John Bell, of Tennessee, who was a candidate with Edward Everett on
the "Constitutional Union" ticket of 1860, when Virginia, Kentucky,
and Tennessee gave him their thirty-nine electoral votes in favor of
a hopeless peace, will always seem one of the most respectable
figures in the politics of a time when calmness and conservatism,
such as characterized him and his coadjutor., Mr. Everett, of
Massachusetts, had ceased to be desired by men who wished immediate
success in public life. He was one of the founders of the Whig
party, and by demonstrating himself to be one of the very few men
who could win against Andrew Jackson's opposition in Tennessee, he
acquired, under Jackson and Van Buren, a great influence with the
Whigs of the country at large. He was a member of Congress from
Tennessee for fourteen years dating from 1827, when he won by a
single vote against Felix Grundy, one of the strongest men in
Tennessee and a special favorite with General Jackson. Disagreeing
with Jackson on the removal of the deposits, Bell was elected
Speaker of the House over Jackson's protege, James K. Polk, in 1834,
and in 1841 he entered the Whig cabinet as Secretary of War under
Harrison who had defeated another of Jackson's proteges, Van
Buren. In 1847 and again in 1853, he was elected United States
Senator from Tennessee and he did his best to prevent secession. He
had opposed Calhoun's theories of the right of a State to nullify a
Federal act if unconstitutional, and in March 1858, in the debate
over the Lecompton constitution, he opposed Toombs in a speech which
probably made him the candidate of the Constitutional Unionists two
years later. Another notable speech, of even more far-reaching
importance, he had delivered in 1853 in favor of opening up the West
by building the Pacific Railroad, a position in which he was
supported by Jefferson Davis.
Mr. Bell was for the Union in 1861, denying the right of secession,
but he opposed the coercion of the Southern States, and when the
fighting actually began he sided with Tennessee, and took little or
no part in public affairs thereafter. He died in 1869.
AGAINST EXTREMISTS NORTH AND SOUTH (From a Speech in the Senate,
March 18th, 1858. on the Lecompton Constitution)
The honorable Senator from Georgia, Mr. Toombs, announced some great
truths to-day. He said that mankind made a long step, a great
stride, when they declared that minorities should not rule; and that
a still higher and nobler advance had been made when it was decided
that majorities could only rule through regular and legal forms. He
asserted this general doctrine with reference to the construction he
proposed to give to the Lecompton constitution; and to say that the
people of Kansas, unless they spoke through regular forms, cannot
speak at all. He will allow me to say, however, that the forms
through which a majority speaks must be provided and established by
competent authority, and his doctrine can have no application to the
Lecompton constitution, unless he can first show that the
legislature of Kansas was vested with legal authority to provide for
the formation of a State constitution; for, until that can be shown,
there could be no regular and legal forms through which the majority
could speak. But how does that Senator reconcile his doctrine with
that avowed by the President, as to the futility of attempting, by
constitutional provisions, to fetter the power of the people in
changing their constitution at pleasure? In no States of the Union
so much as in some of the slaveholding States would such a doctrine
as that be so apt to be abused by incendiary demagogues,
disappointed and desperate politicians, in stirring up the people to
assemble voluntarily in convention--disregarding all the
restrictions in their constitution--and strike at the property of
the slaveholder.
The honorable Senator from Kentucky inquired what, under this new
doctrine, would prevent the majority of the people of the States of
the Union from changing the present Federal Constitution, and
abrogating all existing guarantees for the protection of the small
States, and any peculiar or particular interest confined to a
minority of the States of the Union. The analogy, I admit, is not
complete between the Federal Constitution and a constitution of a
State; but the promulgation of the general principle, that a
majority of the people are fettered by no constitutional
restrictions in the exercise of their right to change their form of
government, is dangerous. That is quite enough for the purposes of
demagogues and incendiary agitators. When I read the special
message of the President, I said to some friends that the message,
taking it altogether, was replete with more dangerous heresies than
any paper I had ever seen emanating, not from a President of the
United States, but from any political club in the country, and
calculated to do more injury. I consider it in effect, and in its
tendencies, as organizing anarchy.
We are told that if we shall admit Kansas with the Lecompton
constitution, this whole difficulty will soon be settled by the
people of Kansas. How? By disregarding the mode and forms
prescribed by the constitution for amending it? No. I am not sure
that the President, after all the lofty generalities announced in
his message, in regard to the inalienable rights of the people,
intended to sanction the idea that all the provisions of the
Lecompton constitution in respect to the mode and form of amending
it should be set aside. He says the legislature now elected may, at
its first meeting, call a convention to amend the constitution; and
in another passage of his message he says that this inalienable
power of the majority must be exercised in a lawful manner. This is
perplexing. Can there be any lawful enactment of the legislature in
relation to the call of a convention, unless it be in conformity
with the provisions of the constitution? They require that
two-thirds of the members of the legislature shall concur in passing
an act to take the sense of the people upon the call of a
convention, and that the vote shall be taken at the next regular
election, which cannot be held until two years afterwards. How can
this difficulty be got over? The truth is, that unless all
constitutional impediments in respect to forms be set aside, and the
people take it in hand to amend the constitution on revolutionary
principles, there can be no end of agitation on this subject in less
than three years. I long since ventured the prediction that there
would be no settlement of the difficulties in Kansas until the next
presidential election. To continue the agitation is too important
to the interests of both the great parties of the country to
dispense with it, as long as any pretext can be found for prolonging
it. In the closing debate on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, I told its
supporters that they could do nothing more certain to disturb the
composure of the two Senators who sat on the opposite side of the
chamber, the one from Massachusetts [Mr. Sumner] and the other from
Ohio [Mr. Chase], than to reject that bill. Its passage was the
only thing in the range of possible events by which their political
fortunes could be resuscitated, so completely had the Free-Soil
movement at the North been paralyzed by the compromise measures of
1850. I say now to the advocates of this measure, if they want to
strengthen the Republican party, and give the reins of government
into their hands, pass this bill. If they desire to weaken the
power of that party, and arrest the progress of slavery agitation,
reject it. And if it is their policy to put an end to the agitation
connected with Kansas affairs at the earliest day practicable, as
they say it is, then let them remit this constitution back to the
people of Kansas, for their ratification or rejection. In that way
the whole difficulty will be settled before the adjournment of the
present session of Congress, without the violation of any sound
principle, or the sacrifice of the rights of either section of the
Union.
But the President informs us that threatening and ominous clouds
impend over the country; and he fears that if Kansas is not admitted
under the Lecompton constitution, slavery agitation will be revived
in a more dangerous form than it has ever yet assumed. There may be
grounds for that opinion, for aught I know; but it seems to me that
if any of the States of the South have taken any position on this
question which endangers the peace of the country, they could not
have been informed of the true condition of affairs in Kansas, and
of the strong objections which may be urged on principle against the
acceptance by Congress of the Lecompton constitution. And I have
such confidence in the intelligence of the people of the whole
South, that when the history and character of this instrument shall
be known, even those who would be glad to find some plausible
pretext for dissolving the Union will see that its rejection by
Congress would not furnish them with such a one as they could make
available for their purposes.
When the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was under discussion, in 1854, in
looking to all the consequences which might follow the adoption of
that measure, I could not overlook the fact that a sentiment of
hostility to the Union was widely diffused in certain States of the
South; and that that sentiment was only prevented from assuming an
organized form of resistance to the authority of the Federal
government, at least in one of the States, in 1851, by the earnest
remonstrance of a sister State, that was supposed to sympathize with
her in the project of establishing a southern republic. Nor could I
fail to remember that the project--I speak of the convention held in
South Carolina, in pursuance of an act of the legislature--was
then postponed, not dropped. The argument was successfully urged
that an enterprise of such magnitude ought not to be entered upon
without the co-operation of a greater number of States than they
could then certainly count upon. It was urged that all the
cotton-planting States would, before a great while, be prepared to
unite in the movement, and that they, by the force of circumstances,
would bring in all the slaveholding States. The ground was openly
taken, that separation was an inevitable necessity. It was only a
question of time. It was said that no new aggression was necessary
on the part of the North to justify such a step. It was said that
the operation of this government from its foundation had been
adverse to southern interests; and that the admission of California
as a free State, and the attempt to exclude the citizens of the
South, with their property, from all the territory acquired from
Mexico, was a sufficient justification for disunion. It was not a
mere menace to deter the North from further aggressions. These
circumstances made a deep impression on my mind at the time, and
from a period long anterior to that I had known that it was a maxim
with the most skillful tacticians among those who desire separation,
that the slaveholding States must be united--consolidated into one
party. That object once effected, disunion, it was supposed, would
follow without difficulty.
I had my fears that the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was expected to
consolidate the South, and to pave the way for the accomplishment of
ulterior plans by some of the most active supporters of that measure
from the South; and these fears I indicated in the closing debate on
that subject. Some of the supporters of that measure, I fear, are
reluctant now to abandon the chances of finding some pretext for
agitating the subject of separation in the South in the existing
complications of the Kansas embroilment.
To what extent the idea of disunion is entertained in some of the
Southern States, and what importance is attached to the policy of
uniting the whole South in one party as a preliminary step, may be
inferred from a speech delivered before the Southern convention lately
held in Knoxville, Tenn., by Mr. De Bow, the president of the
convention, and the editor of a popular Southern review. I will only
refer now to the fate to which the author resigns those who dare to
break the ranks of that solid phalanx in which he thinks the South
should be combined--that is, to be "held up to public scorn and
public punishment as traitors and Tories, more steeped in guilt than
those of the Revolution itself."
The honorable Senator from New York further announced to us in
exultant tones, that "at last there was a North side of this
Chamber, a North side of the Chamber of the House of Representatives,
and a North side of the Union, as well as a South side of all
these"; and he admonished us that the time was at hand when freedom
would assert its influence in the regulation of the domestic and
foreign policy of the country.
When was there a time in the history of the government that there
was no North side of this Chamber and of the other? When was there a
time that there was not a proud array of Northern men in both
Chambers, distinguished by their genius and ability, devoted to the
interests of the North, and successful in maintaining them?
Though it may be true that Southern men have filled the executive
chair for much the larger portion of the time that has elapsed since
the organization of the government, yet when, in what instance was
it, that a Southerner has been elevated to that high station without
the support of a majority of the freemen of the North?
Do you of the North complain that the policy of the government, under
the long-continued influence of Southern Presidents, has been
injurious or fatal to your interests? Has it paralyzed your industry?
Has it crippled your resources? Has it impaired your energies? Has
it checked your progress in any one department of human effort? Let
your powerful mercantile marine, your ships whitening every sea--the
fruit of wise commercial regulations and navigation laws; let your
flourishing agriculture, your astonishing progress in manufacturing
skill, your great canals, your thousands of miles of railroads, your
vast trade, internal and external, your proud cities, and your
accumulated millions of moneyed capital, ready to be invested in
profitable enterprises in any part of the world, answer that question.
Do you complain of a narrow and jealous policy under Southern rule, in
extending and opening new fields of enterprise to your hardy sons in
the great West, along the line of the great chain of American lakes,
even to the head waters of the Father of Rivers, and over the rich and
fertile plains stretching southward from the lake shores? Let the
teeming populations--let the hundreds of millions of annual products
that have succeeded to the but recent dreary and unproductive haunts
of the red man--answer that question. That very preponderance of
free States which the Senator from New York contemplates with such
satisfaction, and which has moved him exultingly to exclaim that
there is at last a North side of this Chamber, has been hastened by
the liberal policy of Southern Presidents and Southern statesmen; and
has it become the ambition of that Senator to unite and combine all
this great, rich, and powerful North in the policy of crippling the
resources and repressing the power of the South? Is this to be the
one idea which is to mold the policy of the government, when that
gentleman and his friends shall control it? If it be, then I appeal
to the better feelings and the better judgment of his followers to
arrest him in his mad career. Sir, let us have some brief interval of
repose at least from this eternal agitation of the slavery question.
Let power go into whatever hands it may, let us save the Union!
I have all the confidence other gentlemen can have in the extent to
which this Union is intrenched in the hearts of the great mass of
the people of the North and South; but when I reflect upon and
consider the desperate and dangerous extremes to which ambitious
party leaders are often prepared to go, without meaning to do the
country any mischief, in the struggle for the imperial power, the
crown of the American presidency, I sometimes tremble for its fate.
Two great parties are now dividing the Union on this question. It is
evident to every man of sense, who examines it, that practically, in
respect to slavery, the result will be the same both to North and
South; Kansas will be a free State, no matter what may be the
decision on this question. But how that decision may affect the
fortunes of those parties, is not certain; and there is the chief
difficulty. But the greatest question of all is, How will that
decision affect the country as a whole?
Two adverse yet concurrent and mighty forces are driving the vessel
of State towards the rocks upon which she must split, unless she
receives timely aid--a paradox, yet expressive of a momentous and
perhaps a fatal truth.
There is no hope of rescue unless the sober-minded men, both of the
North and South, shall, by some sufficient influence, be brought to
adopt the wise maxims and sage counsels of the great founders of our
government.
TRANS-CONTINENTAL RAILROADS (Delivered in the United States Senate,
February 17th, 1858. in Support of the Pacific Railroad Bill)
An objection made to this bill is, the gigantic scale of the
projected enterprise. A grand idea it is. A continent of three
thousand miles in extent from east to west, reaching from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, is to be connected by a railway! Honorable
Senators will remember, that over one thousand miles--one-third of
this whole expanse of the continent--the work is already
accomplished, and that chiefly by private enterprise. I may, as a
safe estimate, say, that a thousand miles of this railroad leading
from the Atlantic to the West, upon the line of the lakes, and
nearly as much upon a line further south, are either completed, or
nearly so. We have two thousand miles yet to compass, in the
execution of a work which it is said has no parallel in the history
of the world. No, sir; it has no parallel in the history of the
world, ancient or modern, either as to its extent and magnitude, or
to its consequences, beneficent and benignant in all its bearings on
the interests of all mankind. It is in these aspects, and in the
contemplation of these consequences, that it has no parallel in the
history of the world--changing the course of the commerce of the
world--bringing the West almost in contact, by reversing the
ancient line of communication, with the gorgeous East, and all its
riches, the stories of which, in our earlier days we regarded as
fabulous; but now, sir, what was held to be merely fictions of the
brain in former times, in regard to the riches of Eastern Asia, is
almost realized on our own western shores. Sir, these are some of
the inducements to the construction of this great road, besides its
importance to the military defenses of the country, and its mail
communications. Sir, it is a magnificent and splendid project in
every aspect in which you can view it. One-third of this great
railway connection is accomplished; two-thirds remain to be. Shall
we hesitate to go forward with the work?
Now, with regard to the means provided for the construction of the
road. It is said, here is an enormous expenditure of the public money
proposed. We propose to give twenty millions of dollars in the bonds
of the government, bearing five per cent. interest, and fifteen
millions of acres of land, supposed to be worth as much more, on the
part of the government. This is said to be enormous, and we are
reminded that we ought to look at what the people will say, and how
they will feel when they come to the knowledge that twenty millions in
money and twenty millions in land have been given for the construction
of a railway! Some doubtless there are in this chamber who are ready
to contend that we had better give these fifteen millions of acres of
land to become homesteads for the landless and homeless. What is this
twenty millions in money, and how is it to be paid? It is supposed
that the road cannot be constructed in less than five years. In that
event, bonds of the government to the amount of four millions of
dollars will issue annually. Probably the road will not be built in
less than ten years, and that will require an issue of bonds amounting
to two millions a year; and possibly the road may not be finished in
less than twenty years, which would limit the annual issue of bonds to
one million. The interest upon these bonds, at five per cent, will
of course have to be paid out of the treasury, a treasury in which
there is now a surplus of twelve or fourteen millions of dollars.
When the road is completed and the whole amount of twenty millions in
lands is paid, making the whole sum advanced by the government forty
millions, the annual interest upon them will only be two millions.
And what is that? Why, sir, the donations and benevolences, the
allowances of claims upon flimsy and untenable grounds, and other
extravagant and unnecessary expenditures that are granted by Congress
and the executive departments, while you have an overflowing treasury,
will amount to the half of that sum annually. The enormous sum of two
millions is proposed to be paid out of the treasury annually, when
this great road shall be completed! It is a tremendous undertaking,
truly! What a scheme! What extravagance! I understand the cost of
the New York and Erie road alone, constructed principally by private
enterprise, has been not less than thirty millions--between thirty
and thirty-three millions of dollars. That work was constructed by a
single State giving aid occasionally to a company, which supplied the
balance of the cost. I understand that the road from Baltimore to
Wheeling, when it shall have been finished, and its furniture placed
upon it, will have cost at least thirty millions. What madness, what
extravagance, then, is it for the government of the United States to
undertake to expend forty millions for a road from the Mississippi
to the Pacific.
Mr. President, one honorable Senator says the amount is not
sufficient to induce a capitalist to invest his money in the
enterprise. Others, again, say it is far too much; more than we can
afford to give for the construction of the work. Let us see which is
right. The government is to give twenty millions in all out of the
treasury for the road; or we issue bonds and pay five per cent,
interest annually upon them, and twenty millions in lands, which, if
regarded as money, amounts to a cost to the government of two
millions per annum.
What are the objects to be accomplished? A daily mail from the
valley of the Mississippi to the Pacific; the free transportation of
all troops and munitions of war required for the protection and
defense of our possessions on the Pacific; which we could not hold
three months in a war either with England or France, without such a
road. By building this road we accomplish this further object: This
road will be the most effective and powerful check that can be
interposed by the government upon Indian depredations and
aggressions upon our frontiers or upon each other; the northern
tribes upon the southern, and the southern upon the northern. You
cut them in two. You will be constantly in their midst, and cut off
their intercommunication and hostile depredations. You will have a
line of quasi fortifications, a line of posts and stations, with
settlements on each side of the road. Every few miles you will thus
have settlements strong enough to defend themselves against inroads
of the Indians, and so constituting a wall of separation between the
Indian tribes, composed of a white population, with arms in their
hands. This object alone would, perhaps, be worth as much as the
road will cost; and when I speak of what the road will be worth in
this respect, I mean to say, that besides the prevention of savage
warfare, the effusion of blood, it will save millions of dollars to
the treasury annually, in the greater economy attained in moving
troops and military supplies and preventing hostilities.
. . .
I have been thus particular in noting these things because I want to
show where or on which side the balance will be found in the
adjustment of the responsibility account between the friends and the
opponents of this measure--which will have the heaviest account to
settle with the country.
For myself, I am not wedded to this particular scheme. Rather than
have no road, I would prefer to adopt other projects. I am now
advocating one which I supposed would meet the views of a greater
number of Senators than any other. I think great honor is due to
Mr. Whitney for having originated the scheme, and having obtained
the sanction of the legislatures of seventeen or eighteen States of
the Union. Rather than have the project altogether fail, I would be
willing to adopt this plan. It may not offer the same advantages for
a speedy consummation of the work; but still, we would have a road
in prospect, and that would be a great deal. But if gentlemen are to
rise here in their places year after year--and this is the fifth
year from the time we ought to have undertaken this work--and tell
us it is just time to commence a survey, we will never have a
road. The honorable Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Butler] says
there ought to be some limitation in this idea of progress, when
regarded as a spur to great activity and energy, as to what we shall
do in our day. He says we have acquired California; we have opened
up those rich regions on our western borders, which promises such
magnificent results; and he asks, is not that enough for the present
generation? Leave it to the nest generation to construct a work of
such magnitude as this--requiring forty millions of dollars from
the government. Mr. President, I have said that if the condition was
a road or no road, I would regard one hundred and fifty millions of
dollars as well laid out by the government for the work; though I
have no idea that it will take such an amount. Eighty or one hundred
millions of dollars will build the road.
But with regard to what is due from this generation to itself, or
what may be left to the next generation, I say it is for the present
generation that we want the road. As to our having acquired
California, and opened this new world of commerce and enterprise,
and as to what we shall leave to the next generation, I say that,
after we of this generation shall have constructed this road, we
will, perhaps, not even leave to the next generation the
construction of a second one. The present generation, in my
opinion, will not pass away until it shall have seen two great lines
of railroads in prosperous operation between the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans, and within our own territory, and still leave quite
enough to the next generation--the third and fourth great lines of
communication between the two extremes of the continent. One, at
least, is due to ourselves, and to the present generation; and I
hope there are many within the sound of my voice who will live to
see it accomplished. We want that new Dorado, the new Ophir of
America, to be thrown open and placed within the reach of the whole
people. We want the great cost, the delays, as well as the
privations and risks of a passage to California, by the malarious
Isthmus of Panama, or any other of the routes now in use, to be
mitigated, or done away with. There will be some greater equality
in the enjoyment and advantages of these new acquisitions upon the
Pacific coast when this road shall be constructed. The
inexhaustible gold mines, or placers of California, will no longer
be accessible only to the more robust, resolute, or desperate part
of our population, and who may be already well enough off to pay
their passage by sea, or provide an outfit for an overland travel of
two and three thousand miles. Enterprising young men all over the
country, who can command the pittance of forty or fifty dollars to
pay their railroad fare; heads of families who have the misfortune
to be poor, but spirit and energy enough to seek comfort and
independence by labor, will no longer be restrained by the necessity
of separating themselves from their families, but have it in their
power, with such small means as they may readily command, in eight
or ten days, to find themselves with their whole households
transported and set down in the midst of the gold regions of the
West, at full liberty to possess and enjoy whatever of the rich
harvest spread out before them their industry and energy shall
entitle them to. It will be theirs by as good a title as any can
boast who have had the means to precede them. We hear much said of
late of the justice and policy of providing a homestead, a quarter
section of the public land, to every poor and landless family in the
country. Make this road, and you enable every poor man in the
country to buy a much better homestead, and retain all the pride and
spirit of independence. Gentlemen here may say that the region of
California, so inviting, and abundant in gold now, will soon be
exhausted, and all these bright prospects for the enterprising poor
pass away. No, sir; centuries will pass--ages and ages must roll
away before those gold-bearing mountains shall all have been
excavated--those auriferous sands and alluvial deposits shall give
out all their wealth; and even after all these shall have failed,
the beds of the rivers will yield a generous return to the toil of
the laborer. ...
Mr. President, I alluded to the importance of having a communication
by railway between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean, in
the event of war with any great maritime Power. I confess that the
debates upon the subject of our foreign relations within the last
few weeks, if all that was said had commanded my full assent, would
have dissipated very much the force of any argument which I thought
might be fairly urged in favor of this road as a necessary work for
the protection and security of our possessions on the Pacific coast.
We now hear it stated, and reiterated by grave and respectable and
intelligent Senators, that there is no reason that any one should
apprehend a war with either Great Britain or France. Not now, nor
at any time in the future; at all events, unless there shall be a
total change in the condition, social, political, and economical, of
those Powers, and especially as regards Great Britain. All who have
spoken agree that there is no prospect of war. None at all. I
agree that I can see nothing in the signs of the times which is
indicative of immediate and certain war. Several gentlemen have
thrown out the idea that we hold the bond of Great Britain to keep
the peace, with ample guarantees and sureties, not only for the
present time, but for an indefinite time; and as long as Great
Britain stands as an independent monarchy. These sureties and
guarantees are said to consist in the discontented and destitute
class of her population, of her operatives and laborers, and the
indispensable necessity of the cotton crop of the United States in
furnishing them with employment and subsistence, without which it is
said she would be torn with internal strife.
I could tell gentlemen who argue in that way, that we have another
guarantee that Great Britain will not break with the United States
for any trivial cause, which they have not thought proper to raise.
We may threaten and denounce and bluster as much as we please about
British violations of the Clayton and Bulwer treaty, and the
Mosquito protectorate, about the assumption of territorial dominion
over the Balize or British Honduras, and the new colony of the Bay
Islands; and Great Britain will negotiate, explain, treat, and
transgress, and negotiate again, and resort to any device, before
she will go to war with us, as long as she can hope to prolong the
advantages to herself of the free-trade policy now established with
the United States. It is not only the cotton crop of America which
she covets, but it is the rich market for the products of her
manufacturing industry, which she finds in the United States; and
this has contributed as much as any other cause to improve the
condition of her operatives, and impart increased prosperity to her
trade and revenue. As long as we think proper to hold to our
present commercial regulations, I repeat that it will require very
great provocation on our part to force Great Britain into a war with
the United States. . . .
As for this road, we are told at every turn that it is ridiculous to
talk of war in connection with it, for we will have no wars except
those with the Indians. Both England and France dare not go to war
with us. I say this course of argument is not only unwise and
delusive, but if such sentiments take hold on the country, they will
be mischievous; they will almost to a certainty lead to a daring and
reckless policy on our part; and as each government labors under a
similar delusion as to what the other will not dare to do, what is
more probable than that both may get into such a position--the
result of a mutual mistake--that war must ensue? It is worth while
to reflect upon the difference between the policy of Great Britain
and this country in her diplomatic correspondence and debates in
Parliament. When we make a threat, Great Britain does not threaten
in turn. We hear of no gasconade on her part. If we declare that we
have a just right to latitude 54 degrees 40', and will maintain our right
at all hazard, she does not bluster, and threaten, and declare what
she will do, if we dare to cany out our threat. When we talk about
the Mosquito king, of Balize, and of the Bay Islands, and declare
our determination to drive her from her policy and purposes in
regard to them, we do not hear of an angry form of expression from
her. We employed very strong language last year in regard to the
rights of American fishermen; but the reply of Great Britain
scarcely assumed the tone of remonstrance against the intemperate
tone of our debates. Her policy upon all such occasions is one of
wisdom. Her strong and stern purpose is seldom to be seen in her
diplomatic intercourse, or in the debates of her leading statesmen;
but if you were about her dock-yards, or in her foundries, or her
timber-yards, and her great engine manufactories, and her armories,
you would find some bustle and stir. There, all is life and motion.
I have always thought that the proper policy of this country is to
make no threats--to make no parade of what we intend to do. Let
us put the country in a condition to defend its honor and interests;
to maintain them successfully whenever they may be assailed; no
matter by what Power, whether by Great Britain, or France, or both
combined. Make this road; complete the defenses of the country, of
your harbors, and navy yards; strengthen your navy--put it upon an
efficient footing; appropriate ample means for making experiments to
ascertain the best model of ships-of-war, to be driven by steam or
any other motive power; the best models of the engines to be
employed in them; to inquire whether a large complement of guns, or
a few guns of great calibre, is the better plan. We may well, upon
such questions, take a lesson from England. At a recent period she
has been making experiments of this nature, in order to give
increased efficiency to her naval establishment. How did she set
about it? Her Admiralty Board gave orders for eleven of the most
perfect engines that could be built by eleven of the most skillful
and eminent engine-builders in the United Kingdom, without limit as
to the cost, or any other limitation, except as to class or size.
At the same time orders were issued for the building of thirteen
frigates of a medium class by thirteen of the most skillful
shipbuilders in the kingdom, in order to ascertain the best models,
the best running lines, and the best of every other quality
desirable in a war vessel. This is the mode in which Great Britain
prepares for any contingencies which may arise. She cannot tell
when they may occur, yet she knows that she has no immunity from
those chances which, at some time or other, are seen to happen to
all nations. In my opinion, the construction of this road from the
Mississippi to the Pacific is essential to the protection and safety
of this country, in the event of a war with any great maritime
Power. It may take ten years to complete it; but every hundred
miles of it, which may be finished before the occurrence of war,
will be just so much gained--so much added to our ability to
maintain our honor in that war. In every view of this question I
can take, I am persuaded that we ought at least prepare to commence
the work, and do it immediately.