Congressman Albert G. Brown’s Speech on Homesteads, July 26, 1850

WHEN arrested in the progress of my remarks yesterday, I was about to say that I approved of the main object of the bill reported by the Committee on Agriculture, and which had been advocated with so much zeal and ability by the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Johnson]. I was about to say that my judgment approved the policy of supplying, by some appropriate means, a home to every citizen.

Ours is essentially an agricultural community. The national prosperity of this country, more than any other, depends upon the production of its soil. Whatever tends to increase that production, enhances the national wealth, and, by consequence, increases the national prosperity. The first care of this nation should be to promote the happiness and prosperity of its citizens; and acting on this hypothesis, it has been my constant aim to promote the passage of all laws which tended to ameliorate the condition of the toiling millions.

I have always thought, and now think, that some salutary reform in our land system, by which a fixed and permanent home should be placed within the reach of every citizen, however humble his condition in life, would promote the national prosperity, add to the wealth of the states, and give fresh impetus to the industry and perseverance of our people.

I repeat, sir, that I am for giving to every man in the United States a home—a spot of earth—a place on the surface of God's broad earth which shall be his against the demands of all the world—a place where, in the full enjoyment of all his senses, and the full exercise of all his faculties, he may look upon the world, and, with the proud consciousness of an American citizen, say, This is my home, the castle of my defence; here I am free from the world's cold frowns, and exempt from the Shylock demands of inexorable creditors. These, sir, are my sentiments, long entertained, and now honestly expressed; nor am I to be deterred from their advocacy by any general outcry. Call these sentiments Socialism, Fourierism, Free-Soilism—call them what you please—say this is the doctrine of "vote yourself a farm"—say it is anti-rentism—say what you please—it is the true doctrine; it embraces great principles, which, if successfully carried out, will lead us on to higher renown as a nation, add to the wealth of the separate states, and do more for the substantial happiness of the great mass of our people than all your other legislation combined.

Congress has been in session nearly eight months, and what have you done?—what have you been trying to do? More than six months of that time has been expended in attacking and defending the institution of slavery—the North depreciating and trying to destroy the sixteen hundred millions of dollars invested in this species of property; and the South, forgetting for a season her party differences, banding together for the defence of this vast interest. Sometimes the monotony of this tedious drama has been relieved by a glance at other matters,—a member has appeared to advocate the manufacturing interests, or possibly to put on foot some grand scheme of internal improvement. But, whatever has been said in all our discussions, or by whomsoever it has been said, "the upper ten" have been constantly in view. No one has thought it worth his while to take account of the wants of the millions who toil for bread. The merchants and the manufacturers, the mariners and the speculators, the professions and the men of fortune everywhere, have their advocates on this floor. I speak to-day for the honest, hard-fisted, warm-hearted toiling millions—I speak here, in the councils of this nation, as I speak in the midst of my constituents; and whilst I do not object to the consideration which you give to other interests and other pursuits, I stand up here to demand even-handed justice for the honest but humble cultivator of the soil.

I cannot forget my allegiance—I know the men whose devotion sustains this government—I know the men whose friendship sustains me against the attacks of slander and the malignity of the interested few. For them I speak, and by no senseless cry of demagoguism, will I be turned from my purpose of vindicating their rights on this floor.

Talk, sir, of your lordly manufacturers, your princely merchants, your professional gentry, and your smooth-tongued politicians. The patriotism of one simple-hearted, honest old farmer would outweigh them all; and, for private friendship, I had rather have the hearty good will of one of those plain old men than the hypocritical smiles of as many of your smooth-tongued oily fellows as would fill this Capitol from its dome to its base.

It is my fortune to represent a constituency in which is mingled wealth and poverty;—whilst some are wealthy, and many possess more than a competency, there are many others on whom poverty has fixed his iron grasp. All, I hope, are patriotic. But, sir, if I were going to hunt for patriots who could be trusted in every emergency; patriots who would pour out their blood like water; and who would think it no privation to lay down their lives in defence of their country, I would go among the poor, the squatters, the preemptors, the hardy sons of toil. Though I should expect to find patriots everywhere, I know I should find them here.

Sir, in the great matter of legislation, shall men like these be neglected? I invoke gentlemen to forget for a moment the loom and the furnace, the storehouse, and the ships on the high seas, and go with me to the houses of these people; listen to the story of their wrongs, and let us together do them justice.

Men in affluent circumstances know but little of the wants of other men, and, unfortunately, care less for the miseries of the poor. Rocked in the cradle of fortune from infancy to manhood, they do not understand why it is that some men toil with poverty all their lives, and die at last in penury. Let gentlemen picture to themselves a man reared in humble life, without education, and with no fortune but his hands; see him going into the wild woods with a wife and a family of small children, there, by his unaided exertions, to rear his humble dwelling, to clear the forest and make way for his planting. See him after the toils of the day are over, returning to that humble dwelling to receive the smiles of his wife and hear the merry prattle of his little children. Watch him as he moves steadily and firmly on from day to day; fancy to yourself his heart buoyant with hope as he marks the progress of his growing crop, and pictures to himself the happiness of his wife and little children when he shall have gathered the reward of his summer's toil, sold it, and with the proceeds secured this his humble home.

Look, sir, at this scene; gaze on that sun-burnt patriot, for he is worthy of your admiration. Now go with me one step further, and behold the destruction of all these fairy visions; blighting seasons, low prices, disease, a bad trade, or some unforeseen disaster has overtaken him. His year of honest industry is gone-the time has come when government demands her pay for this poor man's home. He is without money—government, with a hard heart and inexorable will, turns coldly away, and the next week or the next month she sells her land, and this man's labor, his humble house and little fields, are gone. The speculator comes, and with an iron will, turns him and his family out of doors; and all this is the act of his own government—of a government which has untold millions of acres of land. Now, Mr. Speaker, let me ask you, can this man love a government that treats him thus? Never, sir, never. To do so, he should be more than man, and scarcely less than God. Treatment like this would have put out the fire of patriotism in Washington's breast, and almost justified the treachery of Arnold.

Instead of treating her citizens thus, I would have this government interpose its strong arm to protect them from the iron grasp of the heartless speculator. By doing so, you encourage industry, promote happiness, develope the resources of the soil, make better men and purer patriots. In a word, you perform a vast amount of good without the possibility of doing harm.

Not having seen the bill reported by the committee under circumstances which afforded an opportunity for a critical examination, I am not prepared to say that its details meet my approbation.

I am disinclined to give to the settler an absolute title to lands. I am so, sir, because I would secure him in the possession of his home against his misfortunes, and even against his own improvidence. If he is an honest and industrious man, he should have a home where that honest heart could repose in peace, and where the hand of industry could find employment. If he be dishonest, give him a home where, in the bosom of his family, he may hide his shame, and where they may find shelter from the frowns of a cruel world. If he is idle and worthless, give him a home where his wife and children may toil, and, by their example, bring him back to habits of honest industry. In any and in every event, give him a home, and secure him in the possession of that home, against all the contingencies of life and vicissitudes of fortune. When you have done this, rest satisfied that you have at least made a better man, and done something towards the general prosperity.

My own scheme has been reduced to the form of a bill, and before I take my seat I beg leave to send it to the Clerk's desk, that it may be read—promising that I am wedded to no special plan. The object is a good one; it meets my cordial approbation, and I shall most heartily unite in any scheme which gives reasonable promise of success.

I offer the paper which I hold in my hand as a substitute for the original proposition, and ask that it may be included in the motion to print.

Mr. Brown's proposition was read.

Strike out all after the enacting clause, and insert as follows:

 

That the laws now in force granting preemption to actual settlers on the public lands, shall continue until otherwise ordered by Congress, and that the same be extended to all the territories of the United States.

 

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That from and after the passage of this act, the rights of preemptors shall be perpetuated: that is to say, persons acquiring the right of preemption shall retain the same without disturbance, and without payment of any kind to the United States, but on these conditions: First, The preemptor shall not sell, alienate or dispose of his or her right for a consideration, and if he or she voluntarily abandons one preemption and claims another, no right shall be acquired by such claim, until the claimant shall first have testified, under oath, before the register of the land office when the claim is preferred, that he or she has voluntarily abandoned his or her original preemption, and that no consideration, reward or payment of any kind has been received, or is expected, directly or indirectly, as an inducement for such abandonment; and any person who shall testify falsely in such case, shall be deemed guilty of perjury. Second: Any person claiming and holding the right of preemption to lands under this act, may be required by the state within which the same lies, to pay taxes thereon in the same manner, and to the same extent, as if he or she owned the said land in fee simple; and in case such lands are sold for taxes, the purchaser shall acquire the right of preemption only. Third: Absence of the preemptor and his family for six consecutive months, shall be deemed an abandonment, and the land shall, in such case, revert to the United States, and be subject to the same disposition as other public lands.

 

SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That lands preempted, and the improvements thereon, shall not be subject to execution sale, or other sale for debt; and all contracts made in reference thereto, intended in anywise to alienate the right, or to embarrass or disturb the preemptor in his or her occupancy, shall be absolutely null and void.

 

SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That the preemptor may, at any time, at his or her discretion, enter the lands preempted, by paying therefor to the proper officer of the United States one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre.

 

SEC. 5. And be it further enacted, That in case of the preemptor's death, if a married man, his right shall survive to his widow and infant children, but the rights of the older children shall cease as they respectively come of age, or when they reach the age of twenty-one years; in all cases the right of preemption shall remain in the youngest child. And in case of the death of both father and mother, leaving an infant child or children, the executor, administrator, or guardian, may at any time within twelve months after such death, enter said preempted lands in the name of said infant child or children, or the said preemption, together with the improvements on the lands, may be deemed property, and as such, sold for the benefit of said infants, but for no other purpose, and the purchaser may acquire the right of the deceased preemptor by such purchase.

 

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In reply to Mr. Morse, of Louisiana, Mr. BROWN said: Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Morse], in the progress of his remarks was understood by me to assume the ground that my proposition is unconstitutional. I did not, as you know, Mr. Speaker, undertake to explain, much less to vindicate that proposition. Its provisions are so few and so simple, that it may be well left to speak its own vindication, even against the furious assault of the honorable gentleman.

It proposes simply to perpetuate a law which has stood for years on your statute book, an honorable monument to the wisdom and justice of Congress. To-day, for the first time, it has been discovered to be unconstitutional. The preemption law struggled into existence against the combined opposition of many of the first minds in the country. It has received the repeated sanction of Congress, and to-day I know of no man from the new states who desires its repeal, or who has the boldness to avow such desire if he feels it. Instead of limiting the right of the preemptor to one year or two years, I simply propose to perpetuate that right, and this is the measure which the astute gentleman from Louisiana says is unconstitutional. I shall not stop to vindicate the measure from such a charge. The government has full power to dispose of the public lands, and in the exercise of this power, it has from time to time reduced the price, and in many hundred instances given them away.

I ask the honorable gentleman if the act by which five hundred thousand acres of the public lands were given to the state of Louisiana was unconstitutional? Were the various acts giving lands to the states, Louisiana among the rest, for educational purposes, unconstitutional? Did the honorable gentleman violate the Constitution last year, when he voted to give to his own state five millions of the public lands for works of internal improvement? Did we all violate the Constitution the other day, when we voted bounty lands to the soldiers of the last war with Great Britain and all our Indian wars?

No one knows better than the honorable gentleman, that this government has habitually given away the public lands—given them to the states for internal-improvement purposes; given them to establish colleges and primary schools; given them to railroad and canal companies given them to states and to soulless corporations, for almost every conceivable purpose; and all this has been done within the Constitution; but now, sir, when it is proposed to allow the humble citizen to reside on these lands, the gentleman starts up as though he had just descended from another world, and startles us with a declaration that we are violating the Constitution.

It has pleased the honorable member to denominate this as a villanous measure; and with great emphasis he declares, that its supporters are demagogues. It will not surprise you or others, Mr. Speaker, if I speak warmly in reply to language like this. The gentleman was pleased to extract the poison from his sting, by declaring that he used these words in no offensive sense. In reply, I shall speak plainly, but within the rules of decorum.

"Demagoguing,"—“demagoguing," says the honorable gentleman, "for the votes of the low, ill-bred vagrants and vagabonds." Sir, this is strange language, coming from that quarter. I know something of the gentleman's constituents. Many of the best of them are of this despised caste; many of them are the low, ill-bred vagabonds, of which the gentleman has been speaking. Many, very many, of them are squatters on the public lands. Sir, I should like to hear the honorable gentleman making the same speech in one of the upper parishes of Louisiana, which he has this day pronounced in the American Congress. I can well conceive how his honest constituents the squatters, would stare and wonder, to hear a gentleman, so bland and courteous last year, now so harsh and cruel. Yes, sir, the gentleman's squatter constituents would stand aghast to hear the representative denouncing them as a dirty, ill-bred set of vagabonds and scoundrels—when the candidate, with a face all wreathed in his blandest smile, had told them they were the cleverest fellows in the world!

It may do very well, Mr. Speaker, for gentlemen, when they come on to Washington, to get upon stilts and talk after this fashion. It may sound beautiful in the ears that are here to catch the sound, thus to denounce a measure intended to relieve the poor man's wants as villanous, and its advocates as demagogues. But, sir, I take it upon myself to say there is not a congressional district in the West or Southwest where a candidate for Congress would dare to use such language.

Sir, I know very well how popular electioneering canvasses are conducted, and bold and valiant as the gentleman is, he would scarcely commit the indiscretion of saying to any portion of the voters in his district that they were an ill-bred set of vagabonds, and if he did, they would hardly commission him to repeat the expression in Congress. Let me warn the gentleman, that if the speech made by him to-day shall ever reach his constituents, it will sound his political death-knell. If I owed the gentleman any ill-will, which I take this occasion to say I do not, it would be my highest hope that he would write out and print that speech just as he delivered it. I should at least have a comfortable assurance that the speech would be the last of its kind.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I have to repeat that, notwithstanding the maledictions of the gentleman from Louisiana, I am still for this proposition; and though that gentleman may continue to denounce the squatters on the public lands as a worthless, ill-bred set of vagabonds, I am still their friend. They are honest men, pure patriots, and upright citizens. They are worthy of our care. If the candidate can afford to flatter them for their votes, the representative should not skulk the responsibility of voting to protect their interests. I hold but one language, and it shall be the language of honest sincerity. I would scorn to flatter a poor squatter for his vote in the swamps of Louisiana, and then stand up before the American Congress as his representative, and denounce him as a worthless vagabond.

Sir, if the men are worthless the women are not, and I could appeal to the well-known gallantry of the honorable member to interpose in their behalf. If you will do nothing for the ruder sex, interpose the strong arm of the law to shield the women and children, at least, from the rude grasp of the avaricious speculator. If a man be worthless, let the appeal go up for his wife and little children. Secure them a home, and that wife will make that home her castle. It will shelter her and her little children from the rude blasts of winter, and the rude blows of a wicked world. She will toil there for bread, and with her own hand. plant a shrub, perchance a flower. She will make it useful by her industry, and adorn it by her ingenuity. Give it to her, sir, and she will invoke such blessings on your head as a pious woman alone can ask.

I thank the gentleman from Louisiana, not for his speech, but for his courtesy in giving me a part of his time in which to reply.

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, p. 194-9

Congressman Horace Mann, August 5, 1850

AUG. 5, 1850.

We are rejoiced at the defeat of the Omnibus Bill. It strengthens the chances of the Territories for freedom. All delay in admitting California, that comes from slavery, will intensify their hatred of it. However the questions may be decided in Congress, the chances are increasing, that the Territories, by their own action, will exclude it. This, too, is the best mode in which the work can be done; for there are many at the South who would all but rebel, if not actually do so, should Congress prohibit slavery, who would still allow it if the Territories themselves prohibit it. Several of the Southern States have actually resolved that they would resist if Congress should pass the proviso; but none have dared to utter a threat if the inhabitants of the Territories legislate it into existence.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 311

Congressman Horace Mann to Samuel Downer, June 13, 1850

WASHINGTON, June 13, 1850.

S. DOWNER, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR, You must excuse me for not answering all your kind letters. I should be glad to do so, if it were possible, especially if it would be the means of getting more; for they are most acceptable to me.

I learn that Mr. Webster has written home, that, if the North will give way on the subject of slavery, THEY CAN HAVE A TARIFF IN SIX WEEKS; and I suppose the address now to be circulated is for signatures, calling upon the Massachusetts delegation to make “concession;” that is, to surrender the Territories to slavery: then we may have "beneficent legislation," by which he means a tariff.

I am also told that the Hon. ———, a factory superintendent at Lowell, on a salary of four or five thousand dollars a year, was on here two or three weeks ago to see if some arrangement could not be made to barter human bodies and souls at the South for the sake of certain percentages on imported cottons at the North; and that Mr. Foote of Mississippi, and Mangum of North Carolina, offered to become sureties for the arrangement: how many others, I do not know. I have no doubt of all this, not a particle; though I communicate it to you to give you the means of further inquiry, and of action after inquiry is made. . . .

The Whigs, with very few exceptions, appear to stand well in the House; and I trust we shall be able to give a good account of ourselves. How I wish the Whigs now had all the Free-soilers in their ranks ! In great haste, yours ever and truly,

HORACE MANN.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 304

Congressman Horace Mann to Samuel Downer, June 28, 1850

WASHINGTON, June 28, 1850.

S. DOWNER, Esq.

DEAR SIR,—The fate of the Compromise Bill is still doubtful in the Senate, though public opinion here is against its success. Nothing but the prowess of Clay could have kept the breath in it to this time.

The news from New Mexico, if confirmed, knocks the bottom all out of the compromise. If they organize a government there, choose a governor and a legislature, appoint judges, &c., it will present a very pretty anomaly for us to be sending governor, judges, &c., to them. But the great point is the presumed proviso in their constitution. With that, the longer the South keeps them out of the Union, the more antislavery they will become.

. . . Well, Downer, it is the greatest godsend in our times that Taylor was elected over Cass. It is the turning-point of the fortunes of all the new Territories. Had Cass been President, they would have all been slave, and a fair chance for Cuba into the bargain. I am not sorry because I did not vote for Taylor; but I am glad others did. I think he has designedly steered the ship so as to avoid slavery. . . .

Best regards to your wife. You know you always have them. Look out for the boy, and make a hero of him.

Ever truly yours,

H. MANN.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 304-5

Abraham Lincoln’s 4th Annual Message to Congress, December 6, 1864

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives:

Again the blessings of health and abundant harvests claim our pro-roundest gratitude to Almighty God.

The condition of our foreign affairs is reasonably satisfactory. Mexico continues to be a theater of civil war. While our political relations with that country have undergone no change, we have, at the same time, strictly maintained neutrality between the belligerents.

At the request of the States of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, a competent engineer has been authorized to make a survey of the river San Juan and the port of San Juan. It is a source of much satisfaction that the difficulties which for a moment excited some political apprehensions, and caused a closing of the interoceanic transit route, have been amicably adjusted, and that there is a good prospect that the route will soon be reopened with an increase of capacity and adaptation. We could not exaggerate either the commercial or the political importance of that great improvement.

It would be doing injustice to an important South American State not to acknowledge the directness, frankness, and cordiality with which the United States of Colombia have entered into intimate relations with this Government. A claims convention has been constituted to complete the unfinished work of the one which closed its session in 1861.

The new liberal constitution of Venezuela having gone into effect with the universal acquiescence of the people, the Government under it has been recognized, and diplomatic intercourse with it has opened in a cordial and friendly spirit. The long-deferred Aves Island claim has been satisfactorily paid and discharged.

Mutual payments have been made of the claims awarded by the late joint commission for the settlement of claims between the United States and Peru. An earnest and cordial friendship continues to exist between the two countries, and such efforts as were in my power have been used to remove misunderstanding and avert a threatened war between Peru and Spain.

Our relations are of the most friendly nature with Chili, the Argentine Republic, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Paraguay, San Salvador, and Hayti.

During the past year no differences of any kind have arisen with any of those Republics, and, on the other hand, their sympathies with the United States are constantly expressed with cordiality and earnestness.

The claim arising from the seizure of the cargo of the brig Macedonian, in 1821, has been paid in full by the Government of Chili.

Civil war continues in the Spanish part of San Domingo, apparently without prospect of an early close.

Official correspondence has been freely opened with Liberia, and it gives us a pleasing view of social and political progress in that Republic. It may be expected to derive new vigor from American influence, improved by the rapid disappearance of slavery in the United States.

I solicit your authority to furnish to the Republic a gun-boat at moderate cost, to be reimbursed to the United States by installments. Such a vessel is needed for the safety of that State against the native African races; and in Liberian hands it would be more effective in arresting the African slave trade than a squadron in our own hands. The possession of the least organized naval force would stimulate a generous ambition in the Republic, and the confidence which we should manifest by furnishing it would win forbearance and favor toward the colony from all civilized nations.

The proposed overland telegraph between America and Europe, by the way of Behring's Straits and Asiatic Russia, which was sanctioned by Congress at the last session, has been undertaken, under very favorable circumstances, by an association of American citizens, with the cordial good will and support as well of this Government as of those of Great Britain and Russia. Assurances have been received from most of the South American States of their high appreciation of the enterprise, and their readiness to co-operate in constructing lines tributary to that world-encircling communication. I learn with much satisfaction that the noble design of a telegraphic communication between the Eastern coast of America and Great Britain has been renewed with full expectation of its early accomplishment.

Thus it is hoped that with the return of domestic peace the country will be able to resume with energy and advantage its former high career of commerce and civilization.

Our very popular and estimable representative in Egypt died in April last. An unpleasant altercation which arose between the temporary incumbent of the office and the Government of the Pasha resulted in a suspension of intercourse. The evil was promptly corrected on the arrival of the successor in the consulate, and our relations with Eygpt, as well as our relations with the Barbary powers, are entirely satisfactory.

The rebellion which has so long been flagrant in China has at last been suppressed, with the co-operating good offices of this Government and of the other Western commercial States. The judicial consular establishment there has become very difficult and onerous, and it will need legislative revision to adapt it to the extension of our commerce and to the more intimate intercourse which has been instituted with the Government and people of that vast Empire.

China seems to be accepting with hearty good will the conventional laws which regulate commercial and social intercourse among the Western nations.

Owing to the peculiar situation of Japan and the anomalous form of its Government, the action of that Empire in performing treaty stipulations is inconstant and capricious. Nevertheless, good progress has been effected by the Western powers, moving with enlightened concert. Our own pecuniary claims have been allowed, or put in course of settlement, and the inland sea has been reopened to commerce. There is reason also to believe that these proceedings have increased rather than diminished the friendship of Japan toward the United States.

The ports of Norfolk, Fernandina, and Pensacola have been opened by proclamation. It is hoped that foreign merchants will now consider whether it is not safer and more profitable to themselves, as well as just to the United States, to resort to these and other open ports, than it is to pursue, through many hazards and at vast cost, a contraband trade with other ports which are closed, if not by actual military occupation, at least by a lawful and effective blockade.

For myself, I have no doubt of the power and duty of the Executive, under the law of nations, to exclude enemies of the human race from an asylum in the United States. If Congress should think that proceedings in such cases lack the authority of law, or ought to be further regulated by it, I recommend that provision be made for effectually preventing foreign slave-traders from acquiring domicile and facilities for their criminal occupation in our country.

It is possible that, if it were a new and open question, the maritime powers, with the lights they now enjoy, would not concede the privileges of a naval belligerent to the insurgents of the United States, destitute as they are and always have been equally of ships of war and of ports and harbors. Disloyal emissaries have been neither less assiduous nor more successful during the last year than they were before that time in their efforts, under favor of that privilege, to embroil our country in foreign wars. The desire and determination of the Governments of the maritime states to defeat that design are believed to be as sincere as and cannot be more earnest than our own. Nevertheless, unforeseen political difficulties have arisen, especially in Brazilian and British ports and on the northern boundary of the United States, which have required, and are likely to continue to require, the practice of constant vigilance and a just and conciliatory spirit on the part of the United States as well as of the nations concerned and their governments.

Commissioners have been appointed, under the treaty with Great Britain, on the adjustment of the claims of the Hudson's Bay and Puget's Sound Agricultural Companies, in Oregon, and are now proceeding to the execution of the trust assigned to them.

In view of the insecurity of life and property in the region adjacent to the Canadian border, by reason of recent assaults and depredations committed by inimical and desperate persons who are harbored there, it has been thought proper to give notice that after the expiration of six months, the period conditionally stipulated in the existing arrangement with Great Britain, the United States must hold themselves at liberty to increase their naval armament upon the lakes, if they shall find that proceeding necessary. The condition of the border will necessarily come into consideration in connection with the question of continuing or modifying the rights of transit from Canada through the United States, as well as the regulation of imposts, which were temporarily established by the reciprocity treaty of the 5th of June, 1854.

I desire, however, to be understood, while making this statement, that the colonial authorities of Canada are not deemed to be intentionally unjust or unfriendly toward the United States; but, on the contrary, there is every reason to expect that, with the approval of the Imperial Government, they will take the necessary measures to prevent new incursions across the border.

The act passed at the last session for the encouragement of immigration has, so far as was possible, been put into operation. It seems to need amendment which will enable the officers of the Government to prevent the practice of frauds against the immigrants while on their way and on their arrival in the ports, so as to secure them here a free choice of avocations and places of settlement. A liberal disposition toward this great national policy is manifested by most of the European States, and ought to be reciprocated on our part by giving the immigrants effective national protection. I regard our immigrants as one of the principal replenishing streams which are appointed by Providence to repair the ravages of internal war, and its wastes of national strength and health. All that is necessary is to secure the flow of that stream in its present fullness, and to that end the Government must, in every way, make it manifest that it neither needs nor designs to impose involuntary military service upon those who come from other lands to cast their lot in our country.

The financial affairs of the Government have been successfully administered during the last year. The legislation of the last session of Congress has beneficially affected the revenues, although sufficient time has not yet elapsed to experience the full effect of several of the provisions of the acts of Congress imposing increased taxation.

The receipts during the year, from all sources, upon the basis of warrants signed by the Secretary of the Treasury, including loans and the balance in the Treasury on the 1st day of July, 1863, were $1,394,796,007.62, and the aggregate disbursements, upon the same basis, were $1,298,056,101.89, leaving a balance in the Treasury, as shown by warrants, of $96,739,905.73.

Deduct from these amounts the amount of the principal of the public debt redeemed, and the amount of issues in substitution therefor, and the actual cash operations of the Treasury were: Receipts, $884,076,646.57; disbursements, $865,234,087.86; which leaves a cash balance in the Treasury of $18,842,558.71.

Of the receipts, there were derived from customs $102,316,152.99; from lands, $588,333.29; from direct taxes, $475,648.96; from internal revenue, $109,741,134.10; from miscellaneous sources, $47,511,448.10; and from loans applied to actual expenditures, including former balance, $623,443,929.13.

There were disbursed for the civil service, $27,505,599.46; for pensions and Indians, $7,517,930.97; for the War Department, $690,791,842.97; for the Navy Department, $85,733,292.77; for interest on the public debt, $53,685,421.69; making an aggregate of $865,234,087.86, and leaving a balance in the Treasury of $18,842,558.71, as before stated.

For the actual receipts and disbursements for the first quarter and the estimated receipts and disbursements for the three remaining quarters of the current fiscal year and the general operations of the Treasury in detail, I refer you to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury. I concur with him in the opinion that the proportion of moneys required to meet the expenses consequent upon the war derived from taxation should be still further increased, and I earnestly invite your attention to this subject, to the end that there may be such additional legislation as shall be required to meet the just expectations of the Secretary.

The public debt on the 1st day of July last, as appears by the books of the Treasury, amounted to $1,740,690,489.49. Probably, should the war continue for another year, that amount may be increased by not far from $500,000,000. Held as it is, for the most part, by our own people, it has become a substantial branch of national, though private, property. For obvious reasons, the more nearly this property can be distributed among all the people the better. To favor such general distribution greater inducements to become owners might perhaps, with good effect and without injury, be presented to persons of limited means. With this view, I suggest whether it might not be both competent and expedient for Congress to provide that a limited amount of some future issue of public securities might be held by any bona fide purchaser exempt from taxation and from seizure for debt, under such restrictions and limitations as might be necessary to guard against abuse of so important a privilege. This would enable every prudent person to set aside a small annuity against a possible day of want.

Privileges like these would render the possession of such securities, to the amount limited, most desirable to every person of small means who might be able to save enough for the purpose. The great advantage of citizens being creditors as well as debtors, with relation to the public debt, is obvious. Men readily perceive that they cannot be much oppressed by a debt which they owe to themselves.

The public debt on the 1st day of July last, although somewhat exceeding the estimate of the Secretary of the Treasury made to Congress at the commencement of the last session, falls short of the estimate of that officer made in the preceding December, as to its probable amount at the beginning of this year, by the sum of $3,995,097.31. This fact exhibits a satisfactory condition and conduct of the operations of the Treasury.

The national banking system is proving to be acceptable to capitalists and to the people. On the 25th day of November 584 national banks had been organized, a considerable number of which were conversions from State banks. Changes from State systems to the national system are rapidly taking place, and it is hoped that very soon there will be in the United States no banks of issue not authorized by Congress and no bank-note circulation not secured by the Government. That the Government and the people will derive great benefit from this change in the banking systems of the country can hardly be questioned. The national system will create a reliable and permanent influence in support of the national credit and protect the people against losses in the use of paper money. Whether or not any further legislation is advisable for the suppression of State bank issues it will be for Congress to determine. It seems quite clear that the Treasury cannot be satisfactorily conducted unless the Government can exercise a restraining power over the bank-note circulation of the country.

The report of the Secretary of War and the accompanying documents will detail the campaigns of the armies in the field since the date of the last annual message, and also the operations of the several administrative bureaus of the War Department during the last year. It will also specify the measures deemed essential for the national defense, and to keep up and supply the requisite military force.

The report of the Secretary of the Navy presents a comprehensive and satisfactory exhibit of the affairs of that Department and of the naval service. It is a subject of congratulation and laudable pride to our countrymen that a navy of such vast proportions has been organized in so brief a period and conducted with so much efficiency and success.

The general exhibit of the Navy, including vessels under construction on the 1st of December, 1864, shows a total of 671 vessels, carrying 4,610 guns, and of 510,396 tons, being an actual increase during the year, over and above all losses by shipwreck or in battle, of 83 vessels, 167 guns, and 42,427 tons.

The total number of men at this time in the naval service, including officers, is about 51,000.

There have been captured by the Navy during the year 324 vessels, and the whole number of naval captures since hostilities commenced is 1,379, of which 267 are steamers.

The gross proceeds arising from the sale of condemned prize property thus far reported amount to $14,396,250.51. A large amount of such proceeds is still under adjudication and yet to be reported.

The total expenditure of the Navy Department of every description, including the cost of the immense squadrons that have been called into existence from the 4th of March, 1861, to the 1st of November, 1864, is $938,647,262.35.

Your favorable consideration is invited to the various recommendations of the Secretary of the Navy, especially in regard to a navy-yard and suitable establishment for the construction and repair of iron vessels and the machinery and armature for our ships, to which reference was made in my last annual message.

Your attention is also invited to the views expressed in the report in relation to the legislation of Congress at its last session in respect to prize on our inland waters.

I cordially concur in the recommendation of the Secretary as to the propriety of creating the new rank of vice-admiral in our naval service.

Your attention is invited to the report of the Postmaster-General for a detailed account of the operations and financial condition of the Post-Office Department.

The postal revenues for the year ending June 30, 1864, amounted to $12,438,253.78, and the expenditures to $12,644.786.20, the excess of expenditures over receipts being $206,539.42.

The views presented by the Postmaster-General on the subject of special grants by the Government in aid of the establishment of new lines of ocean mail steamships, and the policy he recommends for the development of increased commercial intercourse with adjacent and neighboring countries, should receive the careful consideration of Congress.

It is of noteworthy interest that the steady expansion of population, improvement, and governmental institutions over the new and unoccupied portions of our country have scarcely been checked, much less impeded or destroyed, by our great civil war, which at first glance would seem to have absorbed almost the entire energies of the Nation.

The organization and admission of the State of Nevada has been completed in conformity with law, and thus our excellent system is firmly established in the mountains, which once seemed a barren and uninhabitable waste between the Atlantic States and those which have grown up on the coast of the Pacific Ocean.

The Territories of the Union are generally in a condition of prosperity and rapid growth. Idaho and Montana, by reason of their great distance and the interruption of communication with them by Indian hostilities, have been only partially organized; but it is understood that these difficulties are about to disappear, which will permit their governments, like those of the others, to go into speedy and full operation.

As intimately connected with, and promotive of, this material growth of the Nation, I ask the attention of Congress to the valuable information and important recommendations relating to the public lands, Indian affairs, the Pacific Railroad, and mineral discoveries contained in the report of the Secretary of the Interior, which is herewith transmitted, and which report also embraces the subjects of patents, pensions, and other topics of public interest pertaining to his Department.

The quantity of public land disposed of during the five quarters ending on the 30th of September last was 4,221,342 acres, of which 1,538,614 acres were entered under the homestead law. The remainder was located with military land warrants, agricultural scrip certified to States for railroads, and sold for cash. The cash received from sales and location fees was $1,019,446.

The income from sales during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1864, was $678,007.21, against $136,077.95 received during the preceding year. The aggregate number of acres surveyed during the year has been equal to the quantity disposed of, and there is open to settlement about 133,000,000 acres of surveyed land.

The great enterprise of connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific States by railways and telegraph lines has been entered upon with a vigor that gives assurance of success, notwithstanding the embarrassments arising from the prevailing high prices of materials and labor. The route of the main line of the road has been definitely located for 100 miles westward from the initial point at Omaha City, Nebr., and a preliminary location of the Pacific Railroad of California has been made from Sacramento eastward to the great bend of Truckee River, in Nevada.

Numerous discoveries of gold, silver, and cinnabar mines have been added to the many heretofore known, and the country occupied by the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains and the subordinate ranges now teems with enterprising labor which is richly remunerative. It is believed that the product of the mines of precious metals in that region has during the year reached, if not exceeded, $100,000,000 in value.

It was recommended in my last annual message that our Indian system be remodeled. Congress at its last session acting upon the recommendation, did provide for reorganizing the system in California, and it is believed that under the present organization the management of the Indians there will be attended with reasonable success. Much yet remains to be done to provide for the proper government of the Indians in other parts of the country, to render it secure for the advancing settler, and to provide for the welfare of the Indian. The Secretary reiterates his recommendations, and to them the attention of Congress is invited.

The liberal provisions made by Congress for paying pensions to invalid soldiers and sailors of the Republic, and to the widows, orphans, and dependent mothers of those who have fallen in battle, or died of disease contracted or of wounds received in the service of their country, have been diligently administered. There have been added to the pension rolls during the year ending the 30th day of June last the names of 16,770 invalid soldiers and of 271 disabled seamen, making the present number of army invalid pensioners 22,767 and of navy invalid pensioners 712.

Of widows, orphans, and mothers, 22,198 have been placed on the army pension rolls and 248 on the navy rolls. The present number of army pensioners of this class is 25,433 and of navy pensioners 793. At the beginning of the year the number of Revolutionary pensioners was 1,430; only twelve of them were soldiers, of whom seven have since died. The remainder are those who, under the law, receive pensions because of relationship to Revolutionary soldiers. During the year ending the 30th of June, 1864, $4,504,616.92 have been paid to pensioners of all classes.

I cheerfully commend to your continued patronage the benevolent institutions of the District of Columbia which have hitherto been established or fostered by Congress, and respectfully refer, for information concerning them, and in relation to the Washington Aqueduct, the Capitol, and other matters of local interest, to the report of the Secretary.

The Agricultural Department, under the supervision of its present energetic and faithful head, is rapidly commending itself to the great and vital interest it was created to advance. It is peculiarly the people's department, in which they feel more directly concerned than in any other. I commend it to the continued attention and fostering care of Congress.

The war continues. Since the last annual message all the important lines and positions then occupied by our forces have been maintained, and our arms have steadily advanced, thus liberating the regions left in rear, so that Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and parts of other States have again produced reasonably fair crops.

The most remarkable feature in the military operations of the year is General Sherman's attempted march of 300 miles directly through the insurgent region. It tends to show a great increase of our relative strength that our General-in-Chief should feel able to confront and hold in check every active force of the enemy, and yet to detach a well-appointed large army to move on such an expedition. The result not yet being known, conjecture in regard to it is not here indulged.

Important movements have also occurred during the year to the effect of molding society for durability in the Union. Although short of complete success, it is much in the right direction, that 12,000 citizens in each of the States of Arkansas and Louisiana have organized loyal State governments, with free constitutions, and are earnestly struggling to maintain and administer them. The movements in the same direction, more extensive, though less definite, in Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee, should not be overlooked. But Maryland presents the example of complete success. Maryland is secure to liberty and union for all the future. The genius of rebellion will no more claim Maryland. Like another foul spirit, being driven out, it may seek to tear her, but it will woo her no more.

At the last session of Congress a proposed amendment of the Constitution, abolishing slavery throughout the United States, passed the Senate, but failed for lack of the requisite two-thirds vote in the House of Representatives. Although the present is the same Congress, and nearly the same members, and without questioning the wisdom or patriotism of those who stood in opposition, I venture to recommend the reconsideration and passage of the measure at the present session. Of course, the abstract question is not changed, but an intervening election shows, almost certainly, that the next Congress will pass the measure if this does not. Hence, there is only a question of time as to when the proposed amendment will go to the States for their action. And as it is to so go, at all events, may we not agree that the sooner the better? It is not claimed that the election has imposed a duty on members to change their views or their votes any further than, as an additional element to be considered, their judgment may be affected by it. It is the voice of the people now, for the first time, heard upon the question. In a great national crisis, like ours, unanimity of action among those seeking a common end is very desirable—almost indispensable. And yet no approach to such unanimity is attainable unless some deference shall be paid to the will of the majority simply because it is the will of the majority. In this case the common end is the maintenance of the Union; and, among the means to secure that end, such will, through the election, is most clearly declared in favor of such constitutional amendment.

The most reliable indication of public purpose in this country is derived through our popular elections. Judging by the recent canvass and its results, the purpose of the people within the loyal States to maintain the integrity of the Union, was never more firm nor more nearly unanimous than now. The extraordinary calmness and good order with which the millions of voters met and mingled at the polls give strong assurance of this. Not only all those who supported the Union ticket, so-called, but a great majority of the opposing party also, may be fairly claimed to entertain, and to be actuated by, the same purpose. It is an unanswerable argument to this effect that no candidate for any office whatever, high or low, has ventured to seek votes on the avowal that he was for giving up the Union. There has been much impugning of motives and much heated controversy as to the proper means and best mode of advancing the Union cause, but on the distinct issue of Union or no Union, the politicians have shown their instinctive knowledge that there is no diversity among the people. In affording the people the fair opportunity of showing, one to another and to the world, this firmness and unanimity of purpose, the election has been of vast value to the national cause.

The election has exhibited another fact not less valuable to be known—the fact that we do not approach exhaustion in the most important branch of national resources—that of living men. While it is melancholy to reflect that the war has filled so many graves, and carried mourning to so many hearts, it is some relief to know that, compared with the surviving, the fallen have been so few. While corps, and divisions, and brigades, and regiments have formed, and fought, and dwindled, and gone out of existence, a great majority of the men who composed them are still living. The same is true of the naval service. The election returns prove this. So many voters could not else be found. The States regularly holding elections, both now and four years ago—to wit, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin—cast 3,982,011 votes now, against 3,870,222 cast then, showing an aggregate now of 3,982,011. To this is to be added 33,762 cast now in the new States of Kansas and Nevada, which States did not vote in 1860, thus swelling the aggregate to 4,015,773 and the net increase during the three years and a half of war to 145,551. A table is appended showing particulars. To this again should be added the number of all soldiers in the field from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Indiana, Illinois, and California, who, by the laws of those States, could not vote away from their homes, and which number cannot be less than 90,000. Nor yet is this all. The number in organized Territories is triple now what it was four years ago, while thousands, white and black, join us as the national arms press back the insurgent lines. So much is shown, affirmatively and negatively, by the election. It is not material to inquire how the increase has been produced, or to show that it would have been greater but for the war, which is probably true. The important fact remains demonstrated, that we have more men now than we had when the war began; that we are not exhausted, nor in process of exhaustion; that we are gaining strength, and may, if need be, maintain the contest indefinitely. This as to men. Material resources are now more complete and abundant than ever.

The national resources, then, are unexhausted, and, as we believe, inexhaustible. The public purpose to re-establish and maintain the national authority is unchanged, and, as we believe, unchangeable. The manner of continuing the effort remains to choose. On careful consideration of all the evidence accessible, it seems to me that no attempt at negotiation with the insurgent leader could result in any good. He would accept nothing short of severance of the Union—precisely what we will not and cannot give. His declarations to this effect are explicit and oft-repeated. He does not attempt to deceive us. He affords us no excuse to deceive ourselves. He cannot voluntarily reaccept the Union; we cannot voluntarily yield it. Between him and us the issue is distinct, simple, and inflexible. It is an issue which can only be tried by war and decided by victory. If we yield, we are beaten; if the Southern people fail him, he is beaten. Either way it would be the victory and defeat following war. What is true however, of him who heads the insurgent cause is not necessarily true of those who follow. Although he cannot reaccept the Union, they can. Some of them, we know, already desire peace and reunion. The number of such may increase. They can at any moment have peace simply by laying down their arms and submitting to the national authority under the Constitution. After so much, the Government could not, if it would, maintain war against them. The loyal people would not sustain or allow it. If questions should remain we would adjust them by the peaceful means of legislation, conference, courts, and votes, operating only in constitutional and lawful channels. Some certain, and other possible, questions are, and would be, beyond the Executive power to adjust; as, for instance, the admission of members into Congress, and whatever might require the appropriation of money. The Executive power itself would be greatly diminished by the cessation of actual war. Pardons and remissions of forfeitures, however, would still be within Executive control. In what spirit and temper this control would be exercised can be fairly judged of by the past.

A year ago general pardon and amnesty, upon specified terms, were offered to all, except certain designated classes; and it was at the same time made known that the excepted classes were still within contemplation of special clemency. During the year many availed themselves of the general provision, and many more would, only that the signs of bad faith in some led to such precautionary measures as rendered the practical process less easy and certain. During the same time, also, special pardons have been granted to individuals of the excepted classes, and no voluntary application has been denied. Thus, practically, the door has been, for a full year, open to all except such as were not in condition to make free choice—that is, such as were in custody or under constraint. It is still so open to all. But the time may come—probably will come—when public duty shall demand that it be closed, and that, in lieu, more rigorous measures than heretofore shall be adopted.

In presenting the abandonment of armed resistance to the national authority on the part of the insurgents as the only indispensable condition to ending the war on the part of the Government, I retract nothing heretofore said as to slavery. I repeat the declaration made a year ago, that "while I remain in my present position I shall not attempt to retract or modify the emancipation proclamation, nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation, or by any of the acts of Congress." If the people should, by whatever mode or means, make it an Executive duty to re-enslave such persons, another, and not I, must be their instrument to perform it.

In stating a single condition of peace, I mean simply to say that the war will cease on the part of the Government whenever it shall have ceased on the part of those who began it.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

SOURCES: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series III, Volume 4 (Serial No. 125), p. 972-82; Roy P. Basler, Editor, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 8, p. 136-52

Congressman Horace Mann, March 13, 1850

MARCH 13, 1850.

The hallucination that seizes the South on the subject of slavery, is, indeed, enough to excite our compassion; but an excuse of their conduct to themselves on this ground, would, perhaps, enrage them more than any thing else. I would be willing to offer them any pecuniary indemnity which they might desire. Indeed, I had thought of bringing forward some such idea in my speech; but I feared they would only scout it.

I do not think Mr. Webster can be honest in the views expressed in his speech. I would struggle against a belief in his treachery to the last minute; but this speech is in flagrant violation of all that he has ever said before.

You are in an error in supposing that the exclusion of slavery from the Territories will affect the growth of cotton or rice unfavorably. Slaves are in great demand now for the cotton and rice fields. No production of the Territories would come in competition with their great staples. It is a fear of losing the balance of power, as they call it; and no doubt, in some cases, a fear that this is only a beginning of a war upon slavery in the States themselves. On this latter point, they will not be pacified by any declarations made by the North. Then, again, on this subject they are not a reasoning people.

To recur to Mr. Webster again. He has said some things it was quite unnecessary to say, and some things not true. Look at his interpretation of the admission of Texas! The act was, as he has quoted in his speech, that four new States—no more might be formed from Texas: those south of 36° 30′ might be slave States, and those north must be free States. Now, he says we are bound to admit four slave States. But we are bound to admit only four in the whole. Why, then, admit all these four as slave States, and then others, that is, if we get the consent of Texas, as free States? No: we are to admit but four in the whole; and, as one or two of these are to be free, there must not be four slave. He therefore not only proposes to execute that ungodly bargain, but to give one or two slave States to the South as a gratuity.

So his offer to take the proceeds of the public lands to deport free blacks is of the greatest service to slavery. It is just what the South wants, to get rid of its free blacks. It would enhance the value and the security of the slave property so called. Had he proposed to give the proceeds of the lands to deport manumitted slaves, that would encourage manumission, and be of real service to humanity. Indeed, the more I think of the speech, the worse I think of it.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 295-6

Congressman Albert G. Brown’s Squatter Sovereignty Speech, February 12, 1850

SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FEBRUARY 12, 1850,

DISSENTING FROM CERTAIN VIEWS PRESENTED TO THE SENATE BY MR. CASS.

MR. BROWN said he would occupy a very few minutes, in presenting some views which he should have presented the other day, but for the expiration of his hour.

Having already taken his position against the President's recommendation of the California constitution, and having expressed his abhorrence of the whole series of movements, which led to its adoption by the people in that country, he should not further allude to the President or Cabinet in that connection.

A new character had presented himself, as one of the champions of this new and extraordinary political movement. He alluded to General Cass, the late Democratic candidate for the Presidency. That distinguished gentleman had redeemed his pledge, and the pledge of his friends, on the subject of the Wilmot proviso. He had spoken against it. He had expressed his determination not to vote for it. With this he was satisfied; he would go further, and say, that the speech, so far as it related to the proviso, challenged his admiration and excited his gratitude. It was replete with sound views, eloquently and happily expressed. And no one could read it attentively without conceding to its author great ability. If the distinguished gentleman had closed his speech with his argument against the proviso, there would not have been a man in all the country more willing than himself to award him the highest honors. But the speech was marred by the expression of opinions, in its closing paragraphs, to which he (Mr. B.) and the southern people generally would dissent. General Cass had (if Mr. B. correctly understood him) avowed his opinion to be, that the people of the territories have the right to exclude slavery; and he was understood to sustain the action of the people in California in forming a state government. Against all these parts of the speech of General Cass, he (Mr. B.) entered his solemn protest. He felt bound to do this, because in the late presidential canvass he had, as the friend of General Cass, given a different interpretation to his views, as foreshadowed in the Nicholson letter. True, he had not done this without some misgivings, at first, of its correctness. But gentlemen nearer the person of General Cass than himself had interpreted the Nicholson letter to mean, that when the people of a territory were duly authorized to form a state constitution, they could then admit or exclude slavery at will, and whether they did the one thing or the other was not a matter to be questioned by Congress. He now conceded, as he had done in the presidential canvass, that whenever a people duly authorized to form a state constitution, have exercised this authority and asked admission into the Union, it is not properly a subject of inquiry whether their constitution admits or excludes slavery from the proposed state. But he understood General Cass as going further than this—to the extent of giving to the people of the territories the right to exclude slavery during their territorial existence, and indeed before government of any sort had been established by Congress. He understood the doctrine as advanced by General Cass to be, that the occupants of the soil where no government existed -as in New Mexico, California, Deseret, &c.—had the right to exclude slavery; and against this doctrine he raised his humble voice; and though he might stand alone, without one other southern representative to sustain him, he would protest against it to the last.

In the late presidential canvass, men of all parties had assailed this doctrine. The Whigs charged General Cass with entertaining these views, and the Democrats had vindicated him against the charge. The doctrine was universally denounced by men of all parties in the South; and now we were startled with the intelligence that General Cass and General Taylor both approve it. For himself, no earthly consideration should keep him silent on such a question. No consideration personal to himself-no party ties nor political obligations, should seal his lips, when his country was about to be betrayed and sacrificed. He had denounced this doctrine before his constituents, he now denounced it before the House. He would not consume time, and prevent other gentlemen from speaking, by going into an argument on the subject. He had felt it due to his own position--to the cause of truth and justice, to make known at the first convenient moment, that what he condemned in General Taylor he equally condemned in General Cass; and having done this, he was satisfied.

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, p. 177-8

Congressman Horace Mann, February 14, 1850

FEB. 14.

You ejaculate a prayer for my protection. I do not feel in any personal danger. I mean to tell them what I think, and in such a way that they shall understand me. But I am principled against doing it offensively.

If Mr. Clay had demanded immunity for slavery in the States and in the District only, he would have demanded nothing more than the South claims as absolute right; and so it would, in their eyes, have wanted the reciprocity of a compromise. Nobody but the abolitionists of the Garrison school pretends to interfere with slavery in the States; and non-interference with slavery in the District, now only fifty square miles, would have seemed to them paltry. I think, regarding the thing as a compromise, Mr. Clay has done pretty well. But I do not concede their right to carry slavery into the Territories at all; and therefore I will never yield to their claim to carry it there, come what will. I should prefer dissolution even, terrible as it would be, to slavery extension.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 289

Congressman Horace Mann, March 10, 1850

March 10.

I have read Mr. Webster's speech carefully. It has all the marks of his mind, clearness of style, weight of statement, power of language; but nothing can, to my mind, atone for the abandonment of the Territories to what he calls the law of Nature for the exclusion of slavery. When so much of Delaware, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, lies far north of a great part of New Mexico, how can a man say that a law of Nature will keep slavery out of the latter, when it has not kept it out of the former? The existence or non-existence of slavery depends more upon conscience than climate. Why should all the South be so anxious to pass this law, if Nature has already passed one? Who knows but mines may yet be discovered in New Mexico?— and mining is the very kind of labor on which slaves can be most profitably employed.

I wish I had not made my speech. I should like to take up these topics, and set forth what seems to be the merit or the demerit of them. There is a very strong feeling here that Mr. Webster has played false to the North. Many of our men will speak, and we shall have an exhibition of Northern feeling yet.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 288

Charles Sumner to Lord Morpeth, May 21, 1850

The same steamer that takes this note will carry our friend Prescott to see and enjoy English life. In long gossips together, recently, we have talked much of you, on whose friendship he counts. Our politics are full of vile. The question of opposing the extension of slavery into territories now free should have united all the North, and I would say the South, too. But one politician after another has given way to slaveholding urgency, until at last Daniel Webster gave way. His intellect is mighty, but “unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.” His excuse for waiving a prohibition of slavery in the new territories is that by a law of “physical geography,” of “the formation of the earth,” slavery cannot go there, thus arguing blindly from physical premises to moral conclusions. In his recent course he shows the same obliquity, amounting to incapacity for moral distinctions, which led him to tell me, two or three years ago, that on deliberately reviewing his correspondence with Lord Ashburton, among all those documents he was best satisfied with the Creole letter.¹ I wanted to tell him, “That letter, dying, you will wish to blot.”

_______________

¹ Ante, vol. ii. pp. 193, 194, 205.

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 214-5

Charles Sumner to John Bigelow, of the New York Evening Post, May 22, 1850

Only a week ago, in overhauling old pamphlets, a part of my patrimony, I found the actual memorial to Congress¹ reported by the committee of which Mr. Webster was chairman, and I determined to send it to you, on reading your article this morning. I have also examined the files of Boston papers at the Athenæum, and enclose a memorandum from them which may be interesting. The memorial is reputed to be the work of Mr. Webster. The close is marked by his clear and cogent statement. Why it was not preserved in the collection of his “Opera,” which was first published ten or fifteen years later, I know not. Perhaps he had already seen that he might be obliged, in the pursuit of his ambition, to tread some steps backward, and did not wish to have a document like this, accessible to all, in perpetual memory of his early professions. If you follow him up on this point, read in this connection the latter part of his Plymouth address, the earliest of his orations in the published volume. At this time he seemed to have high purposes. I wonder that the noble passage about the Ordinance, in his first speech in the Hayne controversy, has not been used against his present tergiversation. There is another document which might be used effectively against him, the address of the Massachusetts Anti-Texas State convention in January, 1845, the first half of which was actually composed by Mr. Webster, partly written and partly dictated. In this he takes the strongest ground against the constitutionality of the resolutions of annexation. Then followed his speech, Dec. 22, 1845, in the Senate, against the admission of Texas with a slaveholding constitution. If the faith of the country was pledged, as he now says it was, by these resolutions when they were accepted by Texas, he was obliged, according to his present argument about the four States, to vote for her admission with or without slavery; but his vote stands nay. But it would be a long work to expose his shiftless course,— “everything by starts, and nothing long.” Mr. Leavitt, of the “Independent,” talks of taking him in hand, and exposing the double-dealings of his life. I wish he might do it through the “Post.” When you have done with the pamphlet, please return it. Of the committee who reported it were George Blake, now dead, who was a leading Republican; Josiah Quincy, Federalist, late President of Harvard College; James T. Austin, Republican, late Attorney-General of Massachusetts; and John Gallison, a lawyer, who died soon after, but of whom there are most grateful traditions in the profession, admired particularly the article on Webster, written shortly after the speech. It must have been done by Mr. Dix.² Aut Erasmus aut Diabolus. I cannot forbear expressing the sincere delight with which I read your paper. Its politics have such a temper from literature that they fascinate as well as convince.

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¹ of the citizens of Boston in 1819 in favor of the prohibition of slavery in territories and new States. Sumner's letter was the basis of a leader by Mr. Bigelow in the New York "Evening Post," May 23, 1850.

² John A. Dix. Sumner was probably at fault in this conjecture.

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 215-6

Senator John C. Calhoun to Senator Herschel V. Johnson,* November 1, 1849

Fort Hill 1st Nov. 1849.

MY DEAR SIR, The enclosed is a speech of Mr Meade¹ to his constituents, on the slavery question.

It is able and bold, and I send it as evidence of the increasing spirit of the old dominion on that vital question. Coming from the quarter it does it may contribute something to merge party feelings with you and rouse the spirit of your legislature.

I do trust your state will back the Mississippi movement. If they should and the other southern states should follow, I feel assured it would do more than anything else to bring the question to a speedy issue. It cannot be made too soon for us, but I have written you so fully on the subject that to add more would be little else than to repeat what I have already written.

With best regards to Mrs. J.

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* Text derived from a copy furnished by Mr. Fred M. Steele, of Chicago, the owner of the original. Herschel V. Johnson, judge of the superior court of Georgia, was afterwards governor of that State, candidate for Vice-President on the Douglas ticket in 1860, and a Confederate senator.

¹ Richard Kidder Meade, of Virginia, Member of Congress, 1847-1853. Speech of R. K. Meade on Restricting Slavery in the Territories, August, 1849, pp. 13.

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. 773

Congressman Albert G. Brown’s Speech in the House of Representatives, on Slavery, and on the action of the Administration in relation to California and New Mexico, January 30, 1850

GENTLEMEN say they deprecate discussion on the subject of slavery. My judgment approves it. We have gone too far to recede without an adjustment of our difficulties. Better far that this agitation should never have commenced. But when wrong has been perpetrated on one side and resented on the other, an adjustment in some form is indispensable. It is better so than to leave the thorn of discord thus planted, to rankle and fester, and finally to produce a never-healing sore. We need attempt no such useless task as that of disguising from ourselves, our constituents, and in truth the world at large, that ill blood has been engendered, that we are losing our mutual attachment, that we are daily becoming more and more estranged, that the fibres of the great cord which unites us as one people are giving way, and that we are fast verging to ultimate and final disruption. I hold no communion with the spurious patriotism which closes its eyes to the dangers which visit us, and with a loud voice, sing hosannas to the Union; such patriotism will not save the Union, it is destructive of the Union. Open wide your eyes and look these dangers full in the face, and with strong arms and stout hearts assault them, vanquish them, and on the field of your triumph erect an altar sacred to the cause of liberty, and on that altar offer as a willing sacrifice this accursed demon of discord. Do this, and we are safe; refuse, and these dangers will thicken, these misty elements will grow darker and blacker as days roll on. The storm which now lingers will burst, and the genius of dissolution will preside where the Union now is.

I am for discussion, for an interchange of sentiments. Let there be no wrangling about small grievances, but with an elevated patriotism—a patriotism high as our noble mountains, and broad as the Union itself—let us come to the consideration of the difficulties and dangers which beset us.

In all matters of dispute it is important to consider who committed the first wrong; until this is done, no satisfactory basis of an adjustment can be established.

The Union is divided in sentiment upon a great question, by a geographical line. The North is opposed to slavery, and the South is in favor of it. The North is for abolishing it, the South is for maintaining it. The North is for confining it within it in its present limits, where they fancy it will languish, and languishing, will die. The South is for leaving it unrestrained to go wherever (within our limits) it may be invited by soil, climate, and population. These issues and their necessary incidents have brought the two ends of the Union into their present perilous position—a position from which one or the other must recede, or a conflict, dangerous to liberty and fatal to the Union, will certainly ensue.

Who is at fault, or rather who was first in fault in this fraternal quarrel? We were the owners of slaves; we bought them from your fathers. We never sought to make slaveholders of you, nor to force slavery upon you. When you emancipated the remnant of your slaves, we did not interpose. Content to enjoy the fruits of our industry at home, within our own limits, we never sought to intrude upon your domestic quiet. Not so with you. For twenty years or more, you have not ceased to disturb our peace. We have appealed in vain to your forbearance. Not only have you disregarded these appeals, but every appeal has been followed by some new act of outrage and aggression. We have in vain pointed to our domicils, and begged that you would respect the feelings of their inmates. You have threatened them with conflagration. When we have pointed to our wives and our sleeping infants, and in their names besought your forbearance, you have spurned our entreaties and mocked the fears of these sacred pledges of our love. Long years of outrage upon our feelings and disregard of our rights have awakened in every southern heart a feeling of stern resistance. Think what you will, say what you will, perpetrate again and again if you will, these acts of lawless tyranny; the day and the hour is at hand when every southern son will rise in rebellion, when every tongue will say, Give us justice or give us death.

I repeat, we have never sought to disturb your quiet. We have forborne to retaliate your wrongs. Content to await a returning sense of justice, we have submitted. That sense of justice, we fear, never will return, and submission is no longer a virtue. We owe it to you, to ourselves, to our common country, to the friends of freedom throughout the world, to warn you that we intend to submit no longer.

Gentlemen tell us they do not believe the South is in earnest. They believe we will still submit. Let me warn them to put away that delusion. It is fatal to the cause of peace. If the North embrace it the Union is gone. It is treason to encourage a hope of submission. Tell the truth, speak out boldly, go home and tell your people the issue is made up; they must now choose between non-interference with southern rights on the one side, and a dissolution of the Union on the other. Tell them the South asks nothing from their bounty, but only asks their forbearance.

The specious arguments by which you cover up your unauthorized attempts to drive us from the territories may deceive the unwary, but an enlightened public sentiment will not fail to detect its fallacy, and posterity will award you the credit of destroying the Union in a lawless effort to seize the spoils of a victory won by other hearts and hands than yours. Territory now free must remain free, say you. Who gave you the right to speak thus oracularly? Is this an acquisition of your own, or is it a thing obtained by the joint effort of us all? I have been told that the United States acquired the territory from Mexico, and that the Congress, speaking for the United States, must dispose of it. Technically speaking, the United States did make the acquisition; but what is the United States? a mere agent for the states, holding for them certain political powers in trust, to be exercised for their mutual benefit, and among these is the power to declare war and make peace. In the exercise of these powers the territory was acquired, and for whom? Not certainly for the agent, but for the principal. Not for the United States, but the states.

Who fought the battles, who won the victories which resulted in the acquisition? The people of the United States? Certainly not. There is no such thing as the people of the United States. They can perform no act—have in fact no political existence. Do the people of the United States elect this Congress? No; we are elected by states—most of us by districts in states. The states elect senators, and the President is himself elected by state electoral colleges, and not by the people of the United States. There is no such political body as the people of the United States; they can do nothing, have done nothing, have in fact no existence. When the war with Mexico began, on whom did the President call? Not, certainly, on the people of the United States, but on the people of the states by states, and by states they responded, by states they made their contributions to the grand army; and whatever was acquired, was of necessity acquired for the states, each having an equal interest; and the United States, as agent, trustee, or general repository of the common fund, is bound to do equal and exact justice to all the parties interested.

The army was created and supported by thirty sovereignties allied together. These sovereignties acted through a common head for the common defence and general welfare of all. But it does not follow that such head may rightfully appropriate the award of the conflict to fifteen of the allies, leaving nothing to the remaining fifteen. Sovereigns are equal; there is no such thing as great or small sovereigns, or, to speak more correctly, sovereigns of great and small degree. They are equals, except when by conventional agreement that equality is destroyed. No such agreement has been made between the sovereigns composing our confederacy. Hence, Delaware is equal to New York, and the fifteen southern states are equal to the fifteen northern states. It follows that the fifteen sovereignties of the North cannot exclude the fifteen sovereignties of the South from an equal participation in, and control over, the joint acquisition or property of all. Nor can the common agent, the United States, hearken to the voice of the fifteen northern in preference to those of the fifteen southern allies. So long as one of the sovereigns in alliance protests against a common disposition of what belongs to all and to each one in an equal degree, no disposition can be rightfully made. The strong may take by force from the weak, but in such case power gives the right. The North may take from the South in this way, unless perchance it should turn out in the course of the conflict that the South is the stronger party, in which case it would be our right to take from you.

Without pursuing this course of reasoning, unprofitable as I feel it must be, I come at once to the conclusion, that we of Mississippi have the same right to go into the territories with our slave property as you of New York have to go there with your personal estate of whatever kind. And if you deny us this right, we will resist your authority, and to the last extremity. You affect to think us not in earnest in this declaration. Look at the attitude of the South; hear her voice as it comes up from her bench, her bar, her legislative halls, and, above all, from her people. Sir, there is not a hamlet in the South from which you will not hear the voice of stern resistance to your lawless mandate. Our men will write it on their shields, our women will teach little children to lisp it with their earliest breath. I invoke your forbearance on this question. Ask yourselves if it is right to exasperate eight millions of people upon an abstraction; a matter to us of substance and of life, but to you the merest shadow of an abstraction. Is it likely, let me ask, that the Union can survive the shock which must ensue if you drive eight millions of people to madness and desperation? Look, sir, to the position of Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and the glorious old state of South Carolina; listen to the warning voice of these, and all the Southern States, as they come to us upon every breeze that sweeps from the South, and tell me if we are not sporting above a volcano. Oh! gentlemen, pause, I beseech you, in this mad career. The South cannot, will not, DARE not submit to your demand. The consequences to her are terrible beyond description; to you forbearance would be a virtue—virtue adorned with love, truth, justice, and patriotism. To some men I can make no appeal. I appeal not to the gentleman from Ohio. He, like Peter the Hermit, feels himself under some religious obligation to lead on this crusade. I make no appeal to the putative father of the Wilmot proviso; like Ephraim, he is joined to his idols—I will let him alone. But to sound men, to patriotic and just men, I do make a solemn appeal that they array themselves on the side of the Constitution, and save the Union. When the fatal step is taken it will be too late to repent the folly of this hour. When the deed is done, and the fatal consequences have fallen upon us, it will be vain, idle, worse than folly to deprecate the evil councils which now prevail. Now, now is the time for good men to do their duty. Let those who desire to save the Constitution and the Union come out from among the wicked and array themselves on the side of justice. And here in this hall, erected by our fathers and dedicated to liberty and law, we will make new vows, enter into new covenants to stand together and fight the demon of discord until death shall summon us to another and better world.

You think that slavery is a great evil. Very well, think so; but keep your thoughts to yourselves. If it be an evil, it is our evil; if it be a curse, it is our curse. We are not seeking to force it upon you; we intend to keep it ourselves. If you do not wish to come in contact with this crying evil, stay where you are, it will never pursue you.

For myself, I regard slavery as a great moral, social, political, and religious blessing—a blessing to the slave, and a blessing to the master. This is my opinion. I do not seek to propagate it. It does not concern me whether you think so or not. I have seen more of slavery than you, know more about it; and my opinions are, I think, worth more than yours. Slavery, African slavery, was, as I religiously believe, planted in this country through the providence of God; and he, in his own good time, will take it away. Civilization dawned in Africa. The Christian religion was preached to the African race before its votaries carried it to other lands. Africa had the glad tidings of the Saviour long before his divine mission was revealed to us. And where is she now? Centuries have passed away, and all traces of Christianity, every vestige of civilization, have departed from that degraded and benighted land—a race of cannibals, roasting, eating men as we do swine and cattle. Resisting with fire and sword all efforts of Christian ministers to lift them from the deep degradation, they perseveringly worship idols and graven images, and run continually after false gods. Look at the condition of this people, and contrast it with the worst condition of the same race in this country, and tell me if the eye of fancy, in its utmost stretch, can measure the elevation at which the Southern slave stands above the African in his native jungle? And yet philanthropy, double distilled, extra refined philanthropy, bewails in piteous accents the fallen condition of the poor slave. The negro race in the South have been civilized; many of them evangelized. Some are pure Christians; all have been improved in their moral, social, and religious condition. And who shall undertake to say it was not within the providence of their Creator to transplant them to our soil for wise, beneficent, and holy purposes?

It is no part of my purpose to discuss this proposition. The subject, in this view of it, belongs rather to the pulpit than to the halls of legislation.

It may seem to those not familiar with the state of public sentiment North and South, and the dangerous issues to which it is conducting us, out of time and out of place for us to discuss the value of the Union. I am not afraid of the consequences of such a discussion. It is a discussion not to be coveted, but one which the times and tempers of men have forced upon us. It is useless to deny that the Union is in danger. To discuss its value is to ascertain its worth. When we shall have done this, we can better decide how great a sacrifice we can afford to make to secure its perpetuity.

We of the South have ever been the fast friends of the Union. We have been so from an earnest attachment to its founders, and from a feeling of elevated patriotism, a patriotism which rises above all grovelling thoughts, and entwines itself about our country, and our whole country. We have made, and are now making day by day, greater sacrifices to uphold and maintain the Union in all its purity and dignity, than all the other parts of the country. Drop for a moment the sacrifice of feeling; forget the galling insults you are habitually heaping upon us, and let us look to other sacrifices. We export annually, in rice, cotton, and tobacco, the peculiar products of our soil, more than seventy-five millions of dollars in value. Your whole national exports do but a little exceed one hundred and forty millions of dollars. These articles of southern export are the support of your immense carrying trade, and of all your flourishing and profitable commerce; and these do not include the sugar of Louisiana, Texas, and Florida, nor do I estimate the cotton, rice, and tobacco consumed in the United States. If all these were embraced, our exports could not fall short of one hundred and twenty millions of dollars. I need not add, that as a separate, independent confederacy we should have the heaviest agricultural export of any people on the face of the earth; and that our wealth would in a short time be commensurate with our immense exports, no reasonable man can doubt. In the Union, our exports become the common trading fund of the nation, and the profits go into the general coffers. We know all this; and more, we know how much we contribute to the support of the Government, and we know too how little we get back. It gives me no pleasure to discuss questions like this, but a solemn duty I will not forego, from any mawkish, sentimental devotion to the Union. It is right that we fully understand one another. You think the South is not in earnest. Now, this opinion is based upon one of two hypotheses, either that we are too much devoted to the Union to run the hazard of its dissolution by a manly vindication of our rights; or else that we are afraid to encounter the perils of a dissolution. That we have loved the Union is most true. That our affections entwine themselves about it, and are reluctant to give it up, is also true. But our affection is no ordinary plant. Nourish it, and it will grow in the poorest soil. Neglect it, or trample upon it, and it will perish in the richest fields. I will not recount the story of our wrongs. I but ask you, can such wrongs ever be the handmaids of love, of that mutual and earnest, devoted love, which stood godfather when the infant Union was baptized, and without whose fostering care it cannot, will not, must not survive? Throw an impartial eye over the history of the last twenty years, and answer me if there is anything there which challenges our devotion? Who does not know that time after time we have turned away in sorrow from your oppressions, and yet have come back clinging to the Union, and proclaiming that "with all her faults we loved her still." And you expect us to do so now again and again; you expect us to return, and, on bended knees, crave your forbearance. No, you do not; you cannot think so meanly of us. There is nothing in our past history which justifies the conclusion that we will thus abase ourselves. You know how much a high-toned people ought to bear; and you know full well that we have borne to the last extremity. You know that we ought not to submit any longer. There is not a man of lofty soul among you all, who in his secret heart does not feel that we ought not to submit. If you fancy that our devotion to the Union will keep us in the Union, you are mistaken. Our love for the Union ceases with the justice of the Union. We cannot love oppression, nor hug tyranny to our bosoms.

Have we any reason to fear a dissolution of the Union? Look at the question dispassionately, and answer to yourselves the important inquiry, Can anything be expected from the fears of the southern people? Do not deceive yourselves—look at things as they really are. For myself, I can say with a clear conscience, we do not fear it; we are not appalled at the prospect before us; we deprecate disunion, but we do not fear it; we know our position too well for that. Whilst you have been heaping outrage upon outrage, adding insult to insult, our people have been calmly calculating the value of the Union. The question has been considered in all its bearings, and our minds are made up. The point has been designated beyond which we will not submit. We will not, because submission beyond that point involves consequences to us more terrible than disunion. It involves the fearful consequences of sectional degradation. We have not been slow in manifesting our devotion to the Union. In all our national conflicts we have obeyed the dictates of duty, the behests of patriotism. Our money has gone freely. The lives of our people have been freely given up. Their blood has washed many a blot from the national escutcheon. We have loved the Union, and we love it yet; but not for this, or a thousand such Unions, will we suffer dishonor at your hands.

I tell you candidly, we have calculated the value of the Union. Your injustice has driven us to it. Your oppression justifies me to-day in discussing the value of the Union, and I do so freely and fearlessly. Your press, your people, and your pulpit, may denounce this as treason; be it so. You may sing hosannas to the Union—it is well. British lords called it treason in our fathers when they resisted British tyranny. British orators were eloquent in their eulogiums on the British crown[.] Our fathers felt the oppression, they saw the hand that aimed the blow, and they resolved to resist. The result is before the world. We will resist, and trust to God and our own stout hearts for the consequences.

The South afraid of dissolving the Union?—why should we fear? What is there to alarm us or awaken our apprehensions? Are we not able to maintain ourselves? Shall eight millions of freemen, with more than one hundred millions of annual exports, fear to take their position among the nations of the earth? With our cotton, sugar, rice, and tobacco, products of a southern soil, yielding us annually more than a hundred millions of dollars, need we fear the frowns of the world? You tell us all the world is against us on the slavery question. We know more of this than you; fanaticism in the Old World, like fanaticism at home, assails our domestic relations, but we know how much British commerce and British labor depend for subsistence on our cotton, to feel at all startled by your threats of British power. Massachusetts looms will yield a smaller profit, and British looms will stop when you stop the supply of southern cotton. When the looms stop, labor will stop, ships will stop, commerce will stop, bread will stop. Build yourselves no castles in the air. Picture to your minds no such halcyon visions as that Great Britain will meddle with our slaves. She made an experiment in the West Indies in freeing negroes. It cost her one hundred millions of pounds sterling, and crippled her commerce to more than three times that amount, and now her emancipated blacks are relapsing into a state of barbarism. By the united verdict of every British statesman the experiment was a signal failure, injurious to the negro and detrimental to the kingdom. England will not interfere with southern slaves. Our cotton bags are our bonds of peace.

Have we anything to fear from you in the event of dissolution? A little gasconade, and sometimes a threat or two, altogether out of place on so grave an issue as this, are resorted to on your part. As to there being any conflict of arms growing out of a dissolution, I have not thought it at all probable. You complain of your association with slaves in the Union. We propose to take them out of the Union—to dissolve the unpleasant association. Will you seek a battle-field to renew, amid blood and carnage, this loathsome association? I take it for granted that you will not. But if you should, we point you to the record of the past, and warn you, by its blood-stained pages, that we shall be ready to meet you. When you leave your homes in New England, or in the great West, on this mission of love—this crusade against the South; when you come to take slavery to your bosoms, and to subdue eight millions of southern people, I warn you to make all things ready. Kiss your wives, bid your children a long farewell, make peace with your God; for I warn you that you may never return.

I repeat, we deprecate disunion. Devoted to the Constitution—reverencing the Union—holding in sacred remembrance the names, the deeds, and the glories of our common and illustrious ancestry—there is no ordinary ill to which we would not bow sooner than dissolve the political association of these states. If there was any point short of absolute ruin to ourselves and desolation to our country, at which these aggressive measures would certainly stop, we would say at once, go to that point and give us peace. But we know full well, that when all is obtained that you now ask, the cormorant appetite for power and plunder will not be satisfied. The tiger may be driven from his prey, but when once he dips his tongue in blood, he will not relinquish his victim without a struggle.

I warn gentlemen, if they persist in their present course of policy, that the sin of disunion is on their heads—not ours. If a man assaults me, and I strike in self-defence, I am no violator of the public peace. If one attacks me with such fury as to jeopardize my life, and I slay him in the conflict, I am no murderer. If you attempt to force upon us sectional desolation and—what to us is infinitely worse—sectional degradation, we will resist you; and if in the conflict of resistance the Union is dissolved, we are not responsible. If any man charges me with harboring sentiments of disunion, he is greatly mistaken. If he says that I prefer disunion to sectional and social degradation, he does me no more than justice.

Does any man desire to know at what time and for what cause I would dissolve the Union, I will tell him: At the first moment after you consummate your first act of aggression upon slave property, I would declare the Union dissolved; and for this reason: such an act, perpetrated after the warning we have given you, would evince a settled purpose to interpose your authority in the management of our domestic affairs, thug degrading us from our rightful position as equals to a state of dependence and subordination. Do not mistake me; I do not say that such an act would, per se, justify disunion; I do not say that our exclusion from the territories would alone justify it; I do not say that the destruction of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, nor even its abolition here, nor yet the prohibition of the slave trade among the states, would justify it. It may be, that not one, nor two, nor all of these combined would justify disunion. These are but the initiative steps—they lead you on to the mastery over us, and you shall not take these steps. The man must have studied the history of our revolt against the power of Britain to but little purpose who supposes that the throwing a few boxes of tea into the water in Boston harbor produced, or had any material influence in producing, the mighty conflict of arms which ensued. Does any man suppose that the stamp act and its kindred measures produced the revolution? They produced a solemn conviction on the minds of our fathers that Britain was determined to oppress and degrade the colonies. This conviction prepared a heroic people for resistance; and the otherwise trivial incident of throwing the tea overboard supplied the occasion for manifesting that state of public sentiment. I warn gentlemen by the history of these transactions, not to outrage the patience of a patriotic people, nor yet, like the British king and parliament, to spurn our entreaties, and turn a deaf ear to our prayers for justice.

Before the first fatal step is taken, remember that we have interests involved which we cannot relinquish; rights which it were better to die with than live without. The direct pecuniary interest involved in this issue is not less than twenty hundred millions of dollars, and yet the loss of this will be the least of the calamities which you are entailing upon us. Our country is to be made desolate. We are to be driven from our homes—the homes hallowed by all the sacred associations of family and friends. We are to be sent, like a people accursed of God, to wander through the land, homeless, houseless, and friendless; or, what is ten thousand times worse than these, than all, remain in a country now prosperous and happy, and see ourselves, our wives and children, degraded to a social position with the black race. These, these are the frightful, terrible consequences you would entail upon us. Picture to yourselves Hungary, resisting the powers of Austria and Russia; and if Hungary, which had never tasted liberty, could make such stout resistance, what may you not anticipate from eight millions of southrons made desperate by your aggression? I tell you, sir, sooner than submit we would dissolve a thousand such unions as this. Sooner than allow our slaves to become our masters, we would lay waste our country with fire and sword, and with our broken spears dig for ourselves honorable graves.

You tell us, sir, there is no intention of pushing us to extremities like these. I do not doubt the sincerity of gentlemen who make this avowal. If there was fixedness in their positions I would believe them, I would trust them. If members of Congress were to the political what stars are to the planetary system, I would take their solemn—and, I hope, sincere—declarations, and be satisfied. I should feel secure. But a few days, a brief space, and you will pass away, and your places will be filled by men more hostile than you, as you are more hostile than your predecessors, and the next who come after your successors will be more hostile than they. Look to the Senate—the conservative branch of the government. Already there are senators from the mighty states of New York and Ohio, who repudiate the Constitution. One [Mr. Chase, of Ohio] says the Constitution is a nullity as regards slavery, and another [Mr. Seward, of New York] declares that slavery can and will be abolished, and that you and he will do it. He tells us how this to be done. He, too, repudiates the constitutional obligation, and says that slavery rests for its security on public sentiment, and that public sentiment must and will destroy it. These are fearful declarations, coming from that quarter. They evince a settled purpose to pursue these aggressive movements to the last terrible extremity; and yet, sir, we are asked to fold our arms and listen to the syren song that all your ills will soon be o'er.

And now, Mr. Chairman, before the sands of my brief hour have quite run out, let me turn for a moment to the late recent and extraordinary movements in the territory of California,—movements fraught with incalculable mischief, and, if not arrested, destined to entail calamities the most terrible upon this country. I am told that the late administration is in some degree responsible for these movements. I know not if this be true. I hope it is not. Indeed, I have authority for saying it is not. Certainly no evidence has been advanced that the statement is true. But I care not who prompted the anomalous state of things now existing in California. At whatever time, and by whomsoever done, it has been without precedent, against the voice of the people's representatives, in derogation of the Constitution of the United States, and intended to rob the Southern States of their just and rightful possessions. Viewing the transaction in this light, and without stopping to inquire whose it was, I denounce it as unwise, unpatriotic, sectional in its tendencies, insulting to the South, and in the last degree despicable.

Twelve short months ago it was thought necessary to invoke the authority of Congress for the people of California to form a state constitution. The present Secretary of the Navy, then a member of this House, did, on the 7th day of February, 1849, introduce a bill for that purpose. The first section declared "that the Congress doth consent that a new state may be erected out of the territory ceded to the United States," &c. (See Congressional Globe, 2 Sess. 30 Con. p. 477.)

Whether the honorable Secretary, as a member of the cabinet, advised and consented to the late extraordinary proceedings in California, I pretend not to know. I do know that he bitterly inveighed against General Cass, in 1848, for a supposed intimation that the people of the territories might settle the slavery question for themselves, and chiefly on the ground that it was a monstrous outrage to allow aliens and foreigners to snatch from the South territory won by the valor of her troops. I know that he introduced the bill to which I have adverted, and urged its passage in a speech which was said to have given him his position in the cabinet. He certainly thought at that time, that the consent of Congress was necessary to the formation of a state government in California. The bill itself, to say nothing of the speech, assigned one pregnant reason for this thought, for by its second section it declared "that the foregoing consent is given upon the following reservations and conditions: First, that the United States hereby unconditionally reserves to the federal government all right of property in the public lands."

It was then thought a matter of some moment to reserve to the parties in interest, their right of property in the soil. But the progressive spirit of the President and cabinet has gone far beyond such idle whims, and "the introduction of California into the Union as a sovereign state is earnestly recommended," without reservation of any kind, save alone that her constitution shall conform to the Constitution of the United States. If any one here knows the secrets of the cabinet councils, he can best inform us whether Mr. Secretary Preston thought it worth his while to intimate to the President and his associates that the formation of an independent government in California would of necessity vest in such government the right of property in the soil, and that her incorporation into the Union without reservation, would be to surrender the right of eminent domain. It would disclose an interesting piece of cabinet history to ascertain whether so trivial a matter ever engrossed the thoughts of that most august body-the President and his constitutional advisers.

It is amusing to see with how much cunning the author of the late special message endeavors to divide the responsibility of this nefarious proceeding with the late administration. Several times in the message it is broadly hinted that President Polk took the initiative in this business. This may be so. I have seen no evidence of it, and do not believe it; but whether true or false, it does not render the transaction less odious or more worthy of support. The President himself seems to think it too much for one administration to bear, and, therefore, strives to divide its responsibility with his distinguished Democratic predecessor. I commend his discretion, more than his generosity. It is discreet in him to shake off as much of the odium of this thing as possible. If it had been a worthy action, I doubt if he would not have appropriated the honors of it entirely to himself.

The President sees, as well as you or I, that there is a fearful accountability ahead, and he cries out in time, "Polk was to blame—I only followed up what he began." I would to God he were as willing to carry out all of Polk's unfinished plans.

Is there nothing wrong, let me ask the friends of the President, in this thing of the Executive of his own volition, and upon his own responsibility—establishing a state government over the territory of the United States, and that too after Congress had been invoked and had refused her consent to the establishment of such a government? I have seen the time when if this thing had been done, the nation would have reverberated with the eloquent burst of patriotic indignation from gentlemen on the other side. General Jackson was charged with taking the responsibility, but he never assumed responsibility like this.

The manner of doing this thing is still more extraordinary than the thing itself. General Riley, a military commander, charged with the execution of certain necessary civil functions, is made the man of power in this business. That officer, on the 3d day of June, 1849, issued his proclamation, a paper at once novel and bold. His object is to make a new state, and he commences thus:

"Congress having failed at its recent session to provide a new government for this country, the undersigned would call attention to the means which he deems best," &c., &c.

Yes, sir, there it is. Congress having failed to give government to California, General Riley notifies the inhabitants that he has taken matters into his own hands; that he will give them a government, and that HE will authorize them to make a state for themselves. He does this, too, because Congress had refused.

I must do General Riley the justice to say he is not wholly an usurper in this business. He declares to the world in this same proclamation (a document by the way drawn up with acumen and legal precision), that the course indicated by him "is advised by the President and the Secretaries of State and of War," and he (General Riley) solemnly affirms that his acts are "fully authorized by law." I hope the General did not understand that Mr. Secretary Preston's bill was the law that "fully authorized" his acts. There might be a difficulty in sustaining the opinion on that basis, inasmuch as the bill did not pass Congress.

There are stranger things than these in this Riley proclamation "advised by the President, and Secretaries Clayton and Crawford." The General not only sets forth circumstantially what is to be done, but he designates the persons who are to do the things which he bids to be done. Hear him:

"Every free male citizen of the United States and of Upper California, 21 years of age, will be entitled to the right of suffrage. All citizens of Lower California who have been forced to come into this territory on account of having rendered assistance to the American troops during the recent war with Mexico, should also be allowed to vote in the district where they actually reside," &c.

Now, sir, I humbly ask who gave the President and his cabinet the right to "advise" this military commander by one sweeping proclamation to admit the "free male citizens of Upper California," and "ALL the citizens of Lower California," (then in the country, under certain circumstances,) to the right of voting? In so important a matter as forming a state constitution, which was to affect important interests within the territory, and still more important interests without the territory, it would have been at least respectful to his southern constituents, if the President had confined the voting to white people; but all free males of Upper California, and ALL from Lower California, whether bond or free, were fully authorized to vote. Shame, shame upon the man who, in the midst of our struggles for blood-bought rights, thus coolly submits them to the arbitrament of such a people.

I have been speaking of what the President expressly authorized. He, by his agent, General Riley, in terms, authorized these people of whom I have been speaking to vote. They did vote; they were voted for; some of them had seats in the so-called California Convention. But the gross wrong—the palpable outrage—did not stop here. We all know the President knows that everybody voted. The whole heterogeneous mass of Mexicans, and foreign adventurers, and interlopers voted; and yet, the President, without one word of comment or caution touching these strange events, calmly recommends the progeny of this strange convention to the favorable consideration of Congress. If I had not ceased to be amazed at the conduct of the present President of the United States, I should indeed wonder what singular infatuation had possessed the old man's brain when he made that recommendation. Can it be that he has not read the treaty with Mexico, or the laws of his own country on the subject of naturalizing foreigners, that he thus recommends the admission of a state into the Union, with a constitution formed mainly by persons who were strangers to our laws, and who, by our laws and by the treaty, were not citizens, and consequently had no right of suffrage? Look you, sir, to the treaty with Mexico. In its 8th article it is declared: "That Mexicans who shall prefer to remain in the territory may either retain the rights and title of Mexican citizens or acquire those of citizens of the United States." They shall make their election in one year after the treaty is ratified. "And those who shall remain in the territory after the expiration of that year without having declared their intention to retain the character of Mexicans, shall be considered to have ELECTED to become citizens of the United States."

Mexicans remaining in the territory after twelve months "shall be considered to have elected to become citizens of the United States;" but who shall make them citizens? This question is fully answered by the ninth article of this treaty. We have seen that Mexicans may acquire the rights of citizens of the United States, and that under certain circumstances they are deemed to have elected to become citizens, &c. Read the ninth article of the treaty: "Mexicans who, in the territories aforesaid, shall not preserve the character of citizens of the Mexican Republic, conformably with what is stipulated in the preceding article, shall be incorporated into the Union of the United States, and be ADMITTED at the proper time (to be judged of by the Congress of the United States) to the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the United States according to the principles of the Constitution."

Here we have it. They are "to be incorporated into the Union, and be admitted at the proper time, to be judged of by Congress, to the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the United States." Where did the President get his authority to dispense with these articles, these solemn stipulations of the treaty? By what right does he extend to these people that dearest privilege of an American freeman, the right of suffrage? By what authority does he confer the power to hold office, to sit in a convention, and to trample under foot the rights of the southern people? The late Administration had something to do with making this treaty, and they provided that these people, at a proper time, to be judged of by Congress, should enjoy all these rights. Congress has not judged in the matter. Congress has done nothing. Congress has refused to act, and the President tells these people to vote, to accept office, to make a state constitution, to elect governors, secretaries, auditors, members of Congress, &c., &c. And when they have done as he bid them, he "earnestly recommends their acts to the favorable consideration of Congress." And this is the President who was going to act according to the laws and the Constitution, and abstain from all interference with the duties of Congress. O tempora! O mores!

[Here the hammer fell, and Mr. BROWN gave notice that he would append the unfinished remarks to his printed speech.]

The present President of the United States delights in doing in all things like Washington. In his annual message he alludes no less than three times, with evident self-complacency, to supposed similitudes between his acts and those of the illustrious Father of his Country.

In the earlier history of the republic, and in the time of Washington's presidency, a case bearing close resemblance to the one under discussion was presented for his consideration. How closely the second Washington copies the precedent of the first may be gathered from the history of the transaction. That history has been briefly sketched by a distinguished, eloquent, and aged friend of President Taylor. I read from a pamphlet by George Poindexter:

Shortly after the cession by North Carolina of the south-western territory, certain influential individuals, anxious to hasten the formation of an independent state government within the ceded territory, induced the inhabitants to call a convention and frame a state constitution, to which they gave the name of the State of Franklin. This proceeding met the unhesitating frowns and disapprobation of the Father of his Country—the illustrious Washington—who caused it to be instantly suppressed, and in lieu of this factitious state government, a territorial government was extended to the inhabitants by Congress, under which they lived and prospered for many years."

If the first President, the great, the good, the illustrious Washington, would not listen to the proposition of the Franklanders, citizens as they were of the United States, for admission into the Union, under the circumstances attending their application, I ask how the present President shall justify his proceeding, in first prompting the free male citizens of Upper California, all the people of Lower California, and in fact the interlopers and adventurers from all the nations of the earth, now upon our territory, to form a state constitution, and ask admission into our Union? And now when this constitution, the creation of such a conglomerate mass, is about to be presented, let the friends of the President justify, if they can, his "earnest recommendation that it may receive the favorable consideration of Congress."

Frankland was not admitted as a state, but a territorial government was given to the country under the name of Tennessee. As a territory these people again applied for admission, and again their application was rejected. I read from Poindexter's pamphlet the history of this second application:

"Subsequent to these transactions, the inhabitants of the south-western territory having increased, as it was believed, to a sufficient number to entitle them to become one of the states of the Union, the territorial legislature directed a census to be taken under the authority of an act passed by that body. This census having been so taken, exhibited a number of free inhabitants exceeding 60,000—being a greater number than was required by the ordinance of 1787 to admit them into the Union; and on the 28th of November, 1795, the governor being authorized thereto by law, issued his proclamation requiring the inhabitants of the several counties of the territory to choose persons to represent them in convention, for the purpose of forming a constitution or permanent form of government. This body so chosen, met in convention on the 11th January, 1796, and adopted a constitution, in which they declared the people of that part of said territory which was ceded by North Carolina, to be a free and independent state, by the name of the State of Tennessee. Without entering into minute details of all the proceedings which took place in relation to this constitution, it will be sufficient for my present purpose to refer to the Senate Journal of the first session of the fourth Congress, to which that constitution was submitted for the reception and approbation of Congress. In the report of the committee of the Senate, to whom this constitution was referred, it will be seen that this act of the territorial authorities was deemed premature and irregular; that the census ordered to be taken of the inhabitants was in many respects deficient in detail, and more especially that the enumeration of the inhabitants must, by the Constitution, be made by Congress; that this rule applied to the original states of the Union, and as their rights as members of the Union are affected by the admission of new states, the same principle which enjoins the census of their inhabitants to be taken under the authority of Congress, equally requires the enumeration of the inhabitants of any new state, laid out by Congress in like manner, should be made under their authority. This rule, the committee are of opinion, left Congress without discretion on this point. The committee therefore reported, that the inhabitants of that part of the territory south of Ohio, ceded by North Carolina, are not at this time entitled to be received as a new state into the Union. This example is drawn from the action of Congress during the administration of Washington, and will serve to show you, sir, the great caution with which, under the administration of that illustrious individual, the state was admitted into the Union."

In the purer and better days of the republic it was thought necessary to consult Congress as to the disposition to be made of the territory belonging to the United States, and our fathers thought it necessary to show a decent regard to the demands of the Constitution, in admitting new states into the Union. But in these latter days, when soldiers become statesmen, without study, and men intuitively understand the Constitution, the old-fashioned notions of Washington and his compatriots are treated with scorn, and we are given to understand that the soldier-President can make new states without the aid of Congress, and in defiance of the Constitution. Whether the people will submit to this highhanded proceeding I do not know; but for my single self I am prepared to say, that "live or die, sink or swim, survive or perish," I will oppose it "at all hazards and to the last extremity."

What, Mr. Chairman, is to be the effect of admitting California into the Union as a state? Independent, sir, of all the objections I have been pointing out, it will effectually unhinge that sectional balance which has so long and happily existed between the two ends of the Union, and at once give to the North that dangerous preponderance in the Senate, which ambitious polititions have so earnestly desired. The admission of one such state as California, opens the way for, and renders easy the admission of another. The President already prompts New Mexico to a like course. The two will reach out their hands to a third, and they to a fourth, fifth, and sixth. Thus precedent follows. precedent, with locomotive velocity and power, until the North has the two-thirds required to change the Constitution. WHEN THIS IS DONE THE CONSTITUTION WILL BE CHANGED. That public opinion, to which Senator SEWARD so significantly alludes, will be seen, and its power will be felt—universal emancipation will become your rallying cry. We see this. It is clearly set forth in all your movements. The sun at noonday is not more visible than is this startling danger. Its presence does arouse our fears and set our thoughts in motion. It comes with giant strides and under the auspices of a southern President, but we will meet it, and we will vanquish it. The time for action is almost come. It is well for us to arrange the order of battle. I have listened, and will again listen with patience and pleasure, to the plans of our southern friends. My own opinion is this: that we should resist the introduction of California as a state, and resist it successfully; resist it by our votes first, and lastly by other means. We can, at least, force an adjournment without her admission. This being done, we are safe. The Southern States, in convention at Nashville, will devise means for vindicating their rights. I do not know what these means will be, but I know what they may be, and with propriety and safety. They may be to carry slaves into all of southern California, as the property of sovereign states, and there hold them, as we have a right to do; and if molested, defend them, as is both our right and duty.

We ask you to give us our rights by NON-INTERVENTION; if you refuse, I am for taking them by ARMED OCCUPATION.

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, p. 162-76