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THIRTY YEARS' VIEW;
OR,
A HISTORY OF THE WORKING OF THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT FOR THIRTY YEARS,
FROM 1820 TO 1850.
CHIEFLY TAKEN
FROM THE CONGRESS DEBATES, THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF GENERAL JACKSON AND THE SPEECHES OF EX-SENATOR BENTON, WITH HIS ACTUAL VIEW OF MEN AND AFFAIRS:
WITH
HISTORICAL NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS, AND SOME NOTICES OF EMINENT DECEASED COTEMPORARIES:
BY A SENATOR OF THIRTY YEARS.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET. LONDON: 16 LITTLE BRITAIN. 1883.
ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by D. APPLETON & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.
AUTO-BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
[The outlines of the life of the lately deceased Thomas H. Benton, which are contained in the following pages, were prepared by the author and subject of them whilst he was suffering excruciating pain from the disease that, a few weeks later, closed his earthly career. They were not intended for a Biography, properly so called, but rather to present some salient points of character and some chief incidents of life, and in respect of them, at least, to govern subsequent Biographies.]
Thomas Hart Benton, known as a senator for thirty years in Congress, and as the author of several works, was born in Orange County, near Hillsborough, North Carolina, March 14th, 1782; and was the son of Col. Jesse Benton, an able lawyer of that State, and of Ann Gooch, of Hanover county, Virginia, of the family of the Gooches of colonial residence in that State. By this descent, on the mother's side, he took his name from the head of the Hart family (Col. Thomas Hart, of Lexington, Kentucky), his mother's maternal uncle; and so became related to the numerous Hart family. He was cousin to Mrs. Clay, born Lucretia Hart, the wife of Henry Clay; and, by an easy mistake, was often quoted during his public life as the relative of Mr. Clay himself. He lost his father before he was eight years of age, and fell under the care of a mother still young, and charged with a numerous family, all of tender age--and devoting herself to them. She was a woman of reading and observation--solid reading, and observation of the men of the Revolution, brought together by course of hospitality of that time, in which the houses of friends, and not taverns, were the universal stopping places. Thomas was the oldest son, and at the age of ten and twelve was reading solid books with his mother, and studying the great examples of history, and receiving encouragement to emulate these examples. His father's library, among others, contained the famous State Trials, in the large folios of that time, and here he got a foundation of British history, in reading the treason, and other trials, with which these volumes abound. She was also a pious and religious woman, cultivating the moral and religious education of her children, and connected all her life with the Christian church; first, as a member of the English Episcopalian, and when removal to the Great West, then in the wilderness, had broken that connection, then in the Methodist Episcopalian--in which she died. All the minor virtues, as well as the greater, were cherished by her; and her house, the resort of the eminent men of the time, was the abode of temperance, modesty, decorum. A pack of cards was never seen in her house. From such a mother all the children received the impress of future character; and she lived to see the fruits of her pious and liberal cares--living a widow above fifty years, and to see her eldest son half through his senatorial career, and taking his place among the historic men of the country for which she had begun so early to train him. These details deserve to be noted, though small in themselves, as showing how much the after life of the man may depend upon the early cares and guidance of a mother.
His scholastic education was imperfect: first, at a grammar school taught by Richard Stanford, Esq., then a young New England emigrant, soon after, and for many years, and until death, a representative in Congress, noted as the life-long friend of Macon and Randolph. Afterwards he was at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina, but finished no course of study there, his mother removing to Tennessee, where his father had acquired great landed property (40,000 acres), and intended to make Nashville his home; and now, as the eldest of the family, though not grown, the care and management of a new settlement, in a new country, fell upon him. The family went upon a choice tract of 3000 acres, on West Harpeth, twenty-five miles south of Nashville, where for several years the main care was the opening a farm in the wilderness. Wilderness! for such was the state of the country at that time within half a day's ride of the city of Nashville. "The widow Benton's settlement" was the outside settlement between civilization and the powerful southern tribes which spread to the Gulf of Mexico. The Indian wars had just been terminated, and the boundary which these great tribes were enabled to exact brought their frontier almost to the gates of Nashville--within 25 miles! for the line actually touched the outside line of the estate. The Indians swarmed about it. Their great war trace (the trace on which they came for blood and plunder in time of war, for trade in time of peace) led through it. Such a position was not to be maintained by a small family alone--a widow, and every child under age, only some twenty odd slaves. It required strength! and found it in the idea of a little colony--leases to settlers without price, for seven years; moderate rents afterwards. The tract was well formed for the purpose, being four miles square, with every attraction for settlement--rich land fine wood, living streams. Settlers came; the ground was covered over: it was called "Benton Town," and retains the name to this day. A rude log school-house, a meeting house of the same primitive structure, with roads and mills, completed the rapid conversion of this wilderness into an abode of civilization. The scholastic education of her son had ceased, but reading continued; and books of solid instruction became his incessant companions. He has been heard to say that, in no period of his life, has he ever read so much, nor with as much system and regularity, nor with the same profit and delight. History and geography was (what he considered) his light reading; national law, the civil law, the common law--and, finally, the law itself, so usually read by law students--constituted his studies. And all this reading, and study, was carried on during the active personal exertions which he gave to the opening of the farm and to the ameliorations upon it which comfort exacted.
Then came the law license, indulgently granted by the three Superior Court Judges--White, Overton, and Campbell--the former afterwards senator in Congress, Overton an eminent lawyer before he was a Superior Court judge, and Campbell, one of the respectable early settlers and lawyers of the State. The law license signed, practice followed, and successful--Gen. Jackson, Gen. James Robertson, Judge McNairy, Major Thomas Hardeman, and the old heads of the population giving him their support and countenance as a young man that might become useful to the State, and so deserved to be encouraged. Scarcely at the bar, and a legislative career was opened to him. He was elected to the General Assembly of the State; and, though serving but for a single session, left the impress of his mind and principles on the statute book, and on the public policy. He was the author of the Judicial Reform Act, by which the old system of Superior Courts was substituted by the circuit system, in which the administration of justice was relieved of great part of its delay, of its expense, and of much of its inconvenience to parties and witnesses. And he was the author of a humane law, giving to slaves the same full benefit of jury trial which was the right of the white man under the same accusation--a law which still remains on the statute book, but has lost its effect under the fatal outside interference which has checked the progress of Southern slave policy amelioration, and turned back the current which was setting so strongly in favor of mitigating the condition of the slave.
Returning to the practice of the law, the war of 1812 broke out. Volunteers were called for, to descend the rivers to New Orleans, to meet the British, expected there in the winter of 1812-'13, but not coming until the winter of 1814-'15. Three thousand volunteers were raised! raised in a flash! under the prestige of Jackson's name--his patriotic proclamation--and the ardent addresses of Benton, flying from muster ground to muster ground, and stimulating the inherent courage and patriotism of the young men. They were formed into three regiments, of which Benton was colonel of one. He had been appointed aide-de-camp to Jackson (then a major-general in the Tennessee militia), on the first symptoms of war with Great Britain, and continued to perform many of the most intimate duties of that station, though, as colonel of a regiment, he could not hold the place. The force descended to the Lower Mississippi: the British did not come; the volunteers returned to Tennessee, were temporarily disbanded, but called again into service by Gen. Jackson at the breaking out of the Creek war. These volunteers were the foundation of all Jackson's subsequent splendid career; and the way in which, through their means, he was enabled to get into the regular army, is a most curious piece of history, not told anywhere but by Col. Benton, as a member of the House of Representatives, on the presentation of Jackson's sword (Feb. 26th, 1855). That piece of unknown history, which could only come from one who was part and parcel of the transaction, deserves to be known, and to be studied by every one who is charged with the administration of government, and by every one who would see with what difficulties genius and patriotism may have to contend--with what chances they may have to wrestle--before they get an opportunity to fulfil a destiny for which they were born.
The volunteers disbanded, Col. Benton proceeded to Washington, and was appointed by Mr. Madison a lieutenant-colonel of infantry in the army (1813); and afterwards (1814-15) proceeding to Canada, where he had obtained service, he met the news of peace; and desiring no service in time of peace, he was within a few months on the west bank of the Mississippi, St. Louis his home, and the profession of the law ardently recommenced. In four years the State of Missouri was admitted into the Union, and Col. Benton was elected one of her first senators; and, continuously by successive elections, until 1851. From that time his life was in the public eye, and the bare enumeration of the measures of which he was the author, and the prime promoter, would be almost a history of Congress legislation. The enumeration is unnecessary here: the long list is known throughout the length and breadth of the land--repeated with the familiarity of household words from the great cities on the seaboard to the lonely cabins on the frontier--and studied by the little boys who feel an honorable ambition beginning to stir within their bosoms, and a laudable desire to learn something of the history of their country.
Omitting this detail of well-known measures, we proceed to something else characteristic of Senator Benton's legislative life, less known, but necessary to be known to know the man. He never had a clerk, nor even a copyist; but did his own writing, and made his own copies. He never had office, or contract, for himself, or any one of his blood. He detested office seeking, and office hunting, and all changes in politics followed by demand for office. He was never in any Congress caucus, or convention to nominate a President or Vice-President, nor even suffered his name to go before such a body for any such nominations. He refused many offices which were pressed upon him--the mission to Russia, by President Jackson; war minister, by Mr. Van Buren; minister to France, by Mr. Polk. Three appointments were intended for him, which he would have accepted if the occasions had occurred--command of the army by General Jackson, if war took place with Mexico during his administration; the same command by the same President, if war had taken place with France, in 1836; the command of the army in Mexico, by President Polk, with the rank of lieutenant-general, if the bill for the rank had not been defeated in the Senate after having passed the House by a general vote. And none of these military appointments could have wounded professional honor, as Col. Benton, at the time of his retiring from the army, ranked all those who have since reached its head.
Politically, Col. Benton always classed democratically, but with very little regard for modern democracy, founded on the platforms which the little political carpenters reconstruct about every four years, generally out of office-timber, sometimes green and sometimes rotten, and in either case equally good, as the platform was only wanted to last until after the election. He admitted no platform of political principles but the constitution, and viewed as impertinent and mischievous the attempt to expound the constitution, periodically, in a set of hurrah resolutions, juggled through the fag-end of a packed convention, and held to be the only test of political salvation during its brief day of supremacy.
His going to Missouri, then a Territory under the pupillage of Congress, was at a period of great interest both for the Territory and the Union. Violent parties were there, as usual in Territories, and great questions coming on upon which the future fate of the State, and perhaps of the Union, depended. The Missouri controversy soon raged in Congress, throughout the States, and into the Territory. An active restriction party was in the Territory, largely reinforced by outside aid, and a decided paper was wanting to give the proper tone to the public mind. Col. Benton had one set up, and wrote for it with such point and vigor that the Territory soon presented a united front, and when the convention election came round there was but one single delegate elected on the side of restriction. This united front had an immense effect in saving the question in Congress.
Besides his legislative reports, bills and speeches, sufficient to fill many volumes, Col. Benton is known as the author of some literary works--the Thirty Years' View of the inside working of the Federal Government; the Abridgment of Debates of Congress from 1789 to (intended) 1856; and an examination of the political part (as he deemed it) of the Supreme Court's decision in the Dred Scott case, that part of it which pronounced the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise line and the self-extension of the Constitution to Territories carrying African slavery along with it, and keeping it there in defiance of Congress or the people of the Territory. There was also a class of speeches, of which he delivered many, which were out of the line of political or legislative discussion; and may be viewed as literary. They were the funeral eulogiums which the custom of Congress began to admit, though not to the degree at present practised, over deceased members. These eulogiums were universally admired, and were read over Europe, and found their charm in the perception of character which they exhibited; in the perception of the qualities which constituted the man, and gave him identity and individuality. These qualities, thus perceived (and it requires intimate acquaintance with the man, and some natural gift, to make the perception), and presented with truth and simplicity, imparted the interest to these eulogiums which survives many readings, and will claim lasting places in biographies.
While in the early part of life, at Nashville and at St. Louis, duels and affrays were common; and the young Benton had his share of them: a very violent affray between himself and brother on one side, and Genl. Jackson and some friends on the other, in which severe pistol and dagger wounds were given, but fortunately without loss of life; and the only use for which that violent collision now finds a reference is in its total oblivion by the parties, and the cordiality with which they acted together for the public good in their subsequent long and intimate public career. A duel at St. Louis ended fatally, of which Col. Benton has not been heard to speak except among intimate friends, and to tell of the pang which went through his heart when he saw the young man fall, and would have given the world to see him restored to life. As the proof of the manner in which he looks upon all these scenes, and his desire to bury all remembrance of them forever, he has had all the papers burnt which relate to them, that no future curiosity or industry should bring to light what he wishes had never happened.
Col. Benton was married, after becoming Senator, to Elizabeth, daughter of Col. James McDowell, of Rockbridge county, Virginia, and of Sarah his wife, born Sarah Preston; and has surviving issue four daughters: Mrs. William Carey Jones, Mrs. Jessie Ann Benton Fremont, Mrs. Sarah Benton Jacob, and Madame Susan Benton Boilleau, now at Calcutta, wife of the French consul general--all respectable in life and worthy of their mother, who was a woman of singular merit, judgment, elevation of character, and regard for every social duty, crowned by a life-long connection with the church in which she was bred, the Presbyterian old school. Following the example of their mother, all the daughters are members of some church. Mrs. Benton died in 1854, having been struck with paralysis in 1844, and from the time of that calamity her husband was never known to go to any place of festivity or amusement.
Preface
1.--MOTIVES FOR WRITING THIS WORK.
Justice to the men with whom I acted, and to the cause in which we were engaged, is my chief motive for engaging in this work. A secondary motive is the hope of being useful to our republican form of government in after ages by showing its working through a long and eventful period; working well all the time, and thereby justifying the hope of its permanent good operation in all time to come, if maintained in its purity and integrity. Justice to the wise and patriotic men who established our independence, and founded this government, is another motive with me. I do not know how young I was when I first read in the speeches of Lord Chatham, the encomium which he pronounced in the House of Lords on these founders of our republic; but it sunk deep into my memory at the time, and, what is more, went deep into the heart: and has remained there ever since. "When your lordships look at the papers transmitted us from America; when you consider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you cannot but respect their cause, and wish to make it your own. For myself, I must declare and avow, that in all my reading and observation--and it has been my favorite study--I have read Thucydides, and have studied and admired the master states of the world--that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion, under such a complication of difficult circumstances, no nation, or body of men, can stand in preference to the general congress at Philadelphia." This encomium, so just and so grand, so grave and so measured, and the more impressive on account of its gravity and measure, was pronounced in the early part of our revolutionary struggle--in its first stage--and before a long succession of crowning events had come to convert it into history, and to show of how much more those men were capable than they had then done. If the great William Pitt--greater under that name than under the title he so long refused--had lived in this day, had lived to see these men making themselves exceptions to the maxim of the world, and finishing the revolution which they began--seen them found a new government and administer it in their day and generation, and until "gathered to their fathers," and all with the same wisdom, justice, moderation, and decorum, with which they began it: if he had lived to have seen all this, even his lofty genius might have recoiled from the task of doing them justice;--and, I may add, from the task of doing justice to the PEOPLE who sustained such men. Eulogy is not my task; but gratitude and veneration is the debt of my birth and inheritance, and of the benefits which I have enjoyed from their labors; and I have proposed to acknowledge this debt--to discharge it is impossible--in laboring to preserve their work during my day, and in now commending it, by the fruits it has borne, to the love and care of posterity. Another motive, hardly entitled to the dignity of being named, has its weight with me, and belongs to the rights of "self-defence." I have made a great many speeches, and have an apprehension that they may be published after I am gone--published in the gross, without due discrimination--and so preserve, or perpetuate, things said, both of men and of measures, which I no longer approve, and would wish to leave to oblivion. By making selections of suitable parts of these speeches, and weaving them into this work, I may hope to prevent a general publication--or to render it harmless if made. But I do not condemn all that I leave out.
2.--QUALIFICATIONS FOR THE WORK.
Of these I have one, admitted by all to be considerable, but by no means enough of itself. Mr. Macaulay says of Fox and Mackintosh, speaking of their histories of the last of the Stuarts, and of the Revolution of 1688: "They had one eminent qualification for writing history; they had spoken history, acted history, lived history. The turns of political fortune, the ebb and flow of popular feeling, the hidden mechanism by which parties are moved, all these things were the subject of their constant thought, and of their most familiar conversation. Gibbon has remarked, that his history is much the better for his having been an officer in the militia, and a member of the House of Commons. The remark is most just. We have not the smallest doubt that his campaigns, though he never saw an enemy, and his parliamentary attendance, though he never made a speech, were of far more use to him than years of retirement and study would have been. If the time that he spent on parade and at mess in Hampshire, or on the Treasury bench and at Brooke's, during the storms which overthrew Lord North and Lord Shelburne, had been passed in the Bodleian Library, he might have avoided some inaccuracies; he might have enriched his notes with a greater number of references; but he never could have produced so lively a picture of the court, the camp, and the senate-house. In this respect Mr. Fox and Sir James Mackintosh had great advantages over almost every English historian since the time of Burnet."--I can say I have these advantages. I was in the Senate the whole time of which I write--an active business member, attending and attentive--in the confidence of half the administrations, and a close observer of the others--had an inside view of transactions of which the public only saw the outside, and of many of which the two sides were very different--saw the secret springs and hidden machinery by which men and parties were to be moved, and measures promoted or thwarted--saw patriotism and ambition at their respective labors, and was generally able to discriminate between them. So far, I have one qualification; but Mr. Macaulay says that Lord Lyttleton had the same, and made but a poor history, because unable to use his material. So it may be with me; but in addition to my senatorial means of knowledge, I have access to the unpublished papers of General Jackson, and find among them some that he intended for publication, and which will be used according to his intention.
3.--THE SCOPE OF THE WORK.
I do not propose a regular history, but a political work, to show the practical working of the government, and speak of men and events in subordination to that design, and to illustrate the character of Institutions which are new and complex--the first of their kind, and upon the fate of which the eyes of the world are now fixed. Our duplicate form of government, State and Federal, is a novelty which has no precedent, and has found no practical imitation, and is still believed by some to be an experiment. I believe in its excellence, and wish to contribute to its permanence, and believe I can do so by giving a faithful account of what I have seen of its working, and of the trials to which I have seen it subjected.
4.--THE SPIRIT OF THE WORK.
I write in the spirit of Truth, but not of unnecessary or irrelevant truth, only giving that which is essential to the object of the work, and the omission of which would be an imperfection, and a subtraction from what ought to be known. I have no animosities, and shall find far greater pleasure in bringing out the good and the great acts of those with whom I have differed, than in noting the points on which I deemed them wrong. My ambition is to make a veracious work, reliable in its statements, candid in its conclusions, just in its views, and which cotemporaries and posterity may read without fear of being misled.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
PAGE.
PRELIMINARY VIEW from 1815 to 1820 1
CHAP.
I. Personal Aspect of the Government 7
II. Admission of the State of Missouri 8
III. Finances--Reduction of the Army 11
IV. Relief of Public Land Debtors 11
V. Oregon Territory 13
VI. Florida Treaty and Cession of Texas 14
VII. Death of Mr. Lowndes 18
VIII. Death of William Pinkney 19
IX. Abolition of the Indian Factory System 20
X. Internal Improvement 21
XI. General Removal of Indians 27
XII. Visit of Lafayette to the United States 29
XIII. The Tariff, and American System 32
XIV. The A. B. Plot 34
XV. Amendment of the Constitution, in relation to the Election of President and Vice-President 37
XVI. Internal Trade with New Mexico 41
XVII. Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections in the Electoral Colleges 44
XVIII. Death of John Taylor, of Caroline 45
XIX. Presidential Election in the House of Representatives 46
XX. The Occupation of the Columbia 50
XXI. Commencement of Mr. Adams's Administration 54
XXII. Case of Mr. Lanman--Temporary Senatorial Appointment from Connecticut 56
XXIII. Retiring of Mr. Rufus King 57
XXIV. Removal of the Creek Indians from Georgia 58
XXV. The Panama Mission 65
XXVI. Duel Between Mr. Clay and Mr. Randolph 70
XXVII. Death of Mr. Gaillard 77
XXVIII. Amendment of the Constitution, in relation to the Election of President and Vice-President 78
XXIX. Reduction of Executive Patronage 80
XXX. Exclusion of Members of Congress from Civil Office Appointments 82
XXXI. Death of the ex-Presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson 87
XXXII. British Indemnity for Deported Slaves 88
XXXIII. Meeting of the first Congress Elected under the Administration of Mr. Adams 91
XXXIV. Revision of the Tariff 95
XXXV. The Public Lands--Their Proper Disposition--Graduated Prices--Pre-emption Rights--Donations to Settlers 102
XXXVI. Cession of a Part of the Territory of Arkansas to the Cherokee Indians 107
XXXVII. Renewal of the Oregon Joint Occupation Convention 109
XXXVIII. Presidential Election of 1828, and Further Errors of Mons. de Tocqueville 111
XXXIX. Retiring and Death of Mr. Macon 114
XL. Commencement of General Jackson's Administration 119
XLI. First Message of General Jackson to the two Houses of Congress 121
XLII. The recovery of the Direct Trade with the British West India Islands 124
XLIII. Establishment of the Globe Newspaper 128
XLIV. Limitation of Public Land Sales--Suspension of Surveys--Abolition of the Office of Surveyor General--Origin of the United States Land System--Authorship of the Anti-slavery Ordinance of 1778--Slavery Controversy--Protective Tariff--Inception of the Doctrine of Nullification 130
XLV. Repeal of the Salt Tax 143
XLVI. Birthday of Mr. Jefferson, and the Doctrine of Nullification 148
XLVII. Regulation of Commerce 149
XLVIII. Alum Salt--The Abolition of the Duty upon it, and Repeal of the Fishing Bounty and Allowances Founded on It 154
XLIX. Bank of the United States 158
L. Removals from Office 159
LI. Indian Sovereignties within the States 163
LII. Veto on the Maysville Road Bill 167
LIII. Rupture between President Jackson and Vice-President Calhoun 167
LIV. Breaking up of the Cabinet, and Appointment of another 180
LV. Military Academy 182
LVI. Bank of the United States--Non-renewal of Charter 187
LVII. Error of De Tocqueville, in relation to the House of Representatives 205
LVIII. The Twenty-second Congress 208
LIX. Rejection of Mr. Van Buren, Minister to England 214
LX. Bank of the United States--Illegal, and Vicious Currency 220
LXI. Error of Mons. de Tocqueville, in relation to the Bank of the United States, the President, and the People 224
LXII. Expenses of the Government 229
LXIII. Bank of the United States--Recharter--Commencement of the Proceedings 232
LXIV. Bank of the United States--Committee of Investigation Ordered 235
LXV. The Three per Cent. Debt, and Loss in not Paying it when the Rate was Low, and the Money in the Bank of the United States without Interest 242
LXVI. Bank of the United States--Bill for the Recharter Reported in the Senate, and Passed that Body 243
LXVII. Bank of the United States--Bill for the Renewed Charter Passed in the House of Representatives 250
LXVIII. The Veto 251
LXXIX. The Protective System 265
LXX. Public Lands--Distribution to the States 275
LXXI. Settlement of French and Spanish Land Claims 279
LXXII. "Effects of the Veto" 280
LXXIII. Presidential Election of 1832 282
LXXIV. First Annual Message of President Jackson, after his Second Election 283
LXXV. Bank of The United States--Delay in Paying the Three per Cents.--Committee of Investigation 287
LXXVI. Abolition of Imprisonment for Debt 291
LXXVII. Sale of United States Stock in the National Bank 294
LXXVIII. Nullification Ordinance in South Carolina 297
LXXIX. Proclamation against Nullification 299
LXXX. Message on the South Carolina Proceedings 303
LXXXI. Reduction of Duties--Mr. Verplanck's Bill 308
LXXXII. Reduction of Duties--Mr. Clay's Bill 313
LXXXIII. Revenue Collection, or Force Bill 330
LXXXIV. Mr. Calhoun's Nullification Resolutions 334
LXXXV. Secret History of the "Compromise" of 1833 342
LXXXVI. Compromise Legislation; and the Act, so called, of 1833 344
LXXXVII. Virginia resolutions of '98-'99--Disabused of their South Carolina Interpretation--1. Upon their Own Words--2. Upon Contemporaneous Interpretation 347
LXXXVIII. Virginia Resolutions of 1798--Disabused of Nullification by their Author 354
LXXXIX. The Author's own View of the Nature of Our Government, as being a Union in Contradistinction to a League--Presented in a Subsequent Speech on Missouri Resolutions 360
XC. Public Lands--Distribution of Proceeds 362
XCI. Commencement of the Twenty-third Congress--The Members', and President's Message 369
XCII. Removal of the Deposits from the Bank of the United States 373
XCIII. Bank Proceedings, on Seeing the Decision of the President, in relation to the Removal of the Deposits 379
XCIV. Report of the Secretary of the Treasury to Congress on the Removal of the Deposits 381
XCV. Nomination of Government Directors, and their Rejection 385
XCVI. Secretary's Report on the Removal of Deposits 393
XCVII. Call on the President for a Copy of the "Paper Read to the Cabinet" 399
XCVIII. Mistakes of Public Men--Great Combination against General Jackson--Commencement of the Panic 400
XCIX. Mr. Clay's Speech against President Jackson on the Removal of the Deposits--Extracts 402
C. Mr. Benton's Speech in Reply to Mr. Clay--Extracts 406
CI. Condemnation of President Jackson--Mr. Calhoun's Speech--Extracts 411
CII. Public Distress 415
CIII. Senatorial Condemnation of President Jackson--his Protest--Notice of the Expunging Resolution 423
CIV. Mr. Webster's Plan of Relief 433
CV. Revival of the Gold Currency--Mr. Benton's Speech 436
CVI. Attempted Investigation of the Bank of the United States 458
CVII. Mr. Taney's Report on the Finances--Exposure of the Distress Alarms--End of the Panic 462
CVIII. Revival of the Gold Currency 469
CIX. Rejection of Mr. Taney--Nominated for Secretary of the Treasury 470
CX. Senatorial Investigation of the Bank of the United States 470
CXI. Downfall of the Bank of the United States 471
CXII. Death of John Randolph, of Roanoake 473
CXIII. Death of Mr. Wirt 475
CXIV. Death of the last of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence 476
CXV. Commencement of the Session, 1834-'35: President's Message 477
CXVI. Report of the Bank Committee 481
CXVII. French Spoliations before 1800 487
CXVIII. French Spoliations--Speech of Mr. Wright, of New-York 489
CXIX. French Spoliations--Mr. Webster's Speech 505
CXX. French Spoliations--Mr. Benton's Speech 514
CXXI. Attempted Assassination of President Jackson 521
CXXII. Alabama Expunging Resolutions 524
CXXIII. The Expunging Resolution 528
CXXIV. Expunging Resolution: Rejected, and Renewed 549
CXXV. Branch Mints at New Orleans, and in the Gold Regions of Georgia and North Carolina 550
CXXVI. Regulation Deposit Bill 553
CXXVII. Defeat of the Defence Appropriation, and loss of the Fortification Bill 554
CXXVIII. Distribution of Revenue 556
CXXIX. Commencement of Twenty-Fourth Congress-- President's Message 568
CXXX. Abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia 576
CXXXI. Mail Circulation of Incendiary Publications 580
CXXXII. French Affairs--Approach at a French Squadron--Apology Required 588
CXXXIII. French Indemnities--British Mediation-- Indemnities Paid 600
CXXXIV. President Jackson's Foreign Diplomacy 601
CXXXV. Slavery Agitation 609
CXXXVI. Removal of the Cherokees from Georgia 624
CXXXVII. Extension of the Missouri Boundary 626
CXXXVIII. Admission of the States of Arkansas and Michigan into the Union 627
CXXXIX. Attempted Inquiry into the Military Academy 638
CXL. Military Academy--Speech of Mr. Pierce 641
CXLI. Expunging Resolution--Peroration of Senator Benton's Second Speech 645
CXLII. Distribution of the Land Revenue 649
CXLIII. Recharter of the District Banks--Speech of Mr. Benton--The Parts of Local and Temporary Interest Omitted 658
CXLIV. Independence of Texas 665
CXLV. Texas Independence--Mr. Benton's Speech 670
CXLVI. The Specie Circular 676
CXLVII. Death of Mr. Madison, Fourth President of the United States 678
CXLVIII. Death of Mr. Monroe, Fifth President of the United States 679
CXLIX. Death of Chief Justice Marshall 681
CL. Death of Col. Burr, Third Vice-President of the United States 681
CLI. Death of William B. Giles, of Virginia 682
CLII. Presidential Election of 1836 683
CLIII. Last Annual Message of President Jackson 684
CLIV. Final Removal of the Indians 690
CLV. Recision of the Treasury Circular 694
CLVI. Distribution of Lands and Money--Various Propositions 707
CLVII. Military Academy--Its Riding House 712
CLVIII. Salt Tax--Mr. Benton's Fourth Speech 714
CLIX. Expunging Resolution--Preparation for Decision 717
CLX. Expunging Resolution--Mr. Benton's Third Speech 719
CLXI. Expunging Resolution--Mr. Clay, Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Webster--Last Scene--Resolution Passed and Executed 727
CLXII. The Supreme Court--Judges and Officers 731
CLXIII. Farewell Address of President Jackson--Extract 732
CLXIV. Conclusion of General Jackson's Administration 733
CLXV. Retiring and Death of General Jackson-- Administration of Martin Van Buren 735
PRELIMINARY VIEW.
FROM 1815 TO 1820
The war with Great Britain commenced in 1812 and ended in 1815. It was a short war, but a necessary and important one, and introduced several changes, and made some new points of departure in American policy, which are necessary to be understood in order to understand the subsequent working of the government, and the VIEW of that working which is proposed to be given.
1. It struggled and labored under the state of the finances and the currency, and terminated without any professed settlement of the cause for which it began. There was no national currency--no money, or its equivalent, which represented the same value in all places. The first Bank of the United States had ceased to exist in 1811. Gold, from being undervalued, had ceased to be a currency--had become an article of merchandise, and of export--and was carried to foreign countries. Silver had been banished by the general use of bank notes, had been reduced to a small quantity, insufficient for a public demand; and, besides, would have been too cumbrous for a national currency. Local banks overspread the land; and upon these the federal government, having lost the currency of the constitution, was thrown for a currency and for loans. They, unequal to the task, and having removed their own foundations by banishing specie with profuse paper issues, sunk under the double load of national and local wants, and stopped specie payments--all except those of New England, which section of the Union was unfavorable to the war. Treasury notes were then the resort of the federal government. They were issued in great quantities; and not being convertible into coin at the will of the holder, soon began to depreciate. In the second year of the war the depreciation had already become enormous, especially towards the Canada frontier, where the war raged, and where money was most wanted. An officer setting out from Washington with a supply of these notes found them sunk one-third by the time he arrived at the northern frontier--his every three dollars counting but two. After all, the treasury notes could not be used as a currency, neither legally, nor in fact: they could only be used to obtain local bank paper--itself greatly depreciated. All government securities were under par, even for depreciated bank notes. Loans were obtained with great difficulty--at large discount--almost on the lender's own terms; and still attainable only in depreciated local bank notes. In less than three years the government, paralyzed by the state of the finances, was forced to seek peace, and to make it, without securing, by any treaty stipulation, the object for which war had been declared. Impressment was the object--the main one, with the insults and the outrages connected with it--and without which there would have been no declaration of war. The treaty of peace did not mention or allude to the subject--the first time, perhaps, in modern history, in which a war was terminated by treaty without any stipulation derived from its cause. Mr. Jefferson, in 1807, rejected upon his own responsibility, without even its communication to the Senate, the treaty of that year negotiated by Messrs. Monroe and Pinkney, because it did not contain an express renunciation of the practice of impressment--because it was silent on that point. It was a treaty of great moment, settled many troublesome questions, was very desirable for what it contained; but as it was silent on the main point, it was rejected, without even a reference to the Senate. Now we were in a like condition after a war. The war was struggling for its own existence under the state of the finances, and had to be stopped without securing by treaty the object for which it was declared. The object was obtained, however, by the war itself. It showed the British government that the people of the United States would fight upon that point--that she would have war again if she impressed again: and there has been no impressment since. Near forty years without a case! when we were not as many days, oftentimes, without cases before, and of the most insulting and outrageous nature. The spirit and patriotism of the people in furnishing the supplies, volunteering for the service, and standing to the contest in the general wreck of the finances and the currency, without regard to their own losses--and the heroic courage of the army and navy, and of the militia and volunteers, made the war successful and glorious in spite of empty treasuries; and extorted from a proud empire that security in point of fact which diplomacy could not obtain as a treaty stipulation. And it was well. Since, and now, and henceforth, we hold exemption from impressment as we hold our independence--by right, and by might--and now want the treaty acknowledgment of no nation on either point. But the glorious termination of the war did not cure the evil of a ruined currency and defective finances, nor render less impressive the financial lesson which it taught. A return to the currency of the constitution--to the hard-money government which our fathers gave us--no connection with banks--no bank paper for federal uses--the establishment of an independent treasury for the federal government; this was the financial lesson which the war taught. The new generation into whose hands the working of the government fell during the THIRTY YEARS, eventually availed themselves of that lesson:--with what effect, the state of the country since, unprecedentedly prosperous; the state of the currency, never deranged; of the federal treasury, never polluted with "unavailable funds," and constantly crammed to repletion with solid gold; the issue of the Mexican war, carried on triumphantly without a national bank, and with the public securities constantly above par--sufficiently proclaim. No other tongue but these results is necessary to show the value of that financial lesson, taught us by the war of 1812.
2. The establishment of the second national bank grew out of this war. The failure of the local banks was enough to prove the necessity of a national currency, and the re-establishment of a national bank was the accepted remedy. No one seemed to think of the currency of the constitution--especially of that gold currency upon which the business of the world had been carried on from the beginning of the world, and by empires whose expenses for a week were equal to those of the United States for a year, and which the framers of the constitution had so carefully secured and guarded for their country. A national bank was the only remedy thought of. Its constitutionality was believed by some to have been vindicated by the events of the war. Its expediency was generally admitted. The whole argument turned upon the word "necessary," as used in the grant of implied powers at the end of the enumeration of powers expressly granted to Congress; and this necessity was affirmed and denied on each side at the time of the establishment of the first national bank, with a firmness and steadiness which showed that these fathers of the constitution knew that the whole field of argument lay there. Washington's queries to his cabinet went to that point; the close reasoning of Hamilton and Jefferson turned upon it. And it is worthy of note, in order to show how much war has to do with the working of government, and the trying of its powers, that the strongest illustration used by General Hamilton, and the one, perhaps, which turned the question in Washington's mind, was the state of the Indian war in the Northwest, then just become a charge upon the new federal government, and beginning to assume the serious character which it afterward attained. To carry on war at that time, with such Indians as were then, supported by the British traders, themselves countenanced by their government, at such a distance in the wilderness, and by the young federal government, was a severe trial upon the finances of the federal treasury, as well as upon the courage and discipline of the troops; and General Hamilton, the head of the treasury, argued that with the aid of a national bank, the war would be better and more successfully conducted: and, therefore, that it was "necessary," and might be established as a means of executing a granted power, to wit, the power of making war. That war terminated well; and the bank having been established in the mean time, got the credit of having furnished its "sinews." The war of 1812 languished under the state of the finances and the currency, no national bank existing; and this want seemed to all to be the cause of its difficulties, and to show the necessity for a bank. The second national bank was then established--many of its old, most able, and conscientious opponents giving in to it, Mr. Madison at their head. Thus the question of a national bank again grew up--grew up out of the events of the war--and was decided against the strict construction of the constitution--to the weakening of a principle which was fundamental in the working of the government, and to the damage of the party which stood upon the doctrine of a strict construction of the constitution. But in the course of the "Thirty Years" of which it is proposed to take a "View," some of the younger generation became impressed with the belief that the constitutional currency had not had a fair trial in that war of 1812! that, in fact, it had had no trial at all! that it was not even in the field! not even present at the time when it was supposed to have failed! and that it was entitled to a trial before it was condemned. That trial has been obtained. The second national bank was left to expire upon its own limitation. The gold currency and the independent treasury were established. The Mexican war tried them. They triumphed. And thus a national bank was shown to be "unnecessary," and therefore unconstitutional. And thus a great question of constitutional construction, and of party division, three times decided by the events of war, and twice against the constitution and the strict constructionists, was decided the last time in their favor; and is entitled to stand, being the last, and the only one in which the constitutional currency had a trial.
3. The protection of American industry, as a substantive object, independent of the object of revenue, was a third question growing out of the war. Its incidental protection, under the revenue clause in the constitution, had been always acknowledged, and granted; but protection as a substantive object was a new question growing out of the state of things produced by the war. Domestic manufactures had taken root and grown up during the non-importation periods of the embargo, and of hostilities with Great Britain, and under the temporary double duties which ensued the war, and which were laid for revenue. They had grown up to be a large interest, and a new one, classing in importance after agriculture and commerce. The want of articles necessary to national defence, and of others essential to individual comfort--then neither imported nor made at home--had been felt during the interruption of commerce occasioned by the war; and the advantage of a domestic supply was brought home to the conviction of the public mind. The question of protection for the sake of protection was brought forward, and carried (in the year 1816); and very unequivocally in the minimum provision in relation to duties on cotton goods. This reversed the old course of legislation--made protection the object instead of the incident, and revenue the incident instead of the object; and was another instance of constitutional construction being made dependent, not upon its own words but upon extrinsic, accidental and transient circumstances. It introduced a new and a large question of constitutional law, and of national expediency, fraught with many and great consequences, which fell upon the period of the THIRTY YEARS' VIEW to settle, or to grapple with.
4. The question of internal improvement within the States, by the federal government, took a new and large development after the war. The want of facilities of transportation had been felt in our military operations. Roads were bad, and canals few; and the question of their construction became a prominent topic in Congress common turnpike roads--for railways had not then been invented, nor had MacAdam yet given his name to the class of roads which has since borne it. The power was claimed as an incident to the granted powers--as a means of doing what was authorized--as a means of accomplishing an end: and the word "necessary" at the end of the enumerated powers, was the phrase in which this incidental power was claimed to have been found. It was the same derivation which was found for the creation of a national bank, and involved very nearly the same division of parties. It greatly complicated the national legislation from 1820 to 1850, bringing the two parts of our double system of government--State and Federal--into serious disagreement, and threatening to compromise their harmonious action. Grappled with by a strong hand, it seemed at one time to have been settled, and consistently with the rights of the States; but sometimes returns to vex the deliberations of Congress. To territories the question did not extend. They have no political rights under the constitution, and are governed by Congress according to its discretion, under that clause which authorizes it to "dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States." The improvement of rivers and harbors, was a branch of the internal improvement question, but resting on a different clause in the constitution--the commercial and revenue clause--and became complex and difficult from its extension to small and local objects. The party of strict construction contend for its restriction to national objects--rivers of national character, and harbors yielding revenue.
5. The boundaries between the treaty-making and the legislative departments of the government, became a subject of examination after the war, and gave rise to questions deeply affecting the working of these two departments. A treaty is the supreme law of the land, and as such it becomes obligatory on the House of Representatives to vote the money which it stipulates, and to co-operate in forming the laws necessary to carry it into effect. That is the broad proposition. The qualification is in the question whether the treaty is confined to the business of the treaty-making power? to the subjects which fall under its jurisdiction? and does not encroach upon the legislative power of Congress? This is the qualification, and a vital one: for if the President and Senate, by a treaty with a foreign power, or a tribe of Indians, could exercise ordinary legislation, and make it supreme, a double injury would have been done, and to the prejudice of that branch of the government which lies closest to the people, and emanates most directly from them. Confinement to their separate jurisdictions is the duty of each; but if encroachments take place, which is to judge? If the President and Senate invade the legislative field of Congress, which is to judge? or who is to judge between them? or is each to judge for itself? The House of Representatives, and the Senate in its legislative capacity, but especially the House, as the great constitutional depository of the legislative power, becomes its natural guardian and defender, and is entitled to deference, in the event of a difference of opinion between the two branches of the government. The discussions in Congress between 1815 and 1820 greatly elucidated this question; and while leaving unimpugned the obligation of the House to carry into effect a treaty duly made by the President and Senate within the limits of the treaty making power--upon matters subject to treaty regulation--yet it belongs to the House to judge when these limits have been transcended, and to preserve inviolate the field of legislation which the constitution has intrusted to the immediate representatives of the people.
6. The doctrine of secession--the right of a State, or a combination of States, to withdraw from the Union, was born of that war. It was repugnant to the New England States, and opposed by them, not with arms, but with argument and remonstrance, and refusal to vote supplies. They had a convention, famous under the name of Hartford, to which the design of secession was imputed. That design was never avowed by the convention, or authentically admitted by any leading member; nor is it the intent of this reference to decide upon the fact of that design. The only intent is to show that the existence of that convention raised the question of secession, and presented the first instance of the greatest danger in the working of the double form of our government--that of a collision between a part of the States and the federal government. This question, and this danger, first arose then--grew out of the war of 1812--and were hushed by its sudden termination; but they have reappeared in a different quarter, and will come in to swell the objects of the THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. At the time of its first appearance the right of secession was repulsed and repudiated by the democracy generally, and in a large degree by the federal party--the difference between a UNION and a LEAGUE being better understood at that time when so many of the fathers of the new government were still alive. The leading language in respect to it south of the Potomac was, that no State had a right to withdraw from the Union--that it required the same power to dissolve as to form the Union--and that any attempt to dissolve it, or to obstruct the action of constitutional laws, was treason. If, since that time, political parties and sectional localities, have exchanged attitudes on this question, it cannot alter the question of right, and may receive some interest from the development of causes which produce such changes. Secession, a question of speculation during the war of 1812, has become a practical question (almost) during the THIRTY YEARS; and thus far has been "compromised," not settled.
7. Slavery agitation took its rise during this time (1819-'20), in the form of attempted restriction on the State of Missouri--a prohibition to hold slaves, to be placed upon her as a condition of her admission into the Union, and to be binding upon her afterwards. This agitation came from the North, and under a federal lead, and soon swept both parties into its vortex. It was quieted, so far as that form of the question was concerned, by admitting the State without restriction, and imposing it on the remainder of the Louisiana territory north and west of that State, and above the parallel of 36 degrees, 30 minutes; which is the prolongation of the southern boundary line of Virginia and Kentucky. This was called a "compromise," and was all clear gain to the antislavery side of the question, and was done under the lead of the united slave state vote in the Senate, the majority of that vote in the House of Representatives, and the undivided sanction of a Southern administration. It was a Southern measure, and divided free and slave soil far more favorably to the North than the ordinance of 1787. That divided about equally: this of 1820 gave about all to the North. It abolished slavery over an immense extent of territory where it might then legally exist, over nearly the whole of Louisiana, left it only in Florida and Arkansas territory, and opened no new territory to its existence. It was an immense concession to the non-slaveholding States; but the genius of slavery agitation was not laid. It reappeared, and under different forms, first from the North, in the shape of petitions to Congress to influence legislation on the subject; then from the South, as a means of exciting one half the Union against the other, and laying the foundation for a Southern confederacy. With this new question, in all its forms, the men of the new generation have had to grapple for the whole period of the "Thirty Years."
8. The war had created a debt, which, added to a balance of that of the Revolution, the purchase of Louisiana, and some other items, still amounted to ninety-two millions of dollars at the period of the commencement of this "View;" and the problem was to be solved, whether a national debt could be paid and extinguished in a season of peace, leaving a nation wholly free from that encumbrance; or whether it was to go on increasing, a burthen in itself, and absorbing with its interest and changes an annual portion of the public revenues. That problem was solved, contrary to the experience of the world, and the debt paid; and the practical benefit added to the moral, of a corresponding reduction in the public taxes.
9. Public distress was a prominent feature of the times to be embraced in this PRELIMINARY VIEW. The Bank of the United States was chartered in 1816, and before 1820 had performed one of its cycles of delusive and bubble prosperity, followed by actual and wide-spread calamity. The whole paper system, of which it was the head and the citadel, after a vast expansion, had suddenly collapsed, spreading desolation over the land, and carrying ruin to debtors. The years 1819 and '20 were a period of gloom and agony. No money, either gold or silver: no paper convertible into specie: no measure, or standard of value, left remaining. The local banks (all but those of New England), after a brief resumption of specie payments, again sank into a state of suspension. The Bank of the United States, created as a remedy for all those evils, now at the head of the evil, prostrate and helpless, with no power left but that of suing its debtors, and selling their property, and purchasing for itself at its own nominal price. No price for property, or produce. No sales but those of the sheriff and the marshal. No purchasers at execution sales but the creditor, or some hoarder of money. No employment for industry--no demand for labor--no sale for the product of the farm--no sound of the hammer, but that of the auctioneer, knocking down property. Stop laws--property laws--replevin laws--stay laws--loan office laws--the intervention of the legislator between the creditor and the debtor: this was the business of legislation in three-fourths of the States of the Union--of all south and west of New England. No medium of exchange but depreciated paper: no change even, but little bits of foul paper, marked so many cents, and signed by some tradesman, barber, or innkeeper: exchanges deranged to the extent of fifty or one hundred per cent. DISTRESS, the universal cry of the people: RELIEF, the universal demand thundered at the doors of all legislatures, State and federal. It was at the moment when this distress had reached its maximum--1820-'21--and had come with its accumulated force upon the machine of the federal government, that this "VIEW" of its working begins. It is a doleful starting point, and may furnish great matter for contrast, or comparison, at its concluding period in 1850.
Such were some of the questions growing out of the war of 1812, or immediately ensuing its termination. That war brought some difficulties to the new generation, but also great advantages, at the head of them the elevation of the national character throughout the world. It immensely elevated the national character, and, as a consequence, put an end to insults and outrages to which we had been subject. No more impressments: no more searching our ships: no more killing: no more carrying off to be forced to serve on British ships against their own country. The national flag became respected. It became the Ægis of those who were under it. The national character appeared in a new light abroad. We were no longer considered as a people so addicted to commerce as to be insensible to insult: and we reaped all the advantages, social, political, commercial, of this auspicious change. It was a war necessary to the honor and interest of the United States, and was bravely fought, and honorably concluded, and makes a proud era in our history. I was not in public life at the time it was declared, but have understood from those who were, that, except for the exertions of two men (Mr. Monroe in the Cabinet, and Mr. Clay in Congress), the declaration of war could not have been obtained. Honor to their memories!
THIRTY YEARS' VIEW.
I. PERSONAL ASPECT OF THE GOVERNMENT
All the departments of the government appeared to great advantage in the personal character of their administrators at the time of my arrival as Senator at Washington. Mr. Monroe was President; Governor Tompkins, Vice-President; Mr. John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State; Mr. William H. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury; Mr. John C. Calhoun, Secretary at War; Mr. Smith Thompson, of New-York, Secretary of the Navy; Mr. John McLean, Postmaster General; William Wirt, Esq., Attorney General. These constituted the Executive Department, and it would be difficult to find in any government, in any country, at any time, more talent and experience, more dignity and decorum, more purity of private life, a larger mass of information, and more addiction to business, than was comprised in this list of celebrated names. The legislative department was equally impressive. The Senate presented a long list of eminent men who had become known by their services in the federal or State governments, and some of them connected with its earliest history. From New-York there were Mr. Rufus King and Nathan Sanford; from Massachusetts, Mr. Harrison Gray Otis; from North Carolina, Mr. Macon and Governor Stokes; from Virginia, the two Governors, James Barbour and James Pleasants; from South Carolina, Mr. John Gaillard, so often and so long President, pro tempore, of the Senate, and Judge William Smith; from Rhode Island, Mr. William Hunter; from Kentucky, Colonel Richard M. Johnson; from Louisiana, Mr. James Brown and Governor Henry Johnson; from Maryland, Mr. William Pinkney and Governor Edward Lloyd from New Jersey, Mr. Samuel L. Southard; Colonel John Williams, of Tennessee; William R. King and Judge Walker, from Alabama; and many others of later date, afterwards becoming eminent, and who will be noted in their places. In the House of Representatives there was a great array of distinguished and of business talent. Mr. Clay, Mr. Randolph, Mr. Lowndes were there. Mr. Henry Baldwin and Mr. John Sergeant, from Pennsylvania; Mr. John W. Taylor, Speaker, and Henry Storrs, from New-York; Dr. Eustis, of revolutionary memory, and Nathaniel Silsbee, of Massachusetts; Mr. Louis McLane, from Delaware; General Samuel Smith, from Maryland; Mr. William S. Archer, Mr. Philip P. Barbour, General John Floyd, General Alexander Smythe, Mr. John Tyler, Charles Fenton Mercer, George Tucker, from Virginia; Mr. Lewis Williams, who entered the House young, and remained long enough to be called its "Father," Thomas H. Hall, Weldon N. Edwards, Governor Hutchins G. Burton, from North Carolina; Governor Earle and Mr. Charles Pinckney, from South Carolina; Mr. Thomas W. Cobb and Governor George Gilmer, from Georgia; Messrs. Richard C. Anderson, Jr., David Trimble, George Robertson, Benjamin Hardin, and Governor Metcalfe, from Kentucky; Mr. John Rhea, of revolutionary service, Governor Newton Cannon, Francis Jones, General John Cocke, from Tennessee; Messrs. John W. Campbell, John Sloan and Henry Bush, from Ohio; Mr. William Hendricks, from Indiana; Thomas Butler, from Louisiana; Daniel P. Cook, from Illinois; John Crowell, from Alabama; Mr. Christopher Rankin, from Mississippi; and a great many other business men of worth and character from the different States, constituting a national representation of great weight, efficiency and decorum. The Supreme Court was still presided over by Chief Justice Marshall, almost septuagenarian, and still in the vigor of his intellect, associated with Mr. Justice Story, Mr. Justice Johnson, of South Carolina, Mr. Justice Duval, and Mr. Justice Washington, of Virginia. Thus all the departments, and all the branches of the government, were ably and decorously filled, and the friends of popular representative institutions might contemplate their administration with pride and pleasure, and challenge their comparison with any government in the world.
II. ADMISSION OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI
This was the exciting and agitating question of the session of 1820-'21. The question of restriction, that is, of prescribing the abolition of slavery within her limits, had been "compromised" the session before, by agreeing to admit the State without restriction, and abolishing it in all the remainder of the province of Louisiana, north and west of the State of Missouri, and north of the parallel of 36 degrees, 30 minutes. This "compromise" was the work of the South, sustained by the united voice of Mr. Monroe's cabinet, the united voices of the Southern senators, and a majority of the Southern representatives. The unanimity of the cabinet has been shown, impliedly, by a letter of Mr. Monroe, and positively by the Diary of Mr. John Quincy Adams. The unanimity of the slave States in the Senate, where the measure originated, is shown by its journal, not on the motion to insert the section constituting the compromise (for on that motion the yeas and nays were not taken), but on the motion to strike it out, when they were taken, and showed 30 votes for the compromise, and 15 against it--every one of the latter from non-slaveholding States--the former comprehending every slave State vote present, and a few from the North. As the constitutionality of this compromise, and its binding force, have, in these latter times, begun to be disputed, it is well to give the list of the senators names voting for it, that it may be seen that they were men of judgment and weight, able to know what the constitution was, and not apt to violate it. They were Governor Barbour and Governor Pleasants, of Virginia; Mr. James Brown and Governor Henry Johnson, of Louisiana; Governor Edwards and Judge Jesse B. Thomas, of Illinois; Mr. Elliott and Mr. Walker, of Georgia; Mr. Gaillard, President, pro tempore, of the Senate and Judge William Smith, from South Carolina; Messrs. Horsey and Van Dyke, of Delaware; Colonel Richard M. Johnson and Judge Logan, from Kentucky; Mr. William R. King, since Vice-President of the United States, and Judge John W. Walker, from Alabama; Messrs. Leake and Thomas H. Williams, of Mississippi; Governor Edward Lloyd, and the great jurist and orator, William Pinkney, from Maryland; Mr. Macon and Governor Stokes, from North Carolina; Messrs. Walter Lowrie and Jonathan Roberts, from Pennsylvania; Mr. Noble and Judge Taylor, from Indiana; Mr. Palmer, from Vermont; Mr. Parrott, from New Hampshire. This was the vote of the Senate for the compromise. In the House, there was some division among Southern members; but the whole vote in favor of it was 134, to 42 in the negative--the latter comprising some Northern members, as the former did a majority of the Southern--among them one whose opinion had a weight never exceeded by that of any other American statesman, William Lowndes, of South Carolina. This array of names shows the Missouri compromise to have been a Southern measure, and the event put the seal upon that character by showing it to be acceptable to the South. But it had not allayed the Northern feeling against an increase of slave States, then openly avowed to be a question of political power between the two sections of the Union. The State of Missouri made her constitution, sanctioning slavery, and forbidding the legislature to interfere with it. This prohibition, not usual in State constitutions, was the effect of the Missouri controversy and of foreign interference, and was adopted for the sake of peace--for the sake of internal tranquillity--and to prevent the agitation of the slave question, which could only be accomplished by excluding it wholly from the forum of elections and legislation. I was myself the instigator of that prohibition, and the cause of its being put into the constitution--though not a member of the convention--being equally opposed to slavery agitation and to slavery extension. There was also a clause in it, authorizing the legislature to prohibit the emigration of free people of color into the State; and this clause was laid hold of in Congress to resist the admission of the State. It was treated as a breach of that clause in the federal constitution, which guarantees equal privileges in all the States to the citizens of every State, of which privileges the right of emigration was one; and free people of color being admitted to citizenship in some of the States, this prohibition of emigration was held to be a violation of that privilege in their persons. But the real point of objection was the slavery clause, and the existence of slavery in the State, which it sanctioned, and seemed to perpetuate. The constitution of the State, and her application for admission, was presented by her late delegate and representative elect, Mr. John Scott; and on his motion, was referred to a select committee. Mr. Lowndes, of South Carolina, Mr. John Sergeant, of Pennsylvania, and General Samuel Smith, of Maryland, were appointed the committee; and the majority being from slave States, a resolution was quickly reported in favor of the admission of the State. But the majority of the House being the other way, the resolution was rejected, 79 to 83--and by a clear slavery and anti-slavery vote, the exceptions being but three, and they on the side of admission, and contrary to the sentiment of their own State. They were Mr. Henry Shaw, of Massachusetts, and General Bloomfield and Mr. Bernard Smith, of New-Jersey. In the Senate, the application of the State shared a similar fate. The constitution was referred to a committee of three, Messrs. Judge William Smith, of South Carolina, Mr. James Burrill, of Rhode Island, and Mr. Macon, of North Carolina, a majority of whom being from slave States, a resolution of admission was reported, and passed the Senate--Messrs. Chandler and Holmes, of Maine, voting with the friends of admission; but was rejected in the House of Representatives. A second resolution to the same effect passed the Senate, and was again rejected in the House. A motion was then made in the House by Mr. Clay to raise a committee to act jointly with any committee which might be appointed by the Senate, "to consider and report to the Senate and the House respectively, whether it be expedient or not, to make provision for the admission of Missouri into the Union on the same footing as the original States, and for the due execution of the laws of the United States within Missouri? and if not, whether any other, and what provision adapted to her actual condition ought to be made by law." This motion was adopted by a majority of nearly two to one--101 to 55--which shows a large vote in its favor from the non-slaveholding States. Twenty-three, being a number equal to the number of the States, were then appointed on the part of the House, and were: Messrs. Clay, Thomas W. Cobb, of Georgia; Mark Langdon Hill, of Massachusetts; Philip P. Barbour, of Virginia; Henry R. Storrs, of New-York; John Cocke, of Tennessee; Christopher Rankin, of Mississippi; William S. Archer, of Virginia; William Brown, of Kentucky; Samuel Eddy, from Rhode Island; William D. Ford, of New-York; William Culbreth, Aaron Hackley, of New-York; Samuel Moore, of Pennsylvania; James Stevens, of Connecticut; Thomas J. Rogers, from Pennsylvania; Henry Southard, of New-Jersey; John Randolph; James S. Smith, of North Carolina; William Darlington, of Pennsylvania; Nathaniel Pitcher, of New-York; John Sloan, of Ohio, and Henry Baldwin, of Pennsylvania. The Senate by a vote almost unanimous--29 to 7--agreed to the joint committee proposed by the House of Representatives; and Messrs. John Holmes, of Maine; James Barbour, of Virginia; Jonathan Roberts, of Pennsylvania; David L. Morril, of New-Hampshire; Samuel L. Southard, of New-Jersey; Colonel Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky; and Rufus King, of New-York, to be a committee on its part. The joint committee acted, and soon reported a resolution in favor of the admission of the State, upon the condition that her legislature should first declare that the clause in her constitution relative to the free colored emigration into the State, should never be construed to authorize the passage of any act by which any citizen of either of the States of the Union should be excluded from the enjoyment of any privilege to which he may be entitled under the constitution of the United States; and the President of the United States being furnished with a copy of said act, should, by proclamation, declare the State to be admitted. This resolution was passed in the House by a close vote--86 to 82--several members from non-slaveholding States voting for it. In the Senate it was passed by two to one--28 to 14; and the required declaration having been soon made by the General Assembly of Missouri, and communicated to the President, his proclamation was issued accordingly, and the State admitted. And thus ended the "Missouri controversy," or that form of the slavery question which undertook to restrict a State from the privilege of having slaves if she chose. The question itself, under other forms, has survived, and still survives, but not under the formidable aspect which it wore during that controversy, when it divided Congress geographically, and upon the slave line. The real struggle was political, and for the balance of power, as frankly declared by Mr. Rufus King, who disdained dissimulation; and in that struggle the non-slaveholding States, though defeated in the State of Missouri, were successful in producing the "compromise," conceived and passed as a Southern measure. The resistance made to the admission of the State on account of the clause in relation to free people of color, was only a mask to the real cause of opposition, and has since shown to be so by the facility with which many States, then voting in a body against the admission of Missouri on that account, now exclude the whole class of the free colored emigrant population from their borders, and without question, by statute, or by constitutional amendment. For a while this formidable Missouri question threatened the total overthrow of all political parties upon principle, and the substitution of geographical parties discriminated by the slave line, and of course destroying the just and proper action of the federal government, and leading eventually to a separation of the States. It was a federal movement, accruing to the benefit of that party, and at first was overwhelming, sweeping all the Northern democracy into its current, and giving the supremacy to their adversaries. When this effect was perceived the Northern democracy became alarmed, and only wanted a turn or abatement in the popular feeling at home, to take the first opportunity to get rid of the question by admitting the State, and re-establishing party lines upon the basis of political principle. This was the decided feeling when I arrived at Washington, and many of the old Northern democracy took early opportunities to declare themselves to me to that effect, and showed that they were ready to vote the admission of the State in any form which would answer the purpose, and save themselves from going so far as to lose their own States, and give the ascendant to their political adversaries. In the Senate, Messrs. Lowrie and Roberts, from Pennsylvania; Messrs. Morril and Parrott, from New-Hampshire; Messrs. Chandler and Holmes, from Maine; Mr. William Hunter, from Rhode Island; and Mr. Southard, from New-Jersey, were of that class; and I cannot refrain from classing with them Messrs. Horsey and Vandyke, from Delaware, which, though counted as a slave State, yet from its isolated and salient position, and small number of slaves, seems more justly to belong to the other side. In the House the vote of nearly two to one in favor of Mr. Clay's resolution for a joint committee, and his being allowed to make out his own list of the House committee (for it was well known that he drew up the list of names himself, and distributed it through the House to be voted), sufficiently attest the temper of that body, and showed the determination of the great majority to have the question settled. Mr. Clay has been often complimented as the author of the "compromise" of 1820, in spite of his repeated declaration to the contrary, that measure coming from the Senate; but he is the undisputed author of the final settlement of the Missouri controversy in the actual admission of the State. He had many valuable coadjutors from the North--Baldwin, of Pennsylvania; Storrs and Meigs, of New-York; Shaw, of Massachusetts: and he had also some opponents from the South--members refusing to vote for the "conditional" admission of the State, holding her to be entitled to absolute admission--among them Mr. Randolph. I have been minute in stating this controversy, and its settlement, deeming it advantageous to the public interest that history and posterity should see it in the proper point of view; and that it was a political movement for the balance of power, balked by the Northern democracy, who saw their own overthrow, and the eventual separation of the States, in the establishment of geographical parties divided by a slavery and anti-slavery line.
III. FINANCES.--REDUCTION OF THE ARMY
The distress of the country became that of the government. Small as the government expenditure then was, only about twenty-one millions of dollars (including eleven millions for permanent or incidental objects), it was still too great for the revenues of the government at this disastrous period. Reductions of expense, and loans, became the resort, and economy--that virtuous policy in all times--became the obligatory and the forced policy of this time. The small regular army was the first, and the largest object on which the reduction fell. Small as it was, it was reduced nearly one-half--from 10,000 to 6,000 men. The navy felt it next--the annual appropriation of one million for its increase being reduced to half a million. The construction and armament of fortifications underwent the like process. Reductions of expense took place at many other points, and even the abolition of a clerkship of $800 in the office of the Attorney General, was not deemed an object below the economical attention of Congress. After all a loan became indispensable, and the President was authorized to borrow five millions of dollars. The sum of twenty-one millions then to be raised for the service of the government, small as it now appears, was more than double the amount required for the actual expenses of the government--for the actual expense of its administration, or the working its machinery. More than half went to permanent or incidental objects, to wit: principal and interest of the public debt, five and a half millions; gradual increase of the navy, one million; pensions, one and a half millions; fortifications, $800,000; arms, munitions, ordnance, and other small items, about two millions; making in the whole about eleven millions, and leaving for the expense of keeping the machinery of government in operation, about ten millions of dollars; and which was reduced to less than nine millions after the reductions of this year were effected. A sum of one million of dollars, over and above the estimated expenditure of the government, was always deemed necessary to be provided and left in the treasury to meet contingencies--a sum which, though small in itself, was absolutely unnecessary for that purpose, and the necessity for which was founded in the mistaken idea that the government expends every year, within the year, the amount of its income. This is entirely fallacious, and never did and never can take place; for a large portion of the government payments accruing within the latter quarters of any year are not paid until the next year. And so on in every quarter of every year. The sums becoming payable in each quarter being in many instances, and from the nature of the service, only paid in the next quarter, while new revenue is coming in. This process regularly going on always leaves a balance in the treasury at the end of the year, not called for until the beginning of the next year, and when there is a receipt of money to meet the demand, even if there had been no balance in hand. Thus, at the end of the year 1820, one of the greatest depression, and when demands pressed most rapidly upon the treasury, there was a balance of above two millions of dollars in the treasury--to be precise, $2,076,607 14, being one-tenth of the annual revenue. In prosperous years the balance is still larger, sometimes amounting to the fourth, or the fifth of the annual revenue; as may be seen in the successive annual reports of the finances. There is, therefore, no necessity to provide for keeping any balance as a reserve in the treasury, though in later times this provision has been carried up to six millions--a mistake which economy, the science of administration, and the purity of the government, requires to be corrected.
IV. RELIEF OF PUBLIC LAND DEBTORS
Distress was the cry of the day; relief the general demand. State legislatures were occupied in devising measures of local relief; Congress in granting it to national debtors. Among these was the great and prominent class of the public land purchasers. The credit system then prevailed, and the debt to the government had accumulated to twenty-three millions of dollars--a large sum in itself, but enormous when considered in reference to the payors, only a small proportion of the population, and they chiefly the inhabitants of the new States and territories, whose resources were few. Their situation was deplorable. A heavy debt to pay, and lands already partly paid for to be forfeited if full payment was not made. The system was this: the land was sold at a minimum price of two dollars per acre, one payment in hand and the remainder in four annual instalments, with forfeiture of all that had been paid if each successive instalment was not delivered to the day. In the eagerness to procure fresh lands, and stimulated by the delusive prosperity which multitudes of banks created after the war, there was no limit to purchasers except in the ability to make the first payment. That being accomplished, it was left to the future to provide for the remainder. The banks failed; money vanished; instalments were becoming due which could not be met; and the opening of Congress in November, 1820, was saluted by the arrival of memorials from all the new States, showing the distress, and praying relief to the purchasers of the public lands. The President, in his annual message to Congress, deemed it his duty to bring the subject before that body, and in doing so recommended indulgence in consideration of the unfavorable change which had occurred since the sales. Both Houses of Congress took up the subject, and a measure of relief was devised by the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Crawford, which was equally desirable both to the purchaser and the government. The principle of the relief was to change all future sales from the credit to the cash system, and to reduce the minimum price of the lands to one dollar, twenty-five cents per acre, and to give all present debtors the benefit of that system, by allowing them to consolidate payments already made on different tracts on any particular one, relinquishing the rest; and allowing a discount for ready pay on all that had been entered, equal to the difference between the former and present minimum price. This released the purchasers from debt, and the government from the inconvenient relation of creditor to its own citizens. A debt of twenty-three millions of dollars was quietly got rid of; and purchasers were enabled to save lands, at the reduced price, to the amount of their payments already made: and thus saved in all cases their homes and fields, and as much more of their purchases as they were able to pay for at the reduced rate. It was an equitable arrangement of a difficult subject, and lacked but two features to make it perfect; first, a pre-emptive right to all first settlers; and, secondly, a periodical reduction of price according to the length of time the land should have been in market, so as to allow of different prices for different qualities, and to accomplish in a reasonable time the sale of the whole. Applications were made at that time for the establishment of the pre-emptive system; but without effect, and, apparently without the prospect of eventual success. Not even a report of a committee could be got in its favor--nothing more than temporary provisions, as special favors, in particular circumstances. But perseverance was successful. The new States continued to press the question, and finally prevailed; and now the pre-emptive principle has become a fixed part of our land system, permanently incorporated with it, and to the equal advantage of the settler and the government. The settler gets a choice home in a new country, due to his enterprise, courage, hardships and privations in subduing the wilderness: the government gets a body of cultivators whose labor gives value to the surrounding public lands, and whose courage and patriotism volunteers for the public defence whenever it is necessary. The second, or graduation principle, though much pressed, has not yet been established, but its justice and policy are self-evident, and the exertions to procure it should not be intermitted until successful. The passage of this land relief bill was attended by incidents which showed the delicacy of members at that time, in voting on questions in which they might be interested. Many members of Congress were among the public land debtors, and entitled to the relief to be granted. One of their number, Senator William Smith, from South Carolina, brought the point before the Senate on a motion to be excused from voting on account of his interest. The motion to excuse was rejected, on the ground that his interest was general, in common with the country, and not particular, in relation to himself: and that his constituents were entitled to the benefit of his vote.
V. OREGON TERRITORY
The session of 1820-21 is remarkable as being the first at which any proposition was made in Congress for the occupation and settlement of our territory on the Columbia River--the only part then owned by the United States on the Pacific coast. It was made by Dr. Floyd, a representative from Virginia, an ardent man, of great ability, and decision of character, and, from an early residence in Kentucky, strongly imbued with western feelings. He took up this subject with the energy which belonged to him, and it required not only energy, but courage, to embrace a subject which, at that time, seemed more likely to bring ridicule than credit to its advocate. I had written and published some essays on the subject the year before, which he had read. Two gentlemen (Mr. Ramsay Crooks, of New-York, and Mr. Russell Farnham, of Massachusetts), who had been in the employment of Mr. John Jacob Astor in founding his colony of Astoria, and carrying on the fur trade on the northwest coast of America, were at Washington that winter, and had their quarters at the same hotel (Brown's), where Dr. Floyd and I had ours. Their acquaintance was naturally made by Western men like us--in fact, I knew them before; and their conversation, rich in information upon a new and interesting country, was eagerly devoured by the ardent spirit of Floyd. He resolved to bring forward the question of occupation, and did so. He moved for a select committee to consider and report upon the subject. The committee was granted by the House, more through courtesy to a respected member, than with any view to business results. It was a committee of three, himself chairman, according to parliamentary rule, and Thomas Metcalfe, of Kentucky (since Governor of the State), and Thomas V. Swearingen, from Western Virginia, for his associates--both like himself ardent men, and strong in western feeling. They reported a bill within six days after the committee was raised, "to authorize the occupation of the Columbia River, and to regulate trade and intercourse with the Indian tribes thereon," accompanied by an elaborate report, replete with valuable statistics, in support of the measure. The fur trade, the Asiatic trade, and the preservation of our own territory, were the advantages proposed. The bill was treated with the parliamentary courtesy which respect for the committee required: it was read twice, and committed to a committee of the whole House for the next day--most of the members not considering it a serious proceeding. Nothing further was done in the House that session, but the first blow was struck: public attention was awakened, and the geographical, historical, and statistical facts set forth in the report, made a lodgment in the public mind which promised eventual favorable consideration. I had not been admitted to my seat in the Senate at the time, but was soon after, and quickly came to the support of Dr. Floyd's measure (who continued to pursue it with zeal and ability); and at a subsequent session presented some views on the subject which will bear reproduction at this time. The danger of a contest with Great Britain, to whom we had admitted a joint possession, and who had already taken possession, was strongly suggested, if we delayed longer our own occupation; "and a vigorous effort of policy, and perhaps of arms, might be necessary to break her hold." Unauthorized, or individual occupation was intimated as a consequence of government neglect, and what has since taken place was foreshadowed in this sentence: "mere adventurers may enter upon it, as Æneas entered upon the Tiber, and as our forefathers came upon the Potomac, the Delaware and the Hudson, and renew the phenomenon of individuals laying the foundation of a future empire." The effect upon Asia of the arrival of an American population on the coast of the Pacific Ocean was thus exhibited: "Upon the people of Eastern Asia the establishment of a civilized power on the opposite coast of America, could not fail to produce great and wonderful benefits. Science, liberal principles in government, and the true religion, might cast their lights across the intervening sea. The valley of the Columbia might become the granary of China and Japan, and an outlet to their imprisoned and exuberant population. The inhabitants of the oldest and the newest, the most despotic and the freest governments, would become the neighbors, and the friends of each other. To my mind the proposition is clear, that Eastern Asia and the two Americas, as they become neighbors should become friends and I for one had as lief see American ministers going to the emperors of China and Japan, to the king of Persia, and even to the Grand Turk, as to see them dancing attendance upon those European legitimates who hold every thing American in contempt and detestation." Thus I spoke; and this I believe was the first time that a suggestion for sending ministers to the Oriental nations was publicly made in the United States. It was then a "wild" suggestion: it is now history. Besides the preservation of our own territory on the Pacific, the establishment of a port there for the shelter of our commercial and military marine, the protection of the fur trade and aid to the whaling vessels, the accomplishment of Mr. Jefferson's idea of a commercial communication with Asia through the heart of our own continent, was constantly insisted upon as a consequence of planting an American colony at the mouth of the Columbia. That man of large and useful ideas--that statesman who could conceive measures useful to all mankind, and in all time to come--was the first to propose that commercial communication, and may also be considered the first discoverer of the Columbia River. His philosophic mind told him that where a snow-clad mountain, like that of the Rocky Mountains, shed the waters on one side which collected into such a river as the Missouri, there must be a corresponding shedding and collection of waters on the other; and thus he was perfectly assured of the existence of a river where the Columbia has since been found to be, although no navigator had seen its mouth and no explorer trod its banks. His conviction was complete; but the idea was too grand and useful to be permitted to rest in speculation. He was then minister to France, and the famous traveller Ledyard, having arrived at Paris on his expedition of discovery to the Nile, was prevailed upon by Mr. Jefferson to enter upon a fresher and more useful field of discovery. He proposed to him to change his theatre from the Old to the New World, and, proceeding to St. Petersburg upon a passport he would obtain for him, he should there obtain permission from the Empress Catharine to traverse her dominions in a high northern latitude to their eastern extremity--cross the sea from Kamschatka, or at Behring's Straits, and descending the northwest coast of America, come down upon the river which must head opposite the head of the Missouri, ascend it to its source in the Rocky Mountains, and then follow the Missouri to the French settlements on the Upper Mississippi; and thence home. It was a magnificent and a daring project of discovery, and on that account the more captivating to the ardent spirit of Ledyard. He undertook it--went to St. Petersburg--received the permission of the Empress--and had arrived in Siberia when he was overtaken by a revocation of the permission, and conducted as a spy out of the country. He then returned to Paris, and resumed his original design of that exploration of the Nile to its sources which terminated in his premature death, and deprived the world of a young and adventurous explorer, from whose ardour, courage, perseverance and genius, great and useful results were to have been expected. Mr. Jefferson was balked in that, his first attempt, to establish the existence of the Columbia River. But a time was coming for him to undertake it under better auspices. He became President of the United States, and in that character projected the expedition of Lewis and Clark, obtained the sanction of Congress, and sent them forth to discover the head and course of the river (whose mouth was then known), for the double purpose of opening an inland commercial communication with Asia, and enlarging the boundaries of geographical science. The commercial object was placed first in his message, and as the object to legitimate the expedition. And thus Mr. Jefferson was the first to propose the North American road to India, and the introduction of Asiatic trade on that road; and all that I myself have either said or written on that subject from the year 1819, when I first took it up, down to the present day when I still contend for it, is nothing but the fruit of the seed planted in my mind by the philosophic hand of Mr. Jefferson. Honor to all those who shall assist in accomplishing his great idea.
VI. FLORIDA TREATY AND CESSION OF TEXAS
I was a member of the bar at St. Louis, in the then territory of Missouri, in the year 1818, when the Washington City newspapers made known the progress of that treaty with Spain, which was signed on the 22d day of February following, and which, in acquiring Florida, gave away Texas. I was shocked at it--at the cession of Texas, and the new boundaries proposed for the United States on the southwest. The acquisition of Florida was a desirable object, long sought, and sure to be obtained in the progress of events; but the new boundaries, besides cutting off Texas, dismembered the valley of the Mississippi, mutilated two of its noblest rivers, brought a foreign dominion (and it non-slave-holding), to the neighborhood of New Orleans, and established a wilderness barrier between Missouri and New Mexico--to interrupt their trade, separate their inhabitants, and shelter the wild Indian depredators upon the lives and property of all who undertook to pass from one to the other. I was not then in politics, and had nothing to do with political affairs; but I saw at once the whole evil of this great sacrifice, and instantly raised my voice against it in articles published in the St. Louis newspapers, and in which were given, in advance, all the national reasons against giving away the country, which were afterwards, and by so many tongues, and at the expense of war and a hundred millions, given to get it back. I denounced the treaty, and attacked its authors and their motives, and imprecated a woe on the heads of those who should continue to favor it. "The magnificent valley of the Mississippi is ours, with all its fountains, springs and floods; and woe to the statesman who shall undertake to surrender one drop of its water, one inch of its soil, to any foreign power." In these terms I spoke, and in this spirit I wrote, before the treaty was even ratified. Mr. John Quincy Adams, the Secretary of State, negotiator and ostensible author of the treaty, was the statesman against whom my censure was directed, and I was certainly sincere in my belief of his great culpability. But the declaration which he afterwards made on the floor of the House, absolved him from censure on account of that treaty, and placed the blame on the majority in Mr. Monroe's cabinet, southern men, by whose vote he had been governed in ceding Texas and fixing the boundary which I so much condemned. After this authoritative declaration, I made, in my place in the Senate, the honorable amends to Mr. Adams, which was equally due to him and to myself. The treaty was signed on the anniversary of the birth-day of Washington, and sent to the Senate the same day, and unanimously ratified on the next day, with the general approbation of the country, and the warm applause of the newspaper press. This unanimity of the Senate, and applause of the press, made no impression upon me. I continued to assail the treaty and its authors, and the more bitterly, because the official correspondence, when published, showed that this great sacrifice of territory, rivers, and proper boundaries, was all gratuitous and voluntary on our part--"that the Spanish government had offered us more than we accepted;" and that it was our policy, and not hers, which had deprived us of Texas and the large country, in addition to Texas, which lay between the Red River and Upper Arkansas. This was an enigma, the solution of which, in my mind, strongly connected itself with the Missouri controversy then raging (1819) with its greatest violence, threatening existing political parties with subversion, and the Union with dissolution. My mind went there--to that controversy--for the solution, but with a misdirection of its application. I blamed the northern men in Mr. Monroe's cabinet: the private papers of General Jackson, which have come to my hands, enable me to correct that error, and give me an inside view of that which I could only see on the outside before. In a private letter from Mr. Monroe to General Jackson, dated at Washington, May 22d, 1820--more than one year after the negotiation of the treaty, written to justify it, and evidently called out by Mr. Clay's attack upon it--are these passages: "Having long known the repugnance with which the eastern portion of our Union, or rather some of those who have enjoyed its confidence (for I do not think that the people themselves have any interest or wish of that kind), have seen its aggrandizement to the West and South, I have been decidedly of opinion that we ought to be content with Florida for the present, and until the public opinion in that quarter shall be reconciled to any further change. I mention these circumstances to show you that our difficulties are not with Spain alone, but are likewise internal, proceeding from various causes, which certain men are prompt to seize and turn to the account of their own ambitious views." This paragraph from Mr. Monroe's letter lifts the curtain which concealed the secret reason for ceding Texas--that secret which explains what was incomprehensible--our having refused to accept as much as Spain had offered. Internal difficulties, it was thus shown, had induced that refusal; and these difficulties grew out of the repugnance of leading men in the northeast to see the further aggrandizement of the Union upon the South and West. This repugnance was then taking an operative form in the shape of the Missouri controversy; and, as an immediate consequence, threatened the subversion of political party lines, and the introduction of the slavery question into the federal elections and legislation, and bringing into the highest of those elections--those of President and Vice-President--a test which no southern candidate could stand. The repugnance in the northeast was not merely to territorial aggrandizement in the southwest, but to the consequent extension of slavery in that quarter; and to allay that repugnance, and to prevent the slavery extension question from becoming a test in the presidential election, was the true reason for giving away Texas, and the true solution of the enigma involved in the strange refusal to accept as much as Spain offered. The treaty was disapproved by Mr. Jefferson, to whom a similar letter was written to that sent to General Jackson, and for the same purpose--to obtain his approbation; but he who had acquired Louisiana, and justly gloried in the act, could not bear to see that noble province mutilated, and returned his dissent to the act, and his condemnation of the policy on which it was done. General Jackson had yielded to the arguments of Mr. Monroe, and consented to the cession of Texas as a temporary measure. The words of his answer to Mr. Monroe's letter were: "I am clearly of your opinion, that, for the present, we ought to be contented with the Floridas." But Mr. Jefferson would yield to no temporary views of policy, and remained inflexibly opposed to the treaty; and in this he was consistent with his own conduct in similar circumstances. Sixteen years before, he had been in the same circumstances--at the time of the acquisition of Louisiana--when he had the same repugnance to southwestern aggrandizement to contend with, and the same bait (Florida) to tempt him. Then eastern men raised the same objections; and as early as August 1803--only four months after the purchase of Louisiana--he wrote to Dr. Breckenridge: "Objections are raising to the eastward to the vast extent of our boundaries, and propositions are made to exchange Louisiana, or a part of it, for the Floridas; but as I have said, we shall get the Floridas without; and I would not give one inch of the waters of the Mississippi to any foreign nation." So that Mr. Jefferson, neither in 1803 nor in 1819, would have mutilated Louisiana to obtain the cession of Florida, which he knew would be obtained without that mutilation; nor would he have yielded to the threatening discontent in the east. I have a gratification that, without knowing it, and at a thousand miles from him, I took the same ground that Mr. Jefferson stood on, and even used his own words: "Not an inch of the waters of the Mississippi to any nation." But I was mortified at the time, that not a paper in the United States backed my essays. It was my first experience in standing "solitary and alone;" but I stood it without flinching, and even incurred the imputation of being opposed to the administration--had to encounter that objection in my first election to the Senate, and was even viewed as an opponent by Mr. Monroe himself, when I first came to Washington. He had reason to know before his office expired, and still more after it expired, that no one (of the young generation) had a more exalted opinion of his honesty, patriotism, firmness and general soundness of judgment; or would be more ready, whenever the occasion permitted, to do justice to his long and illustrious career of public service. The treaty, as I have said, was promptly and unanimously ratified by the American Senate; not so on the part of Spain. She hesitated, delayed, procrastinated; and finally suffered the time limited for the exchange of ratifications to expire, with out having gone through that indispensable formality. Of course this put an end to the treaty, unless it could be revived; and, thereupon, new negotiations and vehement expostulations against the conduct which refused to ratify a treaty negotiated upon full powers and in conformity to instructions. It was in the course of this renewed negotiation, and of these warm expostulations, that Mr. Adams used the strong expressions to the Spanish ministry, so enigmatical at the time, "That Spain had offered more than we accepted, and that she dare not deny it." Finally, after the lapse of a year or so, the treaty was ratified by Spain. In the mean time Mr. Clay had made a movement against it in the House of Representatives, unsuccessful, of course, but exciting some sensation, both for the reasons he gave and the vote of some thirty-odd members who concurred with him. This movement very certainly induced the letters of Mr. Monroe to General Jackson and Mr. Jefferson, as they were contemporaneous (May, 1820), and also some expressions in the letter to General Jackson, which evidently referred to Mr. Clay's movement. The ratification of Spain was given October, 1820, and being after the time limited, it became necessary to submit it again to the American Senate, which was done at the session of 1820-21. It was ratified again, and almost unanimously, but not quite, four votes being given against it, and all by western senators, namely: Colonel Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky; Colonel John Williams, of Tennessee; Mr. James Brown, of Louisiana, and Colonel Trimble, of Ohio. I was then in Washington, and a senator elect, though not yet entitled to a seat, in consequence of the delayed admission of the new State of Missouri into the Union, and so had no opportunity to record my vote against the treaty. But the progress of events soon gave me an opportunity to manifest my opposition, and to appear in the parliamentary history as an enemy to it. The case was this: While the treaty was still encountering Spanish procrastination in the delay of exchanging ratifications, Mexico (to which the amputated part of Louisiana and the whole of Texas was to be attached), itself ceased to belong to Spain. She established her independence, repulsed all Spanish authority, and remained at war with the mother country. The law for giving effect to the treaty by providing for commissioners to run and mark the new boundary, had not been passed at the time of the ratification of the treaty; it came up after I took my seat, and was opposed by me. I opposed it, not only upon the grounds of original objections to the treaty, but on the further and obvious ground, that the revolution in Mexico--her actual independence--had superseded the Spanish treaty in the whole article of the boundaries, and that it was with Mexico herself that we should now settle them. The act was passed, however, by a sweeping majority, the administration being for it, and senators holding themselves committed by previous votes; but the progress of events soon justified my opposition to it. The country being in possession of Mexico, and she at war with Spain, no Spanish commissioners could go there to join ours in executing it; and so the act remained a dead letter upon the statute-book. Its futility was afterwards acknowledged by our government, and the misstep corrected by establishing the boundary with Mexico herself. This was done by treaty in the year 1828, adopting the boundaries previously agreed upon with Spain, and consequently amputating our rivers (the Red and the Arkansas), and dismembering the valley of the Mississippi, to the same extent as was done by the Spanish treaty of 1819. I opposed the ratification of the treaty with Mexico for the same reason that I opposed its original with Spain, but without success. Only two senators voted with me, namely, Judge William Smith, of South Carolina, and Mr. Powhatan Ellis, of Mississippi. Thus I saw this treaty, which repulsed Texas, and dismembered the valley of the Mississippi--which placed a foreign dominion on the upper halves of the Red River and the Arkansas--placed a foreign power and a wilderness between Missouri and New Mexico, and which brought a non-slaveholding empire to the boundary line of the State of Louisiana, and almost to the southwest corner of Missouri--saw this treaty three times ratified by the American Senate, as good as unanimously every time, and with the hearty concurrence of the American press. Yet I remained in the Senate to see, within a few years, a political tempest sweeping the land and overturning all that stood before it, to get back this very country which this treaty had given away; and menacing the Union itself with dissolution, if it was not immediately done, and without regard to consequences. But of this hereafter. The point to be now noted of this treaty of 1819, is, that it completed, very nearly, the extinction of slave territory within the limits of the United States, and that it was the work of southern men, with the sanction of the South. It extinguished or cut off the slave territory beyond the Mississippi, below 36 degrees, 30 minutes, all except the diagram in Arkansas, which was soon to become a State. The Missouri compromise line had interdicted slavery in all the vast expanse of Louisiana north of 36 degrees, 30 minutes; this treaty gave away, first to Spain, and then to Mexico, nearly all the slave territory south of that line; and what little was left by the Spanish treaty was assigned in perpetuity by laws and by treaties to different Indian tribes. These treaties (Indian and Spanish), together with the Missouri compromise line--a measure contemporaneous with the treaty--extinguished slave soil in all the United States territory west of the Mississippi, except in the diagram which was to constitute the State of Arkansas; and, including the extinction in Texas consequent upon its cession to a non-slaveholding power, constituted the largest territorial abolition of slavery that was ever effected by the political power of any nation. The ordinance of 1787 had previously extinguished slavery in all the northwest territory--all the country east of the Mississippi, above the Ohio, and out to the great lakes; so that, at this moment--era of the second election of Mr. Monroe--slave soil, except in Arkansas and Florida, was extinct in the territory of the United States. The growth of slave States (except of Arkansas and Florida) was stopped; the increase of free States was permitted in all the vast expanse from Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, and to Oregon; and there was not a ripple of discontent visible on the surface of the public mind at this mighty transformation of slave into free territory. No talk then about dissolving the Union, if every citizen was not allowed to go with all his "property," that is, all his slaves, to all the territory acquired by the "common blood and treasure" of all the Union. But this belongs to the chapter of 1844, whereof I have the material to write the true and secret history, and hope to use it with fairness, with justice, and with moderation. The outside view of the slave question in the United States at this time, which any chronicler can write, is, that the extension of slavery was then arrested, circumscribed, and confined within narrow territorial limits, while free States were permitted an almost unlimited expansion. That is the outside view; the inside is, that all this was the work of southern men, candidates for the presidency, some in abeyance, some in præsenti; and all yielding to that repugnance to territorial aggrandizement, and slavery extension in the southwest, which Mr. Monroe mentioned in his letter to General Jackson as the "internal difficulty" which occasioned the cession of Texas to Spain. This chapter is a point in the history of the times which will require to be understood by all who wish to understand and appreciate the events and actors of twenty years later.
VII. DEATH OF MR. LOWNDES
I had but a slight acquaintance with Mr. Lowndes. He resigned his place on account of declining health soon after I came into Congress; but all that I saw of him confirmed the impression of the exalted character which the public voice had ascribed to him. Virtue, modesty, benevolence, patriotism were the qualities of his heart; a sound judgment, a mild persuasive elocution were the attributes of his mind; his manners gentle, natural, cordial, and inexpressibly engaging. He was one of the galaxy, as it was well called, of the brilliant young men which South Carolina sent to the House of Representatives at the beginning of the war of 1812--Calhoun, Cheves, Lowndes;--and was soon the brightest star in that constellation. He was one of those members, rare in all assemblies, who, when he spoke, had a cluster around him, not of friends, but of the House--members quitting their distant seats, and gathering up close about him, and showing by their attention, that each one would feel it a personal loss to have missed a word that he said. It was the attention of affectionate confidence. He imparted to others the harmony of his own feelings, and was the moderator as well as the leader of the House and was followed by its sentiment in all cases in which inexorable party feeling, or some powerful interest, did not rule the action of the members; and even then he was courteously and deferentially treated. It was so the only time I ever heard him speak--session of 1820-21--and on the inflammable subject of the admission of the State of Missouri--a question on which the inflamed passions left no room for the influence of reason and judgment, and in which the members voted by a geographical line. Mr. Lowndes was of the democratic school, and strongly indicated for an early elevation to the presidency--indicated by the public will and judgment, and not by any machinery or individual or party management--from the approach of which he shrunk, as from the touch of contamination. He was nominated by the legislature of his native State for the election of 1824; but died before the event came round. It was he who expressed that sentiment, so just and beautiful in itself, and so becoming in him because in him it was true, "That the presidency was an office neither to be sought, nor declined." He died at the age of forty-two; and his death at that early age, and in the impending circumstances of the country, was felt by those who knew him as a public and national calamity. I do not write biographies, but note the death and character of some eminent deceased contemporaries, whose fame belongs to the country, and goes to make up its own title to the respect of the world.
VIII. DEATH OF WILLIAM PINKNEY
He died at Washington during the session of the Congress of which he was a member, and of the Supreme Court of which he was a practitioner. He fell like the warrior, in the plenitude of his strength, and on the field of his fame--under the double labors of the Supreme Court and of the Senate, and under the immense concentration of thought which he gave to the preparation of his speeches. He was considered in his day the first of American orators, but will hardly keep that place with posterity, because he spoke more to the hearer than to the reader--to the present than to the absent--and avoided the careful publication of his own speeches. He labored them hard, but it was for the effect of their delivery, and the triumph of present victory. He loved the admiration of the crowded gallery--the trumpet-tongued fame which went forth from the forum--the victory which crowned the effort; but avoided the publication of what was received with so much applause, giving as a reason that the published speech would not sustain the renown of the delivered one. His forte as a speaker lay in his judgment, his logic, his power of argument; but, like many other men of acknowledged pre-eminence in some great gift of nature, and who are still ambitious of some inferior gift, he courted his imagination too much, and laid too much stress upon action and delivery--so potent upon the small circle of actual hearers, but so lost upon the national audience which the press now gives to a great speaker. In other respects Mr. Pinkney was truly a great orator, rich in his material, strong in his argument--clear, natural and regular in the exposition of his subject, comprehensive in his views, and chaste in his diction. His speeches, both senatorial and forensic, were fully studied and laboriously prepared--all the argumentative parts carefully digested under appropriate heads, and the showy passages often fully written out and committed to memory. He would not speak at all except upon preparation; and at sexagenarian age--that at which I knew him--was a model of study and of labor to all young men. His last speech in the Senate was in reply to Mr. Rufus King, on the Missouri question, and was the master effort of his life. The subject, the place, the audience, the antagonist, were all such as to excite him to the utmost exertion. The subject was a national controversy convulsing the Union and menacing it with dissolution; the place was the American Senate; the audience was Europe and America; the antagonist was PRINCEPS SENATUS, illustrious for thirty years of diplomatic and senatorial service, and for great dignity of life and character. He had ample time for preparation, and availed himself of it. Mr. King had spoken the session before, and published the "Substance" of his speeches (for there were two of them), after the adjournment of Congress. They were the signal guns for the Missouri controversy. It was to these published speeches that Mr. Pinkney replied, and with the interval between two sessions to prepare. It was a dazzling and overpowering reply, with the prestige of having the union and the harmony of the States for its object, and crowded with rich material. The most brilliant part of it was a highly-wrought and splendid amplification (with illustrations from Greek and Roman history), of that passage in Mr. Burke's speech upon "Conciliation with the Colonies," in which, and in looking to the elements of American resistance to British power, he looks to the spirit of the slaveholding colonies as a main ingredient, and attributes to the masters of slaves, who are not themselves slaves, the highest love of liberty and the most difficult task of subjection. It was the most gorgeous speech ever delivered in the Senate, and the most applauded; but it was only a magnificent exhibition, as Mr. Pinkney knew, and could not sustain in the reading the plaudits it received in delivery; and therefore he avoided its publication. He gave but little attention to the current business of the Senate, only appearing in his place when the "Salaminian galley was to be launched," or some special occasion called him--giving his time and labor to the bar, where his pride and glory was. He had previously served in the House of Representatives, and his first speech there was attended by an incident illustrative of Mr. Randolph's talent for delicate intimation, and his punctilious sense of parliamentary etiquette. Mr. Pinkney came into the House with a national reputation, in the fulness of his fame, and exciting a great expectation--which he was obliged to fulfil. He spoke on the treaty-making power--a question of diplomatic and constitutional law; and he having been minister to half the courts of Europe, attorney general of the United States, and a jurist by profession, could only speak upon it in one way--as a great master of the subject; and, consequently, appeared as if instructing the House. Mr. Randolph--a veteran of twenty years' parliamentary service--thought a new member should serve a little apprenticeship before he became an instructor, and wished to signify that to Mr. Pinkney. He had a gift, such as man never had, at a delicate intimation where he desired to give a hint, without offence; and he displayed it on this occasion. He replied to Mr. Pinkney, referring to him by the parliamentary designation of "the member from Maryland;" and then pausing, as if not certain, added, "I believe he is from Maryland." This implied doubt as to where he came from, and consequently as to who he was, amused Mr. Pinkney, who understood it perfectly, and taking it right, went over to Mr. Randolph's seat, introduced himself, and assured him that he was "from Maryland." They became close friends for ever after; and it was Mr. Randolph who first made known his death in the House of Representatives, interrupting for that purpose an angry debate, then raging, with a beautiful and apt quotation from the quarrel of Adam and Eve at their expulsion from paradise. The published debates give this account of it: "Mr. Randolph rose to announce to the House an event which he hoped would put an end, at least for this day, to all further jar or collision, here or elsewhere, among the members of this body. Yes, for this one day, at least, let us say, as our first mother said to our first father--
'While yet we live, scarce one short hour perhaps, Between us two let there be peace.'
"I rise to announce to the House the not unlooked for death of a man who filled the first place in the public estimation, in the first profession in that estimation, in this or in any other country. We have been talking of General Jackson, and a greater than him is, not here, but gone for ever. I allude, sir, to the boast of Maryland, and the pride of the United States--the pride of all of us, but more particularly the pride and ornament of the profession of which you, Mr. Speaker (Mr. Philip P. Barbour), are a member, and an eminent one."
Mr. Pinkney was kind and affable in his temper, free from every taint of envy or jealousy, conscious of his powers, and relying upon them alone for success. He was a model, as I have already said, and it will bear repetition, to all young men in his habits of study and application, and at more than sixty years of age was still a severe student. In politics he classed democratically, and was one of the few of our eminent public men who never seemed to think of the presidency. Oratory was his glory, the law his profession, the bar his theatre; and his service in Congress was only a brief episode, dazzling each House, for he was a momentary member of each, with a single and splendid speech.
IX. ABOLITION OF THE INDIAN FACTORY SYSTEM
The experience of the Indian factory system, is an illustration of the unfitness of the federal government to carry on any system of trade, the liability of the benevolent designs of the government to be abused, and the difficulty of detecting and redressing abuses in the management of our Indian affairs. This system originated in the year 1796, under the recommendation of President Washington, and was intended to counteract the influence of the British traders, then allowed to trade with the Indians of the United States within our limits; also to protect the Indians from impositions from our own traders, and for that purpose to sell them goods at cost and carriage, and receive their furs and peltries at fair and liberal prices; and which being sold on account of the United States, would defray the expenses of the establishment, and preserve the capital undiminished--to be returned to the treasury at the end of the experiment. The goods were purchased at the expense of the United States--the superintendent and factors were paid out of the treasury, and the whole system was to be one of favor and benevolence to the Indians, guarded by the usual amount of bonds and oaths prescribed by custom in such cases. Being an experiment, it was first established by a temporary act, limited to two years--the usual way in which equivocal measures get a foothold in legislation. It was soon suspected that this system did not work as disinterestedly as had been expected--that it was of no benefit to the Indians--no counteraction to British traders--an injury to our own fur trade--and a loss to the United States; and many attempts were made to get rid of it, but in vain. It was kept up by continued temporary renewals for a quarter of a century--from 1796 to 1822--the name of Washington being always invoked to continue abuses which he would have been the first to repress and punish. As a citizen of a frontier State, I had seen the working of the system--seen its inside working, and knew its operation to be entirely contrary to the benevolent designs of its projectors. I communicated all this, soon after my admission to a seat in the Senate, to Mr. Calhoun, the Secretary at War, to whose department the supervision of this branch of service belonged, and proposed to him the abolition of the system; but he had too good an opinion of the superintendent (then Mr. Thomas L. McKinney), to believe that any thing was wrong in the business, and refused his countenance to my proposition. Confident that I was right, I determined to bring the question before the Senate--did so--brought in a bill to abolish the factories, and throw open the fur trade to individual enterprise, and supported the bill with all the facts and reasons of which I was master. The bill was carried through both Houses, and became a law; but not without the strenuous opposition which the attack of every abuse for ever encounters--not that any member favored the abuse, but that those interested in it were vigilant and active, visiting the members who would permit such visits, furnishing them with adverse statements, lauding the operation of the system, and constantly lugging in the name of Washington as its author. When the system was closed up, and the inside of it seen, and the balance struck, it was found how true all the representations were which had been made against it. The Indians had been imposed upon in the quality and prices of the goods sold them; a general trade had been carried on with the whites as well as with the Indians; large per centums had been charged upon every thing sold; and the total capital of three hundred thousand dollars was lost and gone. It was a loss which, at that time (1822), was considered large, but now (1850) would be considered small; but its history still has its uses, in showing how differently from its theory a well intended act may operate--how long the Indians and the government may be cheated without knowing it--and how difficult it is to get a bad law discontinued (where there is an interest in keeping it up), even though first adopted as a temporary measure, and as a mere experiment. It cost me a strenuous exertion--much labor in collecting facts, and much speaking in laying them before the Senate--to get this two years' law discontinued, after twenty-five years of injurious operation and costly experience. Of all the branches of our service, that of the Indian affairs is most liable to abuse, and its abuses the most difficult of detection.
X. INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT
The Presidential election of 1824 was approaching, the candidates in the field, their respective friends active and busy, and popular topics for the canvass in earnest requisition. The New-York canal had just been completed, and had brought great popularity to its principal advocate (De Witt Clinton), and excited a great appetite in public men for that kind of fame. Roads and canals--meaning common turnpike, for the steam car had not then been invented, nor McAdam impressed his name on the new class of roads which afterwards wore it--were all the vogue; and the candidates for the Presidency spread their sails upon the ocean of internal improvements. Congress was full of projects for different objects of improvement, and the friends of each candidate exerted themselves in rivalry of each other, under the supposition that their opinions would stand for those of their principals. Mr. Adams, Mr. Clay, and Mr. Calhoun, were the avowed advocates of the measure, going thoroughly for a general national system of internal improvement: Mr. Crawford and General Jackson, under limitations and qualifications. The Cumberland road, and the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, were the two prominent objects discussed; but the design extended to a general system, and an act was finally passed, intended to be annual and permanent, to appropriate $30,000 to make surveys of national routes. Mr. Monroe signed this bill as being merely for the collection of information, but the subject drew from him the most elaborate and thoroughly considered opinion upon the general question which has ever been delivered by any of our statesmen. It was drawn out by the passage of an act to provide for the preservation and repair of the Cumberland road, and was returned by him to the House in which it originated, with his objections, accompanied by a state paper, in exposition of his opinions upon the whole subject; for the whole subject was properly before him. The act which he had to consider, though modestly entitled for the "preservation" and "repair" of the Cumberland road, yet, in its mode of accomplishing that purpose, assumed the whole of the powers which were necessary to the execution of a general system. It passed with singular unanimity through both Houses, in the Senate, only seven votes against it, of which I afterwards felt proud to have been one. He denied the power; but before examining the arguments for and against it, very properly laid down the amount and variety of jurisdiction and authority which it would require the federal government to exercise within the States, in order to execute a system, and that in each and every part--in every mile of each and every canal road--it should undertake to construct. He began with acquiring the right of way, and pursued it to its results in the construction and preservation of the work, involving jurisdiction, ownership, penal laws, and administration. Commissioners, he said, must first be appointed to trace a route, and to acquire a right to the ground over which the road or canal was to pass, with a sufficient breadth for each. The ground could only be acquired by voluntary grants from individuals, or by purchases, or by condemnation of the property, and fixing its value through a jury of the vicinage, if they refused to give or sell, or demanded an exorbitant price. After all this was done, then came the repairs, the care of which was to be of perpetual duration, and of a kind to provide against criminal and wilful injuries, as well as against the damages of accident, and deterioration from time and use. There are persons in every community capable of committing voluntary injuries, of pulling down walls that are made to sustain the road; of breaking the bridges over water-courses, and breaking the road itself. Some living near it might be disappointed that it did not pass through their lands, and commit these acts of violence and waste from revenge. To prevent these crimes Congress must have a power to pass laws to punish the offenders, wherever they may be found. Jurisdiction over the road would not be sufficient, though it were exclusive. There must be power to follow the offenders wherever they might go. It would seldom happen that the parties would be detected in the act. They would generally commit it in the night, and fly far off before the sun appeared. Right of pursuit must attach, or the power of punishing become nugatory. Tribunals, State or federal, must be invested with power to execute the law. Wilful injuries would require all this assumption of power, and machinery of administration, to punish and prevent them. Repair of natural deteriorations would require the application of a different remedy. Toll gates, and persons to collect the tolls, were the usual resort for repairing this class of injuries, and keeping the road in order. Congress must have power to make such an establishment, and to enact a code of regulations for it, with fines and penalties, and agents to execute it. To all these exercises of authority the question of the constitutionality of the law may be raised by the prosecuted party. But opposition might not stop with individuals. States might contest the right of the federal government thus to possess and to manage all the great roads and canals within their limits; and then a collision would be brought on between two governments, each claiming to be sovereign and independent in its actions over the subject in dispute.
Thus did Mr. Monroe state the question in its practical bearings, traced to their legitimate results, and the various assumptions of power, and difficulties with States or individuals which they involved; and the bare statement which he made--the bare presentation of the practical working of the system, constituted a complete argument against it, as an invasion of State rights, and therefore unconstitutional, and, he might have added, as complex and unmanageable by the federal government, and therefore inexpedient. But, after stating the question, he examined it under every head of constitutional derivation under which its advocates claimed the power, and found it to be granted by no one of them, and virtually prohibited by some of them. These were, first, the right to establish post-offices and post-roads; second, to declare war; third, to regulate commerce among the States; fourth, the power to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; fifth, to make all laws necessary and proper to carry into effect the granted (enumerated) powers; sixth, from the power to dispose of, and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property of the United States. Upon this long enumeration of these claimed sources of power, Mr. Monroe well remarked that their very multiplicity was an argument against them, and that each one was repudiated by some of the advocates for each of the others: that these advocates could not agree among themselves upon any one single source of the power; and that it was sought for from place to place, with an assiduity which proclaimed its non-existence any where. Still he examined each head of derivation in its order, and effectually disposed of each in its turn. 1. The post-office and post-road grant. The word "establish" was the ruling term: roads and offices were the subjects on which it was to act. And how? Ask any number of enlightened citizens, who had no connection with public affairs, and whose minds were unprejudiced, what was the meaning of the word "establish," and the extent of the grant it controls, and there would not be a difference of opinion among them. They would answer that it was a power given to Congress to legalize existing roads as post routes, and existing places as post-offices--to fix on the towns, court-houses, and other places throughout the Union, at which there should be post-offices; the routes by which the mails should be carried; to fix the postages to be paid; and to protect the post-offices and mails from robbery, by punishing those who commit the offence. The idea of a right to lay off roads to take the soil from the proprietor against his will; to establish turnpikes and tolls; to establish a criminal code for the punishment of injuries to the road; to do what the protection and repair of a road requires: these are things which would never enter into his head. The use of the existing road would be all that would be thought of; the jurisdiction and soil remaining in the State, or in those authorized by its legislature to change the road at pleasure.
2. The war power. Mr. Monroe shows the object of this grant of power to the federal government--the terms of the grant itself--its incidents as enumerated in the constitution--the exclusion of constructive incidents--and the pervading interference with the soil and jurisdiction of the States which the assumption of the internal improvement power by Congress would carry along with it. He recites the grant of the power to make war, as given to Congress, and prohibited to the States, and enumerates the incidents granted along with it, and necessary to carrying on war: which are, to raise money by taxes, duties, excises, and by loans; to raise and support armies and a navy; to provide for calling out, arming, disciplining, and governing the militia, when in the service of the United States; establishing fortifications, and to exercise exclusive jurisdiction over the places granted by the State legislatures for the sites of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings. And having shown this enumeration of incidents, he very naturally concludes that it is an exclusion of constructive incidents, and especially of one so great in itself, and so much interfering with the soil and jurisdiction of the States, as the federal exercise of the road-making power would be. He exhibits the enormity of this interference by a view of the extensive field over which it would operate. The United States are exposed to invasion through the whole extent of their Atlantic coast (to which may now be added seventeen degrees of the Pacific coast) by any European power with whom we might be engaged in war: on the northern and northwestern frontier, on the side of Canada, by Great Britain, and on the southern by Spain, or any power in alliance with her. If internal improvements are to be carried on to the full extent to which they may be useful for military purposes, the power, as it exists, must apply to all the roads of the Union, there being no limitation to it. Wherever such improvements may facilitate the march of troops, the transportation of cannon, or otherwise aid the operations, or mitigate the calamities of war along the coast, or in the interior, they would be useful for military purposes, and might therefore be made. They must be coextensive with the Union. The power following as an incident to another power can be measured, as to its extent, by reference only to the obvious extent of the power to which it is incidental. It has been shown, after the most liberal construction of all the enumerated powers of the general government, that the territory within the limits of the respective States belonged to them; that the United States had no right, under the powers granted to them (with the exceptions specified), to any the smallest portion of territory within a State, all those powers operating on a different principle, and having their full effect without impairing, in the slightest degree, this territorial right in the States. By specifically granting the right, as to such small portions of territory as might be necessary for these purposes (forts, arsenals, magazines, dock-yards and other needful buildings), and, on certain conditions, minutely and well defined, it is manifest that it was not intended to grant it, as to any other portion, for any purpose, or in any manner whatever. The right of the general government must be complete, if a right at all. It must extend to every thing necessary to the enjoyment and protection of the right. It must extend to the seizure and condemnation of the property, if necessary; to the punishment of the offenders for injuries to the roads and canals; to the establishment and enforcement of tolls; to the unobstructed construction protection, and preservation of the roads. It must be a complete right, to the extent above stated, or it will be of no avail. That right does not exist.
3. The commercial power. Mr. Monroe argues that the sense in which the power to regulate commerce was understood and exercised by the States, was doubtless that in which it was transferred to the United States; and then shows that their regulation of commerce was by the imposition of duties and imposts; and that it was so regulated by them (before the adoption of the constitution), equally in respect to each other, and to foreign powers. The goods, and the vessels employed in the trade, are the only subject of regulation. It can act on none other. He then shows the evil out of which that grant of power grew, and which evil was, in fact, the predominating cause in the call for the convention which framed the federal constitution. Each State had the right to lay duties and imposts, and exercised the right on narrow, jealous, and selfish principles. Instead of acting as a nation in regard to foreign powers, the States, individually, had commenced a system of restraint upon each other, whereby the interests of foreign powers were promoted at their expense. This contracted policy in some of the States was counteracted by others. Restraints were immediately laid on such commerce by the suffering States; and hence grew up a system of restrictions and retaliations, which destroyed the harmony of the States, and threatened the confederacy with dissolution. From this evil the new constitution relieved us; and the federal government, as successors to the States in the power to regulate commerce, immediately exercised it as they had done, by laying duties and imposts, to act upon goods and vessels: and that was the end of the power.
4. To pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the Union. Mr. Monroe considers this "common defence" and "general welfare" clause as being no grant of power, but, in themselves, only an object and end to be attained by the exercise of the enumerated powers. They are found in that sense in the preamble to the constitution, in company with others, as inducing causes to the formation of the instrument, and as benefits to be obtained by the powers granted in it. They stand thus in the preamble: "In order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution." These are the objects to be accomplished, but not by allowing Congress to do what it pleased to accomplish them (in which case there would have been no need for investing it with specific powers), but to be accomplished by the exercise of the powers granted in the body of the instrument. Considered as a distinct and separate grant, the power to provide for the "common defence" and the "general welfare," or either of them, would give to Congress the command of the whole force, and of all the resources of the Union--absorbing in their transcendental power all other powers, and rendering all the grants and restrictions nugatory and vain. The idea of these words forming an original grant, with unlimited power, superseding every other grant, is (must be) abandoned. The government of the United States is a limited government, instituted for great national purposes, and for those only. Other interests are left to the States individually, whose duty it is to provide for them. Roads and canals fall into this class, the powers of the General Government being utterly incompetent to the exercise of the rights which their construction, and protection, and preservation require. Mr. Monroe examines the instances of roads made in territories, and through the Indian countries, and the one upon Spanish territory below the 31st degree of north latitude (with the consent of Spain), on the route from Athens in Georgia to New Orleans, before we acquired the Floridas; and shows that there was no objection to these territorial roads, being all of them, to the States, ex-territorial. He examines the case of the Cumberland road, made within the States, and upon compact, but in which the United States exercised no power, founded on any principle of "jurisdiction or right." He says of it: This road was founded on an article of compact between the United States and the State of Ohio, under which that State came into the Union, and by which the expense attending it was to be defrayed by the application of a certain portion of the money arising from the sales of the public lands within the State. And, in this instance, the United States have exercised no act of jurisdiction or sovereignty within either of the States through which the road runs, by taking the land from the proprietors by force--by passing acts for the protection of the road--or to raise a revenue from it by the establishment of turnpikes and tolls--or any other act founded on the principles of jurisdiction or right. And I can add, that the bill passed by Congress, and which received his veto, died under his veto message, and has never been revised, or attempted to be revised, since; and the road itself has been abandoned to the States.
5. The power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to carry into effect the powers specifically granted to Congress. This power, as being the one which chiefly gave rise to the latitudinarian constructions which discriminated parties, when parties were founded upon principle, is closely and clearly examined by Mr. Monroe, and shown to be no grant of power at all, nor authorizing Congress to do any thing which might not have been done without it, and only added to the enumerated powers, through caution, to secure their complete execution. He says: I have always considered this power as having been granted on a principle of greater caution, to secure the complete execution of all the powers which had been vested in the General Government. It contains no distinct and specific power, as every other grant does, such as to lay and collect taxes, to declare war, to regulate commerce, and the like. Looking to the whole scheme of the General Government, it gives to Congress authority to make all laws which should be deemed necessary and proper for carrying all its powers into effect. My impression has invariably been, that this power would have existed, substantially, if this grant had not been made. It results, by necessary implication (such is the tenor of the argument), from the granted powers, and was only added from caution, and to leave nothing to implication. To act under it, it must first be shown that the thing to be done is already specified in one of the enumerated powers. This is the point and substance of Mr. Monroe's opinion on this incidental grant, and which has been the source of division between parties from the foundation of the government--the fountain of latitudinous construction--and which, taking the judgment of Congress as the rule and measure of what was "necessary and proper" in legislation, takes a rule which puts an end to the limitations of the constitution, refers all the powers of the body to its own discretion, and becomes as absorbing and transcendental in its scope as the "general welfare" and "common defence clauses" would be themselves.
6. The power to dispose of, and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property of the United States. This clause, as a source of power for making roads and canals within a State, Mr. Monroe disposes of summarily, as having no relation whatever to the subject. It grew out of the cessions of territory which different States had made to the United States, and relates solely to that territory (and to such as has been acquired since the adoption of the constitution), and which lay without the limits of a State. Special provision was deemed necessary for such territory, the main powers of the constitution operating internally, not being applicable or adequate thereto; and it follows that this power gives no authority, and has even no bearing on the subject.
Such was this great state paper, delivered at a time when internal improvement by the federal government, having become an issue in the canvass for the Presidency, and ardently advocated by three of the candidates, and qualifiedly by two others, had an immense current in its favor, carrying many of the old strict constitutionists along with it. Mr. Monroe stood firm vetoed the bill which assumed jurisdiction over the Cumberland road, and drew up his sentiments in full, for the consideration of Congress and the country. His argument is abridged and condensed in this view of it; but his positions and conclusions preserved in full, and with scrupulous correctness. And the whole paper, as an exposition of the differently understood parts of the constitution, by one among those most intimately acquainted with it, and as applicable to the whole question of constructive powers, deserves to be read and studied by every student of our constitutional law. The only point at which Mr. Monroe gave way, or yielded in the least, to the temper of the times, was in admitting the power of appropriation--the right of Congress to appropriate, but not to apply money--to internal improvements; and in that he yielded against his earlier, and, as I believe, better judgment. He had previously condemned the appropriation as well as the application, but finally yielded on this point to the counsels that beset him; but nugatorially, as appropriation without application was inoperative, and a balk to the whole system. But an act was passed soon after for surreys--for making surveys of routes for roads and canals of general and national importance, and the sum of $30,000 was appropriated for that purpose. The act was as carefully guarded as words could do so, in its limitation to objects of national importance, but only presented another to the innumerable instances of the impotency of words in securing the execution of a law. The selection of routes under the act, rapidly degenerated from national to sectional, from sectional to local, and from local to mere neighborhood improvements. Early in the succeeding administration, a list of some ninety routes were reported to Congress, from the Engineer Department, in which occurred names of places hardly heard of before outside of the State or section in which they were found. Saugatuck, Amounisuck, Pasumic, Winnispiseogee, Piscataqua, Titonic Falls, Lake Memphramagog, Conneaut Creek, Holmes' Hole, Lovejoy's Narrows, Steele's Ledge, Cowhegan, Androscoggin, Cobbiesconte, Ponceaupechaux, alias Soapy Joe, were among the objects which figured in the list for national improvement. The bare reading of the list was a condemnation of the act under which they were selected, and put an end to the annual appropriations which were in the course of being made for these surveys. No appropriation was made after the year 1827. Afterwards the veto message of President Jackson put an end to legislation upon local routes, and the progress of events has withdrawn the whole subject--the subject of a system of national internal improvement, once so formidable and engrossing in the public mind--from the halls of Congress, and the discussions of the people. Steamboats and steam-cars have superseded turnpikes and canals; individual enterprise has dispensed with national legislation. Hardly a great route exists in any State which is not occupied under State authority. Even great works accomplished by Congress, at vast cost and long and bitter debates in Congress, and deemed eminently national at the time, have lost that character, and sunk into the class of common routes. The Cumberland road, which cost $6,670,000 in money, and was a prominent subject in Congress for thirty-four years--from 1802, when it was conceived to 1836, when it was abandoned to the States: this road, once so absorbing both of public money and public attention, has degenerated into a common highway, and is entirely superseded by the parallel railroad route. The same may be said, in a less degree, of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, once a national object of federal legislation intended, as its name imports, to connect the tide water of the Atlantic with the great rivers of the West; now a local canal, chiefly used by some companies, very beneficial in its place, but sunk from the national character which commanded for it the votes of Congress and large appropriations from the federal treasury. Mr. Monroe was one of the most cautious and deliberate of our public men, thoroughly acquainted with the theory and the working of the constitution, his opinions upon it entitled to great weight; and on this point (of internal improvement within the States by the federal government) his opinion has become law. But it does not touch the question of improving national rivers or harbors yielding revenue--appropriations for the Ohio and Mississippi and other large streams, being easily had when unincumbered with local objects, as shown by the appropriation, in a separate bill, in 1824, of $75,000 for the improvement of these two rivers, and which was approved and signed by Mr. Monroe.
XI. GENERAL REMOVAL OF INDIANS
The Indian tribes in the different sections of the Union, had experienced very different fates--in the northern and middle States nearly extinct--in the south and west they remained numerous and formidable. Before the war of 1812, with Great Britain, these southern and western tribes held vast, compact bodies of land in these States, preventing the expansion of the white settlements within their limits, and retaining a dangerous neighbor within their borders. The victories of General Jackson over the Creeks, and the territorial cessions which ensued made the first great breach in this vast Indian domain; but much remained to be done to free the southern and western States from a useless and dangerous population--to give them the use and jurisdiction of all the territory within their limits, and to place them, in that respect, on an equality with the northern and middle States. From the earliest periods of the colonial settlements, it had been the policy of the government, by successive purchases of their territory, to remove these tribes further and further to the west; and that policy, vigorously pursued after the war with Great Britain, had made much progress in freeing several of these States (Kentucky entirely, and Tennessee almost) from this population, which so greatly hindered the expansion of their settlements and so much checked the increase of their growth and strength. Still there remained up to the year 1824--the last year of Mr. Monroe's administration--large portions of many of these States, and of the territories, in the hands of the Indian tribes; in Georgia, nine and a half millions of acres; in Alabama, seven and a half millions; in Mississippi, fifteen and three quarter millions; in the territory of Florida, four millions; in the territory of Arkansas, fifteen and a half millions; in the State of Missouri, two millions and three quarters; in Indiana and Illinois, fifteen millions; and in Michigan, east of the lake, seven millions. All these States and territories were desirous, and most justly and naturally so, to get possession of these vast bodies of land, generally the best within their limits. Georgia held the United States bound by a compact to relieve her. Justice to the other States and territories required the same relief; and the applications to the federal government, to which the right of purchasing Indian lands, even within the States, exclusively belonged, were incessant and urgent. Piecemeal acquisitions, to end in getting the whole, were the constant effort; and it was evident that the encumbered States and territories would not, and certainly ought not to be satisfied, until all their soil was open to settlement, and subject to their jurisdiction. To the Indians themselves it was equally essential to be removed. The contact and pressure of the white race was fatal to them. They had dwindled under it, degenerated, become depraved, and whole tribes extinct, or reduced to a few individuals, wherever they attempted to remain in the old States; and could look for no other fate in the new ones.
"What," exclaimed Mr. Elliott, senator from Georgia, in advocating a system of general removal--"what has become of the immense hordes of these people who once occupied the soil of the older States? In New England, where numerous and warlike tribes once so fiercely contended for supremacy with our forefathers, but two thousand five hundred of their descendants remain, and they are dispirited and degraded. Of the powerful league of the Six Nations, so long the scourge and terror of New-York, only about five thousand souls remain. In New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, the numerous and powerful tribes once seen there, are either extinct, or so reduced as to escape observation in any enumeration of the States' inhabitants. In Virginia, Mr. Jefferson informs us that there were at the commencement of its colonization (1607), in the comparatively small portion of her extent which lies between the sea-coast and the mountains, and from the Potomac to the most southern waters of James River, upwards of forty tribes of Indians: now there are but forty-seven individuals in the whole State! In North Carolina none are counted: in South Carolina only four hundred and fifty. While in Georgia, where thirty years since there were not less than thirty thousand souls, there now remain some fifteen thousand--the one half having disappeared in a single generation. That many of these people have removed, and others perished by the sword in the frequent wars which have occurred in the progress of our settlements, I am free to admit. But where are the hundreds of thousands, with their descendants, who neither removed, nor were thus destroyed? Sir, like a promontory of sand, exposed to the ceaseless encroachments of the ocean, they have been gradually wasting away before the current of the advancing white population which set in upon them from every quarter; and unless speedily removed beyond the influence of this cause, of the many tens of thousands now within the limits of the southern and western States, a remnant will not long be found to point you to the graves of their ancestors, or to relate the sad story of their disappearance from earth."
Mr. Jefferson, that statesman in fact as well as in name, that man of enlarged and comprehensive views, whose prerogative it was to foresee evils and provide against them, had long foreseen the evils both to the Indians and to the whites, in retaining any part of these tribes within our organized limits; and upon the first acquisition of Louisiana--within three months after the acquisition--proposed it for the future residence of all the tribes on the east of the Mississippi; and his plan had been acted upon in some degree, both by himself and his immediate successor. But it was reserved for Mr. Monroe's administration to take up the subject in its full sense, to move upon it as a system, and to accomplish at a single operation the removal of all the tribes from the east to the west side of the Mississippi--from the settled States and territories, to the wide and wild expanse of Louisiana. Their preservation and civilization, and permanency in their new possessions, were to be their advantages in this removal--delusive, it might be, but still a respite from impending destruction if they remained where they were. This comprehensive plan was advocated by Mr. Calhoun, then Secretary of War, and charged with the administration of Indian affairs. It was a plan of incalculable value to the southern and western States, but impracticable without the hearty concurrence of the northern and non-slaveholding States. It might awaken the slavery question, hardly got to sleep after the alarming agitations of the Missouri controversy. The States and territories to be relieved were slaveholding. To remove the Indians would make room for the spread of slaves. No removal could be effected without the double process of a treaty and an appropriation act--the treaty to be ratified by two thirds of the Senate, where the slave and free States were equal, and the appropriation to be obtained from Congress, where free States held the majority of members. It was evident that the execution of the whole plan was in the hands of the free States; and nobly did they do their duty by the South. Some societies, and some individuals, no doubt, with very humane motives, but with the folly, and blindness, and injury to the objects of their care which generally attend a gratuitous interference with the affairs of others, attempted to raise an outcry, and made themselves busy to frustrate the plan; but the free States themselves, in their federal action, and through the proper exponents of their will--their delegations in Congress--cordially concurred in it, and faithfully lent it a helping and efficient hand. The President, Mr. Monroe, in the session 1824-'25, recommended its adoption to Congress, and asked the necessary appropriation to begin from the Congress. A bill was reported in the Senate for that purpose, and unanimously passed that body. What is more, the treaties made with the Kansas and Osage tribes in 1825, for the cession to the United States of all their vast territory west of Missouri and Arkansas, except small reserves to themselves, and which treaties had been made without previous authority from the government, and for the purpose of acquiring new homes for all the Indians east of the Mississippi, were duly and readily ratified. Those treaties were made at St. Louis by General Clarke, without any authority, so far as this large acquisition was concerned, at my instance, and upon my assurance that the Senate would ratify them. It was done. They were ratified: a great act of justice was rendered to the South. The foundation was laid for the future removal of the Indians, which was followed up by subsequent treaties and acts of Congress, until the southern and western States were as free as the northern from the incumbrance of an Indian population; and I, who was an actor in these transactions, who reported the bills and advocated the treaties which brought this great benefit to the south and west, and witnessed the cordial support of the members from the free States, without whose concurrence they could not have been passed--I, who wish for harmony and concord among all the States, and all the sections of this Union, owe it to the cause of truth and justice, and to the cultivation of fraternal feelings, to bear this faithful testimony to the just and liberal conduct of the non-slaveholding States, in relieving the southern and western States from so large an incumbrance, and aiding the extension of their settlement and cultivation. The recommendation of Mr. Monroe, and the treaties of 1825, were the beginning of the system of total removal; but it was a beginning which assured the success of the whole plan, and was followed up, as will be seen, in the history of each case, until the entire system was accomplished.
XII. VISIT OF LAFAYETTE TO THE UNITED STATES
In the summer of this year General Lafayette, accompanied by his son, Mr. George Washington Lafayette, and under an invitation from the President, revisited the United States after a lapse of forty years. He was received with unbounded honor, affection, and gratitude by the American people. To the survivors of the Revolution, it was the return of a brother; to the new generation, born since that time, it was the apparition of an historical character, familiar from the cradle; and combining all the titles to love, admiration, gratitude, enthusiasm, which could act upon the heart and the imagination of the young and the ardent. He visited every State in the Union, doubled in number since, as the friend and pupil of Washington, he had spilt his blood, and lavished his fortune, for their independence. His progress through the States was a triumphal procession, such as no Roman ever led up--a procession not through a city, but over a continent--followed, not by captives in chains of iron, but by a nation in the bonds of affection. To him it was an unexpected and overpowering reception. His modest estimate of himself had not allowed him to suppose that he was to electrify a continent. He expected kindness, but not enthusiasm. He expected to meet with surviving friends--not to rouse a young generation. As he approached the harbor of New-York, he made inquiry of some acquaintance to know whether he could find a hack to convey him to a hotel? Illustrious man, and modest as illustrious! Little did he know that all America was on foot to receive him--to take possession of him the moment he touched her soil--to fetch and to carry him--to feast and applaud him--to make him the guest of cities, States, and the nation, as long as he could he detained. Many were the happy meetings which he had with old comrades, survivors for near half a century of their early hardships and dangers; and most grateful to his heart it was to see them, so many of them, exceptions to the maxim which denies to the beginners of revolutions the good fortune to conclude them (and of which maxim his own country had just been so sad an exemplification), and to see his old comrades not only conclude the one they began, but live to enjoy its fruits and honors. Three of his old associates he found ex-presidents (Adams, Jefferson, and Madison), enjoying the respect and affection of their country, after having reached its highest honors. Another, and the last one that Time would admit to the Presidency (Mr. Monroe), now in the Presidential chair, and inviting him to revisit the land of his adoption. Many of his early associates seen in the two Houses of Congress--many in the State governments, and many more in all the walks of private life, patriarchal sires, respected for their characters, and venerated for their patriotic services. It was a grateful spectacle, and the more impressive from the calamitous fate which he had seen attend so many of the revolutionary patriots of the Old World. But the enthusiasm of the young generation astonished and excited him, and gave him a new view of himself--a future glimpse of himself--and such as he would be seen in after ages. Before them, he was in the presence of posterity; and in their applause and admiration he saw his own future place in history, passing down to the latest time as one of the most perfect and beautiful characters which one of the most eventful periods of the world had produced. Mr. Clay, as Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the organ of their congratulations to Lafayette (when he was received in the hall of the House), very felicitously seized the idea of his present confrontation with posterity, and adorned and amplified it with the graces of oratory. He said: "The vain wish has been sometimes indulged, that Providence would allow the patriot, after death, to return to his country, and to contemplate the intermediate changes which had taken place--to view the forests felled, the cities built, the mountains levelled, the canals cut, the highways opened, the progress of the arts, the advancement of learning, and the increase of population. General! your present visit to the United States is the realization of the consoling object of that wish, hitherto vain. You are in the midst of posterity! Every where you must have been struck with the great changes, physical and moral, which have occurred since you left us. Even this very city, bearing a venerated name, alike endearing to you and to us, has since emerged from the forest which then covered its site. In one respect you behold us unaltered, and that is, in the sentiment of continued devotion to liberty, and of ardent affection and profound gratitude to your departed friend, the father of his country, and to your illustrious associates in the field and in the cabinet, for the multiplied blessings which surround us, and for the very privilege of addressing you, which I now have." He was received in both Houses of Congress with equal honor; but the Houses did not limit themselves to honors: they added substantial rewards for long past services and sacrifices--two hundred thousand dollars in money, and twenty-four thousand acres of fertile land in Florida. These noble grants did not pass without objection--objection to the principle, not to the amount. The ingratitude of republics is the theme of any declaimer: it required a Tacitus to say, that gratitude was the death of republics, and the birth of monarchies; and it belongs to the people of the United States to exhibit an exception to that profound remark (as they do to so many other lessons of history), and show a young republic that knows how to be grateful without being unwise, and is able to pay the debt of gratitude without giving its liberties in the discharge of the obligation. The venerable Mr. Macon, yielding to no one in love and admiration of Lafayette, and appreciation of his services and sacrifices in the American cause, opposed the grants in the Senate, and did it with the honesty of purpose and the simplicity of language which distinguished all the acts of his life. He said: "It was with painful reluctance that he felt himself obliged to oppose his voice to the passage of this bill. He admitted, to the full extent claimed for them, the great and meritorious services of General Lafayette, and he did not object to the precise sum which this bill proposed to award him; but he objected to the bill on this ground: he considered General Lafayette, to all intents and purposes, as having been, during our revolution, a son adopted into the family, taken into the household, and placed, in every respect, on the same footing with the other sons of the same family. To treat him as others were treated, was all, in this view of his relation to us, that could be required, and this had been done. That General Lafayette made great sacrifices, and spent much of his money in the service of this country (said Mr. M.), I as firmly believe as I do any other thing under the sun. I have no doubt that every faculty of his mind and body were exerted in the Revolutionary war, in defence of this country; but this was equally the case with all the sons of the family. Many native Americans spent their all, made great sacrifices, and devoted their lives in the same cause. This was the ground of his objection to this bill, which, he repeated, it was as disagreeable to him to state as it could be to the Senate to hear. He did not mean to take up the time of the Senate in debate upon the principle of the bill, or to move any amendment to it. He admitted that, when such things were done, they should be done with a free hand. It was to the principle of the bill, therefore, and not to the sum proposed to be given by it, that he objected."
The ardent Mr. Hayne, of South Carolina, reporter of the bill in the Senate, replied to the objections, and first showed from history (not from Lafayette, who would have nothing to do with the proposed grant), his advances, losses, and sacrifices in our cause. He had expended for the American service, in six years, from 1777 to 1783, the sum of 700,000 francs ($140,000), and under what circumstances?--a foreigner, owing us nothing, and throwing his fortune into the scale with his life, to be lavished in our cause. He left the enjoyments of rank and fortune, and the endearments of his family, to come and serve in our almost destitute armies, and without pay. He equipped and armed a regiment for our service, and freighted a vessel to us, loaded with arms and munitions. It was not until the year 1794, when almost ruined by the French revolution, and by his efforts in the cause of liberty, that he would receive the naked pay, without interest, of a general officer for the time he had served with us. He was entitled to land as one of the officers of the Revolution, and 11,500 acres was granted to him, to be located on any of the public lands of the United States. His agent located 1000 acres adjoining the city of New Orleans; and Congress afterwards, not being informed of the location, granted the same ground to the city of New Orleans. His location was valid, and he was so informed; but he refused to adhere to it, saying that he would have no contest with any portion of the American people, and ordered the location to be removed; which was done, and carried upon ground of little value--thus giving up what was then worth $50,000, and now $500,000. These were his moneyed advances, losses, and sacrifices, great in themselves, and of great value to our cause, but perhaps exceeded by the moral effect of his example in joining us, and his influence with the king and ministry, which procured us the alliance of France.
The grants were voted with great unanimity, and with the general concurrence of the American people. Mr. Jefferson was warmly for them, giving as a reason, in a conversation with me while the grants were depending (for the bill was passed in the Christmas holidays, when I had gone to Virginia, and took the opportunity to call upon that great man), which showed his regard for liberty abroad as well as at home, and his far-seeing sagacity into future events. He said there would be a change in France and Lafayette would be at the head of it, and ought to be easy and independent in his circumstances, to be able to act efficiently in conducting the movement. This he said to me on Christmas day, 1824. Six years afterwards this view into futurity was verified. The old Bourbons had to retire: the Duke of Orleans, a brave general in the republican armies, at the commencement of the Revolution, was handed to the throne by Lafayette, and became the "citizen king, surrounded by republican institutions." And in this Lafayette was consistent and sincere. He was a republican himself, but deemed a constitutional monarchy the proper government for France, and labored for that form in the person of Louis XVI. as well as in that of Louis Philippe.
Loaded with honors, and with every feeling of his heart gratified in the noble reception he had met in the country of his adoption, Lafayette returned to the country of his birth the following summer, still as the guest of the United States, and under its flag. He was carried back in a national ship of war, the new frigate Brandywine--a delicate compliment (in the name and selection of the ship) from the new President, Mr. Adams, Lafayette having wet with his blood the sanguinary battle-field which takes its name from the little stream which gave it first to the field, and then to the frigate. Mr. Monroe, then a subaltern in the service of the United States, was wounded at the same time. How honorable to themselves and to the American people, that nearly fifty years afterwards, they should again appear together, and in exalted station; one as President, inviting the other to the great republic, and signing the acts which testified a nation's gratitude; the other as a patriot hero, tried in the revolutions of two countries, and resplendent in the glory of virtuous and consistent fame.
XIII. THE TARIFF, AND AMERICAN SYSTEM
The revision of the Tariff, with a view to the protection of home industry, and to the establishment of what was then called, "The American System," was one of the large subjects before Congress at the session 1823-24, and was the regular commencement of the heated debates on that question which afterwards ripened into a serious difficulty between the federal government and some of the southern States. The presidential election being then depending, the subject became tinctured with party politics, in which, so far as that ingredient was concerned, and was not controlled by other considerations, members divided pretty much on the line which always divided them on a question of constructive powers. The protection of domestic industry not being among the granted powers, was looked for in the incidental; and denied by the strict constructionists to be a substantive power, to be exercised for the direct purpose of protection; but admitted by all at that time, and ever since the first tariff act of 1789, to be an incident to the revenue raising power, and an incident to be regarded in the exercise of that power. Revenue the object, protection the incident, had been the rule in the earlier tariffs: now that rule was sought to be reversed, and to make protection the object of the law, and revenue the incident. The revision, and the augmentation of duties which it contemplated, turned, not so much on the emptiness of the treasury and the necessity for raising money to fill it, as upon the distress of the country, and the necessity of creating a home demand for labor, provisions and materials, by turning a larger proportion of our national industry into the channel of domestic manufactures. Mr. Clay, the leader in the proposed revision, and the champion of the American System, expressly placed the proposed augmentation of duties on this ground; and in his main speech upon the question, dwelt upon the state of the country, and gave a picture of the public distress, which deserves to be reproduced in this VIEW of the working of our government, both as the leading argument for the new tariff, and as an exhibition of a national distress, which those who were not cotemporary with the state of things which he described, would find it difficult to conceive or to realize. He said:
"In casting our eyes around us, the most prominent circumstance which fixes our attention and challenges our deepest regret, is the general distress which pervades the whole country. It is forced upon us by numerous facts of the most incontestable character. It is indicated by the diminished exports of native produce; by the depressed and reduced state of our foreign navigation; by our diminished commerce; by successive unthreshed crops of grain perishing in our barns for want of a market; by the alarming diminution of the circulating medium; by the numerous bankruptcies; by a universal complaint of the want of employment, and a consequent reduction of the wages of labor; by the ravenous pursuit after public situations, not for the sake of their honors, and the performance of their public duties, but as a means of private subsistence; by the reluctant resort to the perilous use of paper money; by the intervention of legislation in the delicate relation between debtor and creditor; and, above all, by the low and depressed state of the value of almost every description of the whole mass of the property of the nation, which has, on an average, sunk not less than about fifty per centum within a few years. This distress pervades every part of the Union, every class of society; all feel it, though it may be felt, at different places, in different degrees. It is like the atmosphere which surrounds us: all must inhale it, and none can escape from it. A few years ago, the planting interest consoled itself with its happy exemptions from the general calamity; but it has now reached this interest also, which experiences, though with less severity, the general suffering. It is most painful to me to attempt to sketch, or to dwell on the gloom of this picture. But I have exaggerated nothing. Perfect fidelity to the original would have authorized me to have thrown on deeper and darker hues."
Mr. Clay was the leading speaker on the part of the bill in the House of Representatives, but he was well supported by many able and effective speakers--by Messrs. Storrs, Tracy, John W. Taylor, from New-York; by Messrs. Buchanan, Todd, Ingham, Hemphill, Andrew Stewart, from Pennsylvania; by Mr. Louis McLane, from Delaware; by Messrs. Buckner F. Johnson, Letcher, Metcalfe, Trimble, White Wickliffe, from Kentucky; by Messrs. Campbell, Vance, John W. Wright, Vinton, Whittlesey, from Ohio; Mr. Daniel P. Cook, from Illinois.
Mr. Webster was the leading speaker on the other side, and disputed the universality of the distress which had been described; claiming exemption from it in New England; denied the assumed cause for it where it did exist, and attributed it to over expansion and collapse of the paper system, as in Great Britain, after the long suspension of the Bank of England; denied the necessity for increased protection to manufactures, and its inadequacy, if granted, to the relief of the country where distress prevailed; and contested the propriety of high or prohibitory duties, in the present active and intelligent state of the world, to stimulate industry and manufacturing enterprise. He said:
"Within my own observation, there is no cause for such gloomy and terrifying a representation. In respect to the New England States, with the condition of which I am best acquainted, they present to me a period of very general prosperity. Supposing the evil then to be a depression of prices, and a partial pecuniary pressure; the next inquiry is into the causes of that evil. A depreciated currency existed in a great part of the country--depreciated to such a degree as that, at one time, exchange between the centre and the north was as high as twenty per cent. The Bank of the United States was instituted to correct this evil; but, for causes which it is not now necessary to enumerate, it did not for some years bring back the currency of the country to a sound state. In May, 1819, the British House of Commons, by an unanimous vote, decided that the resumption of cash payments by the Bank of England should not be deferred beyond the ensuing February (it had then been in a state of suspension near twenty-five years). The paper system of England had certainly communicated an artificial value to property. It had encouraged speculation, and excited overtrading. When the shock therefore came, and this violent pressure for money acted at the same moment on the Continent and in England, inflated and unnatural prices could be kept up no longer. A reduction took place, which has been estimated to have been at least equal to a fall of thirty, if not forty, per cent. The depression was universal; and the change was felt in the United States severely, though not equally so in every part of them. About the time of these foreign events, our own bank system underwent a change; and all these causes, in my view of the subject, concurred to produce the great shock which took place in our commercial cities, and through many parts of the country. The year 1819 was a year of numerous failures, and very considerable distress, and would have furnished far better grounds than exist at present for that gloomy representation which has been presented. Mr. Speaker (Clay) has alluded to the strong inclination which exists, or has existed, in various parts of the country, to issue paper money, as a proof of great existing difficulties. I regard it rather as a very productive cause of those difficulties; and we cannot fail to observe, that there is at this moment much the loudest complaint of distress precisely where there has been the greatest attempt to relieve it by a system of paper credit. Let us not suppose that we are beginning the protection of manufactures by duties on imports. Look to the history of our laws; look to the present state of our laws. Consider that our whole revenue, with a trifling exception, is collected from the custom-house, and always has been; and then say what propriety there is in calling on the government for protection, as if no protection had heretofore been afforded. On the general question, allow me to ask if the doctrine of prohibition, as a general doctrine, be not preposterous? Suppose all nations to act upon it: they would be prosperous, then, according to the argument, precisely in the proportion in which they abolished intercourse with one another. The best apology for laws of prohibition and laws of monopoly, will be found in that state of society, not only unenlightened, but sluggish, in which they are most generally established. Private industry in those days, required strong provocatives, which government was seeking to administer by these means. Something was wanted to actuate and stimulate men, and the prospects of such profits as would, in our times, excite unbounded competition, would hardly move the sloth of former ages. In some instances, no doubt, these laws produced an effect which, in that period, would not have taken place without them. (Instancing the protection to the English woollen manufactures in the time of the Henrys and the Edwards). But our age is wholly of a different character, and its legislation takes another turn. Society is full of excitement: competition comes in place of monopoly; and intelligence and industry ask only for fair play and an open field."
With Mr. Webster were numerous and able speakers on the side of free trade: From his own State, Mr. Baylies; from New-York, Mr. Cambreling; from Virginia, Messrs. Randolph, Philip P. Barbour, John S. Barbour, Garnet, Alexander Smythe, Floyd, Mercer, Archer, Stevenson, Rives, Tucker, Mark Alexander; from North Carolina, Messrs. Mangum, Saunders, Spaight, Lewis Williams, Burton, Weldon N. Edwards; from South Carolina, Messrs. McDuffie, James Hamilton, Poinsett; from Georgia, Messrs. Forsyth, Tatnall, Cuthbert, Cobb; from Tennessee, Messrs. Blair, Isaaks, Reynolds; from Louisiana, Mr. Edward Livingston; from Alabama, Mr. Owen; from Maryland, Mr. Warfield; from Mississippi, Mr. Christopher Rankin.
The bill was carried in the House, after a protracted contest of ten weeks, by the lean majority of five--107 to 102--only two members absent, and the voting so zealous that several members were brought in upon their sick couches. In the Senate the bill encountered a strenuous resistance. Mr. Edward Lloyd, of Maryland, moved to refer it to the committee on finance--a motion considered hostile to the bill; and which was lost by one vote--22 to 23. It was then, on the motion of Mr. Dickerson, of New Jersey, referred to the committee on manufactures; a reference deemed favorable to the bill, and by which committee it was soon returned to the Senate without any proposed amendment. It gave rise to a most earnest debate, and many propositions of amendment, some of which, of slight import, were carried. The bill itself was carried by the small majority of four votes--25 to 21. The principal speakers in favor of the bill were: Messrs. Dickerson, of New Jersey; D'Wolf, of Rhode Island; Holmes, of Maine; E. M. Johnson, of Kentucky; Lowrie, of Pennsylvania; Talbot, of Kentucky; Van Buren. Against it the principal speakers were: Messrs. James Barbour and John Taylor, of Virginia (usually called John Taylor of Caroline); Messrs. Branch, of North Carolina; Hayne, of South Carolina; Henry Johnson and Josiah Johnston, of Louisiana; Kelly and King, of Alabama; Rufus King, of New-York; James Lloyd, of Massachusetts; Edward Lloyd and Samuel Smith, of Maryland; Macon, of North Carolina; Van Dyke, of Delaware. The bill, though brought forward avowedly for the protection of domestic manufactures, was not entirely supported on that ground. An increase of revenue was the motive with some, the public debt being still near ninety millions, and a loan of five millions being authorized at that session. An increased protection to the products of several States, as lead in Missouri and Illinois, hemp in Kentucky, iron in Pennsylvania, wool in Ohio and New-York, commanded many votes for the bill; and the impending presidential election had its influence in its favor. Two of the candidates, Messrs. Adams and Clay, were avowedly for it; General Jackson, who voted for the bill, was for it, as tending to give a home supply of the articles necessary in time of war, and as raising revenue to pay the public debt. Mr. Crawford was opposed to it; and Mr. Calhoun had been withdrawn from the list of presidential candidates, and become a candidate for the Vice-Presidency. The Southern planting States were extremely dissatisfied with the passage of the bill, believing that the new burdens upon imports which it imposed fell upon the producers of the exports, and tended to enrich one section of the Union at the expense of another. The attack and support of the bill took much of a sectional aspect; Virginia, the two Carolinas, Georgia, and some others being nearly unanimous against it. Pennsylvania, New-York, Ohio, Kentucky being nearly unanimous for it. Massachusetts, which up to this time had a predominating interest in commerce, voted all, except one member, against it. With this sectional aspect, a tariff for protection also began to assume a political aspect, being taken under the care of the party since discriminated as Whig, which drew from Mr. Van Buren a sagacious remark, addressed to the manufacturers themselves; that if they suffered their interests to become identified with a political party (any one), they would share the fate of that party, and go down with it whenever it sunk. Without the increased advantages to some States, the pendency of the presidential election, and the political tincture which the question began to receive, the bill would not have passed--so difficult is it to prevent national legislation from falling under the influence of extrinsic and accidental causes. The bill was approved by Mr. Monroe--a proof that that careful and strict constructionist of the Constitution did not consider it as deprived of its revenue character by the degree of protection which it extended.
XIV. THE A. B. PLOT
On Monday, the 19th of April, the Speaker of the House (Mr. Clay) laid before that body a note just received from Ninian Edwards, Esq., late Senator in Congress, from Illinois, and then Minister to Mexico, and then on his way to his post, requesting him to present to the House a communication which accompanied the note, and which charged illegalities and misconduct on the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. William H. Crawford. The charges and specifications, spread through a voluminous communication, were condensed at its close into six regular heads of accusation, containing matter of impeachment; and declaring them all to be susceptible of proof, if the House would order an investigation. The communication was accompanied by ten numbers of certain newspaper publications, signed A. B., of which Mr. Edwards avowed himself to be the author, and asked that they might be received as a part of his communication, and printed along with it, and taken as the specifications under the six charges. Mr. Crawford was then a prominent candidate for the Presidency, and the A. B. papers, thus communicated to the House, were a series of publications made in a Washington City paper, during the canvass, to defeat his election, and would doubtless have shared the usual fate of such publications, and sunk into oblivion after the election was over, had it not been for this formal appeal to the House (the grand inquest of the nation) and this call for investigation. The communication, however, did not seem to contemplate an early investigation, and certainly not at the then session of Congress. Congress was near its adjournment; the accuser was on his way to Mexico; the charges were grave; the specifications under them numerous and complex; and many of them relating to transactions with the remote western banks. The evident expectation of the accuser was, that the matter would lie over to the next session, before which time the presidential election would take place, and all the mischief be done to Mr. Crawford's character, resulting from unanswered accusations of so much gravity, and so imposingly laid before the impeaching branch of Congress. The friends of Mr. Crawford saw the necessity of immediate action; and Mr. Floyd of Virginia, instantly, upon the reading of the communication, moved that a committee be appointed to take it into consideration, and that it be empowered to send for persons and papers--to administer oaths--take testimony--and report it to the House; with leave to sit after the adjournment, if the investigation was not finished before; and publish their report. The committee was granted, with all the powers asked for, and was most unexceptionably composed by the speaker (Mr. Clay); a task of delicacy and responsibility, the Speaker being himself a candidate for the Presidency, and every member of the House a friend to some one of the candidates, including the accused. It consisted of Mr. Floyd, the mover; Mr. Livingston, of Louisiana; Mr. Webster, of Massachusetts; Mr. Randolph, of Virginia; Mr. J. W. Taylor, of New-York; Mr. Duncan McArthur, of Ohio; and Mr. Owen, of Alabama.
The sergeant-at-arms of the House was immediately dispatched by the committee in pursuit of Mr. Edwards: overtook him at fifteen hundred miles; brought him back to Washington; but did not arrive until Congress had adjourned. In the mean time, the committee sat, and received from Mr. Crawford his answer to the six charges: an answer pronounced by Mr. Randolph to be "a triumphant and irresistible vindication; the most temperate, passionless, mild, dignified, and irrefragable exposure of falsehood that ever met a base accusation; and without one harsh word towards their author." This was the true character of the answer; but Mr. Crawford did not write it. He was unable at that time to write any thing. It was written and read to him as it went on, by a treasury clerk, familiar with all the transactions to which the accusations related--Mr. Asbury Dickens, since secretary of the Senate. This Mr. Crawford told himself at the time, with his accustomed frankness. His answer being mentioned by a friend, as a proof that his paralytic stroke had not affected his strength, he replied, that was no proof--that Dickens wrote it. The committee went on with the case (Mr. Edwards represented by his son-in-law, Mr. Cook), examined all the evidence in their reach, made a report unanimously concurred in, and exonerating Mr. Crawford from every dishonorable or illegal imputation. The report was accepted by the House; but Mr. Edwards, having far to travel on his return journey, had not yet been examined; and to hear him the committee continued to sit after Congress had adjourned. He was examined fully, but could prove nothing; and the committee made a second report, corroborating the former, and declaring it as their unanimous opinion--the opinion of every one present--"that nothing had been proved to impeach the integrity of the Secretary, or to bring into doubt the general correctness and ability of his administration of the public finances."
The committee also reported all the testimony taken, from which it appeared that Mr. Edwards himself had contradicted all the accusations in the A. B. papers; had denied the authorship of them; had applauded the conduct of Mr. Crawford in the use of the western banks, and their currency in payment of the public lands, as having saved farmers from the loss of their homes; and declared his belief, that no man in the government could have conducted the fiscal and financial concerns of the government with more integrity and propriety than he had done. This was while his nomination as minister to Mexico was depending in the Senate, and to Mr. Noble, a Senator from Indiana, and a friend to Mr. Crawford. He testified:
"That he had had a conversation with Mr. Edwards, introduced by Mr. E. himself, concerning Mr. Crawford's management of the western banks, and the authorship of the A. B. letters. That it was pending his nomination made by the President to the Senate, as minister to Mexico. He (Mr. E.) stated that he was about to be attacked in the Senate, for the purpose of defeating his nomination: that party and political spirit was now high; that he understood that charges would be exhibited against him, and that it had been so declared in the Senate. He further remarked, that he knew me to be the decided friend of William H. Crawford, and said, I am considered as being his bitter enemy; and I am charged with being the author of the numbers signed A. B.; but (raising his hand) I pledge you my honor, I am not the author, nor do I know who the author is. Crawford and I, said Mr. Edwards, have had a little difference; but I have always considered him a high-minded, honorable, and vigilant officer of the government. He has been abused about the western banks and the unavailable funds. Leaning forward, and extending his hand, he added, now damn it, you know we both live in States where there are many poor debtors to the government for lands, together with a deranged currency. The notes on various banks being depreciated, after the effect and operation of the war in that portion of the Union, and the banks, by attempting to call in their paper, having exhausted their specie, the notes that were in circulation became of little or no value. Many men of influence in that country, said he, have united to induce the Secretary of the Treasury to select certain banks as banks of deposit, and to take the notes of certain banks in payment for public land. Had he (Mr. Crawford) not done so, many of our inhabitants would have been turned out of doors, and lost their land; and the people of the country would have had a universal disgust against Mr. Crawford. And I will venture to say, said Mr. Edwards, notwithstanding I am considered his enemy, that no man in this government could have managed the fiscal and financial concerns of the government with more integrity and propriety than Mr. Crawford did. He (Mr. Noble) had never repeated this conversation to any body until the evening of the day that I (he) was informed that Gov. Edwards' 'address' was presented to the House of Representatives. On that evening, in conversation with several members of the House, amongst whom were Mr. Reid and Mr. Nelson, some of whom said that Governor Edwards had avowed himself to be the author of A. B., and others said that he had not done so, I remarked, that they must have misunderstood the 'address,' for Gov. Edwards had pledged his honor to me that he was not the author of A. B."
Other witnesses testified to his denials, while the nomination was depending, of all authorship of these publications: among them, the editors of the National Intelligencer,--friends to Mr. Crawford. Mr. Edwards called at their office at that time (the first time he had been there within a year), to exculpate himself from the imputed authorship; and did it so earnestly that the editors believed him, and published a contradiction of the report against him in their paper, stating that they had a "good reason" to know that he was not the author of these publications. That "good reason," they testified, was his own voluntary denial in this unexpected visit to their office, and his declarations in what he called a "frank and free" conversation with them on the subject. Such testimony, and the absence of all proof on the other side, was fatal to the accusations, and to the accuser. The committee reported honorably and unanimously in favor of Mr. Crawford; the Congress and the country accepted it; Mr. Edwards resigned his commission, and disappeared from the federal political theatre: and that was the end of the A. B. plot, which had filled some newspapers for a year with publications against Mr. Crawford, and which might have passed into oblivion, as the current productions and usual concomitants of a Presidential canvass, had it not been for their formal communication to Congress as ground of impeachment against a high officer. That communication carried the "six charges," and their ten chapters of specifications, into our parliamentary history, where their fate becomes one of the instructive lessons which it is the province of history to teach. The newspaper in which the A. B. papers were published, was edited by a war-office clerk, in the interest of the war Secretary (Mr. Calhoun), to the serious injury of that gentleman, who received no vote in any State voting for Mr. Crawford.