THE ABOLITIONISTS DANCE TO THE SLAVE BARONS' PIPING.
In 1844 the Whig candidate for the Presidency, Henry Clay, was defeated
by a Mr. Polk, the nominee of the Democracy. The majorities in several
of the states were very small; this was the case, for example in New
York, the change in whose electoral vote would have also changed the
entire result.
Up to 1860 there were very few political contests in which the dividing
lines between right and wrong so nearly coincided with those drawn
between the two opposing parties as in that of 1844. The Democrats
favored the annexation of Texas, and the addition of new slave territory
to the Union; the Whigs did not. Almost every good element in the
country stood behind Clay; the vast majority of intelligent,
high-minded, upright men supported him. Polk was backed by rabid
Southern fire-eaters and slavery extensionists, who had deified negro
bondage and exalted it beyond the Union, the Constitution, and
everything else; by the almost solid foreign vote, still unfit for the
duties of American citizenship; by the vicious and criminal classes in
all the great cities of the North and in New Orleans; by the corrupt
politicians, who found ignorance and viciousness tools ready forged to
their hands, wherewith to perpetrate the gigantic frauds without which
the election would have been lost; and, lastly, he was also backed
indirectly but most powerfully by the political Abolitionists.
These Abolitionists had formed themselves into the Liberty party, and
ran Birney for president; and though they polled but little over sixty
thousand votes, yet as these were drawn almost entirely from the ranks
of Clay's supporters, they were primarily responsible for his defeat;
for the defections were sufficiently large to turn the scale in certain
pivotal and closely contested states, notably New York. Their action in
this case was wholly evil, alike in its immediate and its remote
results; they simply played into the hands of the extreme slavery men
like Calhoun, and became, for the time being, the willing accomplices of
the latter. Yet they would have accomplished nothing had it not been for
the frauds and outrages perpetrated by the gangs of native and
foreign-born ruffians in the great cities, under the leadership of such
brutal rowdies as Isaiah Rynders.
These three men, Calhoun, Birney, and Isaiah Rynders, may be taken as
types of the classes that were chiefly instrumental in the election of
Polk, and that must, therefore, bear the responsibility for all the
evils attendant thereon, including among them the bloody and unrighteous
war with Mexico. With the purpose of advancing the cause of abstract
right, but with the result of sacrificing all that was best, most
honest, and most high-principled in national politics, the Abolitionists
joined hands with Northern roughs and Southern slavocrats to elect the
man who was, excepting Tyler, the very smallest of the line of small
presidents who came in between Jackson and Lincoln.
Owing to a variety of causes, the Abolitionists have received an immense
amount of hysterical praise, which they do not deserve, and have been
credited with deeds done by other men, whom they in reality hampered and
opposed rather than aided. After 1840 the professed Abolitionists formed
but a small and comparatively unimportant portion of the forces that
were working towards the restriction and ultimate destruction of
slavery; and much of what they did was positively harmful to the cause
for which they were fighting. Those of their number who considered the
Constitution as a league with death and hell, and who therefore
advocated a dissolution of the Union, acted as rationally as would
anti-polygamists nowadays if, to show their disapproval of Mormonism,
they should advocate that Utah should be allowed to form a separate
nation. The only hope of ultimately suppressing slavery lay in the
preservation of the Union, and every Abolitionist who argued or signed a
petition for its dissolution was doing as much to perpetuate the evil he
complained of as if he had been a slave-holder. The Liberty party, in
running Birney, simply committed a political crime, evil in almost all
its consequences; they in no sense paved the way for the Republican
party, or helped forward the anti-slavery cause, or hurt the existing
organizations. Their effect on the Democracy was _nil_; and all they
were able to accomplish with the Whigs was to make them put forward for
the ensuing campaign a slave-holder from Louisiana, with whom they were
successful. Such were the remote results of their conduct; the immediate
evils they produced have already been alluded to. They bore considerable
resemblance--except that, after all, they really did have a principle to
contend for--to the political prohibitionists of the present day, who go
into the third party organizations, and are, not even excepting the
saloon-keepers themselves, the most efficient allies on whom
intemperance and the liquor traffic can count.
Anti-slavery men like Giddings, who supported Clay, were doing a
thousand-fold more effective work for the cause they had at heart than
all the voters who supported Birney; or, to speak more accurately, they
were doing all they could to advance the cause, and the others were
doing all they could to hold it back. Lincoln in 1860 occupied more
nearly the ground held by Clay than that held by Birney; and the men who
supported the latter in 1844 were the prototypes of those who wished to
oppose Lincoln in 1860, and only worked less hard because they had less
chance. The ultra Abolitionists discarded expediency, and claimed to act
for abstract right, on principle, no matter what the results might be;
in consequence they accomplished very little, and that as much for harm
as for good, until they ate their words, went counter to their previous
course, thereby acknowledging it to be bad, and supported in the
Republican party the men and principles they had so fiercely condemned.
The Liberty party was not in any sense the precursor of the Republican
party, which was based as much on expediency as on abstract right, and
was therefore able to accomplish good instead of harm. To say that the
extreme Abolitionists triumphed in Republican success and were causes of
it, is as absurd as it would be to call prohibitionists successful if,
after countless futile efforts totally to prohibit the liquor traffic,
and after savage denunciation of those who try to regulate it, they
should then turn round and form a comparatively insignificant portion of
a victorious high-license party.
Many people in speaking of the Abolitionists apparently forget that the
national government, even under Republican rule, would never have
meddled with slavery in the various states unless as a war measure, made
necessary by the rebellion into which the South was led by a variety of
causes, of which slavery was chief, but among which there were others
that were also prominent; such as the separatist spirit of certain of
the communities and the unscrupulous, treacherous ambition of such men
as Davis, Floyd, and the rest. The Abolitionists' political
organizations, such as the Liberty party, generally produced very little
effect either way, and were scarcely thought of during the contests
waged for freedom in Congress. The men who took a great and effective
part in the fight against slavery were the men who remained within their
respective parties; like the Democrats Benton and Wilmot, or the Whigs
Seward and Stevens. When a new party with more clearly defined
principles was formed, they, for the most part, went into it; but, like
all other men who have ever had a really great influence, whether for
good or bad, on American politics, they did not act independently of
parties, but on the contrary kept within party lines,--although, of
course, none of them were mere blind and unreasoning partisans.
The plea that slavery was a question of principle, on which no
compromise could be accepted, might have been made and could still be
made on twenty other points,--woman suffrage, for instance. Of course,
to give women their just rights does not by any means imply that they
should necessarily be allowed to vote, any more than the bestowal of the
rights of citizenship upon blacks and aliens must of necessity carry
with it the same privilege. But there were until lately, and in some
states there are now, laws on the statute-book in reference to women
that are in principle as unjust, and that are quite as much the remnants
of archaic barbarism as was the old slave code; and though it is true
that they do not work anything like the evil of the latter, they yet
certainly work evil enough. The same laws that in one Southern state
gave a master a right to whip a slave also allowed him to whip his wife,
provided he used a stick no thicker than his little finger; the legal
permission to do the latter was even more outrageous than that to do the
former, yet no one considered it a ground for wishing a dissolution of
the Union or for declaring against the existing parties. The folly of
voting the Liberty ticket in 1844 differed in degree, but not at all in
kind, from the folly of voting the Woman Suffrage ticket in 1884.
The intrigue for the annexation of Texas, and for thereby extending the
slave territory of the Union, had taken shape towards the close of
Tyler's term of office, while Calhoun was secretary of state. Benton, as
an aggressive Western man, desirous of seeing our territorial
possessions extended in any direction, north or south, always hoped that
in the end Texas might be admitted into the Union; but he disliked
seeing any premature steps taken, and was no party to the scheme of
forcing an immediate annexation in the interests of slavery. Such
immediate annexation was certain, among other things, to bring us into
grave difficulties not only with Mexico, but also with England, which
was strongly inclined to take much interest of a practical sort in the
fate of Texas, and would, of course, have done all it could to bring
about the abolition of slavery in that state. The Southerners, desirous
of increasing the slave domain, and always in a state of fierce alarm
over the proximity of any free state that might excite a servile
insurrection, were impatient to add the Lone Star Republic of the Rio
Grande to the number of their states; the Southwesterners fell in with
them, influenced, though less strongly, by the same motives, and also by
the lust for new lands and by race hatred towards the Mexicans and
traditional jealousy of Great Britain; and these latter motives induced
many Northwesterners to follow suit. By a judicious harping on all these
strings Jackson himself, whose name was still a mighty power among the
masses, was induced to write a letter favoring instant and prompt
annexation.
This letter was really procured for political purposes. Tyler had
completely identified himself with the Democracy, and especially with
its extreme separatist wing, to which Calhoun also belonged, and which
had grown so as to be already almost able to take the reins. The
separatist chiefs were intriguing for the presidency, and were using
annexation as a cry that would help them; and, failing in this attempt,
many of the leaders were willing to break up the Union, and turn the
Southern States, together with Texas, into a slave-holding confederacy.
After Benton, the great champion of the old-style Union Democrats was
Van Buren, who was opposed to immediate annexation, sharing the feeling
that prevailed throughout the Northeast generally; although in certain
circles all through the country there were men at work in its favor,
largely as a mere matter of jobbery and from base motives, on account of
speculations in Texan land and scrip, into which various capitalists and
adventurers had gone rather extensively. Jackson, though a Southerner,
warmly favored Van Buren, and was bitterly opposed to separatists; but
the latter, by cunningly working on his feelings, without showing their
own hands, persuaded him to write the letter mentioned, and promptly
used it to destroy the chances of Van Buren, who was the man they
chiefly feared; and though Jackson, at last roused to what was going on,
immediately announced himself as in favor of Van Buren's candidacy, it
was too late to undo the mischief.
Benton showed on this, as on many other occasions, much keener political
ideas than his great political chief. He was approached by a politician,
who himself was either one of those concerned in the presidential
intrigues, or else one of their dupes, and who tried to win him over to
take the lead on their side, complimenting him upon his former services
to the cause of territorial expansion towards the southwest. Ordinarily
the great Missourian was susceptible enough to such flattery; but on
this occasion, preoccupied with the idea of an intrigue for the
presidency, and indignant that there should be an effort made to
implicate him in it, especially as it was mixed up with schemes of
stock-jobbing and of disloyalty to the Union, he took fire at once, and
answered with hot indignation, in words afterwards highly resented by
his questioner, "that it was on the part of some an intrigue for the
presidency, and a plot to dissolve the Union; on the part of others, a
Texas scrip and land speculation; and that he was against it." The
answer was published in the papers, and brought about a total break
between Benton and the annexation party.
He was now thoroughly on the alert, and actively opposed at all points
the schemes of those whom he regarded as concerned in or instigating the
intrigue. He commented harshly on Tyler's annual message, which made a
strong plea for annexation, even at the cost of a war both with Great
Britain and Mexico; also on Calhoun's letter to Lord Aberdeen, which was
certainly a remarkable diplomatic document,--being a thesis on slavery
and the benefits resulting from it. Tyler's object was to prepare the
way for a secret treaty, which should secure the desired object. Benton,
in the course of some severe strictures on his acts, said, very truly,
that it was evidently the intention to keep the whole matter as secret
as possible until the treaty was concluded, "and then to force its
adoption for the purpose of increasing the area of slave territory, or
to make its rejection a cause for the secession of the Southern States;
and in either event and in all cases to make the question of annexation
a controlling one in the nomination of presidential candidates, and also
in the election itself."
When the treaty proposed by the administration was rejected, and when it
became evident that neither Tyler nor Calhoun, the two most prominent
champions of the extreme separatists, had any chance for the Democratic
nomination, the disunion side of the intrigue was brought to the front
in many of the Southern States, beginning of course with South Carolina.
A movement was made for a convention of the Southern States, to be held
in the interest of the scheme; the key-note being struck in the cry of
"Texas or disunion!" But this convention was given up, on account of the
strong opposition it excited in the so-called "Border States,"--an
opposition largely stirred up and led by Benton. Once more the haughty
slave leaders of the Southeast had found that in the Missouri Senator
they had an opponent whose fearlessness quite equaled their own, and
whose stubborn temper and strength of purpose made him at least a match
for themselves, in spite of all their dash and fiery impetuosity. It
must have sounded strange, indeed, to Northern ears, accustomed to the
harsh railings and insolent threats of the South Carolina senators, to
hear one of the latter complaining that Benton's tone in the debate was
arrogant, overbearing, and dictatorial towards those who were opposed to
him. This same Senator, McDuffie, had been speaking of the proposed
Southern meeting at Nashville; and Benton warned him that such a meeting
would never take place, and that he had mistaken the temper of the
Tennesseans; and also reminded him that General Jackson was still alive,
and that the South Carolinians in particular must needs be careful if
they hoped to agree with his followers, whose name was still legion,
because he would certainly take the same position towards a disunion
movement in the interests of slavery that he had already taken towards a
nullification movement in the interests of free trade. "Preservation of
the federal Union is as strong in the old Roman's heart now as ever; and
while, as a Christian, he forgives all that is past (if it were past),
yet no old tricks under new names! Texas disunion will be to him the
same as tariff disunion; and if he detects a Texas disunionist nestling
into his bed, I say again: Woe unto the luckless wight!" Boldly and
forcibly he went on to paint the real motives of the promoters of the
scheme, and the real character of the scheme itself; stating that,
though mixed up with various speculative enterprises and with other
intrigues, yet disunion was at the bottom of it all, and that already
the cry had become, "Texas without the Union, rather than the Union
without Texas!" "Under the pretext of getting Texas into the Union the
scheme is to get the South out of it. A Southern Confederacy stretching
from the Atlantic to the Californias ... is the cherished vision of
disappointed ambition." He bitterly condemned secession, as simply
disunion begat by nullification, and went on to speak of his own
attitude in apparently opposing the admission of Texas, which he had
always desired to see become a part of the Union, and which he had
always insisted rightfully belonged to us, and to have been given away
by Monroe's treaty with Spain. "All that is intended and foreseen. The
intrigue for the presidency was the first act in the drama; the
dissolution of the Union the second. And I, who hate intrigue and love
the Union, can only speak of the intriguers and disunionists with warmth
and indignation. The oldest advocate for the recovery of Texas, I must
be allowed to speak in just terms of the criminal politicians who
prostituted the question of its recovery to their own base purposes, and
delayed its success by degrading and disgracing it. A Western man, and
coming from a state more than any other interested in the recovery of
this country, so unaccountably thrown away by the treaty of 1819, I must
be allowed to feel indignant at seeing Atlantic politicians seizing upon
it, and making it a sectional question for the purposes of ambition and
disunion. I have spoken warmly of these plotters and intriguers; but I
have not permitted their conduct to alter my own, or to relax my zeal
for the recovery of the sacrificed country. I have helped to reject the
disunion treaty; and that obstacle being removed, I have brought in the
bill which will insure the recovery of Texas, with peace and honor, and
with the Union."
It is important to remember, in speaking of his afterwards voting to
admit Texas, that this was what he had all along favored, and that he
now opposed it only on account of special circumstances. In both cases
he was right; for, slavery or no slavery, it would have been a most
unfortunate thing for us, and still worse for the Texans, if the latter
had been allowed to develop into an independent nation. Benton deserves
the greatest credit for the way in which he withstood the ignorant
popular feeling of his own section in regard to Tyler's proposed treaty;
and not only did he show himself able to withstand pressure from behind
him, but also prompt in resenting threats made by outsiders. When
McDuffie told him that the remembrance of his attitude on the bill
would, to his harm, meet him on some future day, like the ghost that
appeared to Brutus at Philippi, he answered:--
I can promise the ghost and his backers that if the fight goes
against me at this new Philippi, with which I am threatened, and the
enemies of the American Union triumph over me as the enemies of
Roman liberty triumphed over Brutus and Cassius, I shall not fall
upon my sword, as Brutus did, though Cassius be killed, and run it
through my own body; but I shall save it and save myself for another
day and another use,--for the day when the battle of the disunion of
these states is to be fought, not with words but with iron, and for
the hearts of the traitors who appear in arms against their country.
Such a stern, defiant, almost prophetic warning did more to help the
Union cause than volumes of elaborate constitutional argument, and it
would have been well for the Northern States had they possessed men as
capable of uttering it as was the iron Westerner. Benton always showed
at his best when the honor or integrity of the nation was menaced,
whether by foes from without or by foes from within. On such occasions
his metal always rang true. When there was any question of breaking
faith with the Union, or of treachery towards it, his figure always
loomed up as one of the chief in the ranks of its defenders; and his
follies and weaknesses sink out of sight when we think of the tremendous
debt which the country owes him for his sorely tried and unswerving
loyalty.
The treaty alluded to by Benton in his speech against the abortive
secession movement was the one made with Texas while Calhoun was
secretary of state, and submitted to the Senate by Tyler, with a message
as extraordinary as some of his secretary's utterances. The treaty was
preposterously unjust and iniquitous. It provided for the annexation of
Texas, and also of a very large portion of Mexico, to which Texas had no
possible title, and this without consulting Mexico in any way whatever;
Calhoun advancing the plea that it was necessary to act immediately on
account of the danger that Texas was in of falling under the control of
England, and therefore having slavery abolished within its borders;
while Tyler blandly announced that we had acquired title to the ceded
territory--which belonged to one power and was ceded to us by
another--through his signature to the treaty, and that, pending its
ratification by the Senate, he had dispatched troops to the scene of
action to protect the ceded land "from invasion,"--the territory to be
thus protected from Mexican invasion being then and always having been
part and parcel of Mexico.
Benton opposed the ratification of the treaty in a very strong speech,
during which he mercilessly assailed both Tyler and Calhoun. The conduct
of the former he dismissed with the contemptuous remark that he had
committed "a caper about equal to the mad freaks with which the
unfortunate Emperor Paul, of Russia, was accustomed to astonish Europe;"
and roughly warned him to be careful how he tried to imitate Jackson's
methods, because in heroic imitations there was no middle ground, and if
he failed to fill the role of hero he would then perforce find himself
playing that of harlequin. Calhoun received more attention, for he was
far more worthy of a foeman's steel than was his nominal superior, and
Benton exposed at length the willful exaggeration and the perversion of
the truth of which the Carolinian had been guilty in trying to raise the
alarm of English interference in Texas, for the purpose of excusing the
haste with which the treaty was carried through.
He showed at length the outrage we should inflict upon Mexico by seizing
"two thousand miles of her territory, without a word of explanation with
her, and by virtue of a treaty with Texas to which she was no party;"
and he conclusively proved, making use of his own extensive acquaintance
with history, especially American history, that the old Texas, the only
territory that the Texans themselves or we could claim with any shadow
of right, made but a fraction of the territory now "ceded" to us. He
laughed at the idea of calling the territory Texas, and speaking of its
forcible cutting off as re-annexation, "Humboldt calls it New Mexico,
Chihuahua, Coahuila and Nuevo Santander; and the civilized world may
qualify this _re_-annexation by some odious and terrible epithet ...
robbery;" then he went on to draw a biting contrast between our
treatment of Mexico and our treatment of England. "Would we take two
thousand miles of Canada in the same way? I presume not. And why not?
Why not treat Great Britain and Mexico alike? Why not march up to
'fifty-four forty' as courageously as we march upon the Rio Grande?
Because Great Britain is powerful and Mexico weak,--a reason which may
fail in policy as much as in morals." Also he ridiculed the flurry of
fear into which the Southern slave-holders affected to be cast by the
dread of England's hostility to slavery, when they had just acquiesced
in making a treaty with her by which we bound ourselves to help to put
down the slave-trade. He then stated his own position, showing why he
wished us to have the original Texan lands, if we could get them
honorably, and without robbing Mexico of new territory; and at the same
time sneered at Calhoun and Tyler because they had formerly favored the
Monroe treaty, by which we abandoned our claims to them:--
We want Texas, that is to say, the Texas of La Salle; and we want it
for great natural reasons, obvious as day, and permanent as nature.
We want it because it is geographically appurtenant to our division
of North America, essential to our political, commercial, and social
system, and because it would be detrimental and injurious to us to
have it fall into the hands or sink under the domination of any
foreign power. For these reasons I was against sacrificing the
country when it was thrown away,--and thrown away by those who are
now so suddenly possessed of a fury to get it back. For these
reasons I am for getting it back whenever it can be done with peace
and honor, or even at the price of just war against any intrusive
European power; but I am against all disguise and artifice,--against
all pretexts,--and especially against weak and groundless pretexts,
discreditable to ourselves and offensive to others, too thin and
shallow not to be seen through by every beholder, and merely
invented to cover unworthy purposes.
The treaty was rejected by an overwhelming vote, although Buchanan led a
few of his timeserving comrades from the North to the support of the
extreme Southern element. Benton then tried, but failed, to get through
a bill providing for a joint agreement between Mexico, Texas, and the
United States to settle definitely all boundary questions. Meanwhile the
presidential election occurred, with the result already mentioned. The
separatist and annexationist Democrats, the extreme slavery wing of the
party, defeated Van Buren and nominated Polk, who was their man; the
Whigs nominated Clay, who was heartily opposed to all the schemes of the
disunion and extreme slavery men, and who, if elected, while he might
very properly have consented to the admission of Texas with its old
boundaries, would never have brought on a war nor have attempted to add
a vast extent of new slave territory to the Union. Clay would have been
elected, and the slavery disunionists defeated, if in the very nick of
time the Abolitionists had not stepped in to support the latter, and by
their blindness in supporting Birney given the triumph to their own most
bitter opponents. Then the Abolitionists, having played their only
card, and played it badly, had to sit still and see what evil their acts
had produced; they had accomplished just as much as men generally do
accomplish when they dance to the tune that their worst foes play.
Polk's election gave an enormous impulse to the annexation movement, and
made it doubly and trebly difficult for any one to withstand it. The
extreme disunion and slavery men, of course, hated Benton, himself a
Southwesterner from a slave-holding state, with peculiar venom, on
account of his attitude, very justly regarding him as the main obstacle
in their path; and the din and outcry raised against all who opposed the
schemes of the intriguers was directed with especial fury against the
Missourian. He was accused of being allied to the Whigs, of wishing to
break up the Democracy, and of many other things. Indeed, Benton's own
people were very largely against him, and it must always be remembered
that whereas Northeastern statesmen were certain to be on the popular
side in taking a stand against the extreme pro-slavery men, Benton's
position was often just the reverse. With them it was politic to do
right; with him it was not; and for this reason the praise awarded the
latter should be beyond measure greater than that awarded to the former.
Still, there can be little question that he was somewhat, even although
only slightly, influenced by the storm of which he had to bear the
brunt; indeed, he would have been more than human if he had not been;
and probably this outside pressure was one among the causes that induced
him to accept a compromise in the matter, which took effect just before
Polk was inaugurated. The House of Representatives had passed a
resolution giving the consent of Congress to the admission of Texas as a
state, and allowing it the privilege of forming four additional states
out of its territory, whenever it should see fit. The line of the
Missouri Compromise, 36 deg. 30', was run through this new territory,
slavery being prohibited in the lands lying north of it, and permissible
or not, according to the will of the state seeking admission, in those
lying south of it. Benton meanwhile had introduced a bill merely
providing that negotiations should be entered into with Texas for its
admission, the proposed treaty or articles of agreement to be submitted
to the Senate or to Congress. He thereby kept the control in the hands
of the legislature, which the joint resolution did not; and moreover, as
he said in his speech, he wished to provide for due consideration being
shown Mexico in the arrangement of the boundary, and for the matter
being settled by commissioners.
Neither resolution nor bill could get through by itself; and
accordingly it was proposed to combine both into one measure, leaving
the president free to choose either plan. To this proposition Benton
finally consented, it being understood that, as only three days of
Tyler's term remained, the execution of the act would be left to the
incoming president, and that the latter would adopt Benton's plans. The
friends of the admission of Texas assured the doubtful voters that such
would be the case. Polk himself gave full assurance that he would
appoint a commission, as provided by Benton's bill, if passed, with the
House resolution as an alternative; and McDuffie, Calhoun's friend, and
the senator from South Carolina, announced without reserve that
Calhoun--for Tyler need not be considered in the matter, after it had
been committed to the great nullifier--would not have the "audacity" to
try to take the settlement of the question away from the president, who
was to be inaugurated on the fourth of March. On the strength of these
assurances, which, if made good, would, of course, have rendered the
"alternative" a merely nominal one, Benton supported the measure, which
was then passed. Contrary to all expectation, Calhoun promptly acted
upon the legislative clause, and Polk made no effort to undo what the
former had done. This caused intense chagrin and anger to the
Bentonians; but they should certainly have taken such a contingency into
account, and though they might with much show of reason say that they
had been tricked into acting as they had done, yet it is probable that
the immense pressure from behind had made Benton too eager to follow any
way he could find that would take him out of the position into which his
conscience had led him. No amount of pressure would have made him
deliberately sanction a wrong; but it did render him a little less wary
in watching to see that the right was not infringed upon. It was most
natural that he should be anxious to find a common ground for himself
and his constituents to stand on; but it is to be regretted that this
anxiety to find a common ground should have made him willing to trust
blindly to vague pledges and promises, which he ought to have known
would not be held in the least binding by those on whose behalf they
were supposed to be made.
Acting under this compromise measure Texas was admitted, and the
foundation for our war with Mexico was laid. Calhoun, under whom this
was done, nevertheless sincerely regretted the war itself, and freely
condemned Polk's administration for bringing it on; his own position
being that he desired to obtain without a war what it was impossible we
should get except at the cost of one. Benton, who had all along
consistently opposed doing a wrong to Mexico, attacked the whole war
party, and in a strong and bitter speech accused Calhoun of being the
cause of the contest; showing plainly that, whatever the ex-secretary of
state might say in regard to the acts immediately precipitating the
conflict, he himself was responsible as being in truth their original
cause. While stating his conviction, however, that Calhoun was the real
author of the war, Benton added that he did not believe that war was his
object, although an inevitable incident of the course he had pursued.
Although heartily opposed to the war in its origin, Benton very properly
believed in prosecuting it with the utmost vigor when once we were
fairly in; and it was mainly owing to him that the proposed policy of a
"masterly inactivity" was abandoned, and the scheme of pushing straight
for the city of Mexico adopted in its stead. Indeed, it was actually
proposed to make him lieutenant-general, and therefore the
commander-in-chief of our forces in Mexico; but this was defeated in the
Senate, very fortunately, as it would have been a great outrage upon
Scott, Taylor, and every other soldier with real military training. It
seems extraordinary that Benton himself should not have seen the
absurdity and wrong of such a proposition.
The wonderful hardihood and daring shown in the various expeditions
against Mexico, especially in those whereby her northwest territory was
wrested from her, naturally called forth all Benton's sympathy; and one
of his best speeches was that made to welcome Doniphan's victorious
volunteers after their return home from their famous march to
Chihuahua.