Willis Hall to Henry Clay, June 1848

NEW YORK, June, 1848.

MY DEAR MR. CLAY, — I write to you in the fullness of my heart, not to condole with you, for though I feel all the personal regard toward you which one man can feel for another, personal considerations are absorbed in those of a public nature.

The Presidency could have added nothing to your fame, and would have detracted much from your comfort.

This Government has had a national existence but little more than sixty years, during nearly forty of which it has been guided by your counsels. Glorious period! You may justly regard it with exultation! During this period you have demonstrated the great problem of the feasibility and permanency of popular government, and almost every nation in Europe, incited by the example, is now convulsed with the effort to imitate it. During this period you have impressed upon the country that high and honorable spirit in our intercourse with foreign nations, that spirit of conciliation and union among the States which have preserved us at home and made us respected abroad.

The uninterrupted and unprecedented prosperity of our national career has not been the work of accident. Three times, at least, the car of state would have taken the wrong road, if not the road to destruction, but for your guiding hand: once in 1810–12, once in 1819-20, once in 1830–31. Will no emergency of the kind ever occur again? When the next storm howls around us, this people, guilty and appalled, will shrink back covered with fear and dismay at the mischief they have done. You may say without arrogance, "Weep not for me, but rather weep for yourselves!" As the scroll of our history unrolls itself, your times will stand out in bold and bolder relief until it becomes the golden age of some future people, perhaps as unlike the present as the miserable herd that now defile the streets of Rome are unlike the associates of the elder Brutus. Convulsions and sterility immediately and abruptly following a tract of rich and elevated fertility, make the period of your counsels a stand mark to all future time.

We are on the eve of great events. Slavery will now become an immediate and bitter subject of dispute, and will not be relinquished until it is extinguished or the Union dissolved. I feel little disposition to commiserate the sufferings of the slave region. They have brought it upon themselves; they have thrust slavery upon us in the most offensive way; the policy of slavery governs all their actions; their conduct in the Convention will not be forgotten; the means they have taken to render themselves as they fancied more secure on this subject, has precipitated the discussion accompanied with an acrimony which will not tend to a friendly adjustment. The Whigs in this quarter every where are joining the Barnburners, ready to make the slave question the great issue in future. The next Presidential election (four years hence) will turn upon that point. A. Barnburner will be elected.

The Whig party, as such, is dead. The very name will be abandoned, should Taylor be elected, for "the Taylor party." The last Whig Convention committed the double crime of suicide and parricide. I loved that party, and whenever and wherever I shall hereafter discover any portion of my fellow-citizens guided by its principles, I shall attach myself to them; meantime I consider myself absolved from all political connection.

It was resolved to have a ratification meeting here as usual. The General Committee met on Monday evening, they were surrounded by more than three thousand people spontaneously collected, and the Committee was compelled to postpone the meeting indefinitely, in hopes that General Taylor's letter of acceptance will place himself more distinctly upon Whig ground. They will wait in vain. The Taylorites begin to think Taylor's election is not quite as certain as they supposed.

I hasten to the sole object of this long letter, which is to assure you of my undiminished and unalterable regard. Mrs. Hall begs me to join her in the expression of these sentiments and the respectful assurances of our highest esteem.

SOURCE: Calvin Colton, Editor, The Private Correspondence of Henry Clay, pp. 563-5

Diary of Corporal John Worrell Northrop, Sunday, August 2, 1864

The policy of enlisting negroes renders it harder for prisoners. So does the emancipation proclamation. The government having enlisted negroes, it is bound by laws of war and all honorable considerations to protect them as soldiers. To do otherwise would be dishonorable, cowardly, pernicious. Their enlistment more excited the unreasonable hatred of Southerners toward the North. The only way they can punish the North for what they deem insulting, is through their military prisons and they open their vials of wrath on "Lincoln hirelings," as they call us, who are wholly in their power. But the ever present fear of retaliation, man for man, men would be slain by hundreds, lined up and shot after being brought beyond the seat of war. As it is they come as near as they dare without displaying the black flag. Exchange was blocked last fall because Rebel authority disregards the negro as a man. That has long been a civil code of Slavedom. They adhere to it with a vengeance when he appears in arms against slavery. He is saved from slaughter if captured, on the theory that he is property, a theory in practice here for 100 years, or more. If any are escaped slaves they are to be returned to masters or used for war purposes indefinitely. If free they are appropriated as laborers, never exchanged, and if their war succeeds he can be sold. Hence the case of a white man is worse than that of a colored. He is deemed deserving of death because his government puts whites and blacks on an equality. The slave codes of the South, written and unwritten are in force, emphasized by the war power. This cruel and absurd animus of "Southern civilization," this unrighteous despotism, is of long standing. It is unquestioned by Southerners; woe be to him who disregarded it during the long arbitrary reign of Slave Kings. The mass accept it as right which is equivalent to thinking it right, and as men think so they are. Hence the critical situation of the white war prisoners at this time. We are wholly at the mercy of this cruel spirit which has transformed the South into a foe of everybody antagonistic to their customs and laws

Shall Lincoln recall his emancipation proclamation for the reason which as surely exists as we are at war? It makes it the deadliest war of any century. Nor should the policy of allowing negroes to fight for liberty be recalled. Shall free men cower and longer concede the injustices of this hell-born slave power? Indeed not. That is the issue-deadly issue to be fought to death. How well do I remember the word passed along the lines at Mine Run and other places last fall and winter: "No exchange of prisoners, men, remember." The same word sounded along the lines in the fiery ordeals in the Wilderness. The die was cast. We fought with it before our eyes. Who does not now realize its import? Davis seeks to supercede the laws of war with his old slave code. Soon after Lincoln's emancipation Davis notified his Congress that he proposed to turn commissioned officer's thereafter over to State authorities in States where captured to be punished under State laws providing for criminals engaged in inciting civil insurrection. That is his disposition, overlooking the fact that codes made to hang "abolition fanatics" can not be safely applied to war prisons in a state of war, where the States he represents are belligerents fighting for independence and asking for foreign recognition. Davis' blood-thirsty fanaticism for slavery, supercedes the intelligence he has been supposed to have and displays his savage inhumanity, thus seeking excuse to hang all U. S. officers.

[Note.—January 12, 1863, Davis, in a message to the Confederate Congress, said: "I shall, unless you, in your wisdom, deem some other course more expedient, deliver to the several State authorities all commissioned officers of the United States that may hereafter be captured by our forces in any of the States embraced in the proclamation, that they may be dealt within accordance with the laws of those States providing for the punishment of criminals engaged in inciting servile insurrection." Confederate War Records now at Washington. The same records show that in May, 1863, the Confederate Congress in its "wisdom," passed a law embodying the above suggestion, but confining its operation to commissioned officers of negro regiments. Negro soldiers, when captured, by its provisions were to be delivered to authorities of States where captured, to be disposed of according to the laws of those States. This law was never repealed, so that, as a legal proposition, any officer of a negro regiment who became a prisoner was liable to be hanged, as John Brown was at Harper's Ferry. The records also show that the prisoner problem was much discussed early in the war. A Yankee caught in slave States to "free niggers" prior to the war could be safely hanged under slave codes. Shallow minds, like Davis, assumed that it could still be done, others saw that having gone to war in the spirit that enacted the codes, they had barred themselves from exercising that sacred function. Some said make Uncle Sam feed them at his own expense though they be kept in the South. Others said starve them; others give them poor bread and water; others, break their legs and turn them loose. Some said make them build railroads or work in other ways to boost the Slave Confederacy.]

SOURCE: John Worrell Northrop, Chronicles from the Diary of a War Prisoner in Andersonville and Other Military Prisons of the South in 1864, pp. 95-7

Diary of Corporal John Worrell Northrop, Wednesday, August 10, 1864

Soldiers and negroes are rebuilding the fallen wall. Prisoners stand at a distance often shouting: "That is good for you, Rebs"; "That's the way your Confederacy will fall; Grant and Sherman are making bigger holes than these." "Ho, Reb, what are you doing with dat nigger dar; 'pears to us you're reduced to the level of the nigger." "It's hard enough to starve on cob-meal and be hunted by dogs, but when you come to build bull-pens for us with niggers, working by your sides, you are hyenas, you are black abolitionists, you are barbarians." Plenty of other taunts are indulged till men get sick of it.

Two new walls are being built outside of the main one. The most hopeful believers in immediate exchange, are puzzled as to what it means. Tunnelling cannot be successfully done more than sixty or eighty feet horizontally, the air becoming insufferable. The vacuity is necessarily small, just admitting a man as he draws himself along. It cannot be larger for fear of exposure, besides the dirt is dug with hands, sticks, etc., and passed to the opening to be carried to the swamp, or whereever it can be concealed. It cannot be ventilated for that might be a key to discovery. Likely these new walls are to obstruct the digging of tunnels.

For several days barracks have been in course of erection in the north part, the work being done by our men on parole who bring the lumber in on their shoulders. They are allowed an extra ration and occasionally opportunities to trade for their benefit. What do these barracks mean? Are we to stay here all winter? men asked. At the rate they go up, I think we will, if we wait for them. Some say they are for hospitals.

Steward Brown, who is an Englishman and not a soldier, on parole, expresses the belief that it was fortunate for prisoners that Stoneman's expedition failed, for it was the intention of Gen. Winder to use the Florida battery on the prison had any considerable Union force approached Andersonville within seven miles, and had so ordered in the regular way in writing, on July 27th.

[Note-Here is the order. It was found on file among the records at the Confederate War Department at Richmond, and is with other records in possession of the government, so it is plain Steward Brown knew his statement was true. This is the diabolical order:

 

Order No 13.

 

Headquarters Military Prison, Andersonville, Ga., July 27, 1864.

 

The officers on duty and in charge of the Battery of Florida Artillery at the time will, upon receiving notice that the enemy has approached within seven miles of this post, open upon the stockade with grapeshot, without reference to the situation beyond these lines of defense.

 

JOHN H. WINDER, 

Brigadier  General Commanding.]

Five men sunstruck and reported dead; most of us are stupefied by heat. For more than a month it has been almost unbearable. The dazzling rays reflected by sand flash through us like flames of fire. The stench of the filthy earth rises hot and vapory to our nostrils. Oh, that I might feel the shade of the beautiful forest yonder, whose green trees look pityingly over upon us! How relieved we would be by an hour of repose on the fresh earth beneath them!

Go to the gate to help William Kline. A number of the sick are carried through the gate and laid in the yard by the stockade. A Rebel sergeant soon ordered us back, no doctors appearing. The sick had been notified at roll call to go for treatment, and their feeble spirits were animated with hope. Some wept bitterly and sank into despair at the disappointment. The Confederate sergeant, in answer to questions, remarked, "They might as well go to hell as to the hospital. It is a right hard place; the doctors can do nothing."

Naturally we believe the word hospital means something. In this horrid distress men long for its benign influence; many are consoled with the thought of being admitted, even when we know it is a cruel, wicked mockery.

Near the sinks a sentry fired tonight, the ball grazing a man's thigh, near where I walked, and whizzed by into the swamp. No rations today; nothing to eat. Men have loitered near the gate since noon hoping for something but in vain. We lay down to-night hungry, sick and sad. Not a crumb of anything all night, all day and all night again, with no certainty of anything to-morrow.

ODE TO WIRZ.

 

Cheating them who truly trust

Is a coward's villainy;

But when we yield to whom we must,

We suffer viler tyranny:

If venom doth full license wield

To feed the vengeance and the hates

No virtue has for years concealed,

And which a misled South elates.

A brutal knave were he who slay

A child that slumbered on his knee;

But we are thrown within his sway

Who lacks sense and magnanimity,

And glories in a brutal way

Toward men who fight 'gainst slavery.

Looking at the swamp with its deposit of ordure, intensely alive with billions of flies and maggots, today, it came to me that not only the early but the late bird can catch worms and catch them continually, if fool enough to visit the place. But no bird have I yet seen in this foul realm. Mingled with a sense of disgust, I am prone to wonder. Out of this mass I see a new creation, an emerging of animate life of low order. The flies that feed on the excreta, deposit germs from which, in connection with the deposit, when operated on by solar energy, the sun being the battery, these lives germinate in form of maggots totally unlike the fly, unlike any worm I ever noticed. These millions of loathsome things, squirming in roasting sun, in a few days develop into winged insects larger and darker than maggots, an inch long. From among a cloud of flies and acres of worms I see them rise and fly from the filthy bed of their inception, seemingly seeking existence elsewhere. Interest was first incited in these low fledglings, when they appeared on ground bordering the swamp, where they fell in the mush when men were at repast. Indeed there is life, or principles of life in matter dead. Here is a low order of exhibition of Nature's power to evolve and produce phases of animation degrees above their physical source.

SOURCE: John Worrell Northrop, Chronicles from the Diary of a War Prisoner in Andersonville and Other Military Prisons of the South in 1864, pp. 103-5

Senator John C. Calhoun to Thomas G. Clemson, July 8, 1847

Fort Hill 8th July 1847

MY DEAR SIR, There is not much to be added about politicks to what I wrote you last. The difference between North and South is daily increasing, in reference to the Slave question. It is hard to say to what it is destined to come. From every appearance, it will at least break up the old party organization. The indication is daily becoming stronger, in favour of General Taylor. The administration is evidently greatly alarmed at his popularity. Their fate is, however, sealed, whatever may become of the General.

The prevailing opinion seems to be, that there will be peace ere long. I regard it, as doubtful. I have no doubt, but the administration is most anxious for it, and that Mexicans desire it, but when they come to fix on terms, there will be great difficulty in agreeing. The former must insist, after so much blood and treasury, on a large cession of territory, and the latter will feel great repugnance to such cession. But be the terms, what they may, our difficulty within, will commence with the termination of those with Mexico.

SOURCE: J. Franklin Jameson, Editor, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1899, Volume II, Calhoun’s Correspondence: Fourth Annual Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, Correspondence of John C. Calhoun, p. 735

Diary of Horatio Nelson Taft, Friday, April 11, 1862

Fine pleasant day. The Event here has been the passage of the Bill by the House abolishing Slavery in the District of Columbia. It had passed the Senate. No particular War news today. I was down to the Hotels. They are all full and quite a crowd at Willards. Went to the “Festival” to call for Julia about 10, staid an hour, it is the last night. We got home about 11½ o'clock. The nights are now bright and beautiful.

SOURCE: Horatio Nelson Taft, The Diary of Horatio Nelson Taft, 1861-1865. Volume 1, January 1,1861-April 11, 1862, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington D. C.

Victor Hugo to Editor of the London News, December 2, 1859

HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, Dec. 2, 1859.

SIR: When one thinks of the United States of America, a majestic figure rises to the mind—Washington. Now, in that country of Washington, see what is going on at this hour!

There are slaves in the Southern States, a fact which strikes with indignation, as the most monstrous of contradictions, the reasonable and freer conscience of the Northern States. These slaves, these negroes, a white man, a free man, one John Brown, wanted to deliver. Certainly, if insurrection be ever a sacred duty, it is against Slavery. Brown wished to begin the good work by the deliverance of the slaves in Virginia. Being a Puritan, a religious and austere man, and full of the Gospel, he cried aloud to these men — his brothers — the cry of emancipation "Christ has set us free!" The slaves, enervated by Slavery, made no response to his appeal — Slavery makes deafness in the soul. Brown, finding himself abandoned, fought with a handful of heroic men; he struggled; he fell, riddled with bullets; his two young sons, martyrs of a holy cause, dead at his side. This is what is called the Harper's Ferry affair.

John Brown, taken prisoner, has just been tried, with four of his fellows — Stephens, Coppoc, Green, and Copeland. What sort of trial it was, a word will tell.

Brown, stretched upon a truckle bed, with six half-closed wounds—a gun-shot wound in his arm, one in his loins, two in the chest, two in the head—almost bereft of hearing, bleeding through his mattress, the spirits of his two dead sons attending him; his four fellow-prisoners crawling around him; Stephens with four sabre wounds; "Justice" in a hurry to have done with the case; an attorney, Hunter, demanding that it be despatched with sharp speed; a Judge, Parker, absenting; the defence cut short; scarcely any delay allowed; forged or garbled documents put in evidence; the witnesses for the prisoner shut out; the defence clogged; two guns, loaded with grape, brought into the court, with an order to the jailers to shoot the prisoners in case of an attempt at rescue; forty minutes' deliberation; three sentences to death. I affirm, on my honor, that all this took place, not in Turkey, but in America.

Such things are not done with impunity in the face of the civilized world. The universal conscience of mankind is an ever-watchful eye. Let the Judge of Charlestown, and Hunter, and Parker, and the slave-holding jurors, and the whole population of Virginia, ponder it well: they are seen! They are not alone in the world. At this moment the gaze of Europe is fixed on America.

John Brown, condemned to die, was to have been hanged on the 2d of December—this very day. But news has this instant reached us. A respite is granted him. It is not until the 16th that he is to die. The interval is short. Has a cry of mercy time to make itself heard? No matter. It is a duty to lift up the voice.

Perhaps a second respite may be granted. America is a noble land. The sentiment of humanity is soon quickened among a free people. We hope that Brown may be saved. If it were otherwise—if Brown should die on the scaffold on the 16th of December—what a terrible calamity!

The executioner of Brown—let us avow it openly (for the day of the kings is past, and the day of the people dawns, and to the people we are bound frankly to speak the truth)—the executioner of Brown would be neither, the Attorney Hunter, nor the Judge Parker, nor the Governor Wise, nor the State of Virginia; it would be, we say it, and we think it with a shudder, the whole American Republic.

The more one loves, the more one admires, the more one reveres the Republic, the more heart-sick one feels at such a catastrophe. A single State ought not to have the power to dishonor all the rest, and in this ease federal intervention is a clear right. Otherwise, by hesitating to interfere when it might prevent a crime, the Union becomes an accomplice. No matter how intense may be the indignation of the generous Northern States, the Southern States associate them with the disgrace of this murder. All of us, whosoever we may be—for whom the democratic cause is a common country—feel ourselves in a manner compromised and hurt. If the scaffold should be erected on the 16th of December, the incorruptible voices of history would thenceforward testify that the august confederation of the New World had added to all its ties of holy brotherhood a brotherhood of blood, and the fasces of that splendid Republic would be bound together with the running noose that hung from the gibbet of Brown.

This is a bond that kills.

When we reflect on what Brown, the liberator, the champion of Christ, has striven to effect, and when we remember that he is about to die, slaughtered by the American Republic, the crime assumes the proportions of the Nation which commits it; and when we say to ourselves that this Nation is a glory of the human race; that—like France, like England, like Germany—she is one of the organs of civilization; that she sometimes even out-marches Europe by the sublime audacity of her progress; that she is the queen of an entire world; and that she bears on her brow an immense light of freedom; we affirm that John Brown will not die; for we recoil, horror-struck, from the idea of so great a crime committed by so great a People,

In a political light, the murder of Brown would be an irreparable fault. It would penetrate the Union with a secret fissure, which—would in the end tear it asunder. It is possible that the execution of Brown might consolidate Slavery in Virginia, but it is certain that it would convulse the entire American Democracy. You preserve your shame, but you sacrifice your glory.

In a moral light, it seems to me, that a portion of the light of humanity would be eclipsed; that even the idea of justice and injustice would be obscured on the day which should witness the assassination of Emancipation by Liberty.

As for myself, though I am but an atom, yet being, as I am, in common with all other men, inspired with the conscience of humanity, I kneel in tears before the great starry banner of the New World, and with clasped hands, and with profound and filial respect, I implore the illustrious American Republic, sister of the French Republic, to look to the safety of the universal moral law, to save Brown; to throw down the threatening scaffold of the 16th December, and not to suffer that, beneath its eyes, and, I add, with a shudder, almost by its fault, the first fratricide be outdone.

For yes, let America know it, and ponder it well—there is something more terrible than Cain slaying Abel—it is Washington slaying Spartacus.

VICTOR HUGO.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LONDON NEWS.

SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, pp. 99-102

Victor Hugo to Maria Weston Chapman, July 6, 1851

PARIS, 6th July, 1851.

MADAME: I have scarcely any thing to add to your letter. I would cheerfully sign every line of it. Pursue your holy work. You have with you all great souls and all good hearts.

You are pleased to believe, and to assure me, that my voice, in this august cause of liberty, will be listened to by the great American people, whom I love so profoundly, and whose destinies, I am fain to think, are closely linked with the mission of France. You desire me to lift up my voice.

I will do it at once, and I will do it on all occasions. I agree with you in thinking, that, within a definite time—that within a time not distant—the United States will repudiate Slavery with horror! Slavery in such a country! Can there be an incongruity more monstrous? Barbarism installed in the very heart of a country, which is itself the affirmation of Civilization; liberty wearing a chain; blasphemy echoing from the altar; the collar of the negro chained to the pedestal of Washington! It is a thing unheard of. I say more; it is impossible. Such a spectacle would destroy itself. The light of the nineteenth century alone is enough to destroy it.

What! Slavery sanctioned, by law, among that illustrious people, who for seventy years have measured the progress of civilization by their march, demonstrated Democracy by their power, and liberty by their prosperity! Slavery in the United States! It is the duty of this Republic to set such a bad example no longer. It is a shame, and she was never born to bow her head.

It is not when Slavery is taking leave of old nations, that it should be received by the new. What! When Slavery is departing from Turkey, shall it rest in America? What! Drive it from the hearth of Omar, and adopt it at the hearth of Franklin! No! No! No!

There is an inflexible logic which develops more or less slowly, which fashions, which redresses according to a mysterious plan, perceptible only to great spirits, the facts, the men, the laws, the morals, the people; or better, under all human things, there are things divine.

Let all those great souls who love the United States, as a country, be re-assured. The United States must renounce Slavery, or they must renounce Liberty. They cannot renounce Liberty. They must renounce Slavery, or renounce the Gospel. They will never renounce the Gospel.

Accept, Madame, with my devotion to the cause you advocate, the homage of my respect.

VICTOR HUGO.

SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, pp. 103-4

Speech of Congressman Albert G. Brown on the subject of the Public Printing, and Against the Action of the Joint Committee in Taking It from the Contractor and Dividing It Between the "Union" and the "Republic" Newspapers, Delivered in the United States House of Representatives, April 13 and 14, 1852

MR. BROWN said: I do not intend to detain the House by anything like an elaborate speech upon the subject of the public printing. In the few remarks which I propose to submit, I shall endeavor to confine myself as nearly as possible to the subjects directly before us; nor should I have asked the indulgence of the House to say a word but for the agency which I have taken heretofore in this matter. When I heard that the Committee on Public Printing had done more than, by the explanation of the honorable chairman, I am now induced to think they intended to do, I thought they had exceeded the authority given them by law, and that they had done that which this House ought not to sanction by its silence, much less by its express assent. With the explanation which the honorable chairman has given, I am satisfied the committee have intended to confine themselves to the letter of the law; but I am just as well satisfied that their action will lead to an abuse of the law. The Committee on Public Printing have a right, according to one construction of the statute of 1846, to take so much of the public printing from the present employee as he fails or refuses to execute. Under this authority we now learn from the chairman, that they propose to take from the public printer-what? The work which he has refused or failed to execute, and this alone? No, sir; for in the progress of his remarks the honorable chairman tells you that they have in their possession now a considerable quantity of work, which has never yet been submitted to the public printer. What brought the minds of the committee to the conclusion, that the printer would either fail or refuse to execute the work, when it had never been in his hands? Was it not straining a conclusion to determine that he had failed to execute, and would not execute, work which they had never intrusted to his care, and never asked him to execute? The honorable chairman of the committee says that the public printer has failed to execute some of the work heretofore intrusted to his care. But does the conclusion necessarily follow, that he will continue to fail; or that, having failed in one kind of printing, he would fail in all others?

Was it ever expected that the public printer could execute the printing of this House instantly upon its delivery to him? Has there been any extraordinary delay in the delivery of this work? According to my recollection, the public printing is about as forward, about as near to completion, as it usually is at this season of the year. We have the first part of the President's message, bound and laid upon our tables, one copy for each member; and what matters it whether the extra copies shall be printed this month, the next month, or three months hence? When was the last part of the President's message and accompanying documents printed during the long session of the last Congress? According to my recollection, we were getting along towards the dog-days before it was laid upon our tables. Was the then venerable and highly-respected public printer [Mr. Ritchie] hauled over the coals for a failure to perform his duty? Was Mr. Ritchie—against whom I have no word of complaint to utter here—held up to the country as a defaulter in the discharge of his duties? Ah! some gentleman answers, in a low tone, Yes. It is well the tone is low. No gentleman ought to answer yes, in a loud voice. The House knows what was the action taken upon that subject two years ago. At the close of the session of 1850, there was found to be, in one House of Congress, a large majority not only indisposed to call Mr. Ritchie to an account for any failure to comply with his contract, but actually disposed and determined to give him some sixty or seventy thousand dollars of the public money as extra compensation. Mr. Ritchie was paid every dollar that he claimed under his contract, and his friends were anxious to give him a great deal more. I never understood that he did the work any better, or any more rapidly than the contract called for; and yet there was a large party in this House ready to vote him sixty thousand dollars, or more, over and above what the contract called for; and it was only, according to my recollection, by parliamentary manœuvring that the thing was prevented. You had two or three committees of conference upon the subject, and the subject was pressed upon our attention as no other subject was ever pressed upon us. And let me remind certain gentlemen, who are enforcing a very rigid observance of the law against Mr. Hamilton, that the journals show them to have been more than liberal towards Mr. Ritchie. Now, sir, I desire to know why it is, in this land of laws, in this land of equality, and before this Democratic House of Representatives, this kind of distinction is made between one employee and another? I know nothing of Mr. Boyd Hamilton; I have never seen him. If I were to meet him to-day, I should not know him from any other man in Christendom. I care not one single solitary farthing about him, but I do care for justice. I will not willingly make myself a party to a transaction so unjust as this. I will not say to one man, who wields a powerful party press, We will pay you the full amount of the bond, wink at your short-comings, and pay you sixty thousand dollars extra; and then to another, who has no press, no power, no influence, We will crush you, because you have not lived up to the very letter of the law.

Mr. GORMAN. I want the gentleman distinctly to avow whether he charges that as a motive operating upon the committee?

Mr. BROWN. Not at all.

Mr. GORMAN. Your words do.

Mr. BROWN. I disavow any personal application; but this I will say: If the House of Representatives shall perpetrate such an act of gross injustice, it will merit, and will assuredly receive, the reprobation of every just man in the nation. We hear continually that the contract system has proved a failure. I do not think so. The contract system has had no fair trial. There has been, what seemed to me, a determination from the beginning to bring this system into disrepute—never to give it fair play. Powerful parties, holding the most influential positions, have engaged in this work. The system has operated against their interest, and they have labored to break it down. Its triumph is not complete, but it has not failed. Let us see how the system has worked so far. Your first contractors were Wendell and Van Benthuysen. Did they execute their contract? I understand they did. I am forced to that conclusion because there has been no suit entered upon their bond for a failure to execute their contract. Thus far the system worked well—at least it did not fail. You received the work and paid for it; and if it was not well done, it was because you did not require it to be well done. During the last Congress, the then venerable editor of the Union (Mr. Ritchie) had the contract. Did he execute it? I understand he did. It is my understanding that he executed it to the satisfaction of the Committee on Printing, and the satisfaction of Congress. I so understand, because no suit has been instituted upon his bond for a failure to execute the contract. You again received the work and paid for it, and we shall presently see that certain gentlemen proposed to do a great deal more. Surely there could have been no failure, when you not only received the work and paid for it, but wanted to give large extra compensation. Then Mr. A. Boyd Hamilton has the contract for this session. The only specifications, according to my present recollection, which the honorable chairman makes against him is, that a portion of the paper is some twelve pounds in the ream lighter than the contract requires. This I find Mr. Hamilton accounts for in the printed paper lying upon our tables. He says, that for a brief season during the past winter, on account of the closing of navigation, he was unable to get a better article of paper. The cold weather having suspended steamboat and railroad operations, he could not procure transportation.

Mr. STANTON, of Kentucky. I wish to make a statement, and it is this: I understand from the chairman of the Senate committee, or rather the late chairman of the Senate committee, that he has rejected nearly all the work sent to the Senate by the printer, and rejected it not solely for the reason that the paper was of an inferior article, but because the whole committee concurred in the idea that a great fraud had been practised upon the government if this paper should be received as the quality of paper which he has now furnished, it being one-fifth less in value, than what he was required to furnish.

But there is another defect in the paper, to which the chairman of the House committee, and of the Senate committee, I understand, objected; and it is this: that the sheets of paper upon which the printing is done, are too small; that they have too little margin; that when the pages are folded together, and the edges clipped or cut, it leaves too little margin, and that in the books in which plates are to be placed, the plates are frequently disfigured and destroyed in consequence of the smallness of the sheets.

Nor is this all. The printing which has been sent to us, is so imperfect in consequence of defects in the manner in which the presswork is done, and defects in the quality of the ink that is used, that there are not half a dozen sheets in any one book that we have examined, that are perfect. They are full from the top line to the bottom of the page, with what printers call technically "monks" and "friars," that is, here a white place, and here a black blotch. So that the work, in every view in which it can be regarded, is inferior to what was agreed for under the contract.

Mr. FLORENCE. Did the gentleman submit any of this work to the House? I understood the chairman of the Committee on Printing [Mr. Gorman] to say that there had been no documents except the President's message and accompanying documents, given to the public printer. His complaint was, that there had been no work done; but now the gentleman from Kentucky, a member of the Committee on Printing, rises in his place, and says that these have been condemned. Where are they?

Mr. POLK. I will ask the gentleman from Pennsylvania, if there are not thirty or forty executive documents that have been furnished to the printer during the last three months, and that have not been printed yet?

Mr. FLORENCE. I do not know anything at all about that, for I am not a member of the Committee on Printing. I attend to the business of the committee to which I belong, and cannot answer the gentleman's question.

Mr. POLK. Then I say to the gentleman from Pennsylvania that he ought not to talk about things he knows nothing about.

Mr. FLORENCE. I rose for the purpose of being informed; and if the gentleman had had his ears open, he would have heard my question, and would not have made the remark he did.

Mr. POLK. I am sorry I did not hear the gentleman; but it is my misfortune, if my ears are not as long as his. [Laughter.]

Mr. GORMAN. The gentleman from Pennsylvania misunderstood me, if he understood me as saying that no document but the President's message had gone into the hands of the printer. A great many documents have gone into his hands, but we have never seen anything of them since; when they get there, it is the last of them. A part of the President's message has, however, come to us, and it is to that that the gentleman from Kentucky alludes. If you look over the pages, you will find the "monks" and "friars," or, as I should call them, blotches of white and then blotches of black. They are really so insufferably bad that we could not receive them. I hope the gentleman from Pennsylvania is satisfied. I will produce a copy, and hand it to him.

Mr. BROWN (resuming). I was proceeding to inquire, when I was interrupted, whether it was true that the contract system had been fairly tried, and had proved a failure? I had shown that there was no evidence of its failure up to the commencement of this session of Congress, and I had stated that I believed there had been combinations to break it down. If it has failed, or shall hereafter fail, in the hands of Mr. Hamilton, is that conclusive that the system is wrong, and ought to be abandoned? That it must fail in his hands, under the policy that the committee propose to pursue towards him, is to my mind the most evident proposition on earth. If the committee suspends a job when it is half completed, takes other jobs from him entirely, and makes large deductions from time to time on the work which he has executed, who does not see that the man's credit must be broken down? If he was worth a quarter of a million of dollars, he could not execute the contract under such a policy as this.

But I do not mean to dwell upon this branch of the subject. I have said that, in my judgment, the system has not proved a failure. If it has failed at all at any time, or in any man's hands, it is because you have not given it a fair trial.

Mr. FREEMAN (interrupting). I did the chairman of the committee to say that the contract had been abrogated, but only that they should employ others to carry out such parts of the contract as the contractor has failed to carry out. I do not understand that this is an attack upon the contract system, but only upon the manner in which this party has acted under his contract. Is not that the fact?

Mr. GORMAN. It is.

Mr. BROWN. If the committee take the printing from this man and hand it over to others, or if they refuse to deliver it over to him, what is it but an abandonment of the contract? Is not that a breaking up of the contract? Does not every man see that the result of this action on the part of the committee must be that the whole of the House printing will go to Donelson & Armstrong, and the whole of the Senate printing to Gideon & Co.? Mr. Boyd Hamilton will be left at the end of three weeks from to-day with not a penny's worth of work on hand. It is useless to say what the committee mean to do, or what is meant by this proceeding. The question is, what does their action inevitably lead to? If the work is taken from Hamilton by the committee, and their action is sanctioned by the House, there is an end of his contract; and with it we all see that the whole contract system will end. It cannot be otherwise.

The committee has notified us that they have ceased to send the work to Hamilton, and have made arrangements with other parties to do it. Is it not ridiculous, then, to say that they have not abrogated the contract? They have, to all intents and purposes, abrogated one contract and made another. It is stultifying ourselves to pretend that it is otherwise.

My reason for introducing a resolution in reference to this subject was this and I had no other purpose to subserve—I wanted to arrest what I thought a dangerous proceeding. I knew the committee were acting without having made a report to the House. I did not pause to inquire whether they had authority to do all that they proposed. I looked only to the effect which their action was certain to produce. Mr. Hamilton says he has made an outlay of $50,000 in preparing himself to execute the printing of Congress. It is proposed summarily to take the contract from him—and by whom and in what manner, pray? Not by Congress—not by a committee of Congress, but by three members of the House and one member of the Senate; for, bear you in mind, this is not the act of a full committee. And this fragment of a committee are doing this without consulting Congress, and without reporting its proceedings. Now, let Congress sanction this act of the committee, and think you, sir, that this man will not come here at the next Congress, and ask indemnity for his losses on this outlay? No man will question that. And what do you suppose he will prove? If he is half as smart in making proof as others have been, he will prove that he was executing the work as well as it had ever been done; that he was delivering it as fast as it had ever been delivered; that his contract was rudely and summarily snatched from him, his business broken up, his credit destroyed, and himself ruined. And instead of your getting the penalty of the bonds, he will present a claim for some $100,000 or more against you. Then, if a committee is appointed, as there will be, to investigate the subject, what evidence will there be on the record to show that you were justified in this proceeding? Take the contract from Mr. Hamilton, under these circumstances, if you will; but I ask you to leave upon the record the evidence which shall justify your action to those who are to come after you, and who will be charged with an investigation of Hamilton's claims. Do not go out of this contract and leave no trace behind to mark your exit. Before you sanction the acts of this committee, demand a report, a full report, one that will justify you before another Congress in dismissing Hamilton from his contract—for rest assured he will present his claim from year to year, and send it down to his children after him, from generation to generation. It will be presented time and again, until, finally, Congress will be brought to pass it. It is this result against which I now raise my warning voice.

If there is anything to justify this step on the part of Congress, let the committee report it. Let the House take the responsibility. Let us know where we stand. Let those who are to come after us have something with which to meet Mr. Hamilton, when he comes here by himself, or through his attorney or successors, to make a demand for damages on account of the breaking up of his contract.

We are told day after day in the newspapers and elsewhere, that the contract system has failed, and that Congress ought to abandon it. I am no friend of the system. I am not its friend or its apologist. But it has not failed. Its success has been wonderful, considering the amount of opposition it has encountered. Does it not strike us all as being rather remarkable, that a member can take up one of these printed documents on his desk, direct it to some one in some remote corner of California or Oregon, put his frank upon it, call a page and send it to the post-office of the House, and that it should then be taken up and carried from one point to another, and that too by contract, until finally it reaches its far off destination, and yet that this document thus borne from one part of the continent to another by contract, cannot be printed here, under the eye of Congress, by contract? Your army and navy can be supplied by contract; your troops on the distant frontier of Texas, California, and Oregon, can be furnished with supplies by contract; and yet you cannot print a book by contract. If these manuscripts belonged to a private individual, could he not get them printed by contract? and would he not do it? Why is it, then, that we cannot do the same thing? I do not profess to know, but I will tell you what I think may be the cause. I do not say why it is we have failed, but I will tell you on what I think has interfered with our success. There are party editors in the city of Washington—Whigs as well as Democrats and there may be such a thing as this going on:

"If you'll tickle me, I'll tickle you."

If a member will vote large supplies to a party editor, and thus tickle him—and it applies not more to one party than the other—why, then, the editor speaks well of the member to his constituents, and thus tickles him in return; but before an excuse can be given for voting these supplies, the contract system must be broken up. Besides, it may be possible that party men, after all, care more for the success of party editors than for the success of a system like this. And they may strive to bring the system into discredit and to destroy it in public favor, in order that party editors may come up and be elected public printers, or have contracts given to them, out of which they may realize large sums of money. I say these things may be. I do not say they are so. But these are reflections which force themselves on my mind. And when I can find no good reason why the contract system is failing, or is likely to fail—no reason why it is cried down my mind dwells here; and I inquire of myself, whether it is not possible, that at the bottom of all the difficulty in executing this contract system, there do not lie some hidden and secret causes like these? If these be the causes of failure, let them be removed. Let us fling defiance in the teeth of those who would use the national treasury to purchase favor. Let members stand on their merits, and editors, like other men, work for what they get, and the contract system will triumph.

I do not say the contract system is the best; I only say it has not had a fair trial, and we have no reason to conclude that it has failed. If I had my own way, or if my suggestions are worth anything to the House, I would say, that above all other modes, I should prefer to have the public printer elected, and that it should be required of him, by law, that he should have no connection with any party press, Whig or Democratic, during his service; but that he should be what his vocation indicated him to be the public printer, and nothing else. If I had my own way, I should prefer to have the work executed by a public printer, who should be well paid. But of all the schemes that I have ever seen or heard of, this last one of the Committee on Printing, is to me the most objectionable—objectionable in many points of view. I do not like these combinations between Whigs and Democrats. I do not say there has been a combination or coalition for bad purposes, because I will not charge my honorable friend from Indiana [Mr. Gorman] with entering into combinations; but it will strike the mind of this country as a coalition; and, however well intended, its effects upon the Democratic party must be most disastrous. Talk about the Massachusetts coalition! Why, sir, the honorable chairman of the committee ought to have retained the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Rantoul], to defend this business. He is a capital defender of coalitions, as he has given us good reason to know. [Laughter.]

This whole thing looks to me, and I fear it will strike the country, as very much like a combination or coalition between the Whigs and Democrats, or rather between the organs of the two parties, to control the government printing, keep the game in their own hands, and pocket the profits. I do not say that it is so, but it occurs to me that it looks that way, and that the country will so regard it.

Mr. GORMAN. I want to put a friendly question to the gentleman from Mississippi. I ask that gentleman whether the present coalition suits him?

Mr. BROWN. It does not.

Mr. GORMAN. I understand it does not. Would the Southern Press suit him?

Mr. BROWN. It would not.

Mr. GORMAN. I am inclined to come to the same conclusion in relation to my friend from Mississippi that he does in relation to myself. He suspects me of forming a coalition with the organs of the Whig and Democratic parties. I suspect him of doing precisely the same thing with the Southern Press. He suspects me, therefore, of exactly what I suspect him; so, if he kills my dog, I will kill his cat in the same way. [Laughter.]

Mr. BROWN. Let me say to my friend from Indiana, that he was never more mistaken. I have at no time sought, directly nor indirectly, to give any part of the public printing to the Southern Press. And, what is more, if it were left to me to direct the whole subject, I would not give one dollar of it to any party editor.

Mr. VENABLE. Wouldn't you give it to the National Era? [Laughter.]

Mr. BROWN. About as soon as to some others.

Mr. POLK. I ask the gentleman if he would not vote to give it to the Southern Press?

Mr. BROWN. No, sir. I have already stated, and I believe it to be true, that it is wrong in principle to give the public patronage to party editors at all. It destroys that independence and boldness which should belong alike to editors and representatives; it begets a sort of paralyzing sympathy between the recipient of a favor and the giver of it, which stands palpably in the way of a fair, upright, equitable, and honest administration of political justice.

Mr. RANTOUL. The suggestion which the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Brown] has thrown out, that I might be employed to defend this coalition, places me in a rather unpleasant situation; and, therefore, I beg leave to say, in advance, that I shall decline entirely to undertake any such task upon any conditions whatever. A coalition which is founded in principle, I can defend; but one which looks entirely to the division of the spoils, seems to me to be entirely indefensible. [Renewed laughter.]

Mr. BROWN. Well, I have only said that if a coalition should be completed, better counsel could not be found to defend it.

Mr. GORMAN. I congratulate the gentleman upon his new coalition.

Mr. BROWN. If my friend, the chairman of the Committee on Printing, will look over the vote of yesterday upon this subject, he will find some reason to congratulate himself upon another coalition. My recollection is, that he was found in very strange company on that occasion. If he will but turn to his friend over the way from New York [Mr. Haven], he will find in him a coadjutor with whom he struck hands in making this bargain.

Mr. GORMAN. I was congratulating the gentleman upon his coalition with the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Rantoul].

Mr. BROWN. Upon the great issues which unite us as Democrats, we work together. And on these issues, I believe there is not a more trustworthy member of the party on this floor than the honorable gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Rantoul]. Those are the issues upon which the gentleman from Massachusetts and myself unite. Upon other issues, there is no bond of sympathy between us. The bond which unites us is political only; and the points of affinity are those which unite the gentleman from Indiana and myself, and indeed all Democrats. But my friend from Indiana [Mr. Gorman], and the gentleman from New York [Mr. Haven], seem to be united, and to have formed a coalition to obtain the spoils. [Laughter.]

Mr. Speaker, although I listened with the most profound attention, as I always do, to the remarks of my friend from Indiana [Mr. Gorman], I am at a loss to know why it became necessary to employ two party organs to aid in the public printing? I cannot understand why somebody else could not have done it just as well. There were other printing establishments here. There was the Towers's establishment. There was Mr. Rives's establishment; and there were others. But I understand the committee voted down all these establishments; they even voted down Donelson & Armstrong, as my friend [Mr. Gorman] says. And in order to secure to them a part of the work the right hand of fellowship was extended by him to his Whig co-laborers, they agreeing to divide it between the two great party organs, the Union and the Republic. I ask my friend [Mr. Gorman] if he did not vote against Rives, and against Towers, and against others.

Mr. GORMAN. I did.

Mr. BROWN. Exactly; and other members of the committee voted against Donelson & Armstrong, and in this way no conclusion was arrived at, until at last the two Whigs on the committee obtained their own terms, and got half the job for the Republic. It seems to me that if my friend from Indiana [Mr. Gorman], and my friend from Kentucky [Mr. Stanton], who was a member of that committee, had gone with the other members of the committee for Mr. Rives, there would have been no difficulty.

Mr. ORR. Will my friend from Mississippi yield for a motion to adjourn?

Mr. BROWN. I will yield for that purpose.

Mr. ORR. I move, then, that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was put and agreed to; and

The House adjourned till twelve o'clock to-morrow.

WEDNESDAY, April 14th, 1852.

Mr. BROWN continued: Before I enter upon the subject which was under consideration at the time of adjournment yesterday, I desire to correct an impression which I ascertain to have made a lodgement upon the minds of some gentlemen, whose opinion I prize very highly. And that is, that I have been actuated in my course by some feeling of personal hostility to the parties engaged by the committee to execute the public printing. I desire to say, once for all, that I distinctly disavow any such feeling. My personal relations with all the gentlemen (or with all of them that I know), are of a friendly character, and I know of no reason why they should not so continue. I owe them no thanks for past favors, and no grudge for past injuries. Occupying such a position, I can deal out to each one, and to all of them, equal and exact justice.

It seems to me, that in the action of the committee upon this subject of printing, there has been no bona fide effort to employ any one to execute the work, except Donelson & Armstrong. With the majority of the committee on the part of the House of Representatives, this appears clearly to have been the case. It seems that no other establishment was thought of, in connection with this printing, or was treated as worthy to receive it, except the Union establishment. With the majority, it was Donelson & Armstrong at the beginning—it was Donelson & Armstrong through its whole progress it was Donelson & Armstrong at the conclusion.

Mr. STANTON of Kentucky (interrupting). Will the gentleman from Mississippi allow me to say a word?

Mr. BROWN. If I am at all mistaken, I want to be corrected

Mr. STANTON. The remark the gentleman has just made does not apply to me. I attempted, at an early part of this struggle, to get this work divided out to Donelson & Armstrong and John T. Towers, and offered a resolution to that effect. I did so for this reason: because there was a necessity, at the time, of doing something. I thought those gentlemen were prepared to do the work, and I proposed to the committee to give to them such work as the public printer could not, or would not, do.

Mr. BROWN. Still I find, from the explanation of my friend from Kentucky [Mr. Stanton], that he insisted upon having Donelson & Armstrong in the contract somewhere. Now, sir, while these gentlemen [Messrs. Stanton and Gorman] were indulging their predilections for their friends, it seems they never thought of indulging other gentlemen to the same extent. They, it seems, had their likes for Donelson & Armstrong, and their dislikes for other printers and editors, and it was

all right that they should indulge them. But if other people indulge their likes and dislikes, then these gentlemen think it is all wrong. They think it very odd that other gentlemen should refuse to give up their opposition to Donelson & Armstrong; but they seem at no time to have been willing to yield their position in favor of these gentlemen. These facts being true, I say there does not seem to have been a bona fide single purpose of procuring the public work to be done in the speediest manner, and by those who would do it the cheapest and best. But there seems to have been but one purpose, running throughout the whole proceedings, from the beginning to the end, and that was to favor the printing establishment of Donelson & Armstrong. That I object to. I do not object to those particular individuals. What I object to is this: that the committee did not go to work in good faith to obtain the printing upon the best terms, but that they made the public interest secondary to the private interest of the Union establishment. Their position appears to have been, that unless Donelson & Armstrong could be included in the contract, they would make no contract. This, in my judgment, was wrong. Why not contract with other parties, if they would do the work as speedily and as cheaply? Why did the committee, from the beginning to the end, insist, without special reference to the speedy completion of the work, that this particular establishment should be included in whatever contract was made? It was the duty of the committee to have given the contractor every reasonable indulgence, and if he failed or refused to do the work, to have reported that failure to Congress; and if they put the work in other hands they ought to have employed the man who would do it the quickest, cheapest, and best.

The honorable gentleman, the chairman of that committee [Mr. Gorman], in the course of a colloquy yesterday, endeavored to impress upon the minds of this House, and so far as his printed speech could do it, upon the minds of the country, that there was something like an understanding between gentlemen entertaining extreme views; or, in other words, between what is called the Southern ultras and Northern Free-Soilers. An intimation was more than once made in the progress of the debate that there was something like a coalition between these extremes, and that by agreement they were acting in concert upon this question. No such thing is true of me. I repudiate any such insinuation, come from what quarter it may. I act here solely and alone, upon my own responsibility, never thinking, never inquiring, and never caring whether any other man North or South is or is not acting with me.

The gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Gorman] intimates that he will expose these understandings. For me, he is quite at liberty to begin. But before he puts my friends or myself on trial, I would advise him to try his hand on his associate, the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Stanton]. He is a capital subject to practise on. I shall expect to hear him say, "Richard Stanton, slaveholder and pro-slavery Democratic representative from the slaveholding state of Kentucky, stand up and answer to this House, by what warrant you were found in an unholy coalition with Truman Smith, Free-Soiler and Abolition Whig Senator from Connecticut, voting to divide the public printing between the Union and the Republic?" It would be an interesting trial, and I should watch its progress with great interest. Let the gentleman settle accounts like this between his colleagues on the committee before he charges coalition upon others. It seems there is no account taken of coalitionists like theirs. But if persons occupying such extreme positions as the gentleman from Massachusetts and myself are found opposing a bargain made by others holding quite as extreme positions as we do, we hear a great outcry about coalition! coalition!! If the bargain was made by a coalition, it may be opposed in the same way. If there was nothing wrong in the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Stanton] and Truman Smith acting together in making the bargain, there can be nothing wrong in the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Rantoul] and myself acting together in opposing it. If I am found acting with gentlemen entertaining extreme views against the contract, it will be found that it was made by gentlemen holding opinions just as extreme.

Mr. STANTON of Kentucky (interrupting). If the gentleman from Mississippi will allow me, I will tell him the result. We succeeded in bringing over a Connecticut Whig Senator and Abolitionist to the support of a compromise press.

Mr. BROWN. Yes, sir; and when he came over he brought with him a Whig paper which has heaped more abuse upon the Democratic majority of this House than all the presses from Maine to Louisiana. Its columns teem from day to day with abuse of members of this House whose Democracy has never been questioned—Northern men and Southern men. When you talk about your Free-Soil ally from the North going for a compromise press, let me remind you, that he carried you over to the Whig press, and that one, the most vindictive of them all. The country will inquire how this was brought about; how, with an overwhelming Democratic majority in this House, and an equally effective Democratic majority in the Senate, you have not been able to choose a Democratic printer? Why it was that the Republic was fastened upon us? Why has this coalition been formed? These are the questions that will be asked. And the answer will be, that Donelson & Armstrong might be provided for. That is the whole secret of the matter that is the nest in which the coalition was hatched.

Mr. POLK (interrupting). Will the gentleman from Mississippi allow me to propound a question to him?

Mr. BROWN. Simply a question.

Mr. POLK. Will you vote to elect the compromise Union press to be public printer?

Mr. BROWN. I will not vote to elect any newspaper editor public printer. I said so yesterday.

Mr. KING. I rise to a question of order.

Mr. POLK. I see the coalition is now formed. The gentleman from New York [Mr. King], a Free-Soiler, says I am out of order. [Laughter.]

Mr. BROWN. I beg not to be interrupted by a side-bar colloquy.

The SPEAKER. The Chair understood the gentleman from Mississippi to yield the floor to the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Polk].

Mr. BROWN. I did for a question, but not for a colloquy. Now, let us see, sir, to what strange reasons gentlemen of this committee are driven in justification of their course. The honorable gentleman who sits before me [Mr. Haven], says that he objected to Mr. Rives's doing this work. He already had a large and important job from the government. How many important and profitable jobs has the Republic under the government? Who does not know that the Republic newspaper is fattened and made sleek by the pap it receives from the Executive departments? All this the gentleman takes no account of. It was his sow that was drinking the swill, and he never thought it worth his while to charge it.

If this printing had to be divided out, why was not more justice observed in the division? Why should the committee have confined themselves exclusively to the Union and Republic? Why take two newspapers, occupying extreme positions, and turn all others out? Why not take in the "old fogies" of the Intelligencer? Why were they, like Nebuchadnezzar, turned out to grass? I do not see any reason why they should not have had a share. They are for the compromise. Was it because they had not been peculiarly abusive of the Democratic party, and of the Democratic members of this House? I must confess, sir, if I had to elect between Donelson & Armstrong and the Intelligencer, on the one hand, and Donelson & Armstrong and the Republic, on the other, I would take the Intelligencer by large odds.

I ask the attention of gentlemen to what I am about to say. What are we to understand by this procedure? My friend from Indiana [Mr. Gorman], on yesterday, when he came to allude to the Southern Press, to which he evidently thought I was much attached, and in whose service I was laboring (and in all of which he was very much mistaken), became almost frantic. His manner was excited, and he became a little denunciatory for a gentleman of his amiable temper. [Laughter.] Why was this? Why was it thought necessary thus to denounce the Southern Press. That paper, as is well known, reflects the sentiments of a large number of the Southern Democrats. Are we to understand, in its exclusion, and the bitter denunciations which follow the mention of its name, that such portion of the Democracy as sympathize in the sentiments uttered through its columns, are also to be proscribed, excluded, and denounced? Is this what we are to understand? And if we are, where is this proscription to stop? If Southern Democrats, who sympathize with the sentiments uttered through the columns of the Southern Press, are to be proscribed before the election, what is to be their position after the election? These are matters, sir, to be reflected upon.

Now, I am free to say to you, Mr. Speaker, to the House, and to the country, that my vote and my course in the presidential canvass, are not to be controlled by your action upon this subject. But I am not authorized to say that your action may not control the votes of hundreds and thousands of others in the South. If you shall indicate to them, that because certain newspapers and gentlemen have defended what they believe to be the rights of the Southern States, they are therefore to be proscribed, they will probably feel it to be due to their own dignity and self-respect to proscribe you in return. Lightly as gentlemen may think of it, this view of the subject may be found worthy of consideration. There are in the states of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi alone, one hundred thousand State-Rights men. Proscribe them, proscribe the organ that more nearly than any other in this city reflects their views, and do it because of those views, and I tell you, I will not be accountable for the manner in which they will dispose of their votes. They may not ask favors at your hands for themselves or for any one else, but they may feel it to be due to their own self-respect to resent an insult—to resent proscription. I will not undertake to say what they will do. I am not authorized, as I have said before, to state what their future action will be; but I do feel authorized, in a friendly way, to say that you should be cautious how you act. You may endanger the success of your presidential candidate. You may endanger a matter infinitely more important to you than the public printing. You may endanger the patronage of the President, and the distribution of the $50,000,000. A little caution, and a little good temper, properly exercised, and a slight sprinkle of justice and common sense, may save a deal of trouble by and by. It is one thing to give up that which is one's due voluntarily, and it is another thing to have it snatched away, and that in so rude a manner as to give offence. I repeat again that I do not want any part of this printing for any friend of mine on earth. But I should not like to be told that certain parties could not have it because they were my friends. And I think it likely this may be the feeling of a great many southern people.

I do not care, sir, to pursue this discussion. I have said about all that I care to say, and if I go farther, I may say that which had better be left unsaid. The concluding portion of my remarks, I throw out only as a friendly warning to my political brethren here. They can receive them in a friendly spirit or not. I want it to be understood, and it is all I have to say, that when proscription commences for opinion's sake, there can be proscription upon one side as well as upon the other. I offer the following resolution. It is not my own, and does not fully meet my approbation. A friend has handed it to me, with a request that I should offer it. I do so in compliance with his request:—

"Resolved, That the report of the Committee on Printing be referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, with instructions to report upon the whole subject, and to recommend for the adoption of Congress such a system for the execution of the public printing as they may deem most expedient, and that they especially take into consideration the plan for a printing bureau, for the execution of the work under the supervision of a government officer."

Mr. BROWN. The Judiciary Committee had been selected, because in taking this contract, if it must be taken, out of the hands of Hamilton, and disposing of it otherwise, legal questions must necessarily arise, which it will be better to have passed upon by the Judiciary Committee than any other. I have done, sir.

At a later period in the debate, Mr. NABERS and Mr. POLK both made inquiries of Mr. Brown as to how far he agreed with Mr. RANTOUL, and what he meant by old issues. When Mr. B. was about to respond, he was decided to be out of order.

Mr. BROWN. It is in order to ask questions, but out of order to answer them.

[Mr. BROWN requests the reporter to say, that if he had been allowed to respond to Mr. Nabers and Mr. Polk, he would have said: The time was when the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Rantoul) was accepted as a sound Democrat. President Polk appointed him United States District Attorney for Massachusetts, and thus endorsed him to me and to the nation. He was a Democrat then on the old issues. If he has changed his opinions on these issues, I have yet to learn it; and if he has not, he is a Democrat on these issues yet. By old issues, I mean those that divided the two parties in the days of Jackson, Van Buren, and Polk. Such, for example, as the Bank, Tariff, Distribution, and the Sub-Treasury. If the bank charter, or a protective tariff, distribution, wasteful appropriations, or the repeal of the sub-treasury, any one or all of them shall be proposed, I will not reject the aid of the gentleman from Massachusetts (Free-Soiler though he be) in upholding the Democratic side of these questions. These were the issues—the old issues—when the honored brother of the gentleman from Tennessee appointed Robert Rantoul district attorney. On these he was sound at that time; we all trusted him then, and if he has not changed his opinions on these issues, I know of no reason why we should not trust him now.

On the new issues—those growing out of the slavery strife and the territorial acquisitions, the compromise, &c.—there is no bond of sympathy, no affinity between the gentleman from Massachusetts and myself. On all these issues, direct and collateral, that gentleman and myself are as wide apart as the poles. This the gentlemen from Tennessee and Mississippi know full well.

If gentlemen on both sides of the House who are the special friends of the compromise are to be trusted, the slavery agitation, and all the incidental issues growing out of it, have been settled; they were all compromised; and it was but the other day that we passed a finality resolution, which meant, as I supposed, that there was an end of the main issue and all its incidents. Now we have it dug up, resurrected, and dragged in here again, and that, too, by its own best friends. I hope we shall be done with this business.

If fidelity to the Democratic party means that I must vote large and fat jobs of printing to Donelson & Armstrong, and if I can only signalize my fidelity by voting other large and fat jobs to the Republic, I must say to the gentlemen who are croaking "Coalition!" "Coalition!" that, in this view of the subject, I am not faithful, and never mean to be.

I would as soon have the aid of the gentleman from Massachusetts in severing the unholy bonds which unite the Union and Republic newspapers, as I would in pulling down protection and upholding the independent treasury. When a good work has to be done, I will accept aid from any quarter.

It is a weak invention of the coalitionists to raise this hue and cry. And they expect thereby to divert public attention from the fact that they have fastened the Union to one teat of the National Treasury, and then, by way of quieting the Republic, given it another and a better one. Cry coalition as much as you please, the people will inquire by whom and for what reason these things were done.

SOURCE: M. W. Cluskey, Editor, Speeches, Messages, and Other Writings of the Hon. Albert G. Brown, A Senator in Congress from the State of Mississippi, pp. 289-303

Congressman Horace Mann to George Combe, May 8, 1852

WASHINGTON, May 8, 1852.

MY DEAR MR. COMBE,— We are on the verge of a Presidential election. Our political caldron is beginning to seethe vehemently. Macbeth's witches had nothing in theirs so baneful as that which gives character to ours. The political leaders desired to make it palatable to the South; and hence they have saturated its contents with proslavery. Even under the application of the three-fifths basis of the Constitution in regard to the slave-representation in Congress, we can give nearly two-thirds of the Presidential votes. Could we only unite for freedom as the South do for slavery, all would be well; but the lower and hinder half of the brain rules, and we do not. The acquisition of our new territory from Mexico, by robbery under the form of a treaty, gave opportunity for competition between our leaders for Southern support. Mr. Fillmore, the present President, goes for what is called the "finality" of the compromises, and makes himself acceptable to the South by issuing proclamations, and giving instructions to marshals and prosecuting attorneys to enforce the Fugitive-slave Law. Mr. Webster tries to get some new popularity in the same quarter by lauding the same accursed law, and by maintaining that it is not only constitutional, but "proper" in itself. The only Whig candidate who is not fully committed on all these proslavery measures is Gen. Scott; and towards him, therefore, the antislavery part of the Whigs are looking as their only hope. Portions, indeed, of the antislavery men, — the abolitionists and no-government men, who vote nowhere; the Liberty-party men, who will vote for no one who does not represent their views in full; and the extreme men, perhaps, of the Free-soil party, — are as violent against Gen. Scott as against Gen. Cass. This repellency of bigots and partisans seems to act on the law of the "inverse ratio of the squares of the distances;" for they are much more violent against those who almost agree with them than against those who are at the opposite moral pole. How the contest will eventuate, it is impossible to foresee. Should the Whigs indorse the "compromise measures " of 1850, or should they nominate Mr. Fillmore or Mr. Webster, or should Gen. Cass, if nominated, come out in favor of the “compromise measures," the Democrats will certainly prevail. There seems to be but one chance for the Whigs to succeed; namely, the contingency of their nominating Gen. Scott, and then of his non-indorsement of the compromises." Of course, the greater portion of the antislavery people are hoping for this result.

Another great moral question is profoundly agitating the people of the Northern and Eastern States: it is the question of temperance. Between one and two years ago, such a concentration and pressure of influence was brought to bear upon the Legislature of the State of Maine, that though it is said that body was principally composed of anti-temperance men, yet it passed what has now become famous, and will forever be famous in the moral history of mankind, — the MAINE LIQUOR LAW. Its grand features are the search for and the seizure of all intoxicating liquors, and their destruction when adjudicated to have been kept for sale. It goes upon the ground that the Government cannot knock a human passion or a depraved and diseased appetite upon the head, but it can knock a barrel of whiskey or rum upon the head, and thus prevent the gratification of the passion or appetite; and after a time the unfed appetite or passion will die out. The author of this law was Neal Dow, the mayor of the city of Portland. He enforced it, and it has worked wonders. The alms-house ceased to be replenished with inmates; assaults and batteries became rare; the jail-doors stood open; and the police officers held almost sinecures. The success was so great, that the temperance party in other States have made it an element in popular elections; and though in most instances they have been defeated at the first trial, yet they are resolved to return again to the contest. The Legislature of the Territory of Minnesota passed the law, but provided that it should be submitted to the people for ratification; and it has been ratified by a popular vote! And, what is still more important, the Legislature of Massachusetts, now in session, has this very week, after one of the most earnest and protracted contests ever waged, passed a similar law. It is to be submitted to the people next month. If a majority vote for it, it is forthwith to become the law of the State. If a majority vote against it, then it is to be suspended in its operation, and we will agitate anew. But this, perhaps you will say, is an heroic remedy for the evils of intemperance. I acknowledge it. But, when a disease becomes so desperate, I go for heroic remedies. I would resort to surgical practice, and lose a limb to save a life, or deplete the whole body to reduce a topical inflammation that threatens to be fatal. When I saw you, I believe I used occasionally to take a very little wine; and I sometimes, though rarely, drank tea. I believe I had left off coffee long before. But, for many years past, I have abjured wine, coffee, tea, and every thing of a stimulating nature. I confine my beverage to the pure element," and am a great deal better in health for the practice.

My whole family has been in Washington since the commencement of the session. How I wish you could come here and see them! for then one of the greatest desires of my life would be answered; that is, I should see you.

How goes on the work of educating in your island? I had a printed account of an examination in your school; but how is it for the million? . . .

Your friend and disciple,

HORACE MANN.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, pp. 363-5