
besides failing to recover the money, will occasion us the loss of
ten times the amount in other ways.
"As to war producing a suspension of interest on a national debt,
let the gentleman look back a little to the wars of France. In 1793
France was at war with almost all the countries of Europe, and she
immediately confiscated all her debts to them. But what happened
thirty years after, when the reäction came? The allies took Paris,
and, in the settlement which then took place, they compelled France
to pay all her debts, with full interest on the whole period during
which payment had been suspended. That was the consequence to France
of going to war to extinguish debts. And, if we go to war with Great
Britain to-morrow, she will make us, as one of the conditions of
peace, pay our whole debt of two hundred millions, with interest.
And what shall we gain? Spend millions upon millions every year, as
long as the war continues; and, unless it is greatly successful,
have to pay our debt at last, principal and interest. This would
depend on the chances of war, or the issues of battle. And, as our
contests would be chiefly on the ocean, we must first obtain a
superiority on the seas before we can put her down and vanquish her;
and this to save ourselves from the payment of two hundred millions
justly due from our citizens to hers!
"There is a second reason given by the gentleman from Virginia in
favor of war. He reminds us, with great warmth, that there are some
ten or twelve citizens of the United States now prisoners in the
city of Mexico, and dragging chains about the streets of that city;
that a British subject taken with them has been liberated, while
they are kept in bondage. Now, if I am correctly informed, one
American citizen, a son of General Coombs, has been liberated on
the application of the minister of the United States, who was as
fairly a subject of imprisonment as the British subject of whom the
gentleman speaks. I certainly have no objections to our minister's
making such representations as he can in favor of the release of
citizens of the United States, although taken in actual war against
Mexico, in association with Texian forces; but I am not prepared to
go to war to obtain their liberation. I must first be permitted to
ask how it is that these men happen to be in the streets of Mexico.
Is it not because they formed part of an expedition got up in Texas
against the Mexican city of Santa Fé? Were they not taken
_flagrante bello_, actually engaged in a war they had nothing to do
with, to which the United States were no party? In all this great
pity and sympathy for American citizens made to travel hundreds of
miles barefoot and in chains, the question 'How came they there?'
seems never to be asked. And yet, so far as the interposition of
this nation for their recovery is concerned, that is the very first
question to be asked.
"I come now to the third ground for war urged by the gentleman from
Virginia, and I hope I do not misrepresent him when I say that I
understood him to affirm that if he had the power he would prohibit
the invasion of Texas by Mexico; and if Mexico would not submit to
such a requirement, and should persist in her invasion, he would go
to war. The gentleman stated, as a ground for war, that Santa Anna
had avowed his determination to 'drive slavery beyond the Sabine.'
That was what the gentleman from Virginia most apprehended--that
slavery would be abolished in Texas; that we should have neighbors
at our doors not contaminated by that accursed plague-spot. He would
have war with Mexico sooner than slavery should be driven back to
the United States, whence it came. If that is to be the avowed
opinion of this committee, in God's name let my constituents know
it! The sooner it is proclaimed on the house-tops, the better--the
house is to go to war with Mexico for the purpose of annexing Texas
to this Union!"