The Congressional Globe, [Volume 17]: Twenty-Ninth Congress, Second Session Page: 46
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46
THE CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE.
Dec. 16,
tory ? The President had told the two Houses of
Congress, in his first annual message, that our
title to the whole of Oregon was " clear and un-
questionable." All must remember the course of
things but a' few weeks before the project of the
British Government was submitted to the Presi-
dent, and by him submitted to the Senate of the
United States. Who could forget that he had told
a member of that body that he should maintain
our rights up to the parailal of 54° 40' at all haz-
ards r And his Secretary of State had at the same
time declared that he would lose his right arm
before he would sign a treaty recognising the
parallel of 49° as our boundary. And a Senator,
known to be hi^h in the President's confidence,
had said that if the President should ever consent to
take the line of 49°, he would damn himself to so
deep an infamy that the hand of resurrection could
never reach him. All this must be fresh in the
minds of all who heard him. Well; the British
Minister submitted tiie project of a treaty estab-
lishing 49° as the boundary. Did the President
icject it? No; he sent it to the Senate, declaring
that, if following the bent of his own will, he
should have rejected such an offer, byt that it was
a matter of too much consequence for him to act
on it without asking the advice of his constitu-
tional advisers, (well-knowing when he said so
what their decision would be, for a majority of
two-thirds had already expressed themselves in
favor of the boundary of 49°,) and he finally
signed a treaty establishing that line. But, further
than this, our Minister to the Court of St. James
hod recently returned from his mission abroad,
and, being invited to a public dinner to be given
in his honor, he had said in his reply that, before
he left the United States, he had possessed himself
of the views of the American Government, and
that, in laboring to get the line of 49° agreed upon
as a settlement of the difficulty, he knew that his
course was acceptable to the President and his
Cabinet.
Now, in view of facts like these, would not the
most zealous friend of the President be disposed
to excuse Mr. G. for being a little skeptical in re-
gaui to official statements, when he had no proof
of their truth but the declaration of the Piesident
of the United States?
He believed, himself, that the present war ivas
waged for conquest. The proofs were abundant,
and perfectly conclusive; nor would the people be
at any loss to find them. Congress were bound
to examine into them, and every freeman was
bound to do the same.
Mr. G. would here lake the liberty of reading
one document. It was a report from the War
Department, dated the 26th June, 184G. [tie here
lead the letter of Secretary Marcy respecting the
regiment to be sent round Cape Horn, to consist
of persons of good habits and various pursuits,
who might be discharged in any foreign tern to ty
if it should then constitute a portion of the United
States; if not, then at the nearest point within our
territory, &c.]
Did tins look like repelling invasion? Did it?
war was but carrying out that scheme. Nor was
he, in this matter, prompted by a sense of grati-
tude to his predecessor for bequeathing to him so
grand an enterprise; for Mr. G. held the man in-
capable of so high an emotion.
But the first question Mr. G. desired to ask was,
How did this war come into existence ? By whom
had it been made ? A large portion of the message
was evidently devoted to an effort to show that
Texas comprehended all the country east of the
Rio Grande; that State having conquered the right
of sovereignty over the whole country, as declared
in the act of 1836. To be sure the President
could not have expected to make Congress believe
this, but he was trying to make the people believe
it—though all of any intelligence must know to the
^contrary. The candid and honorable Representa-
tive from the Richmond district [Mr. Seddon] had
admitted that General Taylor, on approaching the
left bank of the Rio Grande, found it occupied ex-
clusively by people who owned no other govern-
ment but that of Mexico. No fact had been or
could be produced to show that Texas ever had
effectively established her jurisdiction over that
part of the country. Yet the President spoke of
all lying cast of the river as that Texas which had
been annexed to the United States. But the an-
nexing resolution spoke only of so much of the
country as "lightfully belonged" to Texas, and no
more was annexed. If Texas ran to the Rio
Grande, from its mouth to its source, why had the
western boundary been reserved as a question for
negotiation? No: the President might try, but he
never could make the people of the United States
believe any such statement. He spoke only that
he might lead the people to believe a lie. At the
time of annexation, and since, it had been admitted
by the most distinguished members of the Demo-
cratic party that the question of boundary was
stdl an open question, and that the country lying
between the Nueces and the Rio Grande was
plausibly a matter of dispute.
Mr. G. did not say that all the intermediate
country was debatable ground, because he well
knew that on the west bank of the Nueces there
were a few people who had taken part with the
insurrection of Texas and were under Texan
jurisdiction. Texas had established a custom-
house there, as the United States had done since.
But the President drew the inference that because
Texas owned a little strip west of the Nueces, she
had of course jurisdiction quite up to the Rio
Grande. In such an inference there was neither
logic nor common sense.
Mr. G. here referred to and quoted the well-
known resolution, introduced into the Senate by
Mr. Benton, declaring that to seize the country
up to the Rio Grande would be an act of direct ag-
gression on Mexico, and would deprive her of pait
of some of her most valuable provinces. He in-
sisted that no good would ever grow out of deny-
ing so palpable a truth, for honesty was always,
in the long run, the best policy.
The President next undertook to give a history
of the outiages of Mexico on the people of Texas,
Were men to go to California to repel invasion— I from the first existence of that State to the present
to compel indemnity ? Mexico had no army there V time; and this was done with a view to create the
to fight; no forts to take; nothing but a wild country impression that these were the causes of this war.
sparsely inhabited. What was this picked regi-
nu'nt to go there for? The people would have no
difficulty in understanding such a fact; and all the 1
sophistry of the President in this long message J
(and what was the whole message but one bundle j
of sophistry ') could never blind their eyes to a :
matter so plain and palpable. The message was 1
nothing but a low demagoguical attempt to deceive 1
the nation—to tell just enough of the truth to cause \
the people to believe a lie. But he never could j
convince people of plain common sense that the I
w<ir was undertaken for no other object than to j
make his own administration glorious. The j
Piesident was wiithing beneath that scathing ques- ;
turn, " Who is James K. Polk ?" And he seemed i
determined to make everybody know who James ;
K. Polk was; and, as it was truly said by a poet, |
li And fool-? i in wliero angel* fear to tread,'' I
he had ventured on matters far beyond the com- j
pass of his powers. He had a predecessor much
of the same stamp, and was seemingly resolved
that the administration of John Tyler should not
exceed that of James It. Polk. In fact, the last
was but a second edition of the same thing. This
whole project of southern annexation had been
originated and brought on by Mr. Tyler: and this i
But no man of sense could admit such an idea; it
was intended for fools, and for fools only. Mr. G.
did not controvert the position that for these out-
rages we had hadgoodcauseforwaragainstMexico
long ago; and if the President had openly brought
them before tongre>s, and recommended war on
that ground, Mr. G. did not know but lie might
have been in favor of it; but the case was other-
wise, and the Executive had not consulted Con-
gress in the matter till he was urged by imperious
necessity. He left it till circumstances were such
as to leave Congress no moral freedom of action;
for he left them to choose between sacrificing Gen-
eral Taylor and his army and formally recognising
the war. Nor were they allowed to debate the
question or speak a word about it. They voted
under the gag, and in this way gave the President
fifty thousand men and $10,000,000. Since then
the President had been little other than a despot,
and had waged the war by his own will alone. It
was the war of the President, commenced and car-
ried on for his own objects, without the consent
of the body to whom exclusively the Constitution
had committed the war power in this Government.
The President was an executive officer, but whose
will did he execute? The will of the people? Mr.
G. had heard no such expression of their will: they ,
had nowhere declared it to be their wish to annex
half a dozen Mexican provinces to this Union.
No; no such thing. The President had rushed
forward on his own mere motion: he was an usurp-
er, a violator of the Constitution; and it would be
treason, moral treason, not to denounce him.
But Mr. G. had been led off. Pie was arguing
to show that this war had been brought about by
an unconstitutional act of the President of the
United States. He had said that the country be-"
tween the Nueces and the Rio Grande was subject
to dispute and to negotiation, but the President
had asserted our claim to it by force of arms. Mr.
G. insisted that this was an act of provocation cal-
culated and intended to produce war; and it did
produce it. It was a practical evasion of the Con-
stitution, which reposed the power of war and
peace in the Representatives of the people alone.
A large discretionary power was^necessarily left
in the hands of the President; and by the abuse of
this, he might bring on such a state of things that
Congress could exercise no free volition in* the
case, but must declare war or suffer the country to
beinsulted. This was now the controversy between
the President and the people of the United States.
[Mr. G. here quoted the letter of Mr. Calhoun
when Secretary of State, admitting the country
between the JNueces and the Rio Grande, to be
properly a subject of peaceable negotiation be-
tween the United States and Mexico.]
Mr. G. said he would greatly like to know what
instructions had been given to Mr. Slidell, when
sent to negotiate oil the subject of boundary, when
at the same time our navy was stationed on the
Mexican coast, and General Taylor ordered to the
Rio Grande. Had he been instructed to insist on
the cession of the Califormas or of New Mexico?
When those instructions should be submitted to
Congress, they could better determine whether
this was undertaken as a war of conquest or not.
Mr. G. regarded it, however, as certain that Mr.
Slidell had been instructed not to agree to any
treaty of boundary which did not include Califor-
nia, and perhaps New Mexico also.
The President seemed to have thought that if he
only struck an imposing blow, and made a strong
military demonstration, that the Government of
Mexico would be intimidated, and he wojild easily
get all he demanded, and thus his name and his
administration would become glorious in history;
but the war had lasted longer than he expected.
Why had he sent armies into California and New
Mexico? Did not this plainly show it was terri-
tory that he wanted?
The gentleman from Illinois, [Mr. Douglass,]
a distinguished leader in the Executive ranks, and
a learned jurist to boot, had stated to the Houec
that, by the mere fact of conquest, New Mexico
and California became part and parcel of the Uni-
ted States; that we had a perfect right to set up
government over them; and further, that if a treaty
of peace should be made without specific bounda-
ries, all we had conquered would of course be an-
nexed to the territory of the United States, and
once in, could never go back but by an act of re-
cession or by areconquest.
Now, Mr. G. had no doubt that this foreshad-
owed the actual plan of the Administration to get
rid of all those little diiEculties and obstacles that
sometimes attended the consulting of a legislative
body. But it would not go. Even the more hon-
est part of the Democracy themselves would never
stand that. Old Virginia would not stand it. There
was too much of patriotism, too much of the love
of liberty yet remaining, to sanction so gross an
infraction of the Constitution.
But his colleague, [Mr. Stanton,] a gentleman
personally and politically associated with the Presi-
dent, had told the House that the President did
not desire unjustly to wrest from Mexico any of
her provinces; but that those who opposed the war
were opposed to an event which was to constitute
the great feature of this age, viz: the annexation
of California; and that the man was blind who did
not see that events all tended to such a result.
[Mr. G. here quoted the report of Mr. Stanton's
speech.] To what result? Obviously (according
to the language) to the unjust and unauthorized
wresting of California from'Mexico.
Mr. STANTON. Does my colleague mean to
say that that was my meaning?
Mr. GENTRY. According to the language it
must have been.
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United States. Congress. The Congressional Globe, [Volume 17]: Twenty-Ninth Congress, Second Session, book, 1847; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc30814/m1/78/: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.