Was elected major of the regiment in place of Chester resigned. It was hard for me to give up my company, but I should not decline promotion, as my promotion will give it to others—I trust I may always be able to do my duty.
SOURCE: Joseph Stockton, War Diary (1862-5) of Brevet Brigadier General Joseph Stockton, p. 9
Gave a supper to the officers of the regiment. We were honored by the presence of Mrs. and Miss Sanger and Miss VanArman of Chicago. My cook managed to borrow dishes from a neighboring house and everything passed off pleasantly. Thanks to my cook, Joe Wheeler, who understands his business throughly, we had as nice a table and as good a supper as any one would want to set down to. All seemed to enjoy themselves and the presence of the ladies did more than anything else to make it pleasant. It was so refreshing to us all to be in the society of women again. It was a late hour before we broke up and a number of us escorted the ladies home in an ambulance. My brother officers were kind to me in their expressions of confidence, etc.
SOURCE: Joseph Stockton, War Diary (1862-5) of Brevet Brigadier General Joseph Stockton, p. 9
To the people of Charles City, and the other counties and cities composing the Third Congressional District:
The resolutions adopted by the people of Charles City on Thursday last, expressive also, as I have reason to know, of the wishes of many citizens in other portions of this congressional district, are highly appreciated by me, and are entitled to a frank and candid reply. The times are full of peril and of profound interest. A government composed of States whose separate independence and sovereignty was acknowledged by the Treaty of Peace of 1783 (the said treaty being made with each State separately by name, and with all collectively), is now claimed, in opposition to the unobscured lights of history, to have been popular in its origin and altogether so in its construction and operation. This doctrine, as if to make it more flagitious, is asserted by the man who was elected to his high office by the votes of States as States, conferred by their several electoral colleges, and who wanted nearly a million of votes of the people to constitute a popular majority. This is doubtless done to impress the world with the belief that the Southern States have been and are guilty of a most base and infamous revolt, and at the same time to induce the misled masses of the Northern people to maintain in power the unprincipled Catalines who, for long years, for their own emolument, have stirred up the bitter waters of hatred and ill will on the part of the North against the South. That government, a mere agency of the States, whose territorial possessions, as if to indicate its true character, were limited to an area of but ten miles square, created by the States, each acting separately and for itself, is now, without the shadow of right, seized upon by States composing a section, and is made to war upon a part of its principals, who have quite as much right to annul it as others to perpetuate it.
If Virginia or her co-States have broken their compact or covenant, then let the offended or injured States avenge their wrong, not through the agency created by all for all, but in their character of sovereigns, through their own means and appliances. Massachusetts, forsooth, undertakes to preach to Virginia long homilies upon constitutional obligations, and sends her armies to enforce her teachings upon us. And even Rhode Island, of whom we had hoped better things, who stood out two years before she would give her assent to the agent government, now, under the lead of her wealthy manufacturing governor, who is still anxious, doubtless, to fill his coffers to further and greater repletion by high taxes on imports, sends the elite of her people with splendid batteries of artillery to crush out rebellion in Virginia. It looks rather unseemly that a State which, in 1812, did not believe that she could constitutionally send her militia beyond her State line to repel an invasion of other States by a foreign power, with whom the then United States were at war, should now, all of a sudden, come to the conclusion that there was no constitutional barrier in her way when the conquest and subjugation of a once sister State was the game on foot; or that another, who could not adopt the government, from extreme aversion to it, for two whole years, should so have fallen in love with it that she sends forth her armed brigands to assist in crushing the State which originated, but who has become heartily disgusted with it, because of its perversion from its original objects into an engine to be used by a majority section for the oppression of a minority. These demonstrations are accompanied, on the part of the agent government, by proceedings gross, tyrannical and revolting to all who have heretofore worshipped at the now desecrated shrine of public liberty.
It was once fondly believed that there were certain great principles which the Revolution in England of 1688, and our ever glorious Revolution of 1776, had canonized and rendered sacred; but we live to see the day when those principles are derided and trampled upon. In vain does the victim of oppression demand, in the language of our Bill of Rights and of the Constitution, a fair and impartial trial. In vain that he invokes the principles of Magna Charta, which are as dear to him as they were to any lordly baron at Runnymede or any Englishman since. In vain that he appeals to the judges and the courts. The venerable Chief-Justice,1
in his attempt to restore the reign of the law and the Constitution, is mocked at, and his authority despised. A provost marshal usurps the place of the judge, and some unfledged general announces an irreversible decree of banishment or imprisonment. Equally vain that the citizen claims his house to be his castle. Armed men, without authority of law, arouse him from his slumbers at midnight, and hurry him away from home and family, to be immured in gloomy and distant dungeons; the freedom of speech and of the press, along with the freedom of elections, the guardians, as heretofore fondly supposed, of public freedom,—have been crushed out; legislatures are dispersed, their members consigned to prisons, and those citizens who have had the nerve to write or speak a word in opposition to such galling tyranny are to be found immured in modern bastiles, where no ray of light emanating from mind or conscience is permitted to enter.
Such is in brief the night of despotism which now holds its gloomy reign over all the North. Those very people who basely submit to a despotism so unrelenting and cruel invade our soil without a shadow of right, and declare it to be their purpose to force us back into a union which they have destroyed, under a Constitution which they have rendered a mockery and made a nullity. Dream they of the blood that flows in our veins, derived from a glorious ancestry, when they talk of subjecting us to the same tyranny to which they themselves are even now subjected? A renewal of their acquaintance with our history would instruct them to regard our subjugation as a day dream, and nothing more. That history will inform them that this noble old State, through nearly three centuries of existence, has in no instance yielded to force or coercion. Unless I overestimate the character of her people, they would sooner, to use the language of an Irish patriot, "raze every house, burn every blade of grass, and make the last entrenchments of liberty their graves," than submit to the wrong and oppression with which they are threatened. Formidable armies are sent to crush her proud spirit and to impose manacles on her free limbs. Through a great misapprehension, as I think, of their duty, but as they conceived, in a lofty spirit of honor, our naval officers resigned the ships which they commanded at the time of resigning their commissions into the hands of Northern officers, who carried them into Northern ports. Thus have we been deprived of our just proportion of a navy which our means assisted to build, and which is now to be used in efforts to ravage and plunder our coasts, and burn and destroy our cities. Surrounded thus and threatened thus, I hold it as an axiom that no man is at liberty to decline any position which the State or its people may, by their unsolicited suffrages, confer upon him. For myself, while I seek nothing and aspire to nothing. I will decline no service which Virginia, or any portion of her people, may require me to render. If, then, the people of this district shall elect me to Congress, I shall accept the station, and devote my best energies to a successful termination of the war, and to advance the permanent interests of this great, and, as I doubt not it is to be, victorious Confederacy of States, under whose parental sway I wish, for one, to live and die. If, however, either of my distinguished friends -for each of whom I entertain the highest regard—who have been announced as candidates shall be elected, I shall be quite content, and shall give to his useful and patriotic labors in the holy cause that engages us my most hearty applause and approval.
1 Roger B. Taney.
SOURCES: Lyon Gardiner Tyler, The Letters and Times of the Tylers, Volume 2, p. 662-3; “To the people of Charles City, and the other counties and cities composing the Third Congressional District,” Daily Richmond Whig, Richmond, Virginia, Friday Morning, October 25, 1861, p. 3; “To the people of Charles city and the other counties and cities composing the Third Congressional District,” The Daily Dispatch, Richmond, Virginia, October 29, 1861 a transcription of this article appears HERE, and states the date of this document is October 21, 1861; “The address of Mr. Tyler…” The Richmond Examiner, Richmond, Virginia, Tuesday, October 29, 1861, p. 1
To the Hon. JOHN
JANNEY, President of the Virginia State Convention:
SIR:— Your letter
inviting me, “in obedience to a resolution of the Virginia State Convention,
unanimously adopted,” to occupy a privileged seat, provided in the Hall of the
Convention, is before me.
Return to the
Convention, if you please, my profound acknowledgement of their courtesy; and
accept, for yourself, assurances of distinguished consideration.
SOURCE: “Virginia
Secession Convention,” Richmond Enquirer,
Semi-Weekly Edition, Tuesday Morning, June 18, 1861, p. 2
Sir:—I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 15th
inst., communicating to me the resolution of the Virginia State Convention to
visit me at such hour as it may appoint.
It will afford me
great pleasure to receive you and the members of the Convention at eight
o’clock on Monday evening of the 17th instant. I have the honor to be,
SOURCE: “Virginia
Secession Convention,” Richmond Enquirer,
Semi-Weekly Edition, Tuesday Morning, June 18, 1861, p. 2
The Convention assembled
at 10 o’clock.—Prayer by the Rev. Mr. Peterkin.
The Chair called for
reports from Committees, and the Secretary read the list, but no response was
made.
Mr. FISHER.—Mr.
President, I am instructed to ask that the Committee on Post Offices be
discharged from further duty, the whole subject having been turned over to the
Confederate Government, and no further business being before the committee.
There being no
objection, the Committee was thereupon discharged.
The Chair announced
the committee on Railroads to be Messrs. Morris, Cox of Chesterfield, Harvie,
Johnson of Richmond City, and Marye.
Mr. STAPLES.—Not
being present when the Ordinance of Secession was signed, I ask leave to append
my name to that instrument.
The PRESIDENT.—There
is a general order upon that subject, which will enable the gentleman to sign
the Ordinance without the leave of the convention.
Mr. JOHNTSON.—A
document has reached my hand from a county where I do not belong, but,
nevertheless, I take the liberty of laying the same before the Convention. As
the subject referred to is one upon which this body can properly take no
action, I simply present it, and ask that it be laid upon the table.
A VOICE.—Have it
read!
Mr. JOHNSTON.—That
is hardly worth while, for I can state its object in three words. It is simply
a petition from the county of Washington, asking for the establishment of an
election precinct. I move that it be laid upon the table.
The motion was
agreed to.
The PRESIDENT.—When
this body last adjourned it was in secret session, and if there is no other
business before the Convention, I shall direct the lobbies and galleries to be
cleared preparatory to resuming the consideration of the subject then under
discussion.
The Convention
accordingly went into secret session, in which it remained until half past two
o’clock, when the doors were again thrown open.
RECEPTION BY HON. JEFFERSON DAVIS.
The PRESIDENT then
laid before the Convention the following communication in response to a letter
addressed by him to the President of the Confederate States, in accordance with
a resolution offered by Mr. DORMAN, that the latter be invited to state when it
would be convenient for him to receive the members of the Convention.
SPOTSWOOD HOUSE, June 16, 1861.
HON.
JOHN JANNEY, President, etc.—
Sir:—I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 15th
inst., communicating to me the resolution of the Virginia State Convention to
visit me at such hour as it may appoint.
It
will afford me great pleasure to receive you and the members of the Convention
at eight o’clock on Monday evening of the 17th instant. I have the honor to be,
Very respectfully, yours,
JEFFERSON DAIVS.
COURTESIES TO SECRETARY WALKER.
CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA.
Richmond, June 15, 1861.
To
the Hon. JOHN JANNEY, President of the Virginia State Convention:
SIR:—
Your letter inviting me, “in obedience to a resolution of the Virginia State
Convention, unanimously adopted,” to occupy a privileged seat, provided in the
Hall of the Convention, is before me.
Return
to the Convention, if you please, my profound acknowledgement of their
courtesy; and accept, for yourself, assurances of distinguished consideration.
L. P. WALKER,
Secretary of War.
Mr. TYLER.—I move
that when this Convention adjourns, it be to meet at half-past seven o’clock
this evening at this place.
The motion was
agreed to.
On Motion of Mr.
TYLER, the communication of Secretary WALKER was laid upon the table.
Mr. TYLER.—I now
propose for adoption the following resolutions:
Resolved, That this
convention has heard with high satisfaction of the brilliant victory recently
obtained by the combined forces of North Carolina and Virginia at Bethel, in
the county of York, the first regular conflict between those who, under usurped
authority, have invaded our soil and the brave defenders of that soil, and it
being altogether appropriate that our troops should receive a suitable meed of
applause for their gallantry and good conduct;
Be it therefore
resolved, That in the name of the people of Virginia, this convention expresses
its high admiration of the gallantry and good conduct of the officers and men
engaged in the battle of Bethel on the 10th instant, where they repelled and
put to flight more than four times their numbers;
Resolved, That the
conduct of Col. John B. Magruder, the commander of the Confederate forces, of Col.
D. A. Hill, the commander of the North Carolina troops, and of the officers
under their command, evinced in the opinion of this convention high military
skill, united to unshrinking valor;
Resolved, That
copies of the foregoing resolutions be forwarded to Col. Magruder, with the
request that he will cause the same to be publicly read to the troops under his
command.
Mr. TYLER. I desire
to say, Mr. President in regard to these resolutions, that the North Carolina
Legislature received with rapturous applause the account of the battle of
Bethel Church, and of the noble action of the North Carolina troops upon that
occasion; and so inspired were they by the intelligence of the gallantry of
their commander, Col. Hill, that (if the papers are to be relied upon.) they
immediately promoted him to the grade of a Brigadier General.
Sir, when you come
to estimate the value and importance of that battle, considering that it is the
first regular action that has occurred on our soil—though I would, by no means
forget the bold and gallant stand made by the Fauquier Rifles—and when you
calculate the circumstances by which our little army was surrounded and the
battle was fought, it is impossible not to confess that it stands by the side
of the most brilliant military achievements that history every recorded.
At the battle of
Agincourt, in former days, we are told that the English fought in the
proportion of one against ten, and obtained a victory; but it must be
remembered that it was then against an undisciplined rabble, under no military
restraint, and unfamiliar with even the rudiments of military discipline; but
here we have had to encounter troops acquainted with the art of war, well
drilled and formidable.
They marched up to
your ramparts; they advanced against you four to one, and your handful of men
dissipated them like chaff before the wind. I cannot imagine anything more
brilliant than this engagement. I cannot conceive of braver or more undaunted
men, or of military skill more consummate or successful in its results.
Cheerfully do I contribute the praise which properly belongs to the
achievement, and to the noble volunteers who participated in it.
You will remember
that we were to be overcome by these invaders; that all these disturbances of
the country were to pass away like a morning dream. When the enemy came upon
the field, it is said they talked with derision particularly of North
Carolinians, as mere cornstalk troops, whom they were to drive from their sight
without a blow; and yet those same corn stalk troops, under the orders of their
gallant leader, by one single dash of the bayonet, put the enemy to flight and
relieved themselves from the further embarrassment of their presence.
[A VOICE.—They
whipped the Zouaves, the crack regiment.]
Yes, I thank the
gentleman for the suggestion. We have whipped their best regiment off the field
without difficulty, and thank God, with the loss of but one man. We brought
against their four thousand but eight hundred muskets, and almost in the
twinkling of an eye that four thousand was dispersed, and victory perched upon
our banners.
There is but one
occurrence of a similar kind in our history with which I can compare it; it
took place upon the celebrated battlefield of Buena Vista. You all well
remember the gallant conduct of the present President upon that occasion. It
was supposed that the day was lost, that our handful of five thousand were to
be trampled upon by a host of twenty thousand Mexicans; but whose heart did not
thrill with joy on reading the account of the momentary retreat under Col.
Davis until he found a better position when, coming to a right about, the order
of “forward march” was given, and they dashed into the ranks of the enemy.
Another brilliant incident deserves to be mentioned in connection with Bragg’s
battery of Flying artillery—the same gentleman who is now commanding our
Southern troops at Pensacola.
I received the
account from the lips of Gen. Taylor himself. He had with him but two hundred
men. A body of four thousand Mexicans were advancing, and the fate of the day
depended upon that contest. Gen. Taylor was close by to encourage him by his
presence—standing there, as the brave old man told me, with no expectation of
leaving the field alive. The fire opened, the enemy recoiled, hesitated, and finally
retreated before the little force, and the day was hours. And now, as then,
when you compare the disparity of our numbers engaged in the late conflict at
Bethel, you have cause to exult, proudly exult, in the character of the
achievement and the conduct of our troops.
Mr. President, I am
restrained from making any discrimination among either our officers or soldiers
in referring to the recent battle. All behaved nobly and all alike deserve
commendation. But if I were to make any distinction of the gallant Major of the
Howitzers, whom we all well know and appreciate. But I abstain. I trust, Mr.
President—and this is one of the great objects of these resolutions independent
of a rendition of a tribute of respect and applause to those who deserve
it—this example will stimulate all to meet the invaders and drive them from the
soil without hesitating to count either their own or the number of the enemy—to
meet them dauntlessly—meet them as has been done by this handful at Bethel, and
my life upon a victory will crown our [endeavors] at every stop.
RAILRAOD BETWEEN WINCHESTER AND STRASBURG.
Mr. R. Y. CONRAD—I
desire to call the attention of the Convention to an ordinance of considerable
importance in regard to the railroad connection between Winchester and Strasburg.
I move that it be taken up and put upon its passage.
The motion was
agreed to.
Mr. CONRAD—It may be
necessary to state in regard to this ordinance, that it is intended to
authorized the construction, by the Manassas Railroad Company, of a military road
from Strasburg to Winchester, a distance of about eighteen miles. Winchester is
now the Headquarters of the whole force under the Headquarters of the whole
force under the command of General Johnson, who has fallen back upon that town
which will probably be a point of conflict. This road was deemed so important
by the Governor and council as well as by the Commander in Chief, that they
have not only recommended the adoption of the Ordinance, but have agreed,
without authority from the Convention, to advance the sum of fourteen thousand
five hundred dollars to pay the revenue duties on the rail road iron proposed
to be used in its construction. They have also made a contract, depending upon
the approval of this Convention, with the Manassas Gap road, by which the work
will be done without any expense to the State. The only difficulty in regard to
the passage of the Ordinance of which I am aware grows out of the fact that the
connection between Strasburg and Winchester has heretofore been a subject of
controversy in our Legislature. But I have to state that the causes of that
controversy have been entirely removed by the present condition of the country.
The rival which caused the opposition thus made no longer exists or can exist.
It was formerly supposed that this road might be prejudicial to the interests
of Alexandria; but the President of the Manassas Rail Road Company authorizes
me to stat that he is now anxious for its construction; and that he himself
made the proposition concerning this contract, which has been approved by the
Governor and Council and General Lee. I hope, therefore, it may be unnecessary
to make any further statement to the Convention in reference to the matter. If
there be any such occasion, I think I can satisfy the members of this convention
of the propriety and importance, in every point of view, of granting the
authority for the construction of the road.
Mr. GREGORY.—I
desire to submit a motion which I have never before made in any deliberative
body. This is a question of some interest, and likely to require the
consideration of the Convention longer than the present late hour will warrant.
I move that we do now adjourn.
The PRESIDENT. The
Chair would suggest the propriety of taking a recess until half past seven
o’clock.
Mr. GREGORY.—That
ought to have been my motion, and I now make it.
Mr. BORST.—I hope
the gentleman will withdraw his motion for five minutes, as I believe that this
matter may be settled without further discussion.
Mr. GREGORY.—I
should prefer to have it lay over until we meet again.
The Convention then
took a recess until half past 7 o’clock, p.m.
EVENING SESSION.
VISIT TO THE PRESIDENT.
The Convention
re-assembled at half past seven o’clock.
At ten minutes to
eight, the body adjourned and preceded by Hon. Jon Janney, the President and
Hon. John Tyler, visited the Hon. Jefferson Davis at his parlors, in the
Spotswood Hotel, the members being severally introduced to the Chief Magistrate
by Mr. Eubank, the Secretary of the Convention. There were also present Hon.
Messrs. Toombs, Memminger and Mallory of the cabinet, and Mr. Brown, the
Assistant Secretary of State. An hour having been spent in the interchange of
courtesies, the gentlemen retired.
SHERWOOD FOREST, Nov. 1, 1861.
MY DEAR SIR: Your
letter has been duly received, and I have read with the highest pleasure your
article in the Enquirer of the 29th October. It does me full justice, and is
the more agreeable to me as proceeding from one whose past life has been
without reproach of any the slightest kind, and whose name is everywhere and by
every person repeated with honor. I know not what will be the termination of
the approaching election. My own motives are faithfully set forth in my card to
the public. At my time of life, with all my personal surroundings, the place of
ease and comfort would be my own fireside; but when I look to the condition of
the State, and how greatly she is threatened, I can take no counsel from my own
desires, remembering that on another occasion even the "widow's mite"
was esteemed the most valuable. So I feel that I have no right to withhold any
particle of service from the public cause which others may esteem me capable of
rendering. Express to Mrs. Rutherfoord [sic]
my constant and most sincere regard, and believe me to be always, most truly
and faithfully, your friend,
J. TYLER.
SOURCE: Lyon
Gardiner Tyler, The Letters and Times of the Tylers, Volume 2, p.
665
CHULA P. O., May 15, 1885.
MY DEAR SIR: I
regret that I am unable to give you the information you wish. Your honored
father, my friend, and myself were on the commission to treat with Mr.
Stephens, and the whole committee were unanimous, and reported in favor of
uniting under one government with the other Confederate States. Who prepared
the report I have forgotten. I regret that I cannot give you the information.
I esteemed your
father as highly as any man I ever knew. I may say that I reverence his memory.
He had the entire trust and confidence of every member of the Virginia
convention, and exercised and wielded more influence and control over its
deliberations and acts than any man in it. He won its confidence in a speech in
reply to Mr. Summers, who made a report of the proceedings of the "Peace
Congress" held in Washington, and secured the admiration and confidence of
the whole convention, when he was so weak that he could speak only at intervals
and the convention adjourned again and again to hear him. His influence, and, I
may say, control, over the convention, during its whole term, was irresistible.
It would be a labor of love to recite to you evidences of the esteem in which
he was held, and the estimate placed on his patriotism and love of Virginia, by
men of all parties, however conflicting and diversified and distinct their
views and sentiments.
I recollect one
among other occasions when he changed by the force of his eloquence and
patriotism the action of the convention by a defense of General Scott and Mr.
Clay, who were assailed; and how he triumphantly carried the proposition
through the convention (almost by acclamation) to invite General Scott to come
to the rescue of his State. It was the most masterly and triumphant appeal to
which I ever listened, and left us who opposed it in a minority of sixteen, all
told. General Scott and Mr. Clay were both Virginians, and, while he had
differed with them both, they had reflected honor and lustre on her, their
common mother, and he made an appeal to the convention of Virginia that
electrified the whole body.
He was subsequently
elected to the Confederate Congress, almost by acclamation, over two of the
ablest and most popular men in the Richmond district, after he had been
subjected to obloquy and vituperation for strangling the Bank of the United
States and admitting Texas into the Union. His devotion to Virginia and her
confidence in him were commensurate.
Such and so sincere
was my appreciation of his character, and the estimate that I placed on his
valuable and brilliant career that characterized his public conduct, that I
invariably paid my respects to him as soon as he took his seat in convention.
It gives me pleasure
now to recur to my past intercourse with him. I trust that his son will ascribe
the prolixity of my reply to the sincerity of my esteem for one who loved and
was beloved by Virginia with equal fervor.
SOURCE: Lyon
Gardiner Tyler, The Letters and Times of the Tylers, Volume 2, p.
668-9
Today was published
in St Louis papers (copied from the New York Tribune) a recent letter of mine
to the Whig Committee of New York, in answer to their call upon me for my views
and opinions on the politics of the country, and the signs of the times.1
St. Louis, Feb. 24, 1859.
To Messrs. J. PHILIPS PHOENIX, WILLIS BLACKSTONE, H. M. BININGER, DAVID J. LILET AND H. R. SMITH, Committee, New York.
Sirs: A short time ago I was favored with your note of the 7th inst., covering a resolution of the Committee, to the effect that it is inexpedient at this time further to discuss or agitate the Negro question, but rather to turn the attention of the people to other topics — "topics of general importance, such as our Foreign Relations, including the Extension of Territory; the building of Railroads for National purposes; the improvement of our Harbors, the navigation of our Rivers to facilitate Internal Commerce; the subject of Currency, and a Tariff of Duties, and other means of developing our own internal resources, our home wealth, and binding together by ties of national and fraternal feelings, the various parts and sections of our widely extended Republic."
Your letter, gentlemen, opens a very wide field, in asking for my "opinion upon the subject, and my views as to the signs of the times." Books have been written upon these matters, and speeches delivered by the thousand ; and yet the argument seems as far from being exhausted as it was at the beginning ; and I take it for certain that you do not expect or desire me to discuss at large, all or any of these interminable quarrels. That I have opinions upon all or most of them, is true — not the opinions of this or that party, ready to be abandoned or modified to suit this or that platform, but my own opinions — perhaps the more fixed and harder to be changed because deliberately formed in the retirement of private life, free from the exigencies of official responsibility and from the perturbations of party policy. They are my own opinions, right or wrong.
As to the Negro question — I have always thought, and often declared in speech and in print, that it is a pestilent question, the agitation of which has never done good to any party, section or class, and never can do good, unless it be accounted good to stir up the angry passions of men, and exasperate the unreasoning jealousy of sections, and by those bad means foist some unfit men into office, and keep some fit men out. It is a sensitive question into whose dangerous vortex it is quite possible for good men to be drawn unawares. But when I see a man, at the South or the North, of mature age and some experience, persist in urging the question, after the sorrowful experience of the last few years, I can attribute his conduct to no higher motive than personal ambition or sectional prejudice.
As to the power of the General Government to protect the persons and properties, and advance the interests of the people, by laying taxes, raising armies and navies, building forts and arsenals, light houses, moles, and breakwaters, surveying the coasts and adjacent seas, improving rivers, lakes, and harbors, and making roads — I should be very sorry to doubt the existence of the power, or the duty to exercise it, whenever the constituted authorities have the means in their hands, and are convinced that its exercise is necessary to protect the country and advance the prosperity of the people.
In my own opinion, a government that has no power to protect the harbors of its country against winds and waves and human enemies, nor its rivers against snags, sands and rocks, nor to build roads for the transportation of its armies and its mails and the commerce of its people, is a poor, impotent government, and not at all such a government as our fathers thought they had made when they produced the Constitution which was greeted by intelligent men everywhere with admiration and gratitude as a government free enough for all the ends of legal liberty and strong enough for all the purposes of national and individual protection. A free people, if it be wise, will make a good constitution; but a constitution, however good in itself, did never make a free people. The people do not derive their rights from the government, but the government derives its powers from the people; and those powers are granted for the main, if not the only, purpose of protecting the rights of the people. Protection, then, if not the sole, is the chief end of government.
And it is for the governing power to judge, in every instance, what kind and what degree of protection is needful — whether a Navy to guard our commerce all around the world, or an Army to defend the country against armed invasion from without, or domestic insurrection from within; or a Tariff, to protect our home industry against the dangerous obtrusion of foreign labor and capital.
Of the existence of the power and duty of the Government to protect the People in their persons, their property, their industry and their locomotion, I have no doubt; but the time, the mode and the measure of protection, being always questions of policy and prudence, must of necessity be left to the wisdom and patriotism of those whose duty it is to make laws for the good government of the country. And with them I freely leave it, as the safest, and indeed the only, constitutional depository of the power.
As to our Foreign Policy generally, I have but little to say. I am not much of a progressive, and am content to leave it where Washington [Jefferson] placed it, upon that wise, virtuous, safe maxim — "Peace [. . .] with all nations; entangling alliance[s] with none." The greedy and indiscriminate appetite for foreign acquisition, which makes us covet our neighbor's lands, and devise cunning schemes to get them, has little of my sympathy. I view it as a sort of political gluttony, as dangerous to our body politic as gluttony is to the natural man — producing disease certainly, hastening death, probably. Those of our politicians who are afflicted with this morbid appetite are wont to cite the purchase of Louisiana and Florida, as giving countenance to their inordinate desires. But the cases are wholly unlike in almost every particular. Louisiana was indispensable to our full and safe enjoyment of an immense region which was already owned, and its acquisition gave us the unquestioned control of that noble system of Mississippi waters, which nature seems to have made to be one and indivisible, and rounded off the map of the nation into one uniform and compacted whole. Nothing remained to mar and disfigure our national plat, but Florida, and that was desirable, less for its intrinsic value, than because it would form a dangerous means of annoyance, in case of war with a Maritime Power, surrounded as it is, on three sides by the ocean, and touching three of our present States, with no barrier between. The population of Louisiana and Florida, when acquired, was very small compared with the largeness of the territory; and, lying in contact with the States, was easily and quickly absorbed into and assimilated with the mass of our people. Those countries were acquired, moreover, in the most peaceful and friendly manner, and for a satisfactory consideration.
Now, without any right or any necessity, it is hard to tell what we do not claim in all the continent south of us, and the adjacent islands. Cuba is to be the first fruit of our grasping enterprise, and that is to be gotten at all hazards, by peaceful purchase if we can, by war and conquest if we must.2 But Cuba is only an outpost to the Empire of Islands and continental countries that are to follow. A leading Senator3 has lately declared (in debate on the Thirty Million bill4) that we must not only have Cuba, but all the islands from Cape Florida to the Spanish Main, so as to surround the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, and make them our "mare clausum" like the Mediterranean, in old times, when the Roman Emperor ruled both its shores, from the pillars of Hercules to the Hellespont.5 This claim of mare nostrum implies, of course, that we must own the continent that bounds our sea on the west, as well as the string of islands that inclose it on the east — that is, Mexico, Central America, and all South America, so far south at least as the Orinoco.6 In that wide compass of sea and land there are a good many native governments, and provinces belonging to the strongest maritime powers, and a narrow continental isthmus which we ourselves, as well as England and France, are wont to call the highway of nations. To fulfill the grand conception, and perfect our tropical empire, we must buy or conquer all these torrid countries, and their mongrel populations. As to buying them, it strikes me that we had better waite [sic] awhile, at least until the Government has ceased to borrow money to pay its current expenses. And as to conquering them, perhaps it would be prudent to pause and make some estimate of costs and contingencies, before we rush into war with all maritime Europe and half America.
I am not one of those who believe that the United States is not an independent and safe nation, because Cuba is not a part of it. On the contrary, I believe that we are quite capable of self-defense, even if the "Queen of the Antilles" were a province of England, France or Russia; and surely, while it remains an appendage of a comparatively feeble nation, Cuba has much more cause to fear us than we have to fear Cuba. In fact, gentlemen, I cannot help doubting the honesty of the cowardly argument by which we are urged to rob poor old Spain of this last remnant of her Western empire, for fear that she might use it to rob us.
But suppose we could get, honestly and peaceably, the whole of the country — continental and insular — from the Rio Grande to the Orinoco, and from Trinidad to Cuba, and thus establish our mare clausum, and shut the gate of the world across the Isthmus, can we govern them wisely and well? For the last few years, in the attempt to govern our home Territories of Kansas and Utah, we have not very well maintained the dignity and justice of the nation, nor secured the peace and prosperity of the subject people.7 Can we hope to do better with the various mixed races of Mexico, Central and South America, and the West India Islands? Some of those countries have been trying for fifty years to establish republican governments on our model, but in every instance have miserably failed; and yet, there was no obstacle to complete success but their own inaptitude.
For my part, I should be grieved to see my country become, like Rome, a conquering and dominant nation; for I think there are few or no examples in history, of Governments whose chief objects were glory and power, which did ever secure the happiness and prosperity of their own people. Such Governments may grow great and famous, and advance a few of their citizens to wealth and nobility; but the price of their grandeur is the personal independence and individual freedom of their people. Still less am I inclined to see absorbed into our system, "on an equal footing with the original States," the various and mixed races (amounting to I know not how many millions) which inhabit the continent and islands south of our present border. I am not willing to inoculate our body politic with the virus of their diseases, political and social — diseases which, with them, are chronic and hereditary, and with us could hardly fail to produce corruption in the head and weakness in the members.
Our own country, as it is, in position, form and size, is a wonder which proclaims a wisdom above the wit of man. Large enough for our posterity, for centuries to come: All in the temperate zone, and therefore capable of a homogeneous population, yet so diversified in climates and soils, as to produce everything that is necessary to the comfort and wealth of a great people: Bounded east and west by great oceans, and bisected in the middle by a mighty river, which drains and fructifies the continent, and binds together the most southern and northern portions of our land by a bond stronger than iron. Beside all this, it is new and growing — the strongest on the continent, with no neighbor whose power it fears, or of whose ambition it has cause to be jealous. Surely such a country is great enough and good enough for all the ends of honest ambition and virtuous power.
It seems to me that an efficient home-loving Government, moderate and economical in its administration, peaceful in its objects, and just to all nations, need have no fear of invasion at home, or serious aggression abroad. The nations of Europe have to stand continually in defense of their existence; but the conquest of our county by a foreign power is simply impossible, and no nation is so absurd as to entertain the thought. We may conquer ourselves by local strifes and sectional animosities; and when, by our folly and wickedness, we have accomplished that great calamity, there will be none to pity us for the consequences of so great a crime.
If our Government would devote all its energies to the promotion of peace and friendship with all foreign countries, the advancement of Commerce, the increase of Agriculture, the growth and stability of Manufactures, and the cheapening, quickening and securing the internal trade and travel of our country ; in short, if it would devote itself in earnest to the establishment of a wise and steady policy of internal government, I think we should witness a growth and consolidation of wealth and comfort and power for good, which cannot be reasonably hoped for from a fluctuating policy, always watching for the turns of good fortune, or from a grasping ambition to seize new territories, which are hard to get and harder to govern.
The present position of the Administration is a sorrowful commentary upon the broad democracy of its professions. In theory, the people have the right and ability to do anything; in practice, we are verging rapidly to the One-Man power.
The President, the ostensible head of the National Democrats, is eagerly striving to concentrate power in his own hands, and thus to set aside both the People and their Representatives in the actual affairs of government. Having emptied the Treasury, which he found full, and living precariously upon borrowed money, he now demands of Congress to entrust to his unchecked discretion the War power, the Purse and the Sword. First, he asks Congress to authorize him, by statute, to use the Army to take military possession of the Northern Mexico, and hold it under his protectorate, and as a security for debts due to our citizens8 — civil possession would not answer, for that might expose him, as in the case of Kansas, to be annoyed by a factious Congress and a rebellious Territorial Legislature.
Secondly: Not content with this, he demands the discretionary power to use the Army and Navy in the South, also in blockading the coast and marching his troops into the interior of Mexico and New Granada, to protect our citizens against all evil-doers along the transit routes of Tehuantepec and Panama.9 And he and his supporters in Congress claim this enormous power upon the ground that, in this particular at least, he ought to be the equal of the greatest monarch of Europe. They forget that our fathers limited the power of the President by design, and for the reason that they had found out by sad experience that the monarchs of Europe were too strong for freedom.
Third: In strict pursuance of this doctrine, first publicly announced from Ostend,10 he demands of Congress to hand over to him thirty millions of dollars to be used at his discretion, to facilitate his acquisition of Cuba.11 Facilitate how ? Perhaps it might be imprudent to tell.
Add to all this, the fact (as yet unexplained) that one of the largest naval armaments which ever sailed from our coast is now operating in South America, ostensibly against a poor little republic far up the Plate River,12 to settle some little quarrel between the two Presidents.13 If Congress had been polite enough to grant the President's demand of the sword and the purse against Mexico, Central America and Cuba, this navy, its duty done at the south, might be made, on its way home, to arrive in the Gulf very opportunely, to aid the " Commander-in-Chief " in the acquisition of some very valuable territory.
I allude to these facts with no malice against Mr. Buchanan, but as evidences of the dangerous change which is now obviously sought to be made in the practical working of the Government — the concentration of power in the hands of the President, and the dangerous policy, now almost established, of looking abroad for temporary glory and aggrandizement, instead of looking at home, for all the purposes of good government — peaceable, moderate, economical, protecting all interests alike, and by a fixed policy, calling into safe exercise all the talents and industry of our people, and thus steadily advancing our country in everything which can make a nation great, happy, and permanent.
The rapid increase of the Public Expenditures (and that, too, under the management of statesmen professing to be peculiarly economical) is an alarming sign of corruption and decay.
That increase bears no fair proportion to the growth and expansion of the country, but looks rather like wanton waste or criminal negligence. The ordinary objects of great expense are not materially augmented — the Army and Navy remain on a low peace establishment— the military defenses are little, if at all, enlarged — the improvement of Harbors, Lakes and Rivers is abandoned, and the Pacific Railroad is not only not begun but its very location is scrambled for by angry sections, which succeed in nothing but mutual defeat. In short, the money to an enormous amount (I am told at the rate of $80,000,000 to $100,000,000 a year) is gone, and we have little or nothing to show for it. In profound peace with foreign nations, and surrounded with the proofs of National growth and individual prosperity, the Treasury, by less than two years of mismanagement, is made bankrupt, and the Government itself is living from hand to mouth, on bills of credit and borrowed money!
This humiliating state of things could hardly happen if men in power were both honest and wise. The Democratic economists in Congress confess that they have recklessly wasted the Public Revenue; they confess it by refusing to raise the Tariff to meet the present exigency, and by insisting that they can replenish the exhausted Treasury and support the Government, in credit and efficiency, by simply striking off their former extravagances.
An illustrious predecessor of the President is reported to have declared "that those who live on borrowed money ought to break." I do not concur in that harsh saying; yet I am clearly of opinion that the Government, in common prudence (to say nothing of pride and dignity), ought to reserve its credit for great transactions and unforeseen emergencies. In common times of peace, it ought always to have an established revenue, equal, at least, to its current expenses. And that revenue ought to be so levied as to foster and protect the Industry of the country employed in our most necessary and important manufactures.
Gentlemen, I cannot touch upon all the topics alluded to in your letter and resolution. I ought rather to beg your pardon for the prolixity of this answer. I speak for no party, because the only party I ever belonged to has ceased to exist as an organized and militant body.
And I speak for no man but myself.
I am fully aware that my opinions and views of public policy are of no importance to anybody but me, and there is good reason to fear that some of them are so antiquated and out of fashion as to make it very improbable that they will ever again be put to the test of actual practice.
Most respectfully,
EDWARD BATES.
The Republican
publishes the letter to gratify the curiosity of my numerous friends throughout
the country, but gives no opinion, neither praise nor censure.
The Evening News is
rapturous in its applause, and glorifies me without measure or moderation.
The New York City
papers eagerly published the letter, with few editorial comments, for the most
part with moderate praise — I have seen only the Tribune (Greel[e]y's14)
The Times (Raymond's15) the Express (Brooks'16) and the
Herald (Bennett's17)[.]
I expected a sour
reception from the Republican papers — Especially the Tribune and Times — on
account of my openly opposing the further agitation of the Negro question. The
Tribune,18 tho' well pleased with the rest of the letter, is clearly
not well pleased with that part, but makes a distinction in my favor, between
the two kinds of opposition to aggitation [sic] — one (with which he charges
Hiram Ketchum19) he characterises as subserviency to the 'Slave
power' and a tacit aid to their efforts to propagate and extend slavery. The
other (which he supposes may be my position) a desire to stop the slavery
aggitation [sic], with a view to more national questions, but with a readiness
to resist the efforts of the Southern propagandists in their efforts to spread
slavery where we do not find it.
The letter I think,
is well written and effective. But some of my friends, I am sure, think me
imprudent, in coming out so plainly upon the subjects treated of. I am not so
timid, perhaps not so prudent as they — Upon the whole, the letter has been
most favorably received in St Louis.
_______________
1 This present version of the letter is that
of the New York Tribune of April 16, 1859.
2 This was the substance of the Ostend
Manifesto which Buchanan as Minister to Great Britain had joined Ministers John
Y. Mason and Pierre Soulé in promulgating. As Secretary of State under
President Polk, Buchanan had tried to buy Cuba. In his second, third, and
fourth annual messages he urged Congress to cooperate with him in securing it
by negotiation.
3 Robert Toombs of Georgia: Whig state
legislator, 1837-1840, 1841-1844 ; states' rights Democratic congressman,
1845-1853 ; U. S. senator, 1853-1861. He was later a leader in the Georgia
Secession Convention, and congressman, brigadier-general, and secretary of
State under the Confederacy.
4 January, 1859, Senate Reports, 35 Cong., 2
Sess., ser. no. 994, doc. no. 351. The bill purposed to appropriate $30,000,000
"to facilitate the acquisition of Cuba by negotiation." Senator
Slidell (infra, Nov. 24, 1859, note 89) introduced it on January 10. 1859
(Cong. Globe, 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 277) ; it was reported favorably by the
Committee on Foreign Relations of which he was chairman, on January 24, 1859
(ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 538) ; it was debated at great length on January 24,
February 9-10, February 15—17, February 21, and February 25 (ibid., 35 Cong., 2
Sess., 538-544, 904-909, 934-940, 960968, 1038, Appendix [155-169], 1058-1063,
1079-1087, 1179-1192, 1326-1363) ; but because of opposition, it was withdrawn
on February 26 (ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 13S51387). At the next session, on
December 8, 1859, Senator Slidell reintroduced this bill (ibid., 36 Cong., 1
Sess., 53), had it referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations on December
21 (ibid., 36 Cong., 1 Sess., 199), reported it out favorably to the Senate on
May 30, 1860, but because of opposition did not push it (ibid., 36 Cong., 1
Sess., 2456). He promised to call it up again at the next session, but when
that time arrived was too busy seceding to bother about Cuba.
5 On January 24, Toombs had said, "Cuba
has fine ports, and with her acquisition, we can make first the Gulf of Mexico,
and then the Caribbean Sea, a mare clausum. Probably younger men than you or I
will live to see the day when no flag shall float there except by permission of
the United States of America . . . that development, that progress throughout
the tropics [is] the true, fixed unalterable policy of the nation." Ibid.,
35 Cong., 2 Sess., 543.
6 I. e., as far as Venezuela.
7 Bitterness over the slavery question had
reached the point of armed conflict, raids, and murder in Kansas in 1855-1856,
and Utah was at this time subject to frequent Indian raids. It was in 1859,
too, that the Republicans tried to prohibit polygamy in Utah and the Democrats
succeeded, probably with slavery in other territories in mind, in preventing
Congressional legislation on the subject.
8 Dec. 6, 1858, James D. Richardson, Messages
and Papers of the Presidents, V, 514. See infra, Feb. 15, 1860.
9 J. D. Richardson, op. cit., V, 516_517.
10 Supra, April 20, 1859, note 2.
11 J. D. Richardson, op. cit., V, 508-511.
12 Rio de La Plata in South America.
13 An expedition of some 19 ships, 200 guns,
and 2.500 men which was sent against Paraguay because a vessel of that nation
had fired upon the United States steamer Water Witch. A mere show of force
sufficed to secure both an apology and an indemnity on February 10, 1859. The
President of Argentina was so interested and so pleased that he presented the
commander with a sword.
14 Infra, Feb. 2, 1860, note 47.
15 Infra, Feb. 4, 1860, note 61.
16 Infra, Sept. 20, 1860, note 12.
17 James Gordon Bennett: journalist in Boston,
New York, and Charleston; then Washington correspondent; next editor of the New
York Courier and Enquirer, 1829-1832, and of the Pennsylvanian, 1832-1833 ; and
finally editor-owner of the New York Herald, 18351867. He made the Herald one
of the most enterprising and spectacular of papers and kept it independent. He
had supported Taylor (Whig) in 1848, Pierce (Democrat) in 1852, Fr6mont
(Republican) in 1856, and was to support Douglas against Lincoln in 1860 and
Lincoln against McClellan in 1864, Johnson against the Radicals in 1865-1866
and the Radicals against Johnson in 1866-1867. At the outbreak of the Civil
War, Bennett wished to let the Southern States go in peace, but when war came
he supported it.
18 For editorial comment see the New York
Tribune, April 16, 1859.
19 Chairman of the Whig General Committee of
New York City. Bates originally sent his letter to Ketchum in February, but it
disappeared and he had to recopy it out of his letter-book and resend it for
publication. Ibid., April 16, 1859. Ketchum represented moderate anti-Seward
opinion in New York, was a delegate to the National Union Convention in
Baltimore, but opposed the formation of a third party. He promised to support
Mr. Bates if he were nominated by the Republicans.
SOURCE: Howard K.
Beale, Editor, Annual Report of The American
Historical Association For The Year 1930, Vol. 4, The Diary Of Edward Bates,
pp. 1-10
St. Louis, Feb. 24, 1859.
To Messrs. J. PHILIPS PHOENIX, WILLIS BLACKSTONE, H. M. BININGER, DAVID J. LILET AND H. R. SMITH, Committee, New York.
Sirs: A short time ago I was favored with your note of the 7th inst., covering a resolution of the Committee, to the effect that it is inexpedient at this time further to discuss or agitate the Negro question, but rather to turn the attention of the people to other topics — "topics of general importance, such as our Foreign Relations, including the Extension of Territory; the building of Railroads for National purposes; the improvement of our Harbors, the navigation of our Rivers to facilitate Internal Commerce; the subject of Currency, and a Tariff of Duties, and other means of developing our own internal resources, our home wealth, and binding together by ties of national and fraternal feelings, the various parts and sections of our widely extended Republic."
Your letter, gentlemen, opens a very wide field, in asking for my "opinion upon the subject, and my views as to the signs of the times." Books have been written upon these matters, and speeches delivered by the thousand ; and yet the argument seems as far from being exhausted as it was at the beginning ; and I take it for certain that you do not expect or desire me to discuss at large, all or any of these interminable quarrels. That I have opinions upon all or most of them, is true — not the opinions of this or that party, ready to be abandoned or modified to suit this or that platform, but my own opinions — perhaps the more fixed and harder to be changed because deliberately formed in the retirement of private life, free from the exigencies of official responsibility and from the perturbations of party policy. They are my own opinions, right or wrong.
As to the Negro question — I have always thought, and often declared in speech and in print, that it is a pestilent question, the agitation of which has never done good to any party, section or class, and never can do good, unless it be accounted good to stir up the angry passions of men, and exasperate the unreasoning jealousy of sections, and by those bad means foist some unfit men into office, and keep some fit men out. It is a sensitive question into whose dangerous vortex it is quite possible for good men to be drawn unawares. But when I see a man, at the South or the North, of mature age and some experience, persist in urging the question, after the sorrowful experience of the last few years, I can attribute his conduct to no higher motive than personal ambition or sectional prejudice.
As to the power of the General Government to protect the persons and properties, and advance the interests of the people, by laying taxes, raising armies and navies, building forts and arsenals, light houses, moles, and breakwaters, surveying the coasts and adjacent seas, improving rivers, lakes, and harbors, and making roads — I should be very sorry to doubt the existence of the power, or the duty to exercise it, whenever the constituted authorities have the means in their hands, and are convinced that its exercise is necessary to protect the country and advance the prosperity of the people.
In my own opinion, a government that has no power to protect the harbors of its country against winds and waves and human enemies, nor its rivers against snags, sands and rocks, nor to build roads for the transportation of its armies and its mails and the commerce of its people, is a poor, impotent government, and not at all such a government as our fathers thought they had made when they produced the Constitution which was greeted by intelligent men everywhere with admiration and gratitude as a government free enough for all the ends of legal liberty and strong enough for all the purposes of national and individual protection. A free people, if it be wise, will make a good constitution; but a constitution, however good in itself, did never make a free people. The people do not derive their rights from the government, but the government derives its powers from the people; and those powers are granted for the main, if not the only, purpose of protecting the rights of the people. Protection, then, if not the sole, is the chief end of government.
And it is for the governing power to judge, in every instance, what kind and what degree of protection is needful — whether a Navy to guard our commerce all around the world, or an Army to defend the country against armed invasion from without, or domestic insurrection from within; or a Tariff, to protect our home industry against the dangerous obtrusion of foreign labor and capital.
Of the existence of the power and duty of the Government to protect the People in their persons, their property, their industry and their locomotion, I have no doubt; but the time, the mode and the measure of protection, being always questions of policy and prudence, must of necessity be left to the wisdom and patriotism of those whose duty it is to make laws for the good government of the country. And with them I freely leave it, as the safest, and indeed the only, constitutional depository of the power.
As to our Foreign Policy generally, I have but little to say. I am not much of a progressive, and am content to leave it where Washington [Jefferson] placed it, upon that wise, virtuous, safe maxim — "Peace [. . .] with all nations; entangling alliance[s] with none." The greedy and indiscriminate appetite for foreign acquisition, which makes us covet our neighbor's lands, and devise cunning schemes to get them, has little of my sympathy. I view it as a sort of political gluttony, as dangerous to our body politic as gluttony is to the natural man — producing disease certainly, hastening death, probably. Those of our politicians who are afflicted with this morbid appetite are wont to cite the purchase of Louisiana and Florida, as giving countenance to their inordinate desires. But the cases are wholly unlike in almost every particular. Louisiana was indispensable to our full and safe enjoyment of an immense region which was already owned, and its acquisition gave us the unquestioned control of that noble system of Mississippi waters, which nature seems to have made to be one and indivisible, and rounded off the map of the nation into one uniform and compacted whole. Nothing remained to mar and disfigure our national plat, but Florida, and that was desirable, less for its intrinsic value, than because it would form a dangerous means of annoyance, in case of war with a Maritime Power, surrounded as it is, on three sides by the ocean, and touching three of our present States, with no barrier between. The population of Louisiana and Florida, when acquired, was very small compared with the largeness of the territory; and, lying in contact with the States, was easily and quickly absorbed into and assimilated with the mass of our people. Those countries were acquired, moreover, in the most peaceful and friendly manner, and for a satisfactory consideration.
Now, without any right or any necessity, it is hard to tell what we do not claim in all the continent south of us, and the adjacent islands. Cuba is to be the first fruit of our grasping enterprise, and that is to be gotten at all hazards, by peaceful purchase if we can, by war and conquest if we must.2 But Cuba is only an outpost to the Empire of Islands and continental countries that are to follow. A leading Senator3 has lately declared (in debate on the Thirty Million bill4) that we must not only have Cuba, but all the islands from Cape Florida to the Spanish Main, so as to surround the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, and make them our "mare clausum" like the Mediterranean, in old times, when the Roman Emperor ruled both its shores, from the pillars of Hercules to the Hellespont.5 This claim of mare nostrum implies, of course, that we must own the continent that bounds our sea on the west, as well as the string of islands that inclose it on the east — that is, Mexico, Central America, and all South America, so far south at least as the Orinoco.6 In that wide compass of sea and land there are a good many native governments, and provinces belonging to the strongest maritime powers, and a narrow continental isthmus which we ourselves, as well as England and France, are wont to call the highway of nations. To fulfill the grand conception, and perfect our tropical empire, we must buy or conquer all these torrid countries, and their mongrel populations. As to buying them, it strikes me that we had better waite [sic] awhile, at least until the Government has ceased to borrow money to pay its current expenses. And as to conquering them, perhaps it would be prudent to pause and make some estimate of costs and contingencies, before we rush into war with all maritime Europe and half America.
I am not one of those who believe that the United States is not an independent and safe nation, because Cuba is not a part of it. On the contrary, I believe that we are quite capable of self-defense, even if the "Queen of the Antilles" were a province of England, France or Russia; and surely, while it remains an appendage of a comparatively feeble nation, Cuba has much more cause to fear us than we have to fear Cuba. In fact, gentlemen, I cannot help doubting the honesty of the cowardly argument by which we are urged to rob poor old Spain of this last remnant of her Western empire, for fear that she might use it to rob us.
But suppose we could get, honestly and peaceably, the whole of the country — continental and insular — from the Rio Grande to the Orinoco, and from Trinidad to Cuba, and thus establish our mare clausum, and shut the gate of the world across the Isthmus, can we govern them wisely and well? For the last few years, in the attempt to govern our home Territories of Kansas and Utah, we have not very well maintained the dignity and justice of the nation, nor secured the peace and prosperity of the subject people.7 Can we hope to do better with the various mixed races of Mexico, Central and South America, and the West India Islands? Some of those countries have been trying for fifty years to establish republican governments on our model, but in every instance have miserably failed; and yet, there was no obstacle to complete success but their own inaptitude.
For my part, I should be grieved to see my country become, like Rome, a conquering and dominant nation; for I think there are few or no examples in history, of Governments whose chief objects were glory and power, which did ever secure the happiness and prosperity of their own people. Such Governments may grow great and famous, and advance a few of their citizens to wealth and nobility; but the price of their grandeur is the personal independence and individual freedom of their people. Still less am I inclined to see absorbed into our system, "on an equal footing with the original States," the various and mixed races (amounting to I know not how many millions) which inhabit the continent and islands south of our present border. I am not willing to inoculate our body politic with the virus of their diseases, political and social — diseases which, with them, are chronic and hereditary, and with us could hardly fail to produce corruption in the head and weakness in the members.
Our own country, as it is, in position, form and size, is a wonder which proclaims a wisdom above the wit of man. Large enough for our posterity, for centuries to come: All in the temperate zone, and therefore capable of a homogeneous population, yet so diversified in climates and soils, as to produce everything that is necessary to the comfort and wealth of a great people: Bounded east and west by great oceans, and bisected in the middle by a mighty river, which drains and fructifies the continent, and binds together the most southern and northern portions of our land by a bond stronger than iron. Beside all this, it is new and growing — the strongest on the continent, with no neighbor whose power it fears, or of whose ambition it has cause to be jealous. Surely such a country is great enough and good enough for all the ends of honest ambition and virtuous power.
It seems to me that an efficient home-loving Government, moderate and economical in its administration, peaceful in its objects, and just to all nations, need have no fear of invasion at home, or serious aggression abroad. The nations of Europe have to stand continually in defense of their existence; but the conquest of our county by a foreign power is simply impossible, and no nation is so absurd as to entertain the thought. We may conquer ourselves by local strifes and sectional animosities; and when, by our folly and wickedness, we have accomplished that great calamity, there will be none to pity us for the consequences of so great a crime.
If our Government would devote all its energies to the promotion of peace and friendship with all foreign countries, the advancement of Commerce, the increase of Agriculture, the growth and stability of Manufactures, and the cheapening, quickening and securing the internal trade and travel of our country ; in short, if it would devote itself in earnest to the establishment of a wise and steady policy of internal government, I think we should witness a growth and consolidation of wealth and comfort and power for good, which cannot be reasonably hoped for from a fluctuating policy, always watching for the turns of good fortune, or from a grasping ambition to seize new territories, which are hard to get and harder to govern.
The present position of the Administration is a sorrowful commentary upon the broad democracy of its professions. In theory, the people have the right and ability to do anything; in practice, we are verging rapidly to the One-Man power.
The President, the ostensible head of the National Democrats, is eagerly striving to concentrate power in his own hands, and thus to set aside both the People and their Representatives in the actual affairs of government. Having emptied the Treasury, which he found full, and living precariously upon borrowed money, he now demands of Congress to entrust to his unchecked discretion the War power, the Purse and the Sword. First, he asks Congress to authorize him, by statute, to use the Army to take military possession of the Northern Mexico, and hold it under his protectorate, and as a security for debts due to our citizens8 — civil possession would not answer, for that might expose him, as in the case of Kansas, to be annoyed by a factious Congress and a rebellious Territorial Legislature.
Secondly: Not content with this, he demands the discretionary power to use the Army and Navy in the South, also in blockading the coast and marching his troops into the interior of Mexico and New Granada, to protect our citizens against all evil-doers along the transit routes of Tehuantepec and Panama.9 And he and his supporters in Congress claim this enormous power upon the ground that, in this particular at least, he ought to be the equal of the greatest monarch of Europe. They forget that our fathers limited the power of the President by design, and for the reason that they had found out by sad experience that the monarchs of Europe were too strong for freedom.
Third: In strict pursuance of this doctrine, first publicly announced from Ostend,10 he demands of Congress to hand over to him thirty millions of dollars to be used at his discretion, to facilitate his acquisition of Cuba.11 Facilitate how ? Perhaps it might be imprudent to tell.
Add to all this, the fact (as yet unexplained) that one of the largest naval armaments which ever sailed from our coast is now operating in South America, ostensibly against a poor little republic far up the Plate River,12 to settle some little quarrel between the two Presidents.13 If Congress had been polite enough to grant the President's demand of the sword and the purse against Mexico, Central America and Cuba, this navy, its duty done at the south, might be made, on its way home, to arrive in the Gulf very opportunely, to aid the " Commander-in-Chief " in the acquisition of some very valuable territory.
I allude to these facts with no malice against Mr. Buchanan, but as evidences of the dangerous change which is now obviously sought to be made in the practical working of the Government — the concentration of power in the hands of the President, and the dangerous policy, now almost established, of looking abroad for temporary glory and aggrandizement, instead of looking at home, for all the purposes of good government — peaceable, moderate, economical, protecting all interests alike, and by a fixed policy, calling into safe exercise all the talents and industry of our people, and thus steadily advancing our country in everything which can make a nation great, happy, and permanent.
The rapid increase of the Public Expenditures (and that, too, under the management of statesmen professing to be peculiarly economical) is an alarming sign of corruption and decay.
That increase bears no fair proportion to the growth and expansion of the country, but looks rather like wanton waste or criminal negligence. The ordinary objects of great expense are not materially augmented — the Army and Navy remain on a low peace establishment— the military defenses are little, if at all, enlarged — the improvement of Harbors, Lakes and Rivers is abandoned, and the Pacific Railroad is not only not begun but its very location is scrambled for by angry sections, which succeed in nothing but mutual defeat. In short, the money to an enormous amount (I am told at the rate of $80,000,000 to $100,000,000 a year) is gone, and we have little or nothing to show for it. In profound peace with foreign nations, and surrounded with the proofs of National growth and individual prosperity, the Treasury, by less than two years of mismanagement, is made bankrupt, and the Government itself is living from hand to mouth, on bills of credit and borrowed money!
This humiliating state of things could hardly happen if men in power were both honest and wise. The Democratic economists in Congress confess that they have recklessly wasted the Public Revenue; they confess it by refusing to raise the Tariff to meet the present exigency, and by insisting that they can replenish the exhausted Treasury and support the Government, in credit and efficiency, by simply striking off their former extravagances.
An illustrious predecessor of the President is reported to have declared "that those who live on borrowed money ought to break." I do not concur in that harsh saying; yet I am clearly of opinion that the Government, in common prudence (to say nothing of pride and dignity), ought to reserve its credit for great transactions and unforeseen emergencies. In common times of peace, it ought always to have an established revenue, equal, at least, to its current expenses. And that revenue ought to be so levied as to foster and protect the Industry of the country employed in our most necessary and important manufactures.
Gentlemen, I cannot touch upon all the topics alluded to in your letter and resolution. I ought rather to beg your pardon for the prolixity of this answer. I speak for no party, because the only party I ever belonged to has ceased to exist as an organized and militant body.
And I speak for no man but myself.
I am fully aware that my opinions and views of public policy are of no importance to anybody but me, and there is good reason to fear that some of them are so antiquated and out of fashion as to make it very improbable that they will ever again be put to the test of actual practice.
2 This was the substance of the Ostend
Manifesto which Buchanan as Minister to Great Britain had joined Ministers John
Y. Mason and Pierre Soulé in promulgating. As Secretary of State under
President Polk, Buchanan had tried to buy Cuba. In his second, third, and
fourth annual messages he urged Congress to cooperate with him in securing it
by negotiation.
3 Robert Toombs of Georgia: Whig state
legislator, 1837-1840, 1841-1844; states' rights Democratic congressman,
1845-1853; U. S. senator, 1853-1861. He was later a leader in the Georgia
Secession Convention, and congressman, brigadier-general, and secretary of
State under the Confederacy.
4 January, 1859, Senate Reports, 35 Cong., 2
Sess., ser. no. 994, doc. no. 351. The bill purposed to appropriate $30,000,000
"to facilitate the acquisition of Cuba by negotiation." Senator
Slidell (infra, Nov. 24, 1859, note 89) introduced it on January 10. 1859
(Cong. Globe, 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 277) ; it was reported favorably by the
Committee on Foreign Relations of which he was chairman, on January 24, 1859
(ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 538) ; it was debated at great length on January 24,
February 9-10, February 15—17, February 21, and February 25 (ibid., 35 Cong., 2
Sess., 538-544, 904-909, 934-940, 960968, 1038, Appendix [155-169], 1058-1063,
1079-1087, 1179-1192, 1326-1363) ; but because of opposition, it was withdrawn
on February 26 (ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 13S51387). At the next session, on
December 8, 1859, Senator Slidell reintroduced this bill (ibid., 36 Cong., 1
Sess., 53), had it referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations on December
21 (ibid., 36 Cong., 1 Sess., 199), reported it out favorably to the Senate on
May 30, 1860, but because of opposition did not push it (ibid., 36 Cong., 1
Sess., 2456). He promised to call it up again at the next session, but when
that time arrived was too busy seceding to bother about Cuba.
5 On January 24, Toombs had said, "Cuba
has fine ports, and with her acquisition, we can make first the Gulf of Mexico,
and then the Caribbean Sea, a mare clausum. Probably younger men than you or I
will live to see the day when no flag shall float there except by permission of
the United States of America . . . that development, that progress throughout
the tropics [is] the true, fixed unalterable policy of the nation." Ibid.,
35 Cong., 2 Sess., 543.
6 I. e., as far as Venezuela.
7 Bitterness over the slavery question had
reached the point of armed conflict, raids, and murder in Kansas in 1855-1856,
and Utah was at this time subject to frequent Indian raids. It was in 1859,
too, that the Republicans tried to prohibit polygamy in Utah and the Democrats
succeeded, probably with slavery in other territories in mind, in preventing
Congressional legislation on the subject.
8 Dec. 6, 1858, James D. Richardson, Messages
and Papers of the Presidents, V, 514. See infra, Feb. 15, 1860.
9 J. D. Richardson, op. cit., V, 516-517.
10 Supra, April 20, 1859, note 2.
11 J. D. Richardson, op. cit., V, 508-511.
12 Rio de La Plata in South America.
13 An expedition of some 19 ships, 200 guns,
and 2.500 men which was sent against Paraguay because a vessel of that nation
had fired upon the United States steamer Water Witch. A mere show of force
sufficed to secure both an apology and an indemnity on February 10, 1859. The
President of Argentina was so interested and so pleased that he presented the
commander with a sword.
SOURCE: Howard K.
Beale, Editor, Annual Report of The American
Historical Association For The Year 1930, Vol. 4, The Diary Of Edward Bates,
pp. 1-9
