CONGRESS, U. S. 



339 



Bonaparte followed his own inclinations, and was 

 eventually defeated. 



'' Mr. Chairman is there not instruction in 

 the blunt yet forcible reply of the old French 

 marshal to his superior officer for us? Have 

 we not had from time to time the predictions 

 of Xapoleon during the past three years, but 

 without a Marshal Key to say, ' I see no end to 

 this business' ? 



" But, Mr. Chairman, how do we stand in 

 the eyes of the civilized world to-day in waging 

 a war of subjugation and conquest against the 

 confederate States which have seceded from us 

 and set up a government of their own ? Are 

 we not inconsistent with all our former acts ? 

 Have we not been early to admit this proper 

 with regard to others? There never was a 

 people on the face of the earth that demanded 

 an independent Government that did not have 

 the sympathy of the American people, and 

 ought we now to shrink from the doctrine we 

 have been so willing to apply to others ? 



"My earliest recollection is the appeal made 

 by Clay and "Webster in behalf of Greece, in 

 1824, when they so eloquently declaimed in 

 that behalf, on this floor and in the other branch 

 of Congress. Whether it was Greece or the 

 States of South America, or Poland, or Hun- 

 gary, or Italy, or Ireland, the fact that a large 

 country, for any cause, demanded a distinct 

 and separate Government, always received the 

 warmest sympathy and support of the American 

 people, irrespective of party. Even as late as 

 December, 1860, after Mr. Lincoln was elected, 

 and after the preliminary steps for secession 

 had been taken, the paper having the largest 

 circulation of any in the Republican party, and 

 having more influence than any other in the 

 formation of Republican opinion, declared that 

 it could see no reason why, if three million 

 colonists could separate from the British Crown 

 in 1776, that five million southerners could not 

 separate from us in 1861. I have been as much 

 puzzled as the distinguished Republican editor, 

 Mr. Greeley, to find looking at it as a revolu- 

 tionary right the difference in position. Ought 

 we to shrink from the application of a doctrine 

 to ourselves which we have been so willing to 

 apply to other nations, such as Austria, Russia, 

 and Spain? If we do,. what will be the judg- 

 ment of impartial history ? 



" How much better it would have been for 

 us and for the cause of Democracy throughout 

 the globe, what a splendid tribute it would 

 have been to a republican Government, if we 

 had parted in peace with our dissatisfied sister 

 States, as Mr. Everett recommended as late as 

 February, 1861, sustained by such leading Re- 

 publican journals as the ' Cincinnati Commer- 

 cial,' 'Xew York Tribune,' 'Indianapolis Jour- 

 nal,' 'Chicago Tribune,' ' ISTew Haven (Connecti- 

 cut) Palladium,' 'Columbus Journal,' and Salmon 

 P. Chase, now Secretary of the Treasury, and 

 many others of that school. What in mon- 

 archical countries had required a long and 

 bloody war, would have been accomplished by 



democratic principles and a republican sense of 

 justice. What a splendid proof it would have 

 afforded of the capacity of the people for self- 

 government! What a noble lesson it would 

 have conveyed to the whole civilized world! 

 The fact that we could rise superior to all prej- 

 udices and passions, and to have conquered 

 ourselves, would have been the highest triumph 

 that we had ever achieved. 



"I regret as much, Mr. Chairman, as any 

 gentleman upon this floor, that any of our 

 sister States should have desired to cut asunder 

 the ligaments that bound them to us. None 

 would be more willing than myself to make 

 any reasonable sacrifice to induce them to re- 

 turn to their partnership with us ; but still 

 recognizing the truth of the doctrine taught by 

 the fathers of the Republic and so fairly ex- 

 pressed by Mr. John Quincy Adams, that our 

 Government was, after all, in the heart, and 

 that it would be better, severe as would be the 

 pang of regret, to part in friendship rather 

 than to hold sovereign States pinned to us by 

 the bayonet, as Mr. Greeley expressed it in 

 1861. What advance have we made in the 

 science and principles of government ? 



" Mr. Chairman, if we cannot rise above the 

 Austro-Russian principle of holding subject 

 provinces by the power of force and coercion, 

 what becomes of the Declaration of Independ- 

 ence, and of all our teachings for eighty years ? 

 After all, Mr. Chairman, it is not the extent of 

 territory which should be the object of our 

 desires. Better sacrifice even nine-tenths of 

 the territory than destroy our republican form 

 of government. What our people desired in 

 1861, and which I honored, though I regarded 

 as mistaken, was the preservation of the Gov- 

 ernment and the retention of our jurisdiction 

 of the whole territory. They were rightly 

 willing to sacrifice every material consideration 

 for that purpose. Land is nothing, Mr. Chair- 

 man, compared to liberty. We existed as a 

 Republic when the mouth of the Mississippi 

 was held by a foreign Power, when we had 

 nothing west of that river ; when Florida was 

 held against us ; and we could exist again, if 

 by the chastisement of Heaven we should be 

 curtailed to our old territorial dimensions. 

 For $15,000,000 we purchased the whole of 

 that immense territory ; and were it a hundred 

 thousand times as valuable, its preservation 

 would not be worth our admirable form of 

 government. 



" Pride of territorial ambition is a vulgar and 

 low ambition of national greatness. Russia, 

 and even China, can vie with us in that, but 

 who would not rather reside in one of the can- 

 tons of Switzerland, or in Great Britain, than 

 in those countries ? It is not in the extent of 

 territory we possess, but in the manner in 

 which we govern it, that renders us respectable 

 Many gentlemen seem rather to look at the 

 quantity than the quality. All republics have 

 been destroyed by the thirst of territorial ag- 

 grandizement and the lust of conquest. The 



