1863.] 265 [Sharswood. 



it Stands forward before the world in all its horrid incarnation of 

 avowal. Before General Hull's capitulation, the first blow that was 

 struck in the present hostilities came from the Indians deep in the 

 Northwest, against the post of Mackinaw. And what was that unhappy 

 man's extenuation of his surrender ? That the savages were swarming 

 for his destruction, pouring down upon his army from the west and 

 north, and hastening to their annihilation." "I solemnly protest," he 

 exclaimed, "that my inconsiderable knowledge suggests no oblation 

 ever kid on the altar of human malignity and vindictiveness to be com- 

 pared with this subornation of our Indians by the English, who boast 

 of their superior religion and charity, who have sent out more mis- 

 sionaries of late for the salvation of distant hemispheres, than all the 

 rest of the world put together, against us Americans, their descendants, 

 their flesh and blood, through the instrumentality of those savages, 

 whom by every liberality and study, we have labored to humanize 

 and ameliorate, and whom we could at any moment either extirpate 

 or expel from the neighborhood of our frontier. It is, sir, an excess 

 of wrong, which absolutely flings the hurdle and guillotine behind, 

 and occupies the most conspicuous place in the representation of our 

 most unnatural passions." 



We cannot pretend to follow Mr. Ingersoll through his entire 

 career in that Congress, in which among the men, tallest in intellec- 

 tual stature which the Union has ever produced, he exercised a wide 

 and commanding influence, and bore his share in all the most im- 

 portant debates. He occupied, by the appointment of the Speaker, 

 Mr. Clay, the position of Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and 

 was a member also of the Committee of Foreign Relations, of which 

 Mr. Calhoun was the Chairman. 



After the close of this Congress, Mr. Ingersoll did not occupy a 

 seat in any public deliberative body until ISoO, when he was elected 

 a Representative of the City of Philadelphia in the General Assembly 

 of this Commonwealth. He had indeed, in the year 1825, attended 

 what in our practical politics may be termed a quasi public body — a 

 convention of delegates from all parts of the Commonwealth — to con- 

 sider and adopt measures for the improvement of the State by the 

 construction of navigable canals. In this convention, Mr. Ingersoll 

 introduced a resolution in favor of the use of railroads, with locomo- 

 tive steam-engines, in which he was seconded by Mr. Henry Vethake; 

 but the motion was voted down by a large majority. In the Legisla- 

 ture he occupied the post of Chairman of the Standing Committee 



VOL. IX. — 2k 



