Abridgement of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856 (4 of 16 vol.)

Mr. R. here adverted to the provocation to hostilities from shutting up the Mississippi by Spain in 1803 – but more fully to the conduct of the House in 1805-'6, under the strongest of all imaginable provocatives to war; the actual invasion of our country. He read various passages from the President's public Message of December 3, 1805.

Mr. R. said that the peculiar situation of the frontier, at that time insulted, had alone induced the committee to recommend the raising of regular troops. It was too remote from the population of the country for the militia to act, in repelling and chastising Spanish incursion. New Orleans and its dependencies were separated by a vast extent of wilderness from the settlements of the old United States; filled with a disloyal and turbulent people, alien to our institutions, language and manners, and disaffected towards our Government. Little reliance could be placed upon them, and it was plain, that if "it was the intention of Spain to advance on our possessions until she should be repulsed by an opposing force," that force must be a regular army, unless we were disposed to abandon all the country south of Tennessee. That if "the protection of our citizens and the spirit and the honor of our country required that force should be interposed," nothing remained but for the Legislature to grant the only practicable means, or to shrink from the most sacred of all its duties – to abandon the soil and its inhabitants to the tender mercies of hostile invaders.

Yet this report, moderate as it was, had been deemed of too strong a character by the House. It was rejected: and, at the motion of a gentleman from Massachusetts, (Mr. Bidwell,) – who had since taken a great fancy also to Canada,13 and marched off thither, in advance of the committee of Foreign Relations – "$2,000,000, were appropriated towards" (not in full of) "any extraordinary expense which might be incurred in the intercourse between the United States and foreign nations: " in other words, to buy off, at Paris, Spanish aggressions at home.

Was this fact given in evidence of our impartiality towards the belligerents? – that to the insults and injuries and actual invasion of one of them we opposed not bullets, but dollars; that to Spanish invasion we opposed money, whilst for British aggression on the high seas we had arms; offensive war? But Spain was then shielded, as well as instigated, by a greater power. Hence our respect for her. Had we at that time acted as we ought to have done in defence of rights, of the natale solum itself, we should (he felt confident) have avoided that series of insult, disgrace, and injury, which had been poured out upon us in long unbroken succession. We would not then raise a small regular force for a country where the militia could not act, to defend our own Territory; now, we are willing to levy a great army, for great it must be, to accomplish the proposed object, for a war of conquest and ambition – and this, too, at the very entrance of the "Northern Hive," of the strongest part of the Union.

An insinuation had fallen from the gentleman from Tennessee, (Mr. Grundy,) that the late massacre of our brethren on the Wabash had been instigated by the British Government. Has the President given any such information? has the gentleman received any such, even informally, from any officer of this Government? Is it so believed by the Administration? He had cause to think the contrary to be the fact; that such was not their opinion. This insinuation was of the grossest kind – a presumption the most rash, the most unjustifiable. Show but good ground for it, he would give up the question at the threshold – he was ready to march to Canada. It was indeed well calculated to excite the feelings of the Western people particularly, who were not quite so tenderly attached to our red brethren as some modern philosophers; but it was destitute of any foundation, beyond mere surmise and suspicion. What would be thought, if, without any proof whatsoever, a member should rise in his place and tell us, that the massacre in Savannah, a massacre perpetrated by civilized savages, with French commissions in their pockets, was excited by the French Government? There was an easy and natural solution of the late transaction on the Wabash, in the well-known character of the aboriginal savage of North America, without resorting to any such mere conjectural estimate. He was sorry to say, that for this signal calamity and disgrace the House was, in part, at least, answerable. Session after session, their table had been piled up with Indian treaties, for which the appropriations had been voted as a matter of course, without examination. Advantage had been taken of the spirit of the Indians, broken by the war which ended in the Treaty of Greenville. Under the ascendency then acquired over them, they had been pent up by subsequent treaties into nooks straitened in their quarters by a blind cupidity, seeking to extinguish their title to immense wildernesses, for which (possessing, as we do already, more land than we can sell or use) we shall not have occasion, for half a century to come. It was our own thirst for territory, our own want of moderation, that had driven these sons of nature to desperation, of which we felt the effects.

Mr. R., although not personally acquainted with the late Colonel Daviess, felt, he was persuaded, as deep and serious regret for his loss as the gentleman from Tennessee himself. He knew him only through the representation of a friend of the deceased, (Mr. Rowan,) some time a member of that House; a man, who, for native force of intellect, manliness of character, and high sense of honor, was not inferior to any that had ever sat there. With him he sympathized in the severest calamity that could befall a man of his cast of character. Would to God they were both then on the floor! From his personal knowledge of the one, he felt confident that he would have his support – and he believed (judging of him from the representation of their common friend) of the other also.

He could but smile at the liberality of the gentleman, in giving Canada to New York, in order to strengthen the Northern balance of power, while at the same time he forewarned her that the Western scale must preponderate. Mr. R. said that he could almost fancy that he saw the Capitol in motion towards the falls of Ohio – after a short sojourn taking its flight to the Mississippi, and finally alighting on Darien; which, when the gentleman's dreams are realized, will be a most eligible seat of government for the new Republic (or Empire) of the two Americas! But it seemed that "in 1808 we talked and acted foolishly," and to give some color of consistency to that folly, we must now commit a greater. Really he could not conceive of a weaker reason offered in support of a present measure, than the justification of a former folly. He hoped we should act a wiser part – take warning by our follies, since we had become sensible of them, and resolve to talk and act foolishly no more. It was indeed high time to give over such preposterous language and proceedings.

This war of conquest, a war for the acquisition of territory and subjects, is to be a new commentary on the doctrine that Republics are destitute of ambition – that they are addicted to peace, wedded to the happiness and safety of the great body of their people. But it seems this is to be a holiday campaign – there is to be no expense of blood, or treasure, on our part – Canada is to conquer herself – she is to be subdued by the principles of fraternity. The people of that country are first to be seduced from their allegiance, and converted into traitors, as preparatory to the making them good citizens. Although he must acknowledge that some of our flaming patriots were thus manufactured, he did not think the process would hold good with a whole community. It was a dangerous experiment. We were to succeed in the French mode by the system of fraternization – all is French! but how dreadfully it might be retorted on the Southern and Western slaveholding States. He detested this subornation of treason. No – if he must have them, let them fall by the valor of our arms, by fair, legitimate conquest; not become the victims of treacherous seduction.

He was not surprised at the war spirit which was manifesting itself in gentlemen from the South. In the year 1805-'6, in a struggle for the carrying trade of belligerent colonial produce, this country has been most unwisely brought into collision with the great powers of Europe. By a series of most impolitic and ruinous measures,14 utterly incomprehensible to every rational, sober-minded man, the Southern planters, by their own votes, had succeeded in knocking down the price of cotton to seven cents, and of tobacco (a few choice crops excepted) to nothing – and in raising the price of blankets, (of which a few would not be amiss in a Canadian campaign,) coarse woollens, and every article of first necessity, three or four hundred per cent. And now that, by our own acts, we have brought ourselves into this unprecedented condition, we must get out of it in any way, but by an acknowledgment of our own want of wisdom and forecast. But is war the true remedy? Who will profit by it? Speculators – a few lucky merchants, who draw prizes in the lottery – commissaries and contractors. Who must suffer by it? The people. It is their blood, their taxes, that must flow to support it.

But gentlemen avowed that they would not go to war for the carrying trade – that is, for any other but the direct export and import trade – that which carries our native products abroad, and brings back the return cargo; and yet they stickle for our commercial rights, and will go to war for them! He wished to know, in point of principle, what difference gentlemen could point out between the abandonment of this or of that maritime right? Do gentlemen assume the lofty port and tone of chivalrous redressers of maritime wrongs, and declare their readiness to surrender every other maritime right provided they may remain unmolested in the exercise of the humble privilege of carrying their own produce abroad, and bringing back a return cargo? Do you make this declaration to the enemy at the outset? Do you state the minimum with which you will be contented, and put it in her power to close with your proposal at her option; give her the basis of a treaty ruinous and disgraceful beyond example and expression? and this, too, after having turned up your nose in disdain at the treaties of Mr. Jay and Mr. Monroe! Will you say to England, "end the war when you please, give us the direct trade in our own produce, we are content?" But what will the merchants of Salem, and Boston, and New York, and Philadelphia, and Baltimore, the men of Marblehead and Cape Cod, say to this? Will they join in a war professing to have for its object what they would consider (and justly too) as the sacrifice of their maritime rights, yet affecting to be a war for the protection of commerce?

He was gratified to find gentlemen acknowledging the demoralizing and destructive consequences of the non-importation law – confessing the truth of all that its opponents foretold when it was enacted. And will you plunge yourselves in war, because you have passed a foolish and ruinous law, and are ashamed to repeal it? "But our good friend the French Emperor stands in the way of its repeal," and as we cannot go too far in making sacrifices to him, who has given such demonstration of his love for the Americans, we must, in point of fact, become parties to his war. "Who can be so cruel as to refuse him this favor?" His imagination shrunk from the miseries of such a connection. He called upon the House to reflect whether they were not about to abandon all reclamation for the unparalleled outrages, "insults and injuries" of the French Government, to give up our claim for plundered millions; and asked what reparation or atonement they could expect to obtain in hours of future dalliance, after they should have made a tender of their person to this great deflowerer of the virginity of republics. We had by our own wise (he would not say wise-acre) measures, so increased the trade and wealth of Montreal and Quebec, that at last we began to cast a wishful eye at Canada. Having done so much towards its improvement by the exercise of "our restrictive energies," we began to think the laborer worthy of his hire, and to put in claim for our portion. Suppose it ours, are we any nearer to our point? As his Minister said to the King of Epirus, "may we not as well take our bottle of wine before as after this exploit?" Go! march to Canada! leave the broad bosom of the Chesapeake and her hundred tributary rivers – the whole line of seacoast from Machias to St. Mary's unprotected! You have taken Quebec – have you conquered England? Will you seek for the deep foundations of her power in the frozen deserts of Labrador?

"Her march is on the mountain wave,Her home is on the deep!"

Will you call upon her to leave your ports and harbors untouched, only just till you can return from Canada to defend them? The coast is to be left defenceless, whilst men of the interior are revelling in conquest and spoil. But grant for a moment, for mere argument's sake, that in Canada you touched the sinews of her strength, instead of removing a clog upon her resources – an encumbrance, but one, which, from a spirit of honor, she will vigorously defend. In what situation would you then place some of the best men of the nation? As Chatham and Burke, and the whole band of her patriots, prayed for her defeat in 1776, so must some of the truest friends to their country deprecate the success of our arms against the only power that holds in check the arch-enemy of mankind.

Mr. R. declared that the committee had out-stripped the Executive. In designating the power against whom this force was to be employed – as had most unadvisably been done in the preamble or manifesto with which the resolutions were prefaced – they had not consulted the views of the Executive; that designation was equivalent to an abandonment of all our claims on the French Government. No sooner was the report laid on the table, than the vultures were flocking round their prey, the carcass of a great Military Establishment – men of tainted reputation, of broken fortunes (if they ever had any) and of battered constitutions, "choice spirits, tired of the dull pursuits of civil life," were seeking after agencies and commissions; willing to doze in gross stupidity over the public fire; to light the public candle at both ends. Honorable men undoubtedly there were ready to serve their country, but what man of spirit, or of self-respect, would accept a commission in the present army?

The gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Grundy) had addressed himself, yesterday, exclusively to the "Republicans of this House." Mr. R. knew not whether he might consider himself as entitled to any part of the benefit of the honorable gentleman's discourse. It belonged not, however, to that gentleman to decide. If we must have an exposition of the doctrines of Republicanism, he should receive it from the fathers of the Church, and not from the junior apprentices of the law. He should appeal to his worthy friends from Carolina, (Messrs. Macon and Stanford,) "men with whom he had measured his strength," by whose side he had fought during the reign of terror, for it was indeed an hour of corruption, of oppression, of pollution. It was not at all to his taste, that sort of Republicanism which was supported on this side of the Atlantic by the father of the sedition law, John Adams, and by Peter Porcupine on the other. Republicanism! of John Adams! and William Cobbett! Par nobile fratrum, now united as in 1798, whom the cruel walls of Newgate alone keep from flying to each other's embrace – but whom, in sentiment it is impossible to divide! Gallant crusaders in the holy cause of Republicanism! Such "Republicanism does indeed mean any thing or nothing."

Our people will not submit to be taxed for this war of conquest and dominion. The Government of the United States was not calculated to wage offensive foreign war – it was instituted for the common defence and general welfare; and whosoever should embark in a war of offence, would put it to a test which it was by no means calculated to endure. Make it out that Great Britain had instigated the Indians on the late occasion, and he was ready for battle; but not for dominion. He was unwilling, however, under present circumstances, to take Canada, at the risk of the constitution – to embark in common cause with France and be dragged at the wheels of the car of some Burr or Bonaparte. For a gentleman from Tennessee or Genesee, or Lake Champlain, there may be some prospect of advantage. Their hemp would bear a great price by the exclusion of foreign supply. In that too the great importers were deeply interested. The upper country on the Hudson and the Lakes would be enriched by the supplies for the troops, which they alone could furnish. They would have the exclusive market: to say nothing of the increased preponderance from the acquisition of Canada and that section of the Union, which the Southern and Western States had already felt so severely in the apportionment bill.

Mr. R. adverted to the defenceless state of our seaports, and particularly of the Chesapeake. A single spot only, on both shores, might be considered in tolerable security – from the nature of the port and the strength of the population – and that spot unhappily governed the whole State of Maryland. His friend, the late Governor of Maryland, (Mr. Lloyd,) at the very time he was bringing his warlike resolutions before the Legislature of the State, was liable, on any night, to be taken out of his bed, and carried off with his family, by the most contemptible picaroon. Such was the situation of many a family in Maryland and lower Virginia.

Mr. R. dwelt on the danger arising from the black population. He said he would touch this subject as tenderly as possible – it was with reluctance that he touched it at all – but in cases of great emergency, the State physician must not be deterred by a sickly, hysterical humanity, from probing the wound of his patient – he must not be withheld by a fastidious and mistaken humanity from representing his true situation to his friends, or even to the sick man himself, where the occasion called for it. What was the situation of the slaveholding States? During the war of the Revolution, so fixed were their habits of subordination, that when the whole southern country was overrun by the enemy, who invited them to desert, no fear was ever entertained of an insurrection of the slaves. During the war of seven years, with our country in possession of the enemy, no such danger was ever apprehended. But should we therefore be unobservant spectators of the process of society, within the last twenty years – of the silent and powerful change wrought by time and chance, upon its composition and temper? When the fountains of the great deep of abomination were broken up, even the poor slaves had not escaped the general deluge. The French Revolution had polluted even them. Nay, there had not been wanting men in that House, witness their Legislative Legendre, the butcher who once held a seat there, to preach upon that floor these imprescriptible rights to a crowded audience of blacks in the galleries – teaching them that they are equal to there masters; in other words, advising them to cut their throats. Similar doctrines were disseminated by peddlers from New England and elsewhere, throughout the southern country – and masters have been found so infatuated, as by their lives and conversation, by a general contempt of order, morality, and religion, unthinkingly to cherish these seeds of self-destruction to them and their families. What was the consequence? Within the last ten years, repeated alarms of insurrection among the slaves – some of them awful indeed. From the spreading of this infernal doctrine, the whole southern country had been thrown into a state of insecurity. Men dead to the operation of moral causes, had taken away from the poor slave his habits of loyalty and obedience to his master, which lightened his servitude by a double operation; beguiling his own cares and disarming his master's suspicions and severity; and now, like true empirics in politics, you are called upon to trust to the mere physical strength of the fetter which holds him in bondage. You have deprived him of all moral restraint, you have tempted him to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, just enough to perfect him in wickedness; you have opened his eyes to his nakedness; you have armed his nature against the hand that has fed, that has clothed him, that has cherished him in sickness; that hand, which before he became a pupil of your school, he had been accustomed to press with respectful affection. You have done all this – and then show him the gibbet and the wheel, as incentives to a sullen, repugnant obedience. God forbid, sir, that the Southern States should ever see an enemy on their shores, with these infernal principles of French fraternity in the van! While talking of taking Canada, some of us were shuddering for our own safety at home. He spoke from facts, when he said that the night-bell never tolled for fire in Richmond that the mother did not hug her infant more closely to her bosom. He had been a witness of some of the alarms in the capital of Virginia.

Mr. R. then proceeded to notice the unjust and illiberal imputation of British attachments, against certain characters in this country, sometimes insinuated in that House, but openly avowed out of it. Against whom were these charges brought? Against men, who in the war of the Revolution were in the councils of the nation, or fighting the battles of your country. And by whom were they made? By runaways, chiefly from the British dominions, since the breaking out of the French troubles. He indignantly said – it is insufferable. It cannot be borne. It must, and ought, with severity, be put down in this House, and, out of it, to meet the lie direct. We have no fellow feeling for the suffering and oppressed Spaniards! Yet even them we do not reprobate. Strange! that we should have no objection to any people or Government, civilized or savage, in the whole world. The great Autocrat of all the Russias receives the homage of our high consideration. The Dey of Algiers and his Divan of Pirates are very civil, good sort of people, with whom we find no difficulty in maintaining the relations of peace and amity – "Turks, Jews, and Infidels;" Mellimelli, or the Little Turtle; barbarians and savages of every clime and color, are welcome to our arms. With chiefs of banditti, negro or mulatto, we can treat and can trade. Name, however, but England, and all our antipathies are up in arms against her. Against whom? Against those whose blood runs in our veins; in common with whom we claim Shakspeare, and Newton, and Chatham, for our countrymen; whose form of government is the freest on earth, our own only excepted; from whom every valuable principle of our own institutions has been borrowed – representation, jury trial, voting the supplies, writ of habeas corpus – our whole civil and criminal jurisprudence – against our fellow Protestants identified in blood, in language, in religion with ourselves. In what school did the worthies of our land, the Washingtons, Henrys, Hancocks, Franklins, Rutledges of America learn those principles of civil liberty which were so nobly asserted by their wisdom and valor? And American resistance to British usurpation had not been more warmly cherished by these great men and their compatriots; not more by Washington, Hancock, and Henry, than by Chatham and his illustrious associates in the British Parliament. It ought to be remembered, too, that the heart of the English people was with us. It was a selfish and corrupt Ministry, and their servile tools, to whom we were not more opposed than they were. He trusted that none such might ever exist among us – for tools will never be wanting to subserve the purposes, however ruinous or wicked, of Kings and Ministers of State.

He acknowledged the influence of a Shakspeare and Milton upon his imagination, of a Locke upon his understanding, of a Sidney upon his political principles, of a Chatham upon qualities which, would to God! he possessed in common with that illustrious man – of a Tillotson, a Sherlock, and a Porteus, upon his religion. This was a British influence which he could never shake off. He allowed much to the just and honest prejudices growing out of the Revolution. But by whom had they been suppressed when they ran counter to the interests of his country? By Washington. By whom, would you listen to them, are they most keenly felt? By felons escaped from the jails of Paris, Newgate, and Kilmainham, since the breaking out of the French Revolution – who, in this abused and insulted country, have set up for political teachers, and whose disciples give no other proof of their progress in Republicanism, except a blind devotion to the most ruthless military despotism that the world ever saw. These are the patriots, who scruple not to brand with the epithet of tory the men (looking towards the seat of Col. Stuart) by whose blood your liberties have been cemented. These are they, who hold in so keen remembrance the outrages of the British armies, from which many of them were deserters. Ask these self-styled patriots where they were during the American war, (for they are for the most part old enough to have borne arms,) and you strike them dumb – their lips are closed in eternal silence. If it were allowable to entertain partialities, every consideration of blood, language, religion, and interest, would incline us towards England; and yet, shall they be alone extended to France and her ruler, whom we are bound to believe a chastening God suffers as the scourge of a guilty world! On all other nations he tramples – he holds them in contempt – England alone he hates; he would, but he cannot despise her – fear cannot despise. And shall we disparage our ancestors? – shall we bastardize ourselves by placing them even below the brigands of St. Domingo? with whom Mr. Adams had negotiated a sort of treaty, for which he ought to have been and would have been impeached, if the people had not previously passed sentence of disqualification for their service upon him. This antipathy to all that is English must be French.