Chapter CLVII…

Chapter CLVII

OREGON QUESTION: NOTICE TO ABROGATE THE ARTICLE IN THE TREATY FOR A JOINT OCCUPATION: THE PRESIDENT DENOUNCED IN THE SENATE FOR A SUPPOSED LEANING TO THE LINE OF FORTY-NINE.

The proposition for the line of 49 having been withdrawn by the American government on its non-acceptance by the British, had appeased the democratic storm which had been got up against the President; and his recommendation for strong measures to assert and secure our title was entirely satisfactory to those who now came to be called the Fifty-Four Forties. The debate was advancing well upon this question of notice, when a sinister rumor--only sinister to the extreme party--began to spread, that the British government would propose 49, and that the President was favorable to it. This rumor was true, and by way of preparing the public mind for it, Mr. William H. Haywood, a senator from North Carolina, both personally and politically friendly to the President, undertook to show, not so much that the line of 49 was right in itself, but that the President was not so far committed against it as that he could not yet form a treaty upon it. In this sense he--

"Took a view of the course which had been pursued by the President, approving of the offer of the parallel of 49° to Great Britain, and maintaining that there was nothing in the language of the President to render it improper in him to negotiate hereafter on that basis, notwithstanding this rejection. He regarded the negotiation as still open; and he would not do the President so much wrong as to suppose that, if we passed the notice, and thus put into his hand a great moral weapon, that he could be guilty of so miserable a trick as to use it to the dishonor of his country on the one hand, or to the reckless provocation of a war on the other. Believing that the administration stood committed to accept an offer of a division of the territory on the parallel of 49°--or substantially that--he should sustain the Executive in that position. He expressed his conviction that, whatever might be his individual opinions, the President--as General Washington did in 1796--would fulfil his obligations to the country; that, whenever the interests of the country required it, he would sacrifice his own opinions to the sense of his official duty. He rebuked the cry which had been set up by some of the friends of the President, which placed him in the position of being the mere organ of the Baltimore convention, and declared that, if he could believe that the Executive would permit the resolution of that convention to overrule his duty to his country, he would turn his back upon him. Mr. H. then proceeded to deduce, from the language and acts of the Executive, that he had not put himself in a position which imposed on him the necessity of refusing to negotiate on the parallel of 49°, should negotiation be resumed on that basis. In this respect, the President did not occupy that attitude in which some of his friends wished to place him. It ought to be borne in mind that Great Britain had held occupancy for above forty years; and it was absurd to suppose, that, if we turn suddenly upon her and tell her she must quit, that she will not make resistance. And he asked what our government would be likely to do if placed in a similar position and reduced to the same alternative. No one could contend for a moment that the rejection of the offer of 49° by Great Britain released the President from the obligation to accept that offer whenever it should again be made. The question was to be settled by compromise; and, on this principle, the negotiation was still pending. It was not to be expected that a negotiation of this kind could be carried through hastily. Time must be given for communication with the British government, for proper consideration and consultation; and true politeness requires that ample time should be given for this purpose. It is obvious that Great Britain does not consider the negotiation terminated, as she would have recalled her minister; and the President cannot deem it closed, or he would have made a communication to Congress to that effect. The acts of the President were not such as to justify any apprehensions of a rupture; and from that, he did not ask for the notice in order that he might draw the sword and throw away the scabbard. The falsehood of any such charge is proved by the fact that he has asked for no enlargement of the annual appropriations; on the other hand, his estimates are rather diminished. Knowing him to be honest, he (Mr. H.) would acquit him of any such imputation of moral treason, which would subject him to the reprobation of man and the anger of his God. Mr. H. then referred to the divisions which had sprung up in the democratic party, the tendency of which is, to destroy the party, by cutting off its heads. This question of Oregon had been turned into a party question, for the purpose of President-making. He repudiated any submission to the commands of factious meetings, got up by demagogues, for the purpose of dictating to the Senate how to make a treaty, and felt thankful that North Carolina had never taken this course. He did not regard such proceedings as indicative of that true democracy which, like a potato, grew at the root, and did not, like the spurious democracy, show itself from the blossom. The creed of the Baltimore convention directs the party to re-annex Texas and to re-occupy Oregon. Texas had been re-annexed, and now we are to go for the re-occupation of Oregon. Now, Old Oregon, embracing all the territory on which American foot ever trod, comprised merely the valley of Willamette, which did not extend above 49°; and consequently this portion was all which could be contemplated in the expression "re-occupation," as it would involve an absurdity to speak of re-occupying what we had never occupied. Referring to the history of the annexation of Texas, he cited the impossibility of getting Texas through, until the two questions had been made twin sisters by the Baltimore convention. Then Texas passed the House, and came into the Senate, followed so closely by Oregon, that they seemed to be akin."

In all this Mr. Haywood spoke the sentiments of the President, personally confided to him, and to prepare the way for his action in conformity to them. The extreme party suspected this, and had their plan arranged to storm it down, and to force the President to repulse the British offer of 49, if now it should be made, as he had been stormed into a withdrawal of his own offer of that line by his own newspapers and party in the recess of Congress. This task fell upon Mr. Hannegan of Indiana, and Mr. William Allen of Ohio, whose temperaments were better adapted to the work than that of their chief, Mr. Cass. Mr. Hannegan began:

"I must apologize to the Senate for obtruding myself upon your attention at this advanced period of the day, particularly as I have already occupied your attention on several occasions in the course of this debate. My remarks now, however, will be very brief. Before I proceed to make any reply to the speech of the senator from North Carolina--the most extraordinary speech which I have ever listened to in the whole course of my life--I desire, through the Vice President, to put a question to him, which I have committed to writing. It is this: I ask him if he has the authority of the President, directly or indirectly, for saying to the Senate that it is his (the President's) wish to terminate the Oregon question by compromising with Great Britain on the 49th degree of north latitude?"

To this categorical demand, Mr. Haywood replied that it would be unwise and impolitic for the President to authorize any senator to make such a declaration as that implied in the question of Mr. Hannegan. Mr. Allen, of Ohio, then took up the demand for the answer, and said:

"I put the question, and demand an answer to it as a public right. The senator here has assumed to speak for the President. His speech goes to the world; and I demand, as a public right, that he answer the question; and if he won't answer it, I stand ready to deny that he has expressed the views of the President."

Mr. Westcott of Florida, called Mr. Allen to order for asking for the opinions of the President through a senator. The President could only communicate his opinions to the Senate responsibly, by message. It would be a breach of privilege for any senator to undertake to report such opinions, and consequently a breach of order for any senator to call for them. In this Mr. Westcott was right, but the call to order did not prevent Mr. Allen from renewing his demand:

"I do not demand an answer as any personal right at all. I demand it as a public right. When a senator assumes to speak for the President, every senator possesses a public right to demand his authority for so doing. An avowal has been made that he is the exponent of the views of the President, upon a great national question. He has assumed to be that exponent. And I ask him whether he has the authority of the President for the assumption?"

Mr. Westcott renewed his call to order, but no question was taken upon the call, which must have been decided against Mr. Allen. Mr. Haywood said, he denied the right of any senator to put questions to him in that way, and said he had not assumed to speak by the authority of the President. Then, said Mr. Allen, the senator takes back his speech. Mr. Haywood: "Not at all; but I am glad to see my speech takes." Mr. Allen: "With the British." Mr. Hannegan then resumed:

"I do not deem it material whether the senator from North Carolina gives a direct answer to my question or not. It is entirely immaterial. He assumes--no, he says there is no assumption about it--that there is no meaning in language, no truth in man, if the President any where commits himself to 54° 40', as his flattering friends assume for him. Now, sir, there is no truth in man, there is no meaning in language, if the President is not committed to 54° 40' in as strong language as that which makes up the Holy Book. From a period antecedent to that in which he became the nominee of the Baltimore convention, down to this moment, to all the world he stands committed for 54° 40'. I go back to his declaration made in 1844, to a committee of citizens of Cincinnati, who addressed him in relation to the annexation of Texas, and he there uses this language being then before the country as the democratic candidate for the chair which he now fills.

"Mr. CRITTENDEN. What is the date?

"Mr. HANNEGAN. It is dated the 23d of April.

[Mr. H. here read an extract from Mr. Polk's letter to the committee of the citizens of Cincinnati.]"

Mr. Hannegan then went on to quote from the President's message--the annual message at the commencement of the session--to show that, in withdrawing his proposition for a boundary on the 49th parallel, he had taken a position against ever resuming it. He read this paragraph:

"The extraordinary and wholly inadmissible demands of the British Government, and the rejection of the proposition made in deference alone to what had been done by my predecessors, and the implied obligation which their acts seemed to impose, afford satisfactory evidence that no compromise which the United States ought to accept can be effected. With this conviction, the proposition of compromise which had been made and rejected was, by my direction, subsequently withdrawn, and our title to the whole Oregon Territory asserted, and, as is believed, maintained by irrefragable facts and arguments."

Having read this paragraph, Mr. Hannegan proceeded to reply to it; and exclaimed--

"What does the President here claim? Up to 54° 40'--every inch of it. He has asserted that claim, and is, as he says, sustained by 'irrefragable facts and arguments.' But this is not all: I hold that the language of the Secretary of State is the language of the President of the United States; and has not Mr. Buchanan, in his last communication to Mr. Pakenham, named 54° 40' in so many words? He has. The President adopts this language as his own. He plants himself on 54° 40'."

Mr. Hannegan then proceeded to plant the whole democratic party upon the line of 54-40, and to show that Oregon to that extent, and Texas to her whole extent, were the watchwords of the party in the presidential election--that both were to be carried together; and Texas having been gained, Oregon, without treachery, could not be abandoned.

"The democratic party is thus bound to the whole of Oregon--every foot of it; and let the senator rise in his place who will tell me in what quarter of this Union--in what assembly of democrats in this Union, pending the presidential election, the names of Texas and Oregon did not fly together, side by side, on the democratic banners. Every where they were twins--every where they were united. Does the senator from North Carolina suppose that he, with his appeals to the democracy, can blind our eyes, as he thinks he tickled our ears? He is mistaken. 'Texas and Oregon' cannot be divided; they dwell together in the American heart. Even in Texas, I have been told the flag of the lone star had inscribed on it the name of Oregon. Then, it was all Oregon. Now, when you have got Texas, it means just so much of Oregon as you in your kindness and condescension think proper to give us. You little know us, if you think the mighty West will be trodden on in this way."

Mr. Hannegan then undertook to disclaim for the President the sentiments attributed to him by Mr. Haywood, and to pronounce an anathema upon him if the attribution was right.

"The senator in his defence of the President, put language into his mouth which I undertake to say the President will repudiate, and I am not the President's champion. I wish not to be his champion. I would not be the champion of power. I defend the right, and the right only. But, for the President, I deny the intentions which the senator from North Carolina attributes to him--intentions, which, if really entertained by him, would make him an infamous man--ay, an infamous man. He [Mr. Haywood] told the Senate yesterday--unless I grossly misunderstood him, along with several friends around me--'that the President had occasionally stickings-in, parenthetically, to gratify--what?--the ultraisms of the country and of party; whilst he reposed in the White House with no intentions of carrying out these parenthetical stickings-in.' In plain words, he represents the President as parenthetically sticking in a few hollow and false words to cajole the 'ultraisms of the country?' What is this, need I ask, but charging upon the President conduct the most vile and infamous? If this allegation be true, these intentions of the President must sooner or later come to light, and when brought to light, what must follow but irretrievable disgrace? So long as one human eye remains to linger on the page of history, the story of his abasement will be read, sending him and his name together to an infamy so profound, a damnation so deep, that the hand of resurrection will never be able to drag him forth."

Mr. Mangum called Mr. Hannegan to order: Mr. Haywood desired that he might be permitted to proceed, which he did, disclaiming all disrespect to Mr. Haywood, and concluded with saying; that, "so far as the whole tone, spirit, and meaning of the remarks of the senator from North Carolina is concerned, if they speak the language of James K. Polk, then James K. Polk has spoken words of falsehood with the tongue of a serpent."

Mr. Reverdy Johnson came to the relief of the President and Mr. Haywood in a temperate and well-considered speech, in which he showed he had had great apprehension of war--that this apprehension was becoming less, and that he deemed it probable, and right and honorable in itself, that the President should meet the British on the line of 49 if they should come to it; and that line would save the territorial rights of the United States, and the peace and honor of the country.

"It is with unaffected embarrassment I rise to address the Senate on the subject now under consideration; but its great importance and the momentous issues involved in its final settlement are such as compel me, notwithstanding my distrust of my own ability to be useful to my country, to make the attempt. We have all felt that, at one time at least (I trust that time is now past), we were in imminent danger of war. From the moment the President of the United States deemed it right and becoming, in the outset of his official career, to announce to the world that our title to Oregon was clear and unquestionable, down to the period of his message to Congress in December last, when he reiterated the declaration, I could not see how it was possible that war should be averted. That apprehension was rendered much more intense from the character of the debates elsewhere, as well as from the speeches of some of the President's political friends within this chamber. I could not but listen with alarm and dismay to what fell from the very distinguished and experienced senator from Michigan (Mr. Cass) at an early period of this debate; to what I heard from the senator from Indiana (Mr. Hannegan); and, above all, to what was said by the senator from Ohio (Mr. Allen), the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, who, in my simplicity, I supposed must necessarily be apprised of the views of the government in regard to the foreign concerns of the country. Supposing the condition of the country to be what it was represented to be by each and all of the three senators, I could not imagine how it could be possible that the most direful of all human calamities, war, was to be avoided; and I was accordingly prepared to say, on the hypothesis of the fact assumed by the senator from Michigan, that war was inevitable;--to use his own paraphrase of his own term, which, it would appear, has got out of favor with himself--'war must come.'

"What did they represent to be the condition of the nation? I speak now more particularly of the last two senators, from Indiana and Ohio. They told us that negotiation was at an end; that we were now thrown back on our original rights; that, by these original rights, as had been officially announced, our title to the whole country was beyond all question: and that the national honor must be forfeited, if that title should not be maintained by force of arms. I felt that he must have been a careless and a profitless reader of English history who could indulge the hope that, if such was to be the course and conduct of this country, war was not inevitable. Then, in addition to my own opinion, when I heard it admitted by the honorable senator from Michigan, with that perfect candor which always distinguishes him on this floor, that, in his opinion, England would never recede, I felt that war was inevitable.

"I now rejoice in hoping and believing, from what I have subsequently heard, that the fears of the Senate, as well as my own apprehensions, were, as I think, unfounded. Since then, the statesmanlike view taken by the senator from New York who first addressed us (Mr. Dix), and by the senator from Missouri (Mr. Benton), to whom this whole question is as familiar as a household term--and the spirit of peace which breathed in their every word--have fully satisfied me that, so far as depends upon them, a fair and liberal compromise of our difficulties would not be in want of willing and zealous advocates.

"And this hope has been yet more strengthened by the recent speech of the senator from North Carolina (Mr. Haywood), not now in his place. Knowing, as I thought I did, the intimate relations, both personal and political, which that senator bore to the Chief Magistrate--knowing, too, that, as chairman of the Committee on Commerce, it was his special duty to become informed in regard to all matters having a bearing on the foreign relations of the country; I did not doubt, and I do not now doubt, that in every thing he said as to the determination of the President to accept, if offered by the British government, the same terms which he had himself proposed in July last, the reasonable inference was, that such an offer, if made, would be accepted. I do not mean to say, because I did not so understand the senator, that, in addressing this body with regard to the opinions or purposes of the President, he spoke by any express or delegated authority. But I do mean to say, that I have no doubt, from his knowledge of the general views of the President, as expressed in his message, taken in connection with certain omissions on the part of the Executive, that when he announced to us that the President would feel himself in honor bound to accept his own offer, if now reciprocated by Great Britain, he spoke that which he knew to be true. And this opinion was yet more strengthened and confirmed by what I found to be the effect of his speech on the two senators I have named--the leaders, if they will permit me to call them so, of the ultraists on this subject--I mean the senator from Indiana (Mr. Hannegan), and the senator from Ohio (Mr. Allen). He was an undiscerning witness of the scene which took place in this chamber immediately after the speech of the senator from North Carolina (Mr. Haywood), who must not have seen that those two senators had consulted together with the view of ascertaining how far the senator from North Carolina spoke by authority, and that the result of their consultation was a determination to catechise that senator; and the better to avoid all mistake, that they reduced their interrogatory to writing, in order that it might be propounded to him by the senator from Indiana (Mr. Hannegan); and if it was not answered, that it was then to be held as constructively answered by the senator from Ohio (Mr. Allen). What the result of the manoeuvre was I leave it to the Senate to decide; but this I will venture to say, that in the keen encounter of wits, to which their colloquy led, the two senators who commenced it got rather the worst of the contest. My hope and belief has been yet further strengthened by what has NOT since happened; I mean my belief in the pacific views of the Chief Magistrate. The speech of the senator from North Carolina was made on Thursday, and though a week has nearly elapsed since that time, notwithstanding the anxious solicitude of both those senators, and their evident desire to set the public right on that subject, we have, from that day to this, heard from neither of the gentlemen the slightest intimation that the construction given to the message by the senator from North Carolina was not a true one."

Mr. Johnson continued his speech on the merits of the question--the true line which should divide the British and American possessions beyond the Rocky Mountains; and placed it on the parallel of 49° according to the treaty of Utrecht, and in conformity with the opinions and diplomatic instructions of Mr. Jefferson, who had acquired Louisiana and sent an expedition of discovery to the Pacific Ocean, and had well studied the whole question of our territorial rights in that quarter. Mr. Benton did not speak in this incidental debate, but he knew that Mr. Haywood spoke with a knowledge of the President's sentiments, and according to his wishes, and to prepare the country for a treaty upon 49°. He knew this, because he was in consultation with the President, and was to speak for the same purpose, and was urged by him to speak immediately in consequence of the attempt to crush Mr. Haywood--the first of his friends who had given any intimation of his views. Mr. Benton, therefore, at an early day, spoke at large upon the question when it took another form--that of a bill to establish a territorial government for Oregon; some extracts from which constitute the next chapter.

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Chapter CLVIII

OREGON TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENT: BOUNDARIES AND HISTORY OF THE COUNTRY: FRAZER'S RIVER: TREATY OF UTRECHT: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH: EXTRACTS.

Mr. Benton then addressed the Senate. Mr. President, the bill before the Senate proposes to extend the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the United States over all our territories west of the Rocky Mountains, without saying what is the extent and what are the limits of this territory. This is wrong, in my opinion. We ought to define the limits within which our agents are to do such acts as this bill contemplates, otherwise we commit to them the solution of questions which we find too hard for ourselves. This indefinite extension of authority, in a case which requires the utmost precision, forces me to speak, and to give my opinion of the true extent of our territories beyond the Rocky Mountains. I have delayed doing this during the whole session, not from any desire to conceal my opinions (which, in fact, were told to all that asked for them), but because I thought it the business of negotiation, not of legislation, to settle these boundaries. I waited for negotiation: but negotiation lags, while events go forward; and now we are in the process of acting upon measures, upon the adoption of which it may no longer be in the power either of negotiation or of legislation to control the events to which they may give rise. The bill before us is without definition of the territory to be occupied. And why this vagueness in a case requiring the utmost precision? Why not define the boundaries of these territories? Precisely because we do not know them! And this presents a case which requires me to wait no longer for negotiation, but to come forward with my own opinions, and to do what I can to prevent the evils of vague and indefinite legislation. My object will be to show, if I can, the true extent and nature of our territorial claims beyond the Rocky Mountains, with a view to just and wise decisions; and, in doing so, I shall endeavor to act upon the great maxim, "Ask nothing but what is right--submit to nothing that is wrong."

It is my ungracious task, in attempting to act upon this maxim, to commence by exposing error at home, and endeavoring to clear up some great mistakes under which the public mind has labored.

It has been assumed for two years, and the assumption has been made the cause of all the Oregon excitement of the country, that we have a dividing line with Russia, made so by the convention of 1824, along the parallel of 54° 40', from the sea to the Rocky Mountains, up to which our title is good. This is a great mistake. No such line was ever established; and so far as proposed and discussed, it was proposed and discussed as a northern British, and not as a northern American line. The public treaties will prove there is no such line; documents will prove that, so far as 54° 40', from the sea to the mountains, was ever proposed as a northern boundary for any power, it was proposed by us for the British, and not for ourselves.

To make myself intelligible in what I shall say on this point, it is necessary to go back to the epoch of the Russian convention of 1824, and to recall the recollection of the circumstances out of which that convention grew. The circumstances were these: In the year 1821 the Emperor Alexander, acting upon a leading idea of Russian policy (in relation to the North Pacific Ocean) from the time of Peter the Great, undertook to treat that ocean as a close sea, and to exercise municipal authority over a great extent of its shores and waters. In September of that year, the emperor issued a decree, bottomed upon this pretension, assuming exclusive sovereignty and jurisdiction over both shores of the North Pacific Ocean, and over the high seas, in front of each coast, to the extent of one hundred Italian miles, from Behring's Straits down to latitude fifty-one, on the American coast, and to forty-five on the Asiatic; and denouncing the penalties of confiscation upon all ships, of whatsoever nation that should approach the coasts within the interdicted distances. This was a very startling decree. Coming from a feeble nation, it would have been smiled at; coming from Russia, it gave uneasiness to all nations.

Great Britain and the United States, as having the largest commerce in the North Pacific Ocean, and as having large territorial claims on the north-west coast of America, were the first to take the alarm, and to send remonstrances to St. Petersburg against the formidable ukase. They found themselves suddenly thrown together, and standing side by side in this new and portentous contest with Russia. They remonstrated in concert, and here the wise and pacific conduct of the Emperor Alexander displayed itself in the most prompt and honorable manner. He immediately suspended the ukase (which, in fact, had remained without execution), and invited the United States and Great Britain to unite with Russia in a convention to settle amicably, and in a spirit of mutual convenience, all the questions between them, and especially their respective territorial claims on the north-west coast of America. This magnanimous proposition was immediately met by the two powers in a corresponding spirit; and, the ukase being voluntarily relinquished by the emperor, a convention was quickly signed by Russia with each power, settling, so far as Russia was concerned, with each, all their territorial claims in North-west America. The Emperor Alexander had proposed that it should be a joint convention of the three powers--a tripartite convention--settling the claims of each and of all at the same time; and if this wise suggestion had been followed, all the subsequent and all the present difficulties between the United States and Great Britain, with respect to this territory, would have been entirely avoided. But it was not followed: an act of our own prevented it. After Great Britain had consented, the non-colonization principle--the principle of non-colonization in America by any European power--was promulgated by our government, and for that reason Great Britain chose to treat separately with each power, and so it was done.

Great Britain and the United States treated separately with Russia, and with each other; and each came to agreements with Russia, but to none among themselves. The agreements with Russia were contained in two conventions signed nearly at the same time, and nearly in the same words, limiting the territorial claim of Russia to 54° 40', confining her to the coasts and islands, and leaving the continent, out to the Rocky Mountains, to be divided between the United States and Great Britain, by an agreement between themselves. The emperor finished up his own business and quit the concern. In fact, it would seem, from the promptitude, moderation, and fairness with which he adjusted all differences both with the United States and Great Britain, that his only object of issuing the alarming ukase of 1821 was to bring those powers to a settlement; acting upon the homely, but wise maxim, that short settlements make long friends.

Well, there is no such line as 54° 40'; and that would seem to be enough to quiet the excitement which has been got up about it. But there is more to come. I set out with saying, that although this fifty-four forty was never established as a northern boundary for the United States, yet it was proposed to be established as a northern boundary, not for us, but for Great Britain--and that proposal was made to Great Britain by ourselves. This must sound like a strange statement in the ears of the fifty-four forties; but it is no more strange than true; and after stating the facts, I mean to prove them. The plan of the United States at that time was this: That each of the three powers (Great Britain, Russia, and the United States) having claims on the north-west coast of America, should divide the country between them, each taking a third. In this plan of partition, each was to receive a share of the continent from the sea to the Rocky Mountains, Russia taking the northern slice, the United States the southern, and Great Britain the centre, with fifty-four forty for her northern boundary, and forty-nine for her southern. The document from which I now read will say fifty-one; but that was the first offer--forty-nine was the real one, as I will hereafter show. This was our plan. The moderation of Russia defeated it. That power had no settlements on that part of the continent, and rejected the continental share which we offered her. She limited herself to the coasts and islands where she had settlements, and left Great Britain and the United States to share the continent between themselves. But before this was known, we had proposed to her fifty-four forty for the Russian southern boundary, and to Great Britain the same for her northern boundary. I say fifty-four forty; for, although the word in the proposition was fifty-five, yet it was on the principle which gave fifty-four forty--namely, running from the south end of Prince of Wales' Island, supposed to be in fifty-five, but found to have a point to it running down to fifty-four forty. We proposed this to Great Britain. She refused it, saying she would establish her northern boundary with Russia, who was on her north, and not with the United States, who was on her south. This seemed reasonable; and the United States then, and not until then, relinquished the business of pressing fifty-four forty upon Great Britain for her northern boundary. The proof is in the executive documents. Here it is--a despatch from Mr. Rush, our minister in London, to Mr. Adams, Secretary of State, dated December 19, 1823.

(The despatch read.)

Here is the offer, in the most explicit terms, in 1823, to make fifty-five, which was in fact fifty-four forty, the northern boundary of Great Britain; and here is her answer to that proposition. It is the next paragraph in the same despatch from Mr. Rush to Mr. Adams.

(The answer read.)

This was her answer, refusing to take, in 1823, as a northern boundary coming south for quantity, what is now prescribed to her, at the peril of war, for a southern boundary, with nothing north!--for, although the fact happens to be that Russia is not there, bounding us on the north, yet that makes no difference in the philosophy of our Fifty-four-Forties, who believe it to be so; and, on that belief, are ready to fight. Their notion is, that we go jam up to 54° 40', and the Russians come jam down to the same, leaving no place for the British lion to put down a paw, although that paw should be no bigger than the sole of the dove's foot which sought a resting-place from Noah's ark. This must seem a little strange to British statesmen, who do not grow so fast as to leave all knowledge behind them. They remember that Mr. Monroe and his cabinet--the President and cabinet who acquired the Spanish title under which we now propose to squeeze them out of the continent--actually offered them six degrees of latitude in that very place; and they will certainly want reasons for this so much compression now, where we offered them so much expansion then. These reasons cannot be given. There is no boundary at 54° 40'; and so far as we proposed to make it one, it was for the British and not for ourselves; and so ends this redoubtable line, up to which all true patriots were to march! and marching, fight! and fighting, die! if need be! singing all the while, with Horace--

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."

I come to the line of Utrecht, the existence of which is denied upon this floor by senators whose fate it seems to be to assert the existence of a line that is not, and to deny the existence of one that is. A clerk in the Department of State has compiled a volume of voyages and of treaties, and, undertaking to set the world right, has denied that commissioners ever met under the treaty of Utrecht, and fixed boundaries between the British northern and French Canadian possessions in North America. That denial has been produced and accredited on this floor by a senator in his place (Mr. Cass); and this production of a blundering book, with this senatorial endorsement of its blunder, lays me under the necessity of correcting a third error which the "fifty-four-forties" hug to their bosom, and the correction of which becomes necessary for the vindication of history, the establishment of a political right, and the protection of the Senate from the suspicion of ignorance. I affirm that the line was established; that the commissioners met and did their work; and that what they did has been acquiesced in by all the powers interested from the year 1713 down to the present time.

In the year 1805, being the second year after the acquisition of Louisiana, President Jefferson sent ministers to Madrid (Messrs. Monroe and Charles Pinckney) to adjust the southern and southwestern boundaries with her; and, in doing so, the principles which had governed the settlement of the northern boundary of the same province became a proper illustration of their ideas. They quoted these principles, and gave the line of Utrecht as the example; and this to Don Pedro Cevallos, one of the most accomplished statesmen of Europe. They say to him:

"It is believed that this principle has been admitted and acted on invariably since the discovery of America, in respect to their possessions there, by all the European powers. It is particularly illustrated by the stipulations of their most important treaties concerning those possessions and the practice under them, viz., the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, and that of Paris in 1763. In conformity with the 10th article of the first-mentioned treaty, the boundary between Canada and Louisiana on the one side, and the Hudson Bay and Northwestern Companies on the other, was established by commissioners, by a line to commence at a cape or promontory on the ocean, in 58° 31' north latitude; to run thence, southwestwardly, to latitude 49° north from the equator; and along that line indefinitely westward. Since that time, no attempt has been made to extend the limits of Louisiana or Canada to the north of that line, or of those companies to the south of it, by purchase, conquest, or grants from the Indians."

This is what Messrs. Monroe and Charles Pinckney said to Don Pedro Cevallos--a minister who must be supposed to be as well acquainted with the treaties which settled the boundaries of the late Spanish province of Louisiana as we are with the treaties which settle the boundaries of the United States. The line of Utrecht, and in the very words which carry it from the Lake of the Woods to the Pacific Ocean, and which confine the British to the north, and the French and Spanish to the south of that line, are quoted to Mr. Cevallos as a fact which he and all the world knew. He received it as such; and thus Spanish authority comes in aid of British, French, and American, to vindicate our rights and the truth of history.

(The letter was read.)

Another contribution, which I have pleasure to acknowledge, is from a gentleman of Baltimore, formerly of the House of Representatives (Mr. Kennedy), who gives me an extract from the Journal of the British House of Commons, March 5th, 1714, directing a writ to be issued for electing a burgess in the place of Frederick Herne, Esq., who, since his election, hath accepted, as the Journal says, the office of one of his Majesty's commissioners for treating with commissioners on the part of France for settling the trade between Great Britain and France. The same entry occurs at the same time with respect to James Murray, Esq., and Sir Joseph Martyn. The tenth article of the treaty of Utrecht applies to limits in North America, the eleventh and fifteenth to commerce; and these commissioners were appointed under some or all of these articles. Others might have been appointed by the king, and not mentioned in the journals, as not being members of Parliament whose vacated seats were to be filled. All three of the articles of the treaty were equally obligatory for the appointment of commissioners; and here is proof that three were appointed under the commercial articles.

One more piece of testimony, and I have done. And, first, a little statement to introduce it. We all know that in one of the debates which took place in the British House of Commons on the Ashburton treaty, and after that treaty was ratified and past recall, mention was made of a certain map called the King's map, which had belonged to the late King (George III.), and hung in his library during his lifetime, and afterwards in the Foreign Office, from which said office the said map silently disappeared about the time of the Ashburton treaty, and which certainly was not before our Senate at the time of the ratification of that treaty. Well, the member who mentioned it in Parliament said there was a strong red line upon it, about the tenth of an inch wide, running all along where the Americans said the true boundary was, with these words written along it in four places in King George's handwriting: "This is Oswald's line;" meaning, it is the line of the treaty of peace negotiated by Mr. Oswald on the British side, and therefore called Oswald's line.

Now, what I have to say is this: That whenever this royal map shall emerge from its retreat and resume its place in the Foreign Office, on it will be found another strong red line about the tenth of an inch wide, in another place, with these words written on it: Boundaries between the British and French possessions in America "as fixed by the treaty of Utrecht." To complete this last and crowning piece of testimony, I have to add that the evidence of it is in the Department of State, as is nearly the whole of the evidence which I have used in crushing this pie-poudre insurrection--"this puddle-lane rebellion"--against the truth and majesty of history, which, beginning with a clerk in the Department of State, spread to all the organs, big and little; then reached the Senate of the United States, held divided empire in this chamber for four months, and now dies the death of the ridiculous.[9]

[9] Since the delivery of this speech a copy of a paragraph of a despatch from Mr. Edward Everett, United States minister in London, dated 31st March, 1843, has been obtained, giving an account of this map as shown to him by Lord Aberdeen, containing the two red lines upon it, one for our northeast boundary, called "Oswald's line," the other for the northwest, called the line of the "treaty of Utrecht." The paragraph is in these words:

"The above was chiefly written before I had seen Mr. Oswald's map, which I have since by the kindness of Sir Robert Peel and Lord Aberdeen, been permitted to do. It is a copy of Mitchell in fine preservation. The boundaries between the British and French possessions in America, 'as fixed by the treaty of Utrecht,' are marked upon it in a very full distinct line, at least a tenth of an inch broad, and those words written in several places. In like manner the line giving our boundary as we have always claimed it, that is, carrying the northeastern angle of Nova Scotia far to the north of the St. Johns, is drawn very carefully in a bold red line, full a tenth of an inch broad: and in four different places along the line distinctly written 'the boundary described by Mr. Oswald.' What is very noticeable is, that a line narrower, but drawn with care with an instrument, from the lower end of Lake Nipissing to the source of the Mississippi, as far as the map permits such a line to run, had once been drawn on the map, and has since been partially erased, though still distinctly visible."

We must now introduce the gentlemen of 54-40 to Frazer's River, an acquaintance which they will be obliged to make before they arrive at their inexorable line; for it lies in their course, and must be crossed--both itself and the British province of New Caledonia, which it waters. This, then, is the introduction to that inevitable acquaintance, hitherto ignored. It is a river of about a thousand miles in length (following its windings), rising in the Rocky Mountains, opposite the head of the Unjigah, or Peace River, which flows into the Frozen Ocean in latitude about 70. The course of this river is nearly north and south, rising in latitude 55, flowing south to near latitude 49, and along that parallel, and just north of it, to the Gulf of Georgia, into which it falls behind Vancouver's Island. The upper part of this river is good for navigation; the lower half, plunging through volcanic chasms in mountains of rock, is wholly unnavigable for any species of craft. This river was discovered by Sir Alexander Mackenzie in 1793, was settled by the Northwest Company in 1806, and soon covered by their establishments from head to mouth. No American or Spaniard had ever left a track upon this river or its valley. Our claim to it, as far as I can see, rested wholly upon the treaty with Spain of 1819; and her claim rested wholly upon those discoveries among the islands, the value of which, as conferring claims upon the continent, it has been my province to show in our negotiations with Russia in 1824. At the time that we acquired this Spanish claim to Frazer's River, it had already been discovered twenty-six years by the British; had been settled by them for twelve years; was known by a British name; and no Spaniard had ever made a track on its banks. New Caledonia, or Western Caledonia, was the name which it then bore; and it so happens that an American citizen, a native of Vermont, respectably known to the senators now present from that State, and who had spent twenty years of his life in the hyperborean regions of Northwest America, in publishing an account of his travels and sojournings in that quarter, actually published a description of this New Caledonia, as a British province, at the very moment that we were getting it from Spain, and without the least suspicion that it belonged to Spain! I speak of Mr. David Harmon, whose Journal of Nineteen Years' Residence between latitudes 47 and 58 in Northwestern America, was published at Andover, in his native State, in the year 1820, the precise year after we had purchased this New Caledonia from the Spaniards. I read, not from the volume itself, which is not in the library of Congress, but from the London Quarterly Review January No., 1822, as reprinted in Boston; article, WESTERN CALEDONIA.

(The extract.)

This is the account given by Mr. Harmon of New Caledonia, and given of it by him at the exact moment that we were purchasing the Spanish title to it! Of this Spanish title, of which the Spaniards never heard, the narrator seems to have been as profoundly ignorant as the Spaniards were themselves; and made his description of New Caledonia as of a British possession, without any more reference to an adverse title than if he had been speaking of Canada. So much for the written description: now let us look at the map, and see how it stands there. Here is a map--a 54° 40' map--which will show us the features of the country, and the names of the settlements upon it. Here is Frazer's River, running from 55° to 49° and here is a line of British posts upon it, from Fort McLeod, at its head, to Fort Langley, at its mouth, and from Thompson's Fork, on one side, to Stuart's Fork on the other. And here are clusters of British names, imposed by the British, visible every where--Forts George, St. James, Simpson, Thompson, Frazer, McLeod, Langley, and others: rivers and lakes with the same names, and others: and here is Deserter's Creek, so named by Mackenzie, because his guide deserted him there in July, 1793; and here is an Indian village which he named Friendly, because the people were the most friendly to strangers that he had ever seen; and here another called Rascals' village, so named by Mackenzie fifty-three years ago, because its inhabitants were the most rascally Indians he had ever seen; and here is the representation of that famous boundary line 54° 40', which is supposed to be the exact boundary of American territorial rights in that quarter, and which happens to include the whole of New Caledonia, except McLeod's fort, and the whole of Stuart's lake, and a spring, which is left to the British, while we take the branch which flows from it. This line takes all in--river, lakes, forts, villages. See how it goes! Starting at the sea, it gives us, by a quarter of an inch on the map, Fort Simpson, so named after the British Governor Simpson, and founded by the Hudson Bay Company. Upon what principle we take this British fort I know not--except it be on the assumption that our sacred right and title being adjusted to a minute, by the aid of these 40 minutes, so appositely determined by the Emperor Paul's charter to a fur company in 1799, to be on this straight line, the bad example of even a slight deviation from it at the start should not be allowed even to spare a British fort away up at Point McIntyre, in Chatham Sound. On this principle we can understand the inclusion, by a quarter of an inch on the map, of this remote and isolated British post. The cutting in two of Stuart's lake, which the line does as it runs, is quite intelligible: it must be on the principle stated in one of the fifty-four-forty papers, that Great Britain should not have one drop of our water; therefore we divide the lake, each taking their own share of its drops. The fate of the two forts, McLeod and St. James, so near each other and so far off from us, united all their lives, and now so unexpectedly divided from each other by this line, is less comprehensible; and I cannot account for the difference of their fates, unless it is upon the law of the day of judgment, when, of two men in the field, one shall be taken and the other left, and no man be able to tell the reason why. All the rest of the inclusions of British establishments which the line makes, from head to mouth of Frazer's River, are intelligible enough: they turn upon the principle of all or none!--upon the principle that every acre and every inch, every grain of sand, drop of water, and blade of grass in all Oregon, up to fifty-four forty, is ours! and have it we will.

This is the country which geography and history five-and-twenty years ago called New Caledonia, and treated as a British possession; and it is the country which an organized party among ourselves of the present day call "the whole of Oregon or none," and every inch of which they say belongs to us. Well, let us proceed a little further with the documents of 1823, and see what the men of that day--President Monroe and his cabinet--the men who made the treaty with Spain by which we became the masters of this large domain: let us proceed a little further, and see what they thought of our title up to fifty-four forty. I read from the same document of 1823:

Mr. Adams to Mr. Middleton, July, 22, 1823.

"The right of the United States, from the forty-second to the forty-ninth parallel of latitude on the Pacific Ocean we consider as unquestionable, being founded, first, on the acquisition by the treaty of 22d February, 1819, of all the rights of Spain; second, by the discovery of the Columbia River, first from the sea at its mouth, and then by land, by Lewis and Clarke; and, third, by the settlement at its mouth in 1811. This territory is to the United States of an importance which no possession in North America can be of to any European nation, not only as it is but the continuity of their possessions from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, but as it offers their inhabitants the means of establishing hereafter water communications from the one to the other."

From 42° to 49° is here laid down by Mr. Monroe and his cabinet as the extent of our unquestionable title, and on these boundaries they were ready to settle the question. Five other despatches the same year from Mr. Adams to Mr. Rush, our minister in London, offer the same thing. They all claim the valley of the Columbia River, and nothing more. They claim the land drained by its waters, and no more; but as the Columbia had a northern prong, drawing water just under the mountains from as far north as 51°--yes! 51--not 54-40, they offered to cut off the head of that prong, and take the line of 49, which included all that was worth having of the waters of the Columbia, and left out, but barely left out, Frazer's River--coming within three miles of it at its mouth.

On Friday, Mr. President, I read one passage from the documents of 1823, to let you see that fifty-four forty (for that is the true reading of fifty-five) had been offered to Great Britain for her northern boundary: to-day I read you six PASSAGES from the same documents, to show the same thing. And let me remark once more--the remark will bear eternal repetition--these offers were made by the men who had acquired the Spanish title to Oregon! and who must be presumed to know as much about it as those whose acquaintance with Oregon dates from the epoch of the Baltimore convention--whose love for it dates from the era of its promulgation as a party watchword--whose knowledge of it extends to the luminous pages of Mr. Greenhow's horn-book!

Six times Mr. Monroe and his cabinet renounced Frazer's River and its valley, and left it to the British! They did so on the intelligible principle that the British had discovered it, and settled it, and were in the actual possession of it when we got the Spanish claim; which claim Spain never made! Upon this principle, New Caledonia was left to the British in 1823. Upon what principle is it claimed now?

This is what Mr. Monroe and his cabinet thought of our title to the whole of Oregon or none, in the year 1823. They took neither branch of this proposition. They did not go for all or none, but for some! They took some, and left some; and they divided by a line right in itself, and convenient in itself, and mutually suitable to each party. That President and his cabinet carry their "unquestionable right" to Oregon as far as 49°, and no further. This is exactly what was done six years before. Mr. Gallatin and Mr. Rush offered the same line, as being a continuation of the line of Utrecht (describing it by that name in their despatch of October 20th, 1818), and as covering the valley of the Columbia River, to which they alleged our title to be indisputable. Mr. Jefferson had offered the same line in 1807. All these offers leave Frazer's River and its valley to the British, because they discovered and settled it. All these offers hold on to the Columbia River and its valley, because we discovered and settled it; and all these offers let the principle of contiguity or continuity work equally on the British as on the American side of the line of Utrecht.

This is what the statesmen did who made the acquisition of the Spanish claim to Oregon in 1819. In four years afterwards they had freely offered all north of 49 to Great Britain; and no one ever thought of arraigning them for it. Most of these statesmen have gone through fiery trials since, and been fiercely assailed on all the deeds of their lives; but I never heard of one of them being called to account, much less lose an election, for the part he acted in offering 49 to Great Britain in 1823, or at any other time. For my part, I thought they were right then, and I think so now; I was senator then, as I am now. I thought with them that New Caledonia belonged to the British; and thinking so still, and acting upon the first half of the great maxim--Ask nothing but what is right--I shall not ask them for it, much less fight them for it now.

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Chapter CLIX

OREGON JOINT OCCUPATION: NOTICE AUTHORIZED FOR TERMINATING IT: BRITISH GOVERNMENT OFFERS THE LINE OF 49: QUANDARY OF THE ADMINISTRATION: DEVICE: SENATE CONSULTED: TREATY MADE AND RATIFIED.

The abrogation of the article in the conventions of 1818 and 1828, for the joint occupation of the Columbia, was a measure right in itself, indispensable in the actual condition of the territory--colonies from two nations planting themselves upon it together--and necessary to stimulate the conclusion of the treaty which was to separate the possessions of the two countries. Every consideration required the notice to be given, and Congress finally voted it; but not without a struggle in each House, longer and more determined than the disparity of the vote would indicate. In the House of Representatives, the vote in its favor was 154--headed by Mr. John Quincy Adams: the nays were 54. The resolution as adopted by the House, then went to the Senate for its concurrence, where, on the motion of Mr. Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, it underwent a very material alteration in form, without impairing its effect, adopting a preamble containing the motives for the notice, and of which the leading were to show that amicable settlement of the title by negotiation was an object in view, and intended to be promoted by a separation of interests between the parties. Thus amended, the resolution was passed by a good majority--40 to 14. The yeas and nays were:

Messrs. Archer, Ashley, Atherton, Bagby, Barrow, Benton, Berrien, Calhoun, Cameron, Chalmers, John M. Clayton, Corwin, Crittenden, Davis, Dayton, Dix, Greene, Haywood, Houston, Huntington, Jarnagin, Johnson of Maryland, Johnson of Louisiana, Lewis, McDuffie, Mangum, Miller, Morehead, Niles, Pearce, Pennybacker, Phelps, Rusk, Sevier, Simmons, Speight, Turney, Upham, Webster, Woodbridge.

The nays were:

Messrs. Allen, Atchison, Breese, Bright, Cass, Thomas Clayton, Dickinson, Evans, Fairfield, Hannegan, Jenness, Semple, Sturgeon, Westcott.

These nays were not all opposed to the notice itself, but to the form it had adopted, and to the clause which left it discretional with the President to give it when he should think proper. They constituted the body of the extreme friends of Oregon, standing on the Baltimore platform--"the whole of Oregon or none"--looking to war as inevitable, and who certainly would have made it if their course had been followed. In the House the Senate's amendment was substantially adopted, and by an increased vote; and the authority for terminating the joint occupancy--a great political blunder in itself, and fraught with dangerous consequences--was eventually given, but after the lapse of a quarter of a century, and after bringing the two countries to the brink of hostilities. The President acted at once upon the discretion which was given him--caused the notice for the abrogation of the joint occupant article to be immediately given to the British government--and urged Congress to the adoption of the measures which were necessary for the protection of the American citizens who had gone to the territory.

The news of the broken off negotiations was received with regret in Great Britain. Sir Robert Peel, with the frankness and integrity which constitute the patriotic statesman, openly expressed his regret in Parliament that the offer of 49, when made by the American government, had not been accepted by the British government; and it was evident that negotiations would be renewed. They were so: and in a way to induce a speedy conclusion of the question--being no less than a fair and open offer on the side of the British to accept the line we had offered. The administration was in a quandary (qu'en dirai-je? what shall I say to it?), at this unexpected offer. They felt that it was just, and that it ought to be accepted: at the same time they had stood upon the platform of the Baltimore convention--had helped to make it--had had the benefit of it in the election; and were loth to show themselves inconsistent, or ignorant. Besides the fifty-four forties were in commotion against it. A specimen of their temper has been shown in Mr. Hannegan's denunciation of the President. All the government newspapers--the official organ at Washington City, and the five hundred democratic papers throughout the Union which followed its lead, were all vehement against it. Underhandedly they did what they could to allay the storm which was raging--encouraging Mr. Haywood, Mr. Benton, and others to speak; but the pride of consistency, and the fear of reproach, kept them in the background, and even ostensibly in favor of 54-40, while encouraging the events which would enable them to settle on 49. Mr. Pakenham made his offer: it was not a case for delay: and acceptance or rejection became inevitable. It was accepted; and nothing remained but to put the treaty into form. A device was necessary, and it was found in the early practice of the government--that of the President asking the advice of the Senate upon the articles of a treaty before the negotiation. Mr. Benton proposed this course to Mr. Polk. He was pleased with it, but feared its feasibility. The advice of the Senate would be his sufficient shield: but could it be obtained? The chances seemed to be against it. It was an up-hill business, requiring a vote of two-thirds: it was a novelty, not practised since the time of Washington: it was a submission to the whigs, with the risk of defeat; for unless they stood by the President against the dominant division of his own friends, the advice desired would not be given; and the embarrassment of the administration would be greater than ever. In this uneasy and uncertain state of mind, the President had many conferences with Mr. Benton, the point of which was to know, beyond the chance of mistake, how far he could rely upon the whig senators. Mr. Benton talked with them all--with Webster, Archer, Berrien, John M. Clayton, Crittenden, Corwin, Davis of Massachusetts, Dayton, Greene of Rhode Island, Huntington of Connecticut, Reverdy Johnson, Henry Johnson of Louisiana, Miller of New Jersey, Phelps, Simmons, Upham, Woodbridge,--and saw fully that they intended to act for their country, and not for their party: and reported to the President that he would be safe in trusting to them--that their united voice would be in favor of the advice, which, added to the minority of the democracy, would make the two-thirds which were requisite. The most auspicious mode of applying for this advice was deemed to be the submission of a projet of a treaty, presented by the British minister, and to be laid before the Senate for their opinion upon its acceptance. The projet was accordingly received by Mr. Buchanan, a message drawn up, and the desired advice was to be asked the next day, 10th of June. A prey to anxiety as to the conduct of the whigs, the mere absence of part of whom would defeat the measure, the President sent for Mr. Benton the night before, to get himself re-assured on that point. Mr. Benton was clear and positive that they would be in their places, and would vote the advice, and that the measure would be carried. The next day the projet of the treaty was sent in, and with it a message from the President, asking the advice which he desired. It stated:--

"In the early periods of the government, the opinion and advice of the Senate were often taken in advance upon important questions of our foreign policy. General Washington repeatedly consulted the Senate, and asked their previous advice upon pending negotiations with foreign powers; and the Senate in every instance responded to his call by giving their advice, to which he always conformed his action. This practice, though rarely resorted to in later times, was, in my judgment, eminently wise, and may, on occasions of great importance, be properly revived. The Senate are a branch of the treaty-making power; and, by consulting them in advance of his own action upon important measures of foreign policy which may ultimately come before them for their consideration, the President secures harmony of action between that body and himself. The Senate are, moreover, a branch of the war-making power, and it may be eminently proper for the Executive to take the opinion and advice of that body in advance upon any great question which may involve in its decision the issue of peace or war. On the present occasion, the magnitude of the subject would induce me, under any circumstances, to desire the previous advice of the Senate; and that desire is increased by the recent debates and proceedings in Congress, which render it, in my judgment, not only respectful to the Senate, but necessary and proper, if not indispensable, to insure harmonious action between that body and the Executive. In conferring on the Executive the authority to give the notice for the abrogation of the convention of 1827, the Senate acted publicly so large a part, that a decision on the proposal now made by the British government, without a definite knowledge of the views of that body in reference to it, might render the question still more complicated and difficult of adjustment. For these reasons I invite the consideration of the Senate to the proposal of the British government for the settlement of the Oregon question, and ask their advice on the subject."

This statement and expression of opinion were conformable to the early practice of the government and the theory of the constitution, which, in requiring the President to take the advice of the Senate in the formation of treaties, would certainly imply a consultation before they were made; and this interpretation had often been asserted by members of the Senate. As an interpretation deemed right in itself, and being deferential to the Senate, and being of good example for the future, and of great immediate practical good in taking the question of peace or war with Great Britain out of the hands of an administration standing upon the creed of the Baltimore convention, and putting it into the hands of the whigs to whom it did not apply, and that part of the democracy which disregarded it, this application of the President was most favorably received. Still, however, dominated by the idea of consistency, the President added a salvo for that sensitive point in the shape of a reservation in behalf of his previous opinions, thus:

"My opinions and my action on the Oregon question were fully made known to Congress in my annual message of the second of December last; and the opinions therein expressed remain unchanged."

With this reservation, and with a complete devolution of the responsibility of the act upon the Senate, he proceeded to ask their advice in these terms:

"Should the Senate, by the constitutional majority required for the ratification of treaties, advise the acceptance of this proposition, or advise it with such modifications as they may, upon full deliberation, deem proper, I shall conform my action to their advice. Should the Senate, however, decline by such constitutional majority to give such advice, or to express an opinion on the subject, I shall consider it my duty to reject the offer."

It was clear, then, that the fact of treaty or no treaty depended upon the Senate--that the whole responsibility was placed upon it--that the issue of peace or war depended upon that body. Far from shunning this responsibility, that body was glad to take it, and gave the President a faithful support against himself, against his cabinet, and against his peculiar friends. These friends struggled hard, and exhausted parliamentary tactics to defeat the application, and though a small minority, were formidable in a vote where each one counted two against the opposite side. The first motion was to refer the message to the Committee on Foreign Relations, where the fifty-four forties were in the majority, and from whose action delay and embarrassment might ensue. Failing in that motion, it was moved to lay the message on the table. Failing again, it was moved to postpone the consideration of the subject to the next week. That motion being rejected, the consideration of the message was commenced, and then succeeded a series of motions to amend and alter the terms of the proposition as submitted. All these failed, and at the end of two days the vote was taken and the advice given. The yeas were:

"Messrs. Archer, Ashley, Bagby, Benton, Berrien, Calhoun, Chalmers, Thomas Clayton, John M. Clayton, Colquitt, Davis, Dayton, Dix, Evans, Greene, Haywood, Houston, Huntington, Johnson of Maryland, Johnson of Louisiana, Lewis, McDuffie, Mangum, Miller, Morehead, Niles, Pearce, Pennybacker, Phelps, Rusk, Sevier, Simmons, Speight, Turney, Upham, Webster, Woodbridge, Yulee."--38.

The nays:

"Messrs. Allen, Atherton, Breese, Cameron, Cass, Dickinson, Fairfield, Hannegan, Jarnagin, Jenness, Semple, Sturgeon."--12.

The advice was in these words:

"Resolved (two-thirds of the Senators present concurring), That the President of the United States be, and he is hereby, advised to accept the proposal of the British government, accompanying his message to the Senate dated 10th June, 1846, for a convention to settle boundaries, &c., between the United States and Great Britain west of the Rocky or Stony mountains.

"Ordered, That the Secretary lay the said resolution before the President of the United States."

Four days afterwards the treaty was sent in in due form, accompanied by a message which still left its responsibility on the advising Senate, thus:

"In accordance with the resolution of the Senate of the 12th instant, that 'the President of the United States be, and he is hereby, advised to accept the proposal of the British government, accompanying his message to the Senate dated 10th June, 1846, for a convention to settle boundaries, &c., between the United States and Great Britain west of the Rocky or Stony mountains,' a convention was concluded and signed on the 15th instant, by the Secretary of State on the part of the United States, and the envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of her Britannic Majesty on the part of Great Britain. This convention I now lay before the Senate for their consideration, with a view to its ratification."

Two days more were consumed in efforts to amend or alter the treaty in various of its provisions, all of which failing, the final vote on its ratification was taken, and carried by an increased vote on each side--41 to 14.

YEAS.--"Messrs. Archer, Ashley, Bagby, Barrow, Benton, Berrien, Calhoun, Chalmers, Thomas Clayton, John M. Clayton, Colquitt, Corwin, Crittenden, Davis, Dayton, Dix, Evans, Greene, Haywood, Houston, Huntington, Johnson of Maryland, Henry Johnson of Louisiana, Lewis, McDuffie, Mangum, Miller, Morehead, Niles, Pearce, Pennybacker, Phelps, Rusk, Sevier, Simmons, Speight, Turney, Upham, Webster, Woodbridge, Yulee.

NAYS.--"Messrs. Allen, Atchison, Atherton, Breese, Bright, Cameron, Cass, Dickinson, Fairfield, Hannegan, Jenness, Semple, Sturgeon, Westcott."

An anomaly was presented in the progress of this question--that of the daily attack, by all the government papers, upon the senators who were accomplishing the wishes of the President. The organ at Washington, conducted by Mr. Ritchie, was incessant and unmeasured in these attacks, especially on Mr. Benton, whose place in the party, and his geographical position in the West, gave him the privilege of being considered the leader of the forty-nines, and therefore the most obnoxious. It was a new thing under the sun to see the senator daily assailed, in the government papers, for carrying into effect the wishes of the government--to see him attacked in the morning for what the President was hurrying him to do the night before. His course was equally independent of the wishes of the government, and the abuse of its papers. He had studied the Oregon question for twenty-five years--had his mind made up upon it--and should have acted according to his convictions without regard to support or resistance from any quarter.--The issue was an instructive commentary upon the improvidence of these party platforms, adopted for an electioneering campaign, made into a party watch-word, often fraught with great mischief to the country, and often founded in ignorance or disregard of the public welfare. This Oregon platform was eminently of that character. It was a party platform for the campaign: its architects knew but little of the geography of the north-west coast, or of its diplomatic history. They had never heard of the line of the treaty of Utrecht, and denied its existence: they had never heard of the multiplied offers of our government to settle upon that line, and treated the offer now as a novelty and an abandonment of our rights: they had never heard that their 54-40 was no line on the continent, but only a point on an island on the coast, fixed by the Emperor Paul as the southern limit of the charter granted by him to the Russian Fur Company: had never heard of Frazer's River and New Caledonia, which lay between Oregon and their indisputable line, and ignored the existence of that river and province. The pride of consistency made them adhere to these errors; and a desire to destroy Mr. Benton for not joining in the hurrahs for the "whole of Oregon, or none," and for the "immediate annexation of Texas without regard to consequences," lent additional force to the attacks upon him. The conduct of the whigs was patriotic in preferring their country to their party--in preventing a war with Great Britain--and in saving the administration from itself and its friends. Great Britain acted magnanimously, and was worthily represented by her minister, Mr. (now Sir Richard) Pakenham. Her adoption and renewal of our own offer, settled the last remaining controversy between the countries--left them in a condition which they had not seen since the peace of 1783--without any thing to quarrel about, and with a mutuality of interest in the preservation of peace which promised a long continuance of peace. But, alas, Great Britain is to the United States now what Spain was for centuries to her--the raw-head and bloody-bones which inspires terror and rage. During these centuries a ministry, or a public man that was losing ground at home, had only to raise a cry of some insult, aggression, or evil design on the part of Spain to have Great Britain in arms against her. And so it is in the United States at present, putting Great Britain in the place of Spain, and ourselves in hers. We have periodical returns of complaints against her, each to perish when it has served its turn, and to be succeeded by another, evanescent as itself. Thus far, no war has been made; but politicians have gained reputations; newspapers have taken fire; stocks have vacillated, to the profit of jobbers; great expense incurred for national defence in ships and forts, when there is nothing to defend against: and if there was, the electric telegraph and the steam car would do the work with little expense either of time or money.

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Chapter CLX

MEETING OF THE SECOND SESSION OF THE 29TH CONGRESS: PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE: VIGOROUS PROSECUTION OF THE WAR RECOMMENDED: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL PROPOSED TO BE CREATED.

Congress met at the regular annual period, the first Monday in December; and being the second session of the same body, there was nothing to be done, after the assembling of a quorum, before the commencement of business, but to receive the President's message. It was immediately communicated, and, of course, was greatly occupied with the Mexican war. The success of our arms, under the command of General Taylor, was a theme of exultation; and after that, an elaborate argument to throw the blame of the war on Mexico. The war was assumed, and argued to have been made by her, and its existence only recognized by us after "American blood had been spilled upon American soil." History is bound to pronounce her judgment upon these assumptions, and to say that they are unfounded. In the first place, the legal state of war, the status belli, was produced by the incorporation of Texas, with which Mexico was at war. In the next place, the United States' government understood that act to be the assumption of the war in fact, as well as in law, by the immediate advance of the army to the frontier of Texas, and of the navy to the Gulf of Mexico, to take the war off the hands of the Texians. In the third place, the actual collision of arms was brought on by the further advance of the American troops to the left bank of the Lower Rio Grande, then and always in the possession of Mexico, and erecting field works on the bank of the river, and pointing cannon at the town of Matamoras on the opposite side, the seat of a Mexican population, and the head-quarters of their army of observation. It was under these circumstances that the Mexican troops crossed the river, and commenced the attack. And this is what is called spilling American blood on American soil. The laws of nations and the law of self-defence, justify that spilling of blood; and such will be the judgment of history. The paragraph in the original message asking for a provisional territorial government to be established by Congress for the conquered provinces was superseded, and replaced by one asserting the right of the United States to govern them under the law of nations, according to the recommendation of Mr. Benton, and expressed in these words:

"By the laws of nations a conquered territory is subject to be governed by the conqueror during his military possession, and until there is either a treaty of peace, or he shall voluntarily withdraw from it. The old civil government being necessarily superseded, it is the right and duty of the conqueror to secure his conquest, and provide for the maintenance of civil order and the rights of the inhabitants. This right has been exercised and this duty performed by our military and naval commanders, by the establishment of temporary governments in some of the conquered provinces in Mexico, assimilating them as far as practicable to the free institutions of our country. In the provinces of New Mexico and of the Californias, little, if any further resistance is apprehended from the inhabitants of the temporary governments which have thus, from the necessity of the case, and according to the laws of war, been established. It may be proper to provide for the security of these important conquests, by making an adequate appropriation for the purpose of erecting fortifications, and defraying the expenses necessarily incident to the maintenance of our possession and authority over them."

Having abandoned the idea of conquering by "a masterly inactivity," and adopted the idea of a vigorous prosecution of the war, the President also adopted Mr. Benton's plan for prosecuting it, which was to carry the war straight to the city of Mexico--General Taylor, for that purpose, to be supplied with 25,000 men, that, advancing along the table land by San Luis de Potosi, and overcoming all the obstacles in his way, and leaving some garrisons, he might arrive at the capital with some 10,000 men:--General Scott to be supplied with 15,000, that, landing at Vera Cruz, and leaving some battalions to invest (with the seamen) that town, he might run up the road to Mexico, arriving there (after all casualties) with 10,000 men. Thus 20,000 men were expected to arrive at the capital, but 10,000 were deemed enough to master any Mexican force which could meet it--no matter how numerous. This plan (and that without any reference to dissensions among generals) required a higher rank than that of major-general. A lieutenant-general, representing the constitutional commander-in-chief, was the proper commander in the field: and as such, was a part of Colonel Benton's plan; to which negotiation was to be added, and much relied on, as it was known that the old republican party--that which had framed a constitution on the model of that of the United States, and sought its friendship--were all in favor of peace. All this plan was given to the President in writing, and having adopted all that part of it which depended on his own authority, he applied to Congress to give him authority to do what he could not without it, namely, to make the appointment of a lieutenant-general--the appointment, it being well known, intended for Senator Benton, who had been a colonel in the army before either of the present generals held that rank. The bill for the creation of this office readily passed the House of Representatives, but was undermined and defeated in the Senate by three of the President's cabinet ministers, Messrs. Marcy, Walker, and Buchanan--done covertly, of course, for reasons unconnected with the public service. The plan went on, and was consummated, although the office of lieutenant-general was not created. A major-general, in right of seniority, had to command other major-generals; while every one accustomed to military, or naval service, knows that it is rank, and not seniority, which is essential to harmonious and efficient command.

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Chapter CLXI

WAR WITH MEXICO: THE WAR DECLARED, AND AN INTRIGUE FOR PEACE COMMENCED THE SAME DAY.

The state of war had been produced between the United States and Mexico by the incorporation of Texas: hostilities between the two countries were brought on by the advance of the American troops to the left bank of the Lower Rio Grande--the Mexican troops being on the opposite side. The left bank of the river being disputed territory, and always in her possession, the Mexican government had a right to consider this advance an aggression--and the more so as field-works were thrown up, and cannon pointed at the Mexican town of Matamoros on the opposite side of the river. The armies being thus in presence, with anger in their bosoms and arms in their hands, that took place which every body foresaw must take place: collisions and hostilities. They did so; and early in May the President sent in a message to the two Houses of Congress, informing them that American blood had been spilt upon American soil; and requesting Congress to recognize the existence of war, as a fact, and to provide for its prosecution. It was, however, an event determined upon before the spilling of that blood, and the advance of the troops was a way of bringing it on. The President in his message at the commencement of the session, after an enumeration of Mexican wrongs, had distinctly intimated that he should have recommended measures of redress if a minister had not been sent to effect a peaceable settlement; but the minister having gone, and not yet been heard from, "he should forbear recommending to Congress such ulterior measures of redress for the wrongs and injuries we have so long borne, as it would have been proper to make had no such negotiation been instituted." This was a declared postponement of war measures for a contingency which might quickly happen; and did. Mr. Slidell, the minister, returned without having been received, and denouncing war in his retiring despatch. The contingency had therefore occurred on which the forbearance of the President was to cease, and the ulterior measures to be recommended which he had intimated. All this was independent of the spilt blood; but that event producing a state of hostilities in fact, fired the American blood, both in and out of Congress, and inflamed the country for immediate war. Without that event it would have been difficult--perhaps impossible--to have got Congress to vote it: with it, the vote was almost unanimous. Duresse was plead by many members--duresse in the necessity of aiding our own troops. In the Senate only two senators voted against the measure, Mr. Thomas Clayton of Delaware, and Mr. John Davis of Massachusetts. In the House there were 14 negative votes: Messrs. John Quincy Adams, George Ashmun, Henry Y. Cranston, Erastus D. Culver, Columbus Delano, Joshua R. Giddings, Joseph Grinnell, Charles Hudson, Daniel P. King, Joseph M. Root, Luther Severance, John Strohm, Daniel R. Tilden and Joseph Vance. Mr. Calhoun spoke against the bill, but did not vote upon it. He was sincerely opposed to the war, although his conduct had produced it--always deluding himself, even while creating the status belli, with the belief that money, and her own weakness, would induce Mexico to submit, and yield to the incorporation of Texas without forcible resistance: which would certainly have been the case if the United States had proceeded gently by negotiation. He had despatched a messenger, to offer a douceur of ten millions of dollars at the time of signing the treaty of annexation two years before, and he expected the means, repulsed then, to be successful now when the incorporation should be effected under an act of Congress. Had he remained in the cabinet to do which he had not concealed his wish, his labors would have been earnestly directed to that end; but his associates who had co-operated with him in getting up the Texas question for the presidential election, and to defeat Mr. Van Buren and Mr. Clay, had war in view as an object within itself from the beginning: and these associates were now in the cabinet, and he not--their power increased: his gone. Claims upon Mexico, and speculations in Texas land and scrip, were with them (the active managing part of the cabinet) an additional motive, and required a war, or a treaty under the menace of war, or at the end of war, to make these claims and speculations available. Mr. Robert J. Walker had the reputation of being at the head of this class.

Many members of Congress, of the same party with the administration, were extremely averse to this war, and had interviews with the administration, to see if it was inevitable, before it was declared. They were found united for it, and also under the confident belief that there would be no war--not another gun fired: and that in "ninety" or "one hundred and twenty days," peace would be signed, and all the objects gained. This was laid down as a certainty, and the President himself declared that Congress would be "responsible if they did not vote the declaration." Mr. Benton was struck with this confident calculation, without knowing its basis; and with these 90 and 120 days, the usual run of a country bill of exchange; and which was now to become the run of the war. It was enigmatical, and unintelligible, but eventually became comprehensible. Truth was, an intrigue was laid for a peace before the war was declared! and this intrigue was even part of the scheme for making the war. It is impossible to conceive of an administration less warlike, or more intriguing, than that of Mr. Polk. They were men of peace, with objects to be accomplished by means of war; so that war was a necessity and an indispensability to their purpose; but they wanted no more of it than would answer their purposes. They wanted a small war, just large enough to require a treaty of peace, and not large enough to make military reputations, dangerous for the presidency. Never were men at the head of a government less imbued with military spirit, or more addicted to intrigue. How to manage the war was the puzzle. Defeat would be ruin: to conquer vicariously, would be dangerous. Another mode must be fallen upon; and that seemed to have been devised before the declaration was resolved upon, and to have been relied upon for its immediate termination--for its conclusion within the 90 and the 120 days which had been so confidently fixed for its term. This was nothing less than the restoration of the exiled Santa Anna to power, and the purchase of a peace from him. The date of the conception of this plan is not known: the execution of it commenced on the day of the declaration of war. It was intended to be secret, both for the honor of the United States, the success of the movement, and the safety of Santa Anna; but it leaked out: and the ostentation of Captain Slidell Mackenzie in giving all possible eclat to his secret mission, put the report on the winds, and sent it flying over the country. At first it was denied, and early in July the Daily Union (the government paper) gave it a formal and authoritative contradiction. Referring to the current reports that paper said:

"We deem it our duty to state in the most positive terms, that our government has no sort of connection with any scheme of Santa Anna for the revolution of Mexico, or for any sort of purpose. Some three months ago some adventurer was in Washington, who wished to obtain their countenance and aid in some scheme or other connected with Santa Anna. They declined all sort of connection, co-operation, or participation in any effort for the purpose. The government of this country declines all such intrigues or bargains. They have made war openly in the face of the world. They mean to prosecute it with all their vigor. They mean to force Mexico to do us justice at the point of the sword. This, then, is their design--this is their plan; and it is worthy of a bold, high-minded, and energetic people."

The only part of this publication that retains a surviving interest, is that which states that, some three months before that time (which would have been a month before the war was declared), some adventurer was in Washington who wished to obtain the government countenance to some scheme connected with Santa Anna. As for the rest, and all the denial, it was soon superseded by events--by the actual return of Santa Anna through our fleet, and upon an American passport! and open landing at Vera Cruz. Further denial became impossible: justification was the only course: and the President essayed it in his next annual message. Thus:

"Before that time (the day of the declaration of the war) there were symptoms of a revolution in Mexico, favored, as it was understood to be, by the more liberal party, and especially by those who were opposed to foreign interference and to the monarchical government. Santa Anna was then in exile in Havana, having been expelled from power and banished from his country by a revolution which occurred in December, 1844; but it was known that he had still a considerable party in his favor in Mexico. It was also equally well known, that no vigilance which could be exerted by our squadron would, in all probability, have prevented him from effecting a landing somewhere on the extensive gulf coast of Mexico, if he desired to return to his county. He had openly professed an entire change of policy; had expressed his regret that he had subverted the federal constitution of 1824, and avowed that he was now in favor of its restoration. He had publicly declared his hostility, in the strongest terms, to the establishment of a monarchy, and to European interference in the affairs of his country. Information to this effect had been received, from sources believed to be reliable, at the date of the recognition of the existence of the war by Congress, and was afterwards fully confirmed by the receipt of the despatch of our consul in the city of Mexico, with the accompanying documents, which are herewith transmitted. Besides, it was reasonable to suppose that he must see the ruinous consequences to Mexico of a war with the United States, and that it would be his interest to favor peace. It was under these circumstances and upon these considerations that it was deemed expedient not to obstruct his return to Mexico, should he attempt to do so. Our object was the restoration of peace; and with that view, no reason was perceived why we should take part with Paredes, and aid him, by means of our blockade, in preventing the return of his rival to Mexico. On the contrary, it was believed that the intestine divisions which ordinary sagacity could not but anticipate as the fruit of Santa Anna's return to Mexico, and his contest with Paredes, might strongly tend to produce a disposition with both parties to restore and preserve peace with the United States. Paredes was a soldier by profession, and a monarchist in principle. He had but recently before been successful in a military revolution, by which he had obtained power. He was the sworn enemy of the United States, with which he had involved his country in the existing war. Santa Anna had been expelled from power by the army, was known to be in open hostility to Paredes, and publicly pledged against foreign intervention and the restoration of monarchy in Mexico. In view of these facts and circumstances, it was, that, when orders were issued to the commander of our naval forces in the Gulf, on the thirteenth day of May last, the day on which the existence of the war was recognized by Congress, to place the coasts of Mexico under blockade, he was directed not to obstruct the passage of Santa Anna to Mexico, should he attempt to return."

So that the return of Santa Anna, and his restoration to power, and his expected friendship, were part of the means relied upon for obtaining peace from the beginning--from the day of the declaration of war, and consequently before the declaration, and obviously as an inducement to it. This knowledge, subsequently obtained, enabled Mr. Benton (to whom the words had been spoken) to comprehend the reliance which was placed on the termination of the war in ninety or one hundred and twenty days. It was the arrangement with Santa Anna! we to put him back in Mexico, and he to make peace with us; of course an agreeable peace. But Santa Anna was not a man to promise any thing, whether intending to fulfill it or not, without receiving a consideration; and in this case some million of dollars was the sum required--not for himself, of course, but to enable him to promote the peace at home. This explains the application made to Congress by the President before the end of its session--before the adjournment of the body which had declared the war--for an appropriation of two millions as a means of terminating it. On the 4th of August a confidential message was communicated to the Senate, informing them that he had made fresh overtures to Mexico for negotiation of a treaty of peace, and asking for an appropriation of two millions to enable him to treat with the better prospect of success, and even to pay the money when the treaty should be ratified in Mexico, without waiting for its ratification by our own Senate. After stating the overture, and the object, the message went on to say:

"Under these circumstances, and considering the exhausted and distracted condition of the Mexican republic, it might become necessary, in order to restore peace, that I should have it in my power to advance a portion of the consideration money for any cession of territory which may be made. The Mexican government might not be willing to wait for the payment of the whole until the treaty could be ratified by the Senate, and an appropriation to carry it into effect be made by Congress; and the necessity for such a delay might defeat the object altogether. I would, therefore, suggest whether it might not be wise for Congress to appropriate a sum such as they might consider adequate for this purpose, to be paid, if necessary, immediately upon the ratification of the treaty by Mexico."

A similar communication was made to the House on the 8th day of the month (August), and the dates become material, as connecting the requested appropriation with the return of Santa Anna, and his restoration to power. The dates are all in a cluster--Santa Anna landing at Vera Cruz on the 8th of August, and arriving at the capital on the 15th--the President's messages informing the Senate that he had made overtures for peace, and asking the appropriations to promote it, being dated on the 4th and the 8th of the same month. The fact was, it was known at what time Santa Anna was to leave Havana for Mexico, and the overture was made, and the appropriations asked, just at the proper time to meet him. The appropriation was not voted by Congress, and at the next session the application for it was renewed, increased to three millions--the same to which Mr. Wilmot offered that proviso which Mr. Calhoun privately hugged to his bosom as a fortunate event for the South, while publicly holding it up as the greatest of outrages, and just cause for a separation of the slave and the free States.

An intrigue for peace, through the restored Santa Anna, was then a part of the war with Mexico from the beginning. They were simultaneous concoctions. They were twins. The war was made to get the peace. Ninety to one-hundred and twenty days was to be the limit of the life of the war, and that pacifically all the while, and to be terminated by a good treaty of indemnities and acquisitions. It is probably the first time in the history of nations that a secret intrigue for peace was part and parcel of an open declaration of war! the first time that a war was commenced upon an agreement to finish it in so many days! and that the terms of its conclusion were settled before its commencement. It was certainly a most unmilitary conception: and infinitely silly, as the event proved. Santa Anna, restored by our means, and again in power, only thought of himself, and how to make Mexico his own, after getting back. He took the high military road. He roused the war spirit of the country, raised armies, placed himself at their head, issued animating proclamations; and displayed the most exaggerated hatred to the United States--the more so, perhaps, to cover up the secret of his return. He gave the United States a year of bloody and costly work! many thousands killed--many more dead of disease--many ten millions of money expended. Buena Vista, Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Churubusco, Chepultepec, were the fruit of his return! honorable to the American arms, but costly in blood and money. To the Mexicans his return was not less inauspicious: for, true to his old instincts, he became the tyrant of his country--ruled by fraud, force, and bribes--crushed the liberal party--exiled or shot liberal men--became intolerable--and put the nation to the horrors of another civil war to expel him again, and again: but not finally until he had got another milking from the best cow that ever was in his pen--more money from the United States. It was all the natural consequence of trusting such a man: the natural consequence of beginning war upon an intrigue with him. But what must history say of the policy and morality of such doings? The butcher of the American prisoners at Goliad, San Patricio, the Old Mission and the Alamo; the destroyer of republican government at home; the military dictator aspiring to permanent supreme power: this man to be restored to power by the United States, for the purpose of fulfilling speculating and indemnity calculations on which a war was begun.

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Chapter CLXII

BLOODLESS CONQUEST OF NEW MEXICO: HOW IT WAS DONE: SUBSEQUENT BLOODY INSURRECTION, AND ITS CAUSE.

General Kearney was directed to lead an expedition to New Mexico, setting out from the western frontier of Missouri, and mainly composed of volunteers from that State; and to conquer the province. He did so, without firing a gun, and the only inquiry is, how it was done? how a province nine hundred miles distant, covered by a long range of mountain which could not well be turned, penetrable only by a defile which could not be forced, and defended by a numerous militia--could so easily be taken? This work does not write of military events, open to public history, but only of things less known, and to show how they were done: and in this point of view the easy and bloodless conquest of New Mexico, against such formidable obstacles, becomes an exception, and presents a proper problem for intimate historical solution. That solution is this: At the time of the fitting out that expedition there was a citizen of the United States, long resident in New Mexico, on a visit of business at Washington City--his name James Magoffin;--a man of mind, of will, of generous temper, patriotic, and rich. He knew every man in New Mexico and his character, and all the localities, and could be of infinite service to the invading force. Mr. Benton proposed to him to go with it: he agreed. Mr. Benton took him to the President and Secretary at War, who gladly availed themselves of his agreement to go with General Kearney. He went: and approaching New Mexico, was sent ahead, with a staff officer--the officer charged with a mission, himself charged with his own plan: which was to operate upon Governor Armijo, and prevent his resistance to the entrance of the American troops. That was easily done. Armijo promised not to make a stand at the defile, after which the invaders would have no difficulty. But his second in command, Col. Archuletti, was determined to fight, and to defend that pass; and if he did, Armijo would have to do the same. It became indispensable to quiet Archuletti. He was of different mould from the governor, and only accessible to a different class of considerations--those which addressed themselves to ambition. Magoffin knew the side on which to approach him. It so happened that General Kearney had set out to take the left bank of the Upper Del Norte--the eastern half of New Mexico--as part of Texas, leaving the western part untouched. Magoffin explained this to Archuletti, pointed to the western half of New Mexico as a derelict, not seized by the United States, and too far off to be protected by the central government: and recommended him to make a pronunciamiento, and take that half to himself. The idea suited the temper of Archuletti. He agreed not to fight, and General Kearney was informed there would be no resistance at the defile: and there was none. Some thousands of militia collected there (and which could have stopped a large army), retired without firing a gun, and without knowing why. Armijo fled, and General Kearney occupied his capital: and the conquest was complete and bloodless: and this was the secret of that facile success--heralded in the newspapers as a masterpiece of generalship, but not so reported by the general.

But there was an after-clap, to make blood flow for the recovery of a province which had been yielded without resistance. Mr. Magoffin was sincere and veracious in what he said to Col. Archuletti; but General Kearney soon (or before) had other orders, and took possession of the whole country! and Archuletti, deeming himself cheated, determined on a revolt. Events soon became favorable to him. General Kearney proceeded to California, leaving General Sterling Price in command, with some Missouri volunteers. Archuletti prepared his insurrection, and having got the upper country above Santa Fé ready, went below to prepare the lower part. While absent, the plot was detected and broke out, and led to bloody scenes in which there was severe fighting, and many deaths on both sides. It was in this insurrection that Governor Charles Bent, of New Mexico, and Captain Burgwin of the United States army, and many others were killed. The insurgents fought with courage and desperation; but, without their leader, without combination, without resources, they were soon suppressed; many being killed in action, and others hung for high treason--being tried by some sort of a court which had no jurisdiction of treason. All that were condemned were hanged except one, and he recommended to the President of the United States for pardon. Here was a dilemma for the administration. To pardon the man would be to admit the legality of the condemnation: not to pardon was to subject him to murder. A middle course was taken: the officers were directed to turn loose the condemned, and let him run. And this was the cause of the insurrection, and its upshot.

Mr. Magoffin having prepared the way for the entrance of General Kearney into Santa Fé, proceeded to the execution of the remaining part of his mission, which was to do the same by Chihuahua for General Wool, then advancing upon that ancient capital of the Western Internal Provinces on a lower line. He arrived in that city--became suspected--was arrested--and confined. He was a social, generous-tempered man, a son of Erin: loved company, spoke Spanish fluently, entertained freely, and where it was some cost to entertain--claret $36 00 a-dozen, champagne $50 00. He became a great favorite with the Mexican officers. One day the military judge advocate entered his quarters, and told him that Dr. Connolly, an American, coming from Santa Fé, had been captured near El Paso del Norte, his papers taken, and forwarded to Chihuahua, and placed in his hands, to see if there were any that needed government attention: and that he had found among the papers a letter addressed to him (Mr. Magoffin). He had the letter unopened, and said he did not know what it might be; but being just ordered to join Santa Anna at San Luis Potosi, and being unwilling that any thing should happen after he was gone to a gentleman who had been so agreeable to him, he had brought it to him, that he might destroy it if there was any thing in it to commit him. Magoffin glanced his eyes over the letter. It was an attestation from General Kearney of his services in New Mexico, recommending him to the acknowledgments of the American government in that invasion!--that is to say, it was his death warrant, if seen by the Mexican authorities. A look was exchanged: the letter went into the fire: and Magoffin escaped being shot.

But he did not escape suspicion. He remained confined until the approach of Doniphan's expedition, and was then sent off to Durango, where he remained a prisoner to the end of the war. Returning to the United States after the peace, he came to Washington in the last days of Mr. Polk's administration, and expected remuneration. He had made no terms, asked nothing, and received nothing, and had expended his own money, and that freely, for the public service. The administration had no money applicable to the object. Mr. Benton stated his case in secret session in the Senate, and obtained an appropriation, couched in general terms, of fifty thousand dollars for secret services rendered during the war. The appropriation, granted in the last night of the expiring administration, remained to be applied by the new one--to which the business was unknown, and had to be presented unsupported by a line of writing. Mr. Benton went with Magoffin to President Taylor, who, hearing what he had done, and what information he had gained for General Kearney, instantly expressed the wish that he had had some person to do the same for him--observing that he got no information but what he obtained at the point of the bayonet. He gave orders to the Secretary at War to attend to the case as if there had been no change in the administration. The secretary (Mr. Crawford, of Georgia), higgled, required statements to be filed, almost in the nature of an account; and, finally, proposed thirty thousand dollars. It barely covered expenses and losses; but, having undertaken the service patriotically, Magoffin would not lower its character by standing out for more. The paper which he filed in the war office may furnish some material for history--some insight into the way of making conquests--if ever examined. This is the secret history of General Kearney's expedition, and of the insurrection, given because it would not be found in the documents. The history of Doniphan's expedition will be given for the same reason, and to show that a regiment of citizen volunteers, without a regular officer among them, almost without expense, and hardly with the knowledge of their government, performed actions as brilliant as any that illustrated the American arms in Mexico; and made a march in the enemy's country longer than that of the ten thousand under Xenophon. This history will constitute the next chapter, and will consist of the salutatory address with which the heroic volunteers were saluted, when, arriving at St. Louis, they were greeted with a public reception, and the Senator of Thirty Years required to be the organ of the exulting feelings of their countrymen.

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Chapter CLXIII

MEXICAN WAR: DONIPHAN'S EXPEDITION: MR. BENTON'S SALUTATORY ADDRESS, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI.

COLONEL DONIPHAN AND OFFICERS AND MEN:--I have been appointed to an honorable and a pleasant duty--that of making you the congratulations of your fellow-citizens of St. Louis, on your happy return from your long, and almost fabulous expedition. You have, indeed, marched far, and done much, and suffered much, and well entitled yourselves to the applauses of your fellow-citizens, as well as to the rewards and thanks of your government. A year ago you left home. Going out from the western border of your State, you re-enter it on the east, having made a circuit equal to the fourth of the circumference of the globe, providing for yourselves as you went, and returning with trophies taken from fields, the names of which were unknown to yourselves and your country, until revealed by your enterprise, illustrated by your valor, and immortalized by your deeds. History has but few such expeditions to record; and when they occur, it is as honorable and useful as it is just and wise, to celebrate and commemorate the events which entitle them to renown.

Your march and exploits have been among the most wonderful of the age. At the call of your country you marched a thousand miles to the conquest of New Mexico, as part of the force under General Kearney, and achieved that conquest, without the loss of a man, or the fire of a gun. That work finished, and New Mexico, itself so distant, and so lately the ultima thule--the outside boundary of speculation and enterprise--so lately a distant point to be attained, becomes itself a point of departure--a beginning point, for new and far more extended expeditions. You look across the long and lofty chain--the Cordilleras of North America--which divide the Atlantic from the Pacific waters; and you see beyond that ridge, a savage tribe which had been long in the habit of depredations upon the province which had just become an American conquest. You, a part only of the subsequent Chihuahua column, under Jackson and Gilpin, march upon them--bring them to terms--and they sign a treaty with Colonel Doniphan, in which they bind themselves to cease their depredations on the Mexicans, and to become the friends of the United States. A novel treaty, that! signed on the western confines of New Mexico, between parties who had hardly ever heard each other's names before, and to give peace and protection to Mexicans who were hostile to both. This was the meeting, and this the parting of the Missouri volunteers, with the numerous and savage tribe of the Navaho Indians living on the waters of the Gulf of California, and so long the terror and scourge of Sonora, Sinaloa, and New Mexico.

This object accomplished, and impatient of inactivity, and without orders (General Kearney having departed for California), you cast about to carve out some new work for yourselves. Chihuahua, a rich and populous city of near thirty thousand souls, the seat of government of the State of that name, and formerly the residence of the captains-general of the Internal Provinces under the vice-regal government of New Spain, was the captivating object which fixed your attention. It was a far distant city--about as far from St. Louis as Moscow is from Paris; and towns and enemies, and a large river, and defiles and mountains, and the desert whose ominous name, portending death to travellers--el jornada de los muertos--the journey of the dead--all lay between you. It was a perilous enterprise, and a discouraging one, for a thousand men, badly equipped, to contemplate. No matter. Danger and hardship lent it a charm, and the adventurous march was resolved on, and the execution commenced. First, the ominous desert was passed, its character vindicating its title to its mournful appellation--an arid plain of ninety miles, strewed with the bones of animals perished of hunger and thirst--little hillocks of stone, and the solitary cross, erected by pious hands, marking the spot where some Christian had fallen, victim of the savage, of the robber, or of the desert itself--no water--no animal life--no sign of habitation. There the Texian prisoners, driven by the cruel Salazar, had met their direst sufferings, unrelieved, as in other parts of their march in the settled parts of the country, by the compassionate ministrations (for where is it that woman is not compassionate?) of the pitying women. The desert was passed, and the place for crossing the river approached. A little arm of the river, Bracito (in Spanish), made out from its side. There the enemy, in superior numbers, and confident in cavalry and artillery, undertook to bar the way. Vain pretension! Their discovery, attack, and rout, were about simultaneous operations. A few minutes did the work! And in this way our Missouri volunteers of the Chihuahua column spent their Christmas day of the year 1846.

The victory of the Bracito opened the way to the crossing of the river Del Norte, and to admission into the beautiful little town of the Paso del Norte, where a neat cultivation, a comfortable people, fields, orchards, and vineyards, and a hospitable reception, offered the rest and refreshment which toils and dangers, and victory had won. You rested there till artillery was brought down from Sante Fé; but the pretty town of the Paso del Norte, with all its enjoyments, and they were many, and the greater for the place in which they were found, was not a Capua to the men of Missouri. You moved forward in February, and the battle of the Sacramento, one of the military marvels of the age, cleared the road to Chihuahua; which was entered without further resistance. It had been entered once before by a detachment of American troops; but under circumstances how different! In the year 1807, Lieutenant Pike and his thirty brave men, taken prisoners on the head of the Rio del Norte, had been marched captives into Chihuahua: in the year 1847, Doniphan and his men enter it as conquerors. The paltry triumph of a captain-general over a lieutenant, was effaced in the triumphal entrance of a thousand Missourians into the grand and ancient capital of all the Internal Provinces! and old men, still alive, could remark the grandeur of the American spirit under both events--the proud and lofty bearing of the captive thirty--the mildness and moderation of the conquering thousand.

Chihuahua was taken, and responsible duties, more delicate than those of arms, were to be performed. Many American citizens were there, engaged in trade; much American property was there. All this was to be protected, both life and property, and by peaceful arrangement; for the command was too small to admit of division, and of leaving a garrison. Conciliation, and negotiation were resorted to, and successfully. Every American interest was provided for, and placed under the safeguard, first, of good will, and next, of guarantees not to be violated with impunity.

Chihuahua gained, it became, like Santa Fé, not the terminating point of a long expedition, but the beginning point of a new one. General Taylor was somewhere--no one knew where--but some seven or eight hundred miles towards the other side of Mexico. You had heard that he had been defeated, that Buena Vista had not been a good prospect to him. Like good Americans, you did not believe a word of it; but, like good soldiers, you thought it best to go and see. A volunteer party of fourteen, headed by Collins, of Boonville, undertake to penetrate to Saltillo, and to bring you information of his condition. They set out. Amidst innumerable dangers they accomplish their purpose, and return. Taylor is conqueror; but will be glad to see you. You march. A vanguard of one hundred men, led by Lieutenant-colonel Mitchell, led the way. Then came the main body (if the name is not a burlesque on such a handful), commanded by Colonel Doniphan himself.

The whole table land of Mexico, in all its breadth, from west to east, was to be traversed. A numerous and hostile population in towns--treacherous Camanches in the mountains--were to be passed. Every thing was to be self-provided--provisions, transportation, fresh horses for remounts, and even the means of victory--and all without a military chest, or even an empty box, in which government gold had ever reposed. All was accomplished. Mexican towns were passed, in order and quiet: plundering Camanches were punished: means were obtained from traders to liquidate indispensable contributions: and the wants that could not be supplied, were endured like soldiers of veteran service.

The long march from Chihuahua to Monterey, was made more in the character of protection and deliverance than of conquest and invasion. Armed enemies were not met, and peaceful people were not disturbed. You arrived in the month of May in General Taylor's camp, and about in a condition to vindicate, each of you for himself, your lawful title to the double sobriquet of the general, with the addition to it which the colonel commanding the expedition has supplied--ragged--as well as rough and ready. No doubt you all showed title, at that time, to that third sobriquet; but to see you now, so gayly attired, so sprucely equipped, one might suppose that you had never, for a day, been strangers to the virtues of soap and water, or the magic ministrations of the blanchisseuse, and the elegant transformations of the fashionable tailor. Thanks perhaps to the difference between pay in the lump at the end of the service, and driblets along in the course of it.

You arrived in General Taylor's camp ragged and rough, as we can well conceive, and ready, as I can quickly show. You arrived: you reported for duty: you asked for service--such as a march upon San Luis de Potosi, Zacatecas, or the "halls of the Montezumas;" or any thing in that way that the general should have a mind to. If he was going upon any excursion of that kind, all right. No matter about fatigues that were passed, or expirations of service that might accrue: you came to go, and only asked the privilege. That is what I call ready. Unhappily the conqueror of Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Monterey, and Buena Vista, was not exactly in the condition that the lieutenant-general, that might have been, intended him to be. He was not at the head of twenty thousand men! he was not at the head of any thousands that would enable him to march! and had to decline the proffered service. Thus the long-marched and well-fought volunteers--the rough, the ready, and the ragged--had to turn their faces towards home, still more than two thousand miles distant. But this being mostly by water, you hardly count it in the recital of your march. But this is an unjust omission, and against the precedents as well as unjust. "The ten thousand" counted the voyage on the Black Sea as well as the march from Babylon; and twenty centuries admit the validity of the count. The present age, and posterity, will include in "the going out and coming in" of the Missouri-Chihuahua volunteers, the water voyage as well as the land march; and then the expedition of the one thousand will exceed that of the ten by some two thousand miles.

The last nine hundred miles of your land march, from Chihuahua to Matamoros, you made in forty-five days, bringing seventeen pieces of artillery, eleven of which were taken from the Sacramento and Bracito. Your horses, travelling the whole distance without United States provender, were astonished to find themselves regaled, on their arrival on the Rio Grande frontier, with hay, corn, and oats from the States. You marched further than the farthest, fought as well as the best, left order and quiet in your train; and cost less money than any.

You arrive here to-day, absent one year, marching and fighting all the time, bringing trophies of cannon and standards from fields whose names were unknown to you before you set out, and only grieving that you could not have gone further. Ten pieces of cannon, rolled out of Chihuahua to arrest your march, now roll through the streets of St. Louis, to grace your triumphal return. Many standards, all pierced with bullets while waving over the heads of the enemy at the Sacramento, now wave at the head of your column. The black flag, brought to the Bracito, to indicate the refusal of that quarter which its bearers so soon needed and received, now takes its place among your trophies, and hangs drooping in their nobler presence. To crown the whole--to make public and private happiness go together--to spare the cypress where the laurel hangs in clusters--this long, perilous march, with all its accidents of field and camp, presents an incredibly small list of comrades lost. Almost all return: and the joy of families resounds, intermingled with the applause of the State.

I have said that you made your long expedition without government orders: and so, indeed, you did. You received no orders from your government, but, without knowing it, you were fulfilling its orders--orders which, though issued for you, never reached you. Happy the soldier who executes the command of his government: happier still he who anticipates command, and does what is wanted before he is bid. This is your case. You did the right thing, at the right time, and what your government intended you to do, and without knowing its intentions. The facts are these: Early in the month of November last, the President asked my opinion on the manner of conducting the war. I submitted a plan to him, which, in addition to other things, required all the disposable troops in New Mexico, and all the American citizens in that quarter who could be engaged for a dashing expedition, to move down through Chihuahua, and the State of Durango, and, if necessary, to Zacatecas, and get into communication with General Taylor's right as early as possible in the month of March. In fact, the disposable forces in New Mexico were to form one of three columns destined for a combined movement on the city of Mexico, all to be on the table-land and ready for a combined movement in the month of March. The President approved the plan, and the Missourians being most distant, orders were despatched to New Mexico to put them in motion. Mr. Solomon Sublette carried the order, and delivered it to the commanding officer at Santa Fé, General Price, on the 22d day of February--just five days before you fought the marvellous action of Sacramento. I well remember what passed between the President and myself at the time he resolved to give this order. It awakened his solicitude for your safety. It was to send a small body of men a great distance, into the heart of a hostile country, and upon the contingency of uniting in a combined movement, the means for which had not yet been obtained from Congress. The President made it a question, and very properly, whether it was safe or prudent to start the small Missouri column, before the movement of the left and the centre was assured: I answered that my own rule in public affairs was to do what I thought was right, and leave it to others to do what they thought was right; and that I believed it the proper course for him to follow on the present occasion. On this view he acted. He gave the order to go, without waiting to see whether Congress would supply the means of executing the combined plan; and for his consolation I undertook to guarantee your safety. Let the worst come to the worst, I promised him that you would take care of yourselves. Though the other parts of the plan should fail--though you should become far involved in the advance, and deeply compromised in the enemy's country, and without support--still I relied on your courage, skill, and enterprise to extricate yourselves from every danger--to make daylight through all the Mexicans that should stand before you--cut your way out--and make good your retreat to Taylor's camp. This is what I promised the President in November last; and what I promised him you have done. Nobly and manfully you have made one of the most remarkable expeditions in history, worthy to be studied by statesmen, and showing what citizen volunteers can do; for the crowning characteristic is that you were all citizens--all volunteers--not a regular bred officer among you: and if there had been, with power to control you, you could never have done what you did.

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CLXIV. FREMONT'S THIRD EXPEDITION, AND ACQUISITION OF CALIFORNIA

In the month of May 1845, Mr. Frémont, then a brevet captain of engineers (appointed a lieutenant-colonel of Rifles before he returned), set out on his third expedition of geographical and scientific exploration in the Great West. Hostilities had not broken out between the United States and Mexico; but Texas had been incorporated; the preservation of peace was precarious, and Mr. Frémont was determined, by no act of his, to increase the difficulties, or to give any just cause of complaint to the Mexican government. His line of observation would lead him to the Pacific Ocean, through a Mexican province--through the desert parts first, and the settled part afterwards of the Alta California. Approaching the settled parts of the province at the commencement of winter, he left his equipment of 60 men and 200 horses on the frontier, and proceeded alone to Monterey, to make known to the governor the object of his coming, and his desire to pass the winter (for the refreshment of his men and horses) in the uninhabited parts of the valley of the San Joaquin. The permission was granted; but soon revoked, under the pretext that Mr. Frémont had come into California, not to pursue science, but to excite the American settlers to revolt against the Mexican government. Upon this pretext troops were raised, and marched to attack him. Having notice of their approach, he took a position on the mountain, hoisted the flag of the United States, and determined, with his sixty brave men, to defend himself to the last extremity--never surrendering; and dying, if need be, to the last man. A messenger came into his camp, bringing a letter from the American consul at Monterey, to apprise him of his danger: that messenger, returning, reported that 2,000 men could not force the American position: and that information had its effect upon the Mexican commander. Waiting four days in his mountain camp, and not being attacked, he quit his position, descended from the mountain, and set out for Oregon, that he might give no further pretext for complaint, by remaining in California.

Turning his back on the Mexican possessions, and looking to Oregon as the field of his future labors, Mr. Frémont determined to explore a new route to the Wah-lah-math settlements and the tide-water region of the Columbia, through the wild and elevated region of the Tla-math lakes. A romantic interest attached to this region from the grandeur of its features, its lofty mountains, and snow-clad peaks, and from the formidable character of its warlike inhabitants. In the first week of May, he was at the north end of the Great Tla-math lake, and in Oregon--the lake being cut near its south end by the parallel of 42 degrees north latitude. On the 8th day of that month, a strange sight presented itself--almost a startling apparition--two men riding up, and penetrating a region which few ever approached without paying toll of life or blood. They proved to be two of Mr. Frémont's old voyageurs, and quickly told their story. They were part of a guard of six men conducting a United States officer, who was on his trail with despatches from Washington, and whom they had left two days back, while they came on to give notice of his approach, and to ask that assistance might be sent him. They themselves had only escaped the Indians by the swiftness of their horses. It was a case in which no time was to be lost, or a mistake made. Mr. Frémont determined to go himself; and taking ten picked men, four of them Delaware Indians, he took down the western shore of the lake on the morning of the 9th (the direction the officer was to come), and made a ride of sixty miles without a halt. But to meet men, and not to miss them, was the difficult point in this trackless region. It was not the case of a high road, where all travellers must meet in passing each other: at intervals there were places--defiles, or camping grounds--where both parties must pass; and watching for these, he came to one in the afternoon, and decided that, if the party was not killed, it must be there that night. He halted and encamped; and, as the sun was going down, had the inexpressible satisfaction to see the four men approaching. The officer proved to be a lieutenant of the United States marines, who had been despatched from Washington the November previous, to make his way by Vera Cruz, the City of Mexico, and Mazatlan to Monterey, in Upper California, deliver despatches to the United States' consul there; and then find Mr. Frémont, wherever he should be. His despatches for Mr. Frémont were only a letter of introduction from the Secretary of State (Mr. Buchanan), and some letters and slips of newspapers from Senator Benton and his family, and some verbal communications from the Secretary of State. The verbal communications were that Mr. Frémont should watch and counteract any foreign scheme on California, and conciliate the good will of the inhabitants towards the United States. Upon this intimation of the government's wishes, Mr. Frémont turned back from Oregon, in the edge of which he then was, and returned to California. The letter of introduction was in the common form, that it might tell nothing if it fell into the hands of foes, and signified nothing of itself; but it accredited the bearer, and gave the stamp of authority to what he communicated; and upon this Mr. Frémont acted: for it was not to be supposed that Lieutenant Gillespie had been sent so far, and through so many dangers, merely to deliver a common letter of introduction on the shores of the Tlamath lake.

The events of some days on the shores of this wild lake, sketched with the brevity which the occasion requires, may give a glimpse of the hardships and dangers through which Mr. Frémont pursued science, and encountered and conquered perils and toils. The night he met Mr. Gillespie presented one of those scenes to which he was so often exposed, and which nothing but the highest degree of vigilance and courage could prevent from being fatal. The camping ground was on the western side of the lake, the horses picketed with long halters on the shore, to feed on the grass; and the men (fourteen in number) sleeping by threes at different fires, disposed in a square; for danger required them so to sleep as to be ready for an attack; and, though in the month of May, the elevation of the place, and the proximity of snow-clad mountains, made the night intensely cold. His feelings joyfully excited by hearing from home (the first word of intelligence he had received since leaving the U. S. a year before), Mr. Frémont sat up by a large fire, reading his letters and papers, and watching himself over the safety of the camp, while the men slept. Towards midnight, he heard a movement among the horses, indicative of alarm and danger. Horses, and especially mules, become sensitive to danger under long travelling and camping in the wilderness, and manifest their alarm at the approach of any thing strange. Taking a six-barrelled pistol in his hand, first making sure of their ready fire, and, without waking the camp, he went down among the disturbed animals. The moon shone brightly: he could see well, but could discover nothing. Encouraged by his presence, the horses became quiet--poor dumb creatures that could see the danger, but not tell what they had seen; and he returned to the camp, supposing it was only some beast of the forest--a bear or wolf--prowling for food, that had disturbed them. He returned to the camp fire. Lieutenant Gillespie woke up, and talked with him awhile, and then lay down again. Finally nature had her course with Mr. Frémont himself. Excited spirits gave way to exhausted strength. The day's ride, and the night's excitement demanded the reparation of repose. He lay down to sleep, and without waking up a man to watch--relying on the loneliness of the place, and the long ride of the day, as a security against the proximity of danger. It was the second time in his twenty thousand miles of wilderness explorations that his camp had slept without a guard: the first was in his second expedition, and on an island in the Great Salt Lake, and when the surrounding water of the lake itself constituted a guard. The whole camp was then asleep. A cry from Carson roused it. In his sleep he heard a groan: it was the groan of a man receiving the tomahawk in his brains. All sprung to their feet. The savages were in the camp: the hatchet and the winged arrow were at work. Basil Lajeunesse, a brave and faithful young Frenchman, the follower of Frémont in all his expeditions, was dead: an Iowa was dead: a brave Delaware Indian, one of those who had accompanied Frémont from Missouri, was dying: it was his groan that awoke Carson. Another of the Delawares was a target for arrows, from which no rifle could save him--only avenge him. The savages had waited till the moon was in the trees, casting long shadows over the sleeping camp: then approaching from the dark side, with their objects between themselves and the fading light, they used only the hatchet and the formidable bow, whose arrow went to its mark without a flash or a sound to show whence it came. All advantages were on the side of the savages: but the camp was saved! the wounded protected from massacre, and the dead from mutilation. The men, springing to their feet, with their arms in their hands, fought with skill and courage. In the morning, Lieutenant Gillespie recognized, in the person of one of the slain assailants, the Tlamath chief who the morning before had given him a salmon, in token of friendship, and who had followed him all day to kill and rob his party at night--a design in which he would certainly have been successful had it not been for the promptitude and precision of Mr. Frémont's movement. Mr. Frémont himself would have been killed, when he went to the horses, had it not been that the savages counted upon the destruction of the whole camp, and feared to alarm it by killing one, before the general massacre.

It was on the 9th of May--a day immortalized by American arms at Resaca de la Palma--that this fierce and bloody work was done in the far distant region of the Tlamath lakes.

The morning of the 10th of May was one of gloom in the camp. The evening sun of the 9th had set upon it full of life and joy at a happy meeting: the same sun rose upon it the next morning, stained with blood, ghastly with the dead and wounded, and imposing mournful duties on the survivors. The wounded were to be carried--the dead to be buried; and so buried as to be hid and secured from discovery and violation. They were carried ten miles, and every precaution taken to secure the remains from the wolf and the savage: for men, in these remote and solitary dangers, become brothers, and defend each other living and dead. The return route lay along the shore of the lake, and during the day the distant canoes of the savages could be seen upon it, evidently watching the progress of the party, and meditating a night attack upon it. All precautions, at the night encampment, were taken for security--horses and men enclosed in a breastwork of great trees, cut down for the purpose, and half the men constantly on the watch. At leaving in the morning, an ambuscade was planted--and two of the Tlamaths were killed by the men in ambush--a successful return of their own mode of warfare. At night the main camp, at the north end of the lake, was reached. It was strongly intrenched, and could not be attacked; but the whole neighborhood was infested, and scouts and patrols were necessary to protect every movement. In one of these excursions the Californian horse, so noted for spirit and docility, showed what he would do at the bid of his master. Carson's rifle had missed fire, at ten feet distance. The Tlamath long bow, arrow on the string, was bending to the pull. All the rifles in the party could not have saved him. A horse and his rider did it. Mr. Frémont touched his horse; he sprang upon the savage! and the hatchet of a Delaware completed the deliverance of Carson. It was a noble horse, an iron gray, with a most formidable name--el Toro del Sacramento: and which vindicated his title to the name in all the trials of travel, courage, and performance to which he was subjected. It was in the midst of such dangers as these, that science was pursued by Mr. Frémont; that the telescope was carried to read the heavens; the barometer to measure the elevations of the earth; the thermometer to gauge the temperature of the air; the pencil to sketch the grandeur of mountains, and to paint the beauty of flowers; the pen to write down whatever was new, or strange, or useful in the works of nature. It was in the midst of such dangers, and such occupations as these, and in the wildest regions of the Farthest West, that Mr. Frémont was pursuing science and shunning war, when the arrival of Lieutenant Gillespie, and his communications from Washington, suddenly changed all his plans, turned him back from Oregon, and opened a new and splendid field of operations in California itself. He arrived in the valley of the Sacramento in the month of May, 1846, and found the country alarmingly, and critically situated. Three great operations, fatal to American interests, were then going on, and without remedy, if not arrested at once. These were: 1. The massacre of the Americans, and the destruction of their settlements, in the valley of the Sacramento. 2. The subjection of California to British protection. 3. The transfer of the public domain to British subjects. And all this with a view to anticipate the events of a Mexican war, and to shelter California from the arms of the United States.

The American settlers sent a deputation to the camp of Mr. Frémont, in the valley of the Sacramento, laid all these dangers before him, and implored him to place himself at their head and save them from destruction. General Castro was then in march upon them: the Indians were incited to attack their families, and burn their wheat fields, and were only waiting for the dry season to apply the torch. Juntas were in session to transfer the country to Great Britain: the public domain was passing away in large grants to British subjects: a British fleet was expected on the coast: the British vice consul, Forbes, and the emissary priest, Macnamara, ruling and conducting every thing: and all their plans so far advanced as to render the least delay fatal. It was then the beginning of June. War had broken out between the United States and Mexico, but that was unknown in California. Mr. Frémont had left the two countries at peace when he set out upon his expedition, and was determined to do nothing to disturb their relations: he had even left California to avoid giving offence; and to return and take up arms in so short a time was apparently to discredit his own previous conduct as well as to implicate his government. He felt all the responsibilities of his position; but the actual approach of Castro, and the immediate danger of the settlers, left him no alternative. He determined to put himself at the head of the people, and to save the country. To repulse Castro was not sufficient: to overturn the Mexican government in California, and to establish Californian Independence, was the bold resolve, and the only measure adequate to the emergency. That resolve was taken, and executed with a celerity that gave it a romantic success. The American settlers rushed to his camp--brought their arms, horses and ammunition--were formed into a battalion; and obeyed with zeal and alacrity the orders they received. In thirty days all the northern part of California was freed from Mexican authority--Independence proclaimed--the flag of Independence raised--Castro flying to the south--the American settlers saved from destruction; and the British party in California counteracted and broken up in all their schemes.

This movement for Independence was the salvation of California, and snatched it out of the hands of the British at the moment they were ready to clutch it. For two hundred years--from the time of the navigator Drake, who almost claimed it as a discovery, and placed the English name of New Albion upon it--the eye of England has been upon California; and the magnificent bay of San Francisco, the great seaport of the North Pacific Ocean, has been surveyed as her own. The approaching war between Mexico and the United States was the crisis in which she expected to realize the long-deferred wish for its acquisition; and carefully she took her measures accordingly. She sent two squadrons to the Pacific as soon as Texas was incorporated--well seeing the actual war which was to grow out of that event--a small one into the mouth of the Columbia, an imposing one to Mazatlan, on the Mexican coast, to watch the United States squadron there, and to anticipate its movements upon California. Commodore Sloat commanding the squadron at Mazatlan, saw that he was watched, and pursued, by Admiral Seymour, who lay alongside of him, and he determined to deceive him. He stood out to sea, and was followed by the British Admiral. During the day he bore west, across the ocean, as if going to the Sandwich Islands: Admiral Seymour followed. In the night the American commodore tacked, and ran up the coast towards California: the British admiral, not seeing the tack, continued on his course, and went entirely to the Sandwich Islands before he was undeceived. Commodore Sloat arrived before Monterey on the second of July, entering the port amicably, and offering to salute the town, which the authorities declined on the pretext that they had no powder to return it--in reality because they momentarily expected the British fleet. Commodore Sloat remained five days before the town, and until he heard of Frémont's operations: then believing that Frémont had orders from his government to take California, he having none himself, he determined to act himself. He received the news of Frémont's successes on the 6th day of July: on the 7th he took the town of Monterey, and sent a despatch to Frémont. This latter came to him in all speed, at the head of his mounted force. Going immediately on board the commodore's vessel, an explanation took place. The commodore learnt with astonishment that Frémont had no orders from his government to commence hostilities--that he had acted entirely on his own responsibility. This left the commodore without authority for having taken Monterey; for still at this time, the commencement of the war with Mexico was unknown. Uneasiness came upon the commodore. He remembered the fate of Captain Jones in making the mistake of seizing the town once before in time of peace. He resolved to return to the United States, which he did--turning over the command of the squadron to Commodore Stockton, who had arrived on the 15th. The next day (16th) Admiral Seymour arrived; his flagship the Collingwood, of 80 guns, and his squadron the largest British fleet ever seen in the Pacific. To his astonishment he beheld the American flag flying over Monterey, the American squadron in its harbor, and Frémont's mounted riflemen encamped over the town. His mission was at an end. The prize had escaped him. He attempted nothing further, and Frémont and Stockton rapidly pressed the conquest of California to its conclusion. The subsequent military events can be traced by any history: they were the natural sequence of the great measure conceived and executed by Frémont before any squadron had arrived upon the coast, before he knew of any war with Mexico, and without any authority from his government, except the equivocal and enigmatical visit of Mr. Gillespie. Before the junction of Mr. Frémont with Commodore Sloat and Stockton, his operations had been carried on under the flag of Independence--the Bear Flag, as it was called--the device of the bear being adopted on account of the courageous qualities of that animal (the white bear), which never gives the road to men,--which attacks any number,--and fights to the last with increasing ferocity, with amazing strength of muscle, and with an incredible tenacity of the vital principle--never more formidable and dangerous than when mortally wounded. The Independents took the device of this bear for their flag, and established the independence of California under it: and in joining the United States forces, hauled down this flag, and hoisted the flag of the United States. And the fate of California would have been the same whether the United States squadrons had arrived, or not; and whether the Mexican war had happened, or not. California was in a revolutionary state, already divided from Mexico politically as it had always been geographically. The last governor-general from Mexico, Don Michel Toreno, had been resisted--fought--captured--and shipped back to Mexico, with his 300 cut-throat soldiers. An insurgent government was in operation, determined to be free of Mexico, sensible of inability to stand alone, and looking, part to the United States, part to Great Britain, for the support which they needed. All the American settlers were for the United States protection, and joined Frémont. The leading Californians were also joining him. His conciliatory course drew them rapidly to him. The Picos, who were the leading men of the revolt (Don Pico, Don Andres, and Don Jesus), became his friends. California, become independent of Mexico by the revolt of the Picos, and independent of them by the revolt of the American settlers, had its destiny to fulfil--which was, to be handed over to the United States. So that its incorporation with the American Republic was equally sure in any, and every event.

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CLXV. PAUSE IN THE WAR: SEDENTARY TACTICS: "MASTERLY INACTIVITY."

Arriving at Washington before the commencement of the session of '46-'47, Mr. Benton was requested by the President to look over the draught of his proposed message to Congress (then in manuscript), and to make the remarks upon it which he might think it required; and in writing. Mr. Benton did so, and found a part to which he objected, and thought ought to be omitted. It was a recommendation to Congress to cease the active prosecution of the war, to occupy the conquered part of the country (General Taylor had then taken Monterey) with troops in forts and stations, and to pass an act establishing a temporary government in the occupied part; and to retain the possession until the peace was made. This recommendation, and the argument in support of it, spread over four pages of the message--from 101 to 105. Mr. Benton objected to the whole plan, and answered to it in an equal, or greater number of pages, and to the entire conviction and satisfaction of the President. 1. The sedentary occupation was objected to as being entirely contrary to the temper of the American people, which was active, and required continual "going ahead" until their work was finished. 2. It was a mode of warfare suited to the Spanish temper, which loved procrastination, and could beat the world at it, and had sat-out the Moors seven hundred years in the South of Spain and the Visigoths three hundred years in the north of it; and would certainly out-sit us in Mexico. 3. That he could govern the conquered country under the laws of nations, without applying to Congress, to be worried upon the details of the act, and rousing the question of annexation by conquest, and that beyond the Rio Grande; for the proposed line was to cover Monterey, and to run east and west entirely across the country. These objections, pursued through their illustrations, were entirely convincing to the President, and he frankly gave up the sedentary project.

But it was a project which had been passed upon in the cabinet, and not only adopted but began to be executed. The Secretary at War, Mr. Marcy, had officially refused to accept proffered volunteers from the governors of several States, saying to them--"A sufficient amount of force for the prosecution of the war had already been called into service:" and a premium of two dollars a head had been offered to all persons who could bring in a recruit to the regular army--the regulars being the reliance for the sedentary occupation. The cabinet adhered to their policy. The President convoked them again, and had Mr. Benton present to enforce his objections; but without much effect. The abandonment of the sedentary policy required the adoption of an active one, and for that purpose the immediate calling out of ten regiments of volunteers had been recommended by Mr. Benton; and this call would result at once from the abandonment of the sedentary scheme. Here the pride of consistency came in to play its part. The Secretary at War said he had just refused to accept any more volunteers, and informed the governors of two States that the government had troops enough to prosecute the war; and urged that it would be contradictory now to call out ten regiments. The majority of the cabinet sided with him; but the President retained Mr. Benton to a private interview--talked the subject all over--and finally came to the resolution to act for himself, regardless of the opposition of the major part of his cabinet. It was then in the night, and the President said he would send the order to the Secretary at War in the morning to call out the ten regiments--which he did: but the Secretary, higgling to the last, got one regiment abated: so that nine instead of ten were called out: but these nine were enough. They enabled Scott to go to Mexico, and Taylor to conquer at Buena Vista, and to finish the war victoriously.

A comic mistake grew out of this change in the President's message, which caused the ridicule of the sedentary line to be fastened on Mr. Calhoun--who in fact had counselled it. When the message was read in the Senate, Mr. Westcott, of Florida, believing it remained as it had been drawn up, and induced by Mr. Calhoun, with whose views he was acquainted, made some motion upon it, significant of approbatory action. Mr. Benton asked for the reading of the part of the message referred to. Mr. Westcott searched, but could not find it: Mr. Calhoun did the same. Neither could find the passage. Inquiring and despairing looks were exchanged: and the search for the present was adjourned. Of course it was never found. Afterwards Mr. Westcott said to Mr. Benton that the President had deceived Mr. Calhoun--had told him that the sedentary line was recommended in the message, when it was not. Mr. Benton told him there was no deception--that the recommendation was in the message when he said so, but had been taken out (and he explained how) and replaced by an urgent recommendation for a vigorous prosecution of the war. But the secret was kept for the time. The administration stood before the country vehement for war, and loaded with applause for their spirit. Mr. Calhoun remained mystified, and adhered to the line, and incurred the censure of opposing the administration which he professed to support. He brought forward his plan in all its detail--the line marked out--the number of forts and stations necessary--and the number of troops necessary to garrison them: and spoke often, and earnestly in its support: but to no purpose. His plan was entirely rejected, nor did I ever hear of any one of the cabinet offering to share with him in the ridicule which he brought upon himself for advocating a plan so preposterous in itself, and so utterly unsuited to the temper of our people. It was in this debate, and in support of this sedentary occupation that Mr. Calhoun characterized that proposed inaction as "a masterly inactivity:" a fine expression of the Earl of Chatham--and which Mr. Calhoun had previously used in the Oregon debate in recommending us to do nothing there, and leave it to time to perfect our title. Seven years afterwards the establishment of a boundary between the United States and Mexico was attempted by treaty in the latitude of this proposed line of occupation--a circumstance,--one of the circumstances,--which proves that Mr. Calhoun's plans and spirit survive him.

In all that passed between the President and Mr. Benton about this line, there was no suspicion on the part of either of any design to make it permanent; nor did any thing to that effect appear in Mr. Calhoun's speeches in favor of it; but the design was developed at the time of the ratification of the treaty of peace, and has since been attempted by treaty; and is a design which evidently connects itself with, what is called, preserving the equilibrium of the States (free and slave) by adding on territory for slave States--and to increase the Southern margin for the "UNITED STATES SOUTH," in the event of a separation of the two classes of States.

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Chapter CLXVI

THE WILMOT PROVISO; OR, PROHIBITION OF SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES: ITS INUTILITY AND MISCHIEF.

Scarcely was the war with Mexico commenced when means, different from those of arms, were put in operation to finish it. One of these was the return of the exiled Santa Anna (as has been shown) to his country, and his restoration to power, under the belief that he was favorable to peace, and for which purpose arrangements began to be made from the day of the declaration of the war--or before. In the same session another move was made in the same direction, that of getting peace by peaceable means, in an application made to Congress by the President, to place three millions of dollars at his disposal, to be used in negotiating for a boundary which should give us additional territory: and that recommendation not having been acted upon at the war session, was renewed at the commencement of the next one. It was recommended as an "important measure for securing a speedy peace;" and as an argument in favor of granting it, a sum of two millions similarly placed at the disposition of Mr. Jefferson when about to negotiate for Florida (which ended in the acquisition of Louisiana), was plead as a precedent; and justly. Congress, at this second application, granted the appropriation; but while it was depending, Mr. Wilmot, a member of Congress, from Pennsylvania, moved a proviso, that no part of the territory to be acquired should be open to the introduction of slavery. It was a proposition not necessary for the purpose of excluding slavery, as the only territory to be acquired was that of New Mexico and California, where slavery was already prohibited by the Mexican laws and constitution; and where it could not be carried until those laws should be repealed, and a law for slavery passed. The proviso was nugatory, and could answer no purpose but that of bringing on a slavery agitation in the United States; for which purpose it was immediately seized upon by Mr. Calhoun and his friends, and treated as the greatest possible outrage and injury to the slave States. Congress was occupied with this proviso for two sessions, became excessively heated on the subject, and communicated its heat to the legislatures of the slave States--by several of which conditional disunion resolutions were passed. Every where, in the slave States, the Wilmot Proviso became a Gorgon's head--a chimera dire--a watchword of party, and the synonyme of civil war and the dissolution of the Union. Many patriotic members were employed in resisting the proviso as a bona fide cause of breaking up the Union, if adopted; many amiable and gentle-tempered members were employed in devising modes of adjusting and compromising it; a few, of whom Mr. Benton was one, produced the laws and the constitution of Mexico to show that New Mexico and California were free from slavery; and argued that neither party had any thing to fear, or to hope--the free soil party nothing to fear, because the soil was now free; the slave soil party nothing to hope, because they could not take a step to make it slave soil, having just invented the dogma of "No power in Congress to legislate upon slavery in territories." Never were two parties so completely at loggerheads about nothing: never did two parties contend more furiously against the greatest possible evil. Close observers, who had been watching the progress of the slavery agitation since its inauguration in Congress in 1835, knew it to be a game played by the abolitionists on one side and the disunionists on the other, to accomplish their own purposes. Many courageous men denounced it as such--as a game to be kept up for the political benefit of the players; and deplored the blindness which could not see their determination to keep it agoing to the last possible moment, and to the production of the greatest possible degree of national and sectional exasperation. It was while this contention was thus raging, that Mr. Calhoun wrote a confidential letter to a member of the Alabama legislature, hugging this proviso to his bosom as a fortunate event--as a means of "forcing the issue" between the North and the South; and deprecating any adjustment, compromise, or defeat of it, as a misfortune to the South: and which letter has since come to light. Gentle and credulous people, who believed him to be in earnest when he was sounding the tocsin to rouse the States, instigating them to pass disunion resolutions, and stirring up both national and village orators to attack the proviso unto death: such persons must be amazed to read in that exhumed letter, written during the fiercest of the strife, these ominous words:

"With this impression I would regard any compromise or adjustment of the proviso, or even its defeat, without meeting the danger in its whole length and breadth, as very unfortunate for us. It would lull us to sleep again, without removing the danger, or materially diminishing it."

This issue to be forced was a separation of the slave and the free States; the means, a commercial non-intercourse, in shutting the slave State seaports against the vessels of the free States; the danger to be met, was in the trial of this issue, by the means indicated; which were simply high treason when pursued to the overt act. Mr. Calhoun had flinched from that act in the time of Jackson, but he being dead, and no more Jacksons at the head of the government, he rejoiced in another chance of meeting the danger--meeting it in all its length and breadth; and deprecated the loss of the proviso as the loss of this chance.

Truly the abolitionists and the nullifiers were necessary to each other--the two halves of a pair of shears, neither of which could cut until joined together. Then the map of the Union was in danger; for in their conjunction, that map was cloth between the edges of the shears. And this was that Wilmot Proviso, which for two years convulsed the Union, and prostrated men of firmness and patriotism--a thing of nothing in itself, but magnified into a hideous reality, and seized upon to conflagrate the States and dissolve the Union. The Wilmot Proviso was not passed: that chance of forcing the issue was lost: another had to be found, or made.

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Chapter CLXVII

MR. CALHOUN'S SLAVERY RESOLUTIONS, AND DENIAL OF THE RIGHT OF CONGRESS TO PROHIBIT SLAVERY IN A TERRITORY.

On Friday, the 19th of February, Mr. Calhoun introduced into the Senate his new slavery resolutions, prefaced by an elaborate speech, and requiring an immediate vote upon them. They were in these words:

"Resolved, That the territories of the United States belong to the several States composing this Union, and are held by them as their joint and common property.

"Resolved, That Congress, as the joint agent and representative of the States of this Union, has no right to make any law, or do any act whatever, that shall directly, or by its effects, make any discrimination between the States of this Union, by which any of them shall be deprived of its full and equal right in any territory of the United States acquired or to be acquired.

"Resolved, That the enactment of any law which should directly, or by its effects, deprive the citizens of any of the States of this Union from emigrating, with their property, into any of the territories of the United States, will make such discrimination, and would, therefore, be a violation of the constitution, and the rights of the States from which such citizens emigrated, and in derogation of that perfect equality which belongs to them as members of this Union, and would tend directly to subvert the Union itself.

"Resolved, That it is a fundamental principle in our political creed, that a people, in forming a constitution, have the unconditional right to form and adopt the government which they may think best calculated to secure their liberty, prosperity, and happiness; and that, in conformity thereto, no other condition is imposed by the federal constitution on a State, in order to be admitted into this Union, except that its constitution shall be republican; and that the imposition of any other by Congress would not only be in violation of the constitution, but in direct conflict with the principle on which our political system rests."

These resolutions, although the sense is involved in circumlocutory phrases, are intelligible to the point, that Congress has no power to prohibit slavery in a territory, and that the exercise of such a power would be a breach of the constitution, and leading to the subversion of the Union. Ostensibly the complaint was, that the emigrant from the slave State was not allowed to carry his slave with him: in reality it was that he was not allowed to carry the State law along with him to protect his slave. Placed in that light, which is the true one, the complaint is absurd: presented as applying to a piece of property instead of the law of the State, it becomes specious--has deluded whole communities; and has led to rage and resentment, and hatred of the Union. In support of these resolutions the mover made a speech in which he showed a readiness to carry out in action, to their extreme results, the doctrines they contained, and to appeal to the slave-holding States for their action, in the event that the Senate should not sustain them. This was the concluding part of his speech:

"Well, sir, what if the decision of this body shall deny to us this high constitutional right, not the less clear because deduced from the whole body of the instrument and the nature of the subject to which it relates? What, then, is the question? I will not undertake to decide. It is a question for our constituents--the slave-holding States. A solemn and a great question. If the decision should be adverse, I trust and do believe that they will take under solemn consideration what they ought to do. I give no advice. It would be hazardous and dangerous for me to do so. But I may speak as an individual member of that section of the Union. There I drew my first breath. There are all my hopes. There is my family and connections. I am a planter--a cotton planter. I am a Southern man, and a slave-holder; a kind and a merciful one, I trust--and none the worse for being a slave-holder. I say, for one, I would rather meet any extremity upon earth than give up one inch of our equality--one inch of what belongs to us as members of this great republic. What, acknowledge inferiority! The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledged inferiority.

"I have examined this subject largely--widely. I think I see the future if we do not stand up as we ought. In my humble opinion, in that case, the condition of Ireland is prosperous and happy--the condition of Hindostan is prosperous and happy--the condition of Jamaica is prosperous and happy, to what the Southern States will be if they should not now stand up manfully in defence of their rights".

When these resolutions were read, Mr. Benton rose in his place, and called them "firebrand." Mr. Calhoun said he had expected the support of Mr. Benton "as the representative of a slave-holding State." Mr. Benton answered that it was impossible that he could have expected such a thing. Then, said Mr. Calhoun, I shall know where to find the gentleman. To which Mr. Benton: "I shall be found in the right place--on the side of my country and the Union." This answer, given on that day, and on the spot, is one of the incidents of his life which Mr. Benton will wish posterity to remember.

Mr. Calhoun demanded the prompt consideration of his resolutions, giving notice that he would call them up the next day, and press them to a speedy and final vote. He did call them up, but never called for the vote, nor was any ever had: nor would a vote have any practical consequence, one way or the other. The resolutions were abstractions, without application. They asserted a constitutional principle, which could not be decided, one way or the other, by the separate action of the Senate; not even in a bill, much less in a single and barren set of resolves. No vote was had upon them. The condition had not happened on which they were to be taken up by the slave States; but they were sent out to all such States, and adopted by some of them; and there commenced the great slavery agitation, founded upon the dogma of "no power in Congress to legislate upon slavery in the territories," which has led to the abrogation of the Missouri compromise line--which has filled the Union with distraction--and which is threatening to bring all federal legislation, and all federal elections, to a mere sectional struggle, in which, one-half of the States is to be arrayed against the other. The resolves were evidently introduced for the mere purpose of carrying a question to the slave States on which they could be formed into a unit against the free States; and they answered that purpose as well on rejection by the Senate as with it; and were accordingly used in conformity to their design without any such rejection, which--it cannot be repeated too often--could in no way have decided the constitutional question which they presented.

These were new resolutions--the first of their kind in the (almost) sixty years' existence of the federal government--contrary to its practice during that time--contrary to Mr. Calhoun's slavery resolutions of 1838--contrary to his early and long support of the Missouri compromise--and contrary to the re-enactment of that line by the authors of the Texas annexation law. That re-enactment had taken place only two years before, and was in the very words of the anti-slavery ordinance of '87, and of the Missouri compromise prohibition of 1820; and was voted for by the whole body of the annexationists, and was not only conceived and supported by Mr. Calhoun, then Secretary of State, but carried into effect by him in the despatch of that messenger to Texas in the expiring moments of his power. The words of the re-enactment were: "And in such State, or States as shall be formed out of said territory north of the said Missouri compromise line, slavery or involuntary servitude (except for crime) shall be prohibited." This clause re-established that compromise line in all that long extent of it which was ceded to Spain by the treaty of 1819, which became Texian by her separation from Mexico, and which became slave soil under her laws and constitution. So that, up to the third day of March, in the year 1845--not quite two years before the date of these resolutions--Mr. Calhoun by authentic acts, and the two Houses of Congress by recorded votes, and President Tyler by his approving signature, acknowledged the power of Congress to prohibit slavery in a territory! and not only acknowledged the power, but exerted it! and actually prohibited slavery in a long slip of country, enough to make a "State or States," where it then legally existed. This fact was formally brought out in the chapter of this volume which treats of the legislative annexation of Texas; and those who wish to see the proceeding in detail may find it in the journals of the two Houses of Congress, and in the congressional history of the time.

These resolutions of 1847, called fire-brand at the time, were further characterized as nullification a few days afterwards, when Mr. Benton said of them, that, "as Sylla saw in the young Cæsar many Mariuses, so did he see in them many nullifications."

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Chapter CLXVIII

THE SLAVERY AGITATION: DISUNION: KEY TO MR. CALHOUN'S POLICY: FORCING THE ISSUE: MODE OF FORCING IT.

In the course of this year, and some months after the submission of his resolutions in the Senate denying the right of Congress to abolish slavery in a territory, Mr. Calhoun wrote a letter to a member of the Alabama Legislature, which furnishes the key to unlock his whole system of policy in relation to the slavery agitation, and its designs, from his first taking up the business in Congress in the year 1835, down to the date of the letter; and thereafter. The letter was in reply to one asking his opinion "as to the steps which should be taken" to guard the rights of the South; and was written in a feeling of personal confidence to a person in a condition to take steps; and which he has since published to counteract the belief that Mr. Calhoun was seeking the dissolution of the Union. The letter disavows such a design, and at the same time proves it--recommends forcing the issue between the North and the South, and lays down the manner in which it should be done. It opens with this paragraph:

"I am much gratified with the tone and views of your letter, and concur entirely in the opinion you express, that instead of shunning, we ought to court the issue with the North on the slavery question. I would even go one step further, and add that it is our duty--due to ourselves, to the Union, and our political institutions, to force the issue on the North. We are now stronger relatively than we shall be hereafter, politically and morally. Unless we bring on the issue, delay to us will be dangerous indeed. It is the true policy of those enemies who seek our destruction. Its effects are, and have been, and will be to weaken us politically and morally, and to strengthen them. Such has been my opinion from the first. Had the South, or even my own State backed me, I would have forced the issue on the North in 1835, when the spirit of abolitionism first developed itself to any considerable extent. It is a true maxim, to meet danger on the frontier, in politics as well as war. Thus thinking, I am of the impression, that if the South act as it ought, the Wilmot Proviso, instead of proving to be the means of successfully assailing us and our peculiar institution, may be made the occasion of successfully asserting our equality and rights, by enabling us to force the issue on the North. Something of the kind was indispensable to rouse and unite the South. On the contrary, if we should not meet it as we ought, I fear, greatly fear, our doom will be fixed. It would prove that we either have not the sense or spirit to defend ourselves and our institutions."

The phrase "forcing the issue" is here used too often, and for a purpose too obvious, to need remark. The reference to his movement in 1835 confirms all that was said of that movement at the time by senators from both sections of the Union, and which has been related in chapter 131 of the first volume of this View. At that time Mr. Calhoun characterized his movement as defensive--as done in a spirit of self-defence: it was then characterized by senators as aggressive and offensive: and it is now declared in this letter to have been so. He was then openly told that he was playing into the hands of the abolitionists, and giving them a champion to contend with, and the elevated theatre of the American Senate for the dissemination of their doctrines, and the production of agitation and sectional division. All that is now admitted, with a lamentation that the South, and not even his own State, would stand by him then in forcing the issue. So that chance was lost. Another was now presented. The Wilmot Proviso, so much deprecated in public, is privately saluted as a fortunate event, giving another chance for forcing the issue. The letter proceeds:

"But in making up the issue, we must look far beyond the proviso. It is but one of many acts of aggression, and, in my opinion, by no means the most dangerous or degrading, though more striking and palpable."

In looking beyond the proviso (the nature of which has been explained in a preceding chapter) Mr. Calhoun took up the recent act of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, repealing the slave sojournment law within her limits, and obstructing the recovery of fugitive slaves--saying:

"I regard the recent act of Pennsylvania, and laws of that description, passed by other States, intended to prevent or embarrass the reclamation of fugitive slaves, or to liberate our domestics when travelling with them in non-slaveholding States, as unconstitutional. Insulting as it is, it is even more dangerous. I go further, and hold that if we have a right to hold our slaves, we have a right to hold them in peace and quiet, and that the toleration, in the non-slaveholding States, of the establishment of societies and presses, and the delivery of lectures, with the express intention of calling in question our right to our slaves, and of seducing and abducting them from the service of their masters, and finally overthrowing the institution itself, as not only a violation of international laws, but also of the Federal compact. I hold, also, that we cannot acquiesce in such wrongs, without the certain destruction of the relation of master and slave, and without the ruin of the South."

The acts of Pennsylvania here referred to are justly complained of, but with the omission to tell that these injurious acts were the fruit of his own agitation policy, and in his own line of forcing issues; and that the repeal of the sojournment law, which had subsisted since the year 1780, and the obstruction of the fugitive slave act, which had been enforced since 1793, only took place twelve years after he had commenced slavery agitation in the South, and were legitimate consequences of that agitation, and of the design to force the issue with the North. The next sentence of the letter reverts to the Wilmot Proviso, and is of momentous consequence as showing that Mr. Calhoun, with all his public professions in favor of compromise and conciliation, was secretly opposed to any compromise or adjustment, and actually considered the defeat of the proviso as a misfortune to the South. Thus:

"With this impression, I would regard any compromise or adjustment of the proviso, or even its defeat, without meeting the danger in its whole length and breadth, as very unfortunate for us. It would lull us to sleep again, without removing the danger, or materially diminishing it."

So that, while this proviso was, publicly, the Pandora's box which filled the Union with evil, and while it was to Mr. Calhoun and his friends the theme of endless deprecation, it was secretly cherished as a means of keeping up discord, and forcing the issue between the North and the South. Mr. Calhoun then proceeds to the serious question of disunion, and of the manner in which the issue could be forced.

"This brings up the question, how can it be so met, without resorting to the dissolution of the Union? I say without its dissolution, for, in my opinion, a high and sacred regard for the constitution, as well as the dictates of wisdom, make it our duty in this case, as well as all others, not to resort to, or even to look to that extreme remedy, until all others have failed, and then only in defence of our liberty and safety. There is, in my opinion, but one way in which it can be met; and that is the one indicated in my letter to Mr. ----, and to which you allude in yours to me, viz., by retaliation. Why I think so, I shall now proceed to explain."

Then follows an argument to justify retaliation, by representing the constitution as containing provisions, he calls them stipulations, some in favor of the slaveholding, and some in favor of the non-slaveholding States, and the breach of any of which, on one side, authorizes a retaliation on the other; and then declaring that Pennsylvania, and other States, have violated the provision in favor of the slave States in obstructing the recovery of fugitive slaves, he proceeds to explain his remedy--saying:

"There is and can be but one remedy short of disunion, and that is to retaliate on our part, by refusing to fulfil the stipulations in their favor, or such as we may select, as the most efficient. Among these, the right of their ships and commerce to enter and depart from our ports is the most effectual, and can be enforced. That the refusal on their part would justify us to refuse to fulfil on our part those in their favor, is too clear to admit of argument. That it would be effectual in compelling them to fulfil those in our favor can hardly be doubted, when the immense profit they make by trade and navigation out of us is regarded; and also the advantages we would derive from the direct trade it would establish between the rest of the world and our ports."

Retaliation by closing the ports of the State against the commerce of the offending State: and this called a constitutional remedy, and a remedy short of disunion. It is, on the contrary, a flagrant breach of the constitution, and disunion itself, and that at the very point which caused the Union to be formed. Every one acquainted with the history of the formation of the federal constitution, knows that it grew out of the single question of commerce--the necessity of its regulation between the States to prevent them from harassing each other, and with foreign nations to prevent State rivalries for foreign trade. To stop the trade with any State is, therefore, to break the Union with that State; and to give any advantage to a foreign nation over a State, would be to break the constitution again in the fundamental article of its formation; and this is what the retaliatory remedy of commercial non-intercourse arrives at--a double breach of the constitution--one to the prejudice of sister States, the other in favor of foreign nations. For immediately upon this retaliation upon a State, and as a consequence of it, a great foreign trade is to grow up with all the world. The letter proceeds with further instructions upon the manner of executing the retaliation:

"My impression is, that it should be restricted to sea-going vessels, which would leave open the trade of the valley of the Mississippi to New Orleans by river, and to the other Southern cities by railroad; and tend thereby to detach the North-western from the North-eastern States."

This discloses a further feature in the plan of forcing the issue. The North-eastern States were to be excluded from Southern maritime commerce: the North-western States were to be admitted to it by railroad, and also allowed to reach New Orleans by the Mississippi River. And this discrimination in favor of the North-western States was for the purpose of detaching them from the North-east. Detach is the word. And that word signifies to separate, disengage, disunite, part from: so that the scheme of disunion contemplated the inclusion of the North-western States in the Southern division. The State of Missouri was one of the principal of these States, and great efforts were made to gain her over, and to beat down Senator Benton who was an obstacle to that design. The letter concludes by pointing out the only difficulty in the execution of this plan, and showing how to surmount it.

"There is but one practical difficulty in the way; and that is, to give it force, it will require the co-operation of all the slave-holding States lying on the Atlantic Gulf. Without that, it would be ineffective. To get that is the great point, and for that purpose a convention of the Southern States is indispensable. Let that be called, and let it adopt measures to bring about the co-operation, and I would underwrite for the rest. The non-slaveholding States would be compelled to observe the stipulations of the constitution in our favor, or abandon their trade with us, or to take measures to coerce us, which would throw on them the responsibility of dissolving the Union. Which they would choose, I do not think doubtful. Their unbounded avarice would, in the end, control them. Let a convention be called--let it recommend to the slaveholding States to take the course advised, giving, say one year's notice, before the acts of the several States should go into effect, and the issue would fairly be made up, and our safety and triumph certain."

This the only difficulty--the want of a co-operation of all the Southern Atlantic States; and to surmount that, the indispensability of a convention of the Southern States is fully declared. This was going back to the starting point--to the year 1835--when Mr. Calhoun first took up the slavery agitation in the Senate, and when a convention of the slaveholding States was as much demanded then as now, and that twelve years before the Wilmot Proviso--twelve years before the Pennsylvania unfriendly legislation--twelve years before the insult and outrage to the South, in not permitting them to carry their local laws with them to the territories, for the protection of their slave property. A call of a Southern convention was as much demanded then as now; and such conventions often actually attained: but without accomplishing the object of the prime mover. No step could be got to be taken in those conventions towards dividing and sectionalizing the States, and after a vain reliance upon them for seventeen years, a new method has been fallen upon: and this confidential letter from Mr. Calhoun to a member of the Alabama legislature of 1847, has come to light, to furnish the key which unlocks his whole system of slavery agitation which he commenced in the year 1835. That system was to force issues upon the North under the pretext of self-defence, and to sectionalize the South, preparatory to disunion, through the instrumentality of sectional conventions, composed wholly of delegates from the slaveholding States. Failing in that scheme of accomplishing the purpose, a new one was fallen upon, which will disclose itself in its proper place.

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Chapter CLXIX

DEATH OF SILAS WRIGHT, EX-SENATOR AND EX-GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK.

He died suddenly, at the early age of fifty-two, and without the sufferings and premonitions which usually accompany the mortal transit from time to eternity. A letter that he was reading, was seen to fall from his hand: a physician was called: in two hours he was dead--apoplexy the cause. Though dying at the age deemed young in a statesman, he had attained all that long life could give--high office, national fame, fixed character, and universal esteem. He had run the career of honors in the State of New York--been representative and senator in Congress--and had refused more offices, and higher, than he ever accepted. He refused cabinet appointments under his fast friend, Mr. Van Buren, and under Mr. Polk, whom he may be said to have elected: he refused a seat on the bench of the federal Supreme Court; he rejected instantly the nomination of 1844 for Vice-President of the United States, when that nomination was the election. He refused to be put in nomination for the presidency. He refused to accept foreign missions. He spent that time in declining office which others did in winning it; and of those he did accept, it might well be said they were "thrust" upon him. Office, not greatness, was thrust upon him. He was born great, and above office, and unwillingly descended to it; and only took it for its burthens, and to satisfy an importunate public demand. Mind, manners, morals, temper, habits, united in him to form the character that was perfect, both in public and private life, and to give the example of a patriot citizen--of a farmer statesman--of which we have read in Cincinnatus and Cato, and seen in Mr. Macon, and some others of their stamp--created by nature--formed in no school: and of which the instances are so rare and long between.

His mind was clear and strong, his judgment solid, his elocution smooth and equable, his speaking always addressed to the understanding, and always enchaining the attention of those who had minds to understand. Grave reasoning was his forte. Argumentation was always the line of his speech. He spoke to the head, not to the passions; and would have been disconcerted to have seen any body laugh, or cry, at any thing he said. His thoughts evolved spontaneously, in natural and proper order, clothed in language of force and clearness; all so naturally and easily conceived that an extemporaneous speech, or the first draught of an intricate report, had all the correctness of a finished composition. His manuscript had no blots--a proof that his mind had none; and he wrote a neat, compact hand, suitable to a clear and solid mind. He came into the Senate, in the beginning of General Jackson's administration, and remained during that of Mr. Van Buren; and took a ready and active part in all the great debates of those eventful times. The ablest speakers of the opposition always had to answer him; and when he answered them, they showed by their anxious concern, that the adversary was upon them whose force they dreaded most. Though taking his full part upon all subjects, yet finance was his particular department, always chairman of that committee, when his party was in power, and by the lucidity of his statements making plain the most intricate moneyed details. He had a just conception of the difference between the functions of the finance committee of the Senate, and the committee of ways and means of the House--so little understood in these latter times: those of the latter founded in the prerogative of the House to originate all revenue bills; those of the former to act upon the propositions from the House, without originating measures which might affect the revenue, so as to coerce either its increase or prevent its reduction. In 1844 he left the Senate, to stand for the governorship of New York; and never did his self-sacrificing temper undergo a stronger trial, or submit to a greater sacrifice. He liked the Senate: he disliked the governorship, even to absolute repugnance. But it was said to him (and truly, as then believed, and afterwards proved) that the State would be lost to Mr. Polk, unless Mr. Wright was associated with him in the canvass: and to this argument he yielded. He stood the canvass for the governorship--carried it--and Mr. Polk with him; and saved the presidential election of that year.

Judgment was the character of Mr. Wright's mind: purity the quality of the heart. Though valuable in the field of debate, he was still more valued at the council table, where sense and honesty are most demanded. General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren relied upon him as one of their safest counsellors. A candor which knew no guile--an integrity which knew no deviation--which worked right on, like a machine governed by a law of which it was unconscious--were the inexorable conditions of his nature, ruling his conduct in every act, public and private. No foul legislation ever emanated from him. The jobber, the speculator, the dealer in false claims, the plunderer, whose scheme required an act of Congress; all these found in his vigilance and perspicacity a detective police, which discovered their designs, and in his integrity a scorn of corruption which kept them at a distance from the purity of his atmosphere.

His temper was gentle--his manners simple--his intercourse kindly--his habits laborious--and rich upon a freehold of thirty acres, in much part cultivated by his own hand. In the intervals of senatorial duties this man, who refused cabinet appointments and presidential honors, and a seat upon the Supreme Bench--who measured strength with Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, and on whose accents admiring Senates hung: this man, his neat suit of broadcloth and fine linen exchanged for the laborer's dress, might be seen in the harvest field, or meadow, carrying the foremost row, and doing the cleanest work: and this not as recreation or pastime, or encouragement to others, but as work, which was to count in the annual cultivation, and labor to be felt in the production of the needed crop. His principles were democratic, and innate, founded in a feeling, still more than a conviction, that the masses were generally right in their sentiments, though sometimes wrong in their action; and that there was less injury to the country from the honest mistakes of the people, than from the interested schemes of corrupt and intriguing politicians. He was born in Massachusetts, came to man's estate in New York, received from that State the only honors he would accept; and in choosing his place of residence in it gave proof of his modest, retiring, unpretending nature. Instead of following his profession in the commercial or political capital of his State, where there would be demand and reward for his talent, he constituted himself a village lawyer where there was neither, and pertinaciously refused to change his locality. In an outside county, on the extreme border of the State, taking its name of St. Lawrence from the river which washed its northern side, and divided the United States from British America--and in one of the smallest towns of that county, and in one of the least ambitious houses of that modest town, lived and died this patriot statesman--a good husband (he had no children)--a good neighbor--a kind relative--a fast friend--exact and punctual in every duty, and the exemplification of every social and civic virtue.

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Chapter CLXX

THIRTIETH CONGRESS: FIRST SESSION: LIST OF MEMBERS: PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.

Senate.

MAINE.--Hannibal Hamlin, J. W. Bradbury.

NEW HAMPSHIRE.--Charles G. Atherton, John P. Hale.

VERMONT.--William Upham, Samuel S. Phelps.

MASSACHUSETTS.--Daniel Webster, John Davis.

RHODE ISLAND.--Albert C. Greene, John H. Clarke.

CONNECTICUT.--John M. Niles, Roger S. Baldwin.

NEW YORK.--John A. Dix, Daniel S. Dickinson.

NEW JERSEY.--William L. Dayton, Jacob W. Miller.

PENNSYLVANIA.--Simon Cameron, Daniel Sturgeon.

DELAWARE.--John M. Clayton, Presley Spruance.

MARYLAND.--James A. Pearce, Reverdy Johnson.

VIRGINIA.--James M. Mason, R. M. T. Hunter.

NORTH CAROLINA.--George. E. Badger, Willie P. Mangum.

SOUTH CAROLINA.--A. P. Butler, John C. Calhoun.

GEORGIA.--Herschell V. Johnson, John M. Berrien.

ALABAMA.--William R. King, Arthur P. Bagley.

MISSISSIPPI.--Jefferson Davis, Henry Stuart Foote.

LOUISIANA.--Henry Johnson, S. U. Downs.

TENNESSEE.--Hopkins L. Turney, John Bell.

KENTUCKY.--Thomas Metcalfe, Joseph R. Underwood.

OHIO.--William Allen, Thomas Corwin.

INDIANA.--Edward A. Hannegan, Jesse D. Bright.

ILLINOIS.--Sidney Breese, Stephen A. Douglass.

MISSOURI.--David R. Atchison, Thomas H. Benton.

ARKANSAS.--Solon Borland, William K. Sebastian.

MICHIGAN.--Thomas Fitzgerald, Alpheus Felch.

FLORIDA.--J. D. Westcott, Jr., David Yulee.

TEXAS.--Thomas J. Rusk, Samuel Houston.

IOWA.--Augustus C. Dodge, George W. Jones.

WISCONSIN.--Henry Dodge, I. P. Walker.

House of Representatives.

MAINE.--David Hammonds, Asa W. H. Clapp, Hiram Belcher, Franklin Clark, E. K. Smart, James S. Wiley, Hezekiah Williams.

NEW HAMPSHIRE.--Amos Tuck, Charles H. Peaslee, James Wilson, James H. Johnson.

MASSACHUSETTS.--Rob't C. Winthrop, Daniel P. King, Amos Abbott, John G. Palfrey, Chas. Hudson, George Ashmun, Julius Rockwell, Horace Mann, Artemas Hale, Joseph Grinnell.

RHODE ISLAND.--R. B. Cranston, B. B. Thurston.

CONNECTICUT.--James Dixon, S. D. Hilliard, J. A. Rockwell, Truman Smith.

VERMONT.--William Henry, Jacob Collamer, George P. Marsh, Lucius B. Peck.

NEW YORK.--Frederick W. Lloyd, H. C. Murphy, Henry Nicoll, W. B. Maclay, Horace Greeley, William Nelson, Cornelius Warren, Daniel B. St. John, Eliakim Sherrill, P. H. Sylvester, Gideon Reynolds, J. I. Slingerland, Orlando Kellogg, S. Lawrence, Hugh White, George Petrie, Joseph Mullin, William Collins, Timothy Jenkins, G. A. Starkweather, Ausburn Birdsall, William Duer, Daniel Gott, Harmon S. Conger, William T. Lawrence, Ebon Blackman, Elias B. Holmes, Robert L. Rose, David Ramsay, Dudly Marvin, Nathan K. Hall, Harvey Putnam, Washington Hunt.

NEW JERSEY.--James G. Hampton, William A. Newell, Joseph Edsall, J. Van Dyke, D. S. Gregory.

PENNSYLVANIA.--Lewis C. Levin, J. R. Ingersoll, Charles Brown, C. J. Ingersoll, John Freedly, Samuel A. Bridges, A. R. McIlvaine, John Strohm, William Strong, R. Brodhead, Chester Butler, David Wilmot, James Pollock, George N. Eckert, Henry Nes, Jasper E. Brady, John Blanchard, Andrew Stewart, Job Mann, John Dickey, Moses Hampton, J. W. Farrelly, James Thompson, Alexander Irvine.

DELAWARE.--John W. Houston.

MARYLAND.--J. G. Chapman, J. Dixon Roman, T. Watkins Ligon, R. M. McLane, Alexander Evans, John W. Crisfield.

VIRGINIA.--Archibald Atkinson, Richard K. Meade, Thomas S. Flournoy, Thomas S. Bocock, William L. Goggin, John M. Botts, Thomas H. Bayly, R. T. L. Beale, J. S. Pendleton, Henry Bedinger, James McDowell, William B. Preston, Andrew S. Fulton, R. A. Thompson, William G. Brown.

NORTH CAROLINA.--Thomas S. Clingman, Nathaniel Boyden, D. M. Berringer, Aug. H. Shepherd, Abm. W. Venable, James J. McKay, J. R. J. Daniel, Richard S. Donnell, David Outlaw.

SOUTH CAROLINA.--Daniel Wallace, Richard F. Simpson, J. A. Woodward, Artemas Burt, Isaac E. Holmes, R. Barnwell Rhett.

GEORGIA.--T. Butler King, Alfred Iverson, John W. Jones, H. A. Harralson, J. A. Lumpkin, Howell Cobb, A. H. Stephens, Robert Toombs.

ALABAMA.--John Gayle, H. W. Hilliard, S. W. Harris, William M. Inge, G. S. Houston, W. R. W. Cobb, F. W. Bowdon.

MISSISSIPPI.--Jacob Thompson, W. S. Featherston, Patrick W. Tompkins, Albert G. Brown.

LOUISIANA.--Emile La Sere, B. G. Thibodeaux, J. M. Harmansan, Isaac E. Morse.

FLORIDA.--Edward C. Cabell.

OHIO.--James J. Faran, David Fisher, Robert C. Schenck, Richard S. Canby, William Sawyer, R. Dickinson, Jonathan D. Morris, J. L. Taylor, T. O. Edwards, Daniel Duncan, John K. Miller, Samuel F. Vinton, Thomas Richey, Nathan Evans, William Kennon, Jr., J. D. Cummins, George Fries, Samuel Lahm, John Crowell, J. R. Giddings, Joseph M. Root.

INDIANA.--Elisha Embree, Thomas J. Henley, J. L. Robinson, Caleb B. Smith, William W. Wick, George G. Dunn, R. W. Thompson, John Pettit, C. W. Cathcart, William Rockhill.

MICHIGAN.--R. McClelland, Cha's E. Stewart, Kinsley S. Bingham.

ILLINOIS.--Robert Smith, J. A. McClernand, O. B. Ficklin, John Wentworth, W. A. Richardson, Thomas J. Turner, A. Lincoln.

IOWA.--William Thompson, Shepherd Leffler.

KENTUCKY.--Linn Boyd, Samuel O. Peyton, B. L. Clark, Aylett Buckner, J. B. Thompson, Green Adams, Garnett Duncan, Charles S. Morehead, Richard French, John P. Gaines.

TENNESSEE.--Andrew Johnson, William M. Cocke, John H. Crozier, H. L. W. Hill, George W. Jones, James H. Thomas, Meredith P. Gentry, Washington Barrow, Lucien B. Chase, Frederick P. Stanton, William T. Haskell.

MISSOURI.--James B. Bowlin, John Jamieson, James S. Green, Willard P. Hall, John S. Phelps.

ARKANSAS.--Robert W. Johnson.

TEXAS.--David S. Kaufman, Timothy Pillsbury.

WISCONSIN.--Mason C. Darling, William Pitt Lynde.

Robert C. Winthrop, Esq., of Massachusetts, was elected Speaker of the House, and Benjamin B. French, Esq., clerk, and soon after the President's message was delivered, a quorum of the Senate having appeared the first day. The election of Speaker had decided the question of the political character of the House, and showed the administration to be in a minority:--a bad omen for the popularity of the Mexican war. The President had gratifying events to communicate to Congress--the victories of Cerro Gordo, Contreras and Churubusco, the storming of Chepultepec, and the capture of the City of Mexico: and exulted over these exploits with the pride of an American, although all these advantages had to be gained over the man whom he handed back into Mexico under the belief that he was to make peace. He also informed Congress that a commissioner had been sent to the head-quarters of the American army to take advantage of events to treat for peace; and that he had carried out with him the draught of the treaty, already prepared, which contained the terms on which alone the war was to be terminated. This commissioner was Nicholas P. Trist, Esq., principal clerk in the Department of State, a man of mind and integrity, well acquainted with the state of parties in Mexico, subject to none at home, and anxious to establish peace between the countries. Upon the capture of the city, and the downfall of Santa Anna, commissioners were appointed to meet Mr. Trist; but the Mexican government, far from accepting the treaty as drawn up and sent to them, submitted other terms still more objectionable to us than ours to them; and the two parties remained without prospect of agreement. The American commissioner was recalled, "under the belief," said the message, "that his continued presence with the army could do no good." This recall was despatched from the United States the 6th of October, immediately after information had been received of the failure of the attempted negotiations; but, as will be seen hereafter, the notice of the recall arriving when negotiations had been resumed with good prospect of success, Mr. Trist remained at his post to finish his work.

In the course of the summer a "female," fresh from Mexico, and with a masculine stomach for war and politics, arrived at Washington, had interviews with members of the administration, and infected some of them with the contagion of a large project--nothing less than the absorption into our Union of all Mexico, and the assumption of all her debts (many tens of millions in esse, and more in posse), and all to be assumed at par, though the best were at 25 cents in the dollar, and the mass ranging down to five cents. This project was given out, and greatly applauded in some of the administration papers--condemned by the public feeling, and greatly denounced in a large opposition meeting in Lexington, Kentucky, at which Mr. Clay came forth from his retirement to speak wisely and patriotically against it. The "female" had gone back to Mexico, with high letters from some members of the cabinet to the commanding general, and to the plenipotentiary negotiator; both of whom, however, eschewed the proffered aid. A party in Mexico developed itself for this total absorption, and total assumption of debts, and the scheme acquired so much notoriety, and gained such consistency of detail, and stuck so close to some members of the administration, that the President deemed it necessary to clear himself from the suspicion; which he did in a decisive paragraph of his message:

"It has never been contemplated by me, as an object of the war, to make a permanent conquest of the republic of Mexico, or to annihilate her separate existence as an independent nation. On the contrary, it has ever been my desire that she should maintain her nationality, and, under a good government adapted to her condition, be a free, independent, and prosperous republic. The United States were the first among the nations to recognize her independence, and have always desired to be on terms of amity and good neighborhood with her. This she would not suffer. By her own conduct we have been compelled to engage in the present war. In its prosecution, we seek not her overthrow as a nation, but, in vindicating our national honor, we seek to obtain redress for the wrongs she has done us, and indemnity for our just demands against her. We demand an honorable peace; and that peace must bring with it indemnity for the past, and security for the future."

While some were for total absorption, others were for half; and for taking a line (provisionally during the war), preparatory to its becoming permanent at its close, and giving to the United States the northern States of Mexico from gulf to gulf. This project the President also repulsed in a paragraph of his message:

"To retire to a line, and simply hold and defend it, would not terminate the war. On the contrary, it would encourage Mexico to persevere, and tend to protract it indefinitely. It is not to be expected that Mexico, after refusing to establish such a line as a permanent boundary when our victorious army are in possession of her capital, and in the heart of her country, would permit us to hold it without resistance. That she would continue the war, and in the most harassing and annoying forms, there can be no doubt. A border warfare of the most savage character, extending over a long line, would be unceasingly waged. It would require a large army to be kept constantly in the field stationed at posts and garrisons along such a line, to protect and defend it. The enemy, relieved from the pressure of our arms on his coasts and in the populous parts of the interior, would direct his attention to this line, and selecting an isolated post for attack, would concentrate his forces upon it. This would be a condition of affairs which the Mexicans, pursuing their favorite system of guerilla warfare, would probably prefer to any other. Were we to assume a defensive attitude on such a line, all the advantages of such a state of war would be on the side of the enemy. We could levy no contributions upon him, or in any other way make him feel the pressure of the war; but must remain inactive, and wait his approach, being in constant uncertainty at what point on the line, or at what time, he might make an assault. He may assemble and organize an overwhelming force in the interior, on his own side of the line, and, concealing his purpose, make a sudden assault on some one of our posts so distant from any other as to prevent the possibility of timely succor or reinforcements; and in this way our gallant army would be exposed to the danger of being cut off in detail; or if by their unequalled bravery and prowess every where exhibited during this war, they should repulse the enemy, their number stationed at any one post may be too small to pursue him. If the enemy be repulsed in one attack, he would have nothing to do but to retreat to his own side of the line, and being in no fear of a pursuing army, may reinforce himself at leisure, for another attack on the same or some other post. He may, too, cross the line between our posts, make rapid incursions into the country which we hold, murder the inhabitants, commit depredations on them, and then retreat to the interior before a sufficient force can be concentrated to pursue him. Such would probably be the harassing character of a mere defensive war on our part. If our forces, when attacked, or threatened with attack, be permitted to cross the line, drive back the enemy, and conquer him, this would be again to invade the enemy's country, after having lost all the advantages of the conquests we have already made by having voluntarily abandoned them. To hold such a line successfully and in security, it is far from being certain that it would not require as large an army as would be necessary to hold all the conquests we have already made, and to continue the prosecution of the war in the heart of the enemy's country. It is also far from being certain that the expense of the war would be diminished by such a policy."

These were the same arguments which Senator Benton had addressed to the President the year before, when the recommendation of this line of occupation had gone into the draught of his message, as a cabinet measure, and was with such difficulty got out of it; but without getting it out of the head of Mr. Calhoun and his political friends. To return to the argument against such a line, in this subsequent message, bespoke an adherence to it on the part of some formidable interest, which required to be authoritatively combated: and such was the fact. The formidable interest which wished a separation of the slave from the free States, wished also as an extension of their Southern territory, to obtain a broad slice from Mexico, embracing Tampico as a port on the east, Guaymas as a port on the Gulf of California, and Monterey and Saltillo in the middle. Mr. Polk did not sympathize with that interest, and publicly repulsed their plan--without, however, extinguishing their scheme--which survives, and still labors at its consummation in a different form, and with more success.

The expenses of the government during that season of war, were the next interesting head of the message, and were presented, all heads of expenditure included, at some fifty-eight millions of dollars; or a quarter less than those same expenses now are in a state of peace The message says:

"It is estimated that the receipts into the Treasury for the fiscal year ending on the 30th of June, 1848, including the balance in the Treasury on the 1st of July last, will amount to forty-two millions eight hundred and eighty-six thousand five hundred and forty-five dollars and eighty cents; of which thirty-one millions, it is estimated, will be derived from customs; three millions five hundred thousand from the sale of the public lands; four hundred thousand from incidental sources; including sales made by the solicitor of the Treasury; and six millions two hundred and eighty-five thousand two hundred and ninety-four dollars and fifty-five cents from loans already authorized by law, which, together with the balance in the Treasury on the 1st of July last, make the sum estimated. The expenditures for the same period, if peace with Mexico shall not be concluded, and the army shall be increased as is proposed, will amount, including the necessary payments on account of principal and interest of the public debt and Treasury notes, to fifty-eight millions six hundred and fifteen thousand and sixty dollars and seven cents."

An encomium upon the good working of the independent treasury system, and the perpetual repulse of paper money from the federal Treasury, concluded the heads of this message which retain a surviving interest:

"The financial system established by the constitutional Treasury has been, thus far, eminently successful in its operations; and I recommend an adherence to all its essential provisions; and especially to that vital provision, which wholly separates the government from all connection with banks, and excludes bank paper from all revenue receipts."

An earnest exhortation to a vigorous prosecution of the war concluded the message.

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CLXXI. DEATH OF SENATOR BARROW: MR. BENTON'S EULOGIUM

MR. BENTON. In rising to second the motion for paying to the memory of our deceased brother senator the last honors of this body, I feel myself to be obeying the impulsions of an hereditary friendship, as well as conforming to the practice of the Senate. Forty years ago, when coming to the bar at Nashville, it was my good fortune to enjoy the friendship of the father of the deceased, then an inhabitant of Nashville, and one of its most respected citizens. The deceased was then too young to be noted amongst the rest of the family. The pursuits of life soon carried us far apart, and long after, and for the first time to know each other, we met on this floor. We met not as strangers, but as friends--friends of early and hereditary recollections; and all our intercourse since--every incident and every word of our lives, public and private--has gone to strengthen and confirm the feelings under which we met, and to perpetuate with the son the friendship which had existed with the father. Up to the last moments of his presence in this chamber--up to the last moment that I saw him--our meetings and partings were the cordial greetings of hereditary friendship; and now, not only as one of the elder senators, but as the early and family friend of the deceased, I come forward to second the motion for the honors to his memory.

The senator from Louisiana (Mr. H. Johnson) has performed the office of duty and of friendship to his deceased friend and colleague. Justly, truly and feelingly has he performed it. With deep and heartfelt emotion he has portrayed the virtues, and sketched the qualities, which constituted the manly and lofty character of Alexander Barrow. He has given us a picture as faithful as it is honorable, and it does not become me to dilate upon what he has so well presented; but, in contemplating the rich and full portrait of the high qualities of the head and heart which he has presented, suffer me to look for an instant to the source, the fountain, from which flowed the full stream of generous and noble actions which distinguished the entire life of our deceased brother senator. I speak of the heart--the noble heart--of Alexander Barrow. Honor, courage, patriotism, friendship, generosity--fidelity to his friend and his country--the social affections--devotion to the wife of his bosom, and the children of their love: all--all, were there! and never, not once, did any cold, or selfish, or timid calculation ever come from his manly head to check or balk the noble impulsions of his generous heart. A quick, clear, and strong judgment found nothing to restrain in these impulsions; and in all the wide circle of his public and private relations--in all the words and acts of his life--it was the heart that moved first, and always so true to honor that judgment had nothing to do but to approve the impulsion. From that fountain flowed the stream of the actions of his life; and now what we all deplore--what so many will join in deploring--is, that such a fountain, so unexpectedly, in the full tide of its flow, should have been so suddenly dried up. He was one of the younger members of this body, and in all the hope and vigor of meridian manhood. Time was ripening and maturing his faculties. He seemed to have a right to look forward to many years of usefulness to his country and to his family. With qualities evidently fitted for the field as well as for the Senate, a brilliant future was before him; ready, as I know he was, to serve his country in any way that honor and duty should require.

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CLXXII. DEATH OF MR. ADAMS

"Just after the yeas and nays were taken on a question, and the Speaker had risen to put another question to the House, a sudden cry was heard on the left of the chair, 'Mr. Adams is dying!' Turning our eyes to the spot, we beheld the venerable man in the act of falling over the left arm of his chair, while his right arm was extended, grasping his desk for support. He would have dropped upon the floor had he not been caught in the arms of the member sitting next him. A great sensation was created in the House: members from all quarters rushing from their seats, and gathering round the fallen statesman, who was immediately lifted into the area in front of the clerk's table. The Speaker instantly suggested that some gentleman move an adjournment, which being promptly done, the House adjourned."

So wrote the editors of the National Intelligencer, friends and associates of Mr. Adams for forty years, and now witnesses of the last scene--the sudden sinking in his chair, which was to end in his death. The news flew to the Senate chamber, the Senate then in session, and engaged in business, which Mr. Benton interrupted, standing up, and saying to the President of the body and the senators:

"I am called on to make a painful announcement to the Senate. I have just been informed that the House of Representatives has this instant adjourned under the most afflictive circumstances. A calamitous visitation has fallen on one of its oldest and most valuable members--one who has been President of the United States, and whose character has inspired the highest respect and esteem. Mr. Adams has just sunk down in his chair, and has been carried into an adjoining room, and may be at this moment passing from the earth, under the roof that covers us, and almost in our presence. In these circumstances the whole Senate will feel alike, and feel wholly unable to attend to any business. I therefore move the immediate adjournment of the Senate."

The Senate immediately adjourned, and all inquiries were directed to the condition of the stricken statesman. He had been removed to the Speaker's room, where he slightly recovered the use of his speech, and uttered in faltering accents, the intelligible words, "This is the last of earth;" and soon after, "I am composed." These were the last words he ever spoke. He lingered two days, and died on the evening of the 23d--struck the day before, and dying the day after the anniversary of Washington's birth--and attended by every circumstance which he could have chosen to give felicity in death. It was on the field of his labors--in the presence of the national representation, presided by a son of Massachusetts (Robert C. Winthrop, Esq.), in the full possession of his faculties, and of their faithful use--at octogenarian age--without a pang--hung over in his last unconscious moments by her who had been for more than fifty years the worthy partner of his bosom. Such a death was the "crowning mercy" of a long life of eminent and patriotic service, filled with every incident that gives dignity and lustre to human existence.

I was sitting in my library-room in the twilight of a raw and blustering day, the lamp not yet lit, when a note was delivered to me from Mr. Webster--I had saved it seven years, just seven--when it was destroyed in that conflagration of my house which consumed, in a moment, so much which I had long cherished. The note was to inform me that Mr. Adams had breathed his last; and to say that the Massachusetts delegation had fixed upon me to second the motion, which would be made in the Senate the next day, for the customary funeral honors to his memory. Seconding the motion on such an occasion always requires a brief discourse on the life and character of the deceased. I was taken by surprise, for I had not expected such an honor: I was oppressed; for a feeling of inability and unworthiness fell upon me. I went immediately to Mr. Winthrop, who was nearest, to inquire if some other senator had been named to take my place if I should find it impossible to comply with the request. He said there was none--that Mr. Davis, of Massachusetts, would make the motion, and that I was the only one named to second him. My part was then fixed. I went to the other end of the city to see Mr. Davis, and so to arrange with him as to avoid repetitions--which was done, that he should speak of events, and I of characteristics. It was late in the night when I got back to my house, and took pen and paper to note the heads of what I should say. Never did I feel so much the weight of Cicero's admonition--"Choose with discretion out of the plenty that lies before you." The plenty was too much. It was a field crowded with fruits and flowers, of which you could only cull a few--a mine filled with gems, of which you could only snatch a handful. By midnight I had finished the task, and was ready for the ceremony.

Mr. Adams died a member of the House, and the honors to his memory commenced there, to be finished in the Senate. Mr. Webster was suffering from domestic affliction--the death of a son and a daughter--and could not appear among the speakers. Several members of the House spoke justly and beautifully; and of these, the pre-eminent beauty and justice of the discourse delivered by Mr. James McDowell, of Virginia (even if he had not been a near connection, the brother of Mrs. Benton), would lead me to give it the preference in selecting some passages from the tributes of the House. With a feeling and melodious delivery, he said:

"It is not for Massachusetts to mourn alone over a solitary and exclusive bereavement. It is not for her to feel alone a solitary and exclusive sorrow. No, sir; no! Her sister commonwealths gather to her side in this hour of her affliction, and, intertwining their arms with hers, they bend together over the bier of her illustrious son--feeling as she feels, and weeping as she weeps, over a sage, a patriot, and a statesman gone! It was in these great characteristics of individual and of public man that his country reverenced that son when living, and such, with a painful sense of her common loss, will she deplore him now that he is dead.

"Born in our revolutionary day, and brought up in early and cherished intimacy with the fathers and founders of the republic, he was a living bond of connection between the present and the past--the venerable representative of the memories of another age, and the zealous, watchful, and powerful one of the expectations, interests, and progressive knowledge of his own.

"There he sat, with his intense eye upon every thing that passed, the picturesque and rare one man, unapproachable by all others in the unity of his character and in the thousand-fold anxieties which centred upon him. No human being ever entered this hall without turning habitually and with heart-felt deference first to him, and few ever left it without pausing, as they went, to pour out their blessings upon that spirit of consecration to the country which brought and which kept him here.

"Standing upon the extreme boundary of human life, and disdaining all the relaxations and exemptions of age, his outer framework only was crumbling away. The glorious engine within still worked on unhurt, uninjured, amid all the dilapidations around it, and worked on with its wonted and its iron power, until the blow was sent from above which crushed it into fragments before us. And, however appalling that blow, and however profoundly it smote upon our own feelings as we beheld its extinguishing effect upon his, where else could it have fallen so fitly upon him? Where else could he have been relieved from the yoke of his labors so well as in the field where he bore them? Where else would he himself have been so willing to have yielded up his life, as upon the post of duty, and by the side of that very altar to which he had devoted it? Where but in the capitol of his country, to which all the throbbings and hopes of his heart had been given, would the dying patriot be so willing that those hopes and throbbings should cease? And where but from this mansion-house of liberty on earth, could this dying Christian more fitly go to his mansion-house of eternal liberty on high?"

Mr. Benton concluded in the Senate the ceremonies which had commenced in the House, pronouncing the brief discourse which was intended to group into one cluster the varied characteristics of the public and private life of this most remarkable man:

"The voice of his native State has been heard, through one of the senators of Massachusetts, announcing the death of her aged and most distinguished son. The voice of the other senator from Massachusetts is not heard, nor is his presence seen. A domestic calamity, known to us all, and felt by us all, confines him to the chamber of grief while the Senate is occupied with the public manifestations of a respect and sorrow which a national loss inspires. In the absence of that senator, and as the member of this body longest here, it is not unfitting or unbecoming in me to second the motion which has been made for extending the last honors of the Senate to him who, forty-five years ago, was a member of this body, who, at the time of his death, was among the oldest members of the House of Representatives, and who, putting the years of his service together, was the oldest of all the members of the American government.

"The eulogium of Mr. Adams is made in the facts of his life, which the senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Davis) has so strikingly stated, that from early manhood to octogenarian age, he has been constantly and most honorably employed in the public service. For a period of more than fifty years, from the time of his first appointment as minister abroad under Washington, to his last election to the House of Representatives by the people of his native district, he has been constantly retained in the public service, and that, not by the favor of a sovereign, or by hereditary title, but by the elections and appointments of republican government. This fact makes the eulogy of the illustrious deceased. For what, except a union of all the qualities which command the esteem and confidence of man, could have insured a public service so long, by appointments free and popular, and from sources so various and exalted? Minister many times abroad; member of this body; member of the House of Representatives; cabinet minister; President of the United States; such has been the galaxy of his splendid appointments. And what but moral excellence the most perfect; intellectual ability the most eminent; fidelity the most unwavering; service the most useful; would have commanded such a succession of appointments so exalted, and from sources so various and so eminent? Nothing less could have commanded such a series of appointments; and accordingly we see the union of all these great qualities in him who has received them.

"In this long career of public service, Mr. Adams was distinguished not only by faithful attention to all the great duties of his stations, but to all their less and minor duties. He was not the Salaminian galley, to be launched only on extraordinary occasions; but he was the ready vessel, always under sail when the duties of his station required it, be the occasion great or small. As President, as cabinet minister, as minister abroad, he examined all questions that came before him, and examined all, in all their parts--in all the minutiæ of their detail, as well as in all the vastness of their comprehension. As senator, and as a member of the House of Representatives, the obscure committee-room was as much the witness of his laborious application to the drudgery of legislation, as the halls of the two Houses were to the ever-ready speech, replete with knowledge, which instructed all hearers, enlightened all subjects, and gave dignity and ornament to all debate.

"In the observance of all the proprieties of life, Mr. Adams was a most noble and impressive example. He cultivated the minor as well as the greater virtues. Wherever his presence could give aid and countenance to what was useful and honorable to man, there he was. In the exercises of the school and of the college--in the meritorious meetings of the agricultural, mechanical, and commercial societies--in attendance upon Divine worship--he gave the punctual attendance rarely seen but in those who are free from the weight of public cares.

"Punctual to every duty, death found him at the post of duty; and where else could it have found him, at any stage of his career, for the fifty years of his illustrious public life? From the time of his first appointment by Washington to his last election by the people of his native town, where could death have found him but at the post of duty? At that post, in the fulness of age, in the ripeness of renown crowned with honors, surrounded by his family, his friends, and admirers, and in the very presence of the national representation, he has been gathered to his fathers, leaving behind him the memory of public services which are the history of his country for half a century, and the example of a life, public and private, which should be the study and the model of the generations of his countrymen."

The whole ceremony was inconceivably impressive. The two Houses of Congress were filled to their utmost capacity, and of all that Washington contained, and neighboring cities could send--the President, his cabinet, foreign ministers, judges of the Supreme Court, senators and representatives, citizens and visitors.

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