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• Foreword
• The Webster-hayne Debate On the Nature of the Union
• Robert Y. Hayne: Speech of Mr. Hayne , of South Carolina [january 19, 1830]
• Daniel Webster: Speech of Mr. Webster , of Massachusetts [january 20, 1830]
• Speech of Mr. Hayne , of South Carolina [january 25, 1830]
• Speech of Mr. Webster , of Massachusetts [january 26 and 27, 1830]
• Speech of Mr. Hayne , of South Carolina [january 27, 1830]
• Thomas Hart Benton: Speech of Mr. Benton, of Missouri [january 20 and 29, February 1 and 2, 1830]
• John Rowan: Speech of Mr. Rowan , of Kentucky [february 4, 1830]
• William Smith: Speech of Mr. Smith , of South Carolina [february 25, 1830]
• John M. Clayton: Speech of Mr. Clayton , of Delaware [march 4, 1830]
• Speech of Mr. Livingston , of Louisiana [march 9, 1830]

Thomas Hart Benton

Thomas Hart Benton was born in North Carolina in 1782. He attended the University of North Carolina and the law department in the College of William and Mary, and was admitted to the bar in Tennessee in 1806. He was a member of the state Senate from 1809 to 1811. Benton was active in the War of 1812, serving as aide-de-camp to General Andrew Jackson and as colonel of an infantry regiment. Following the war, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he practiced law, was a newspaper editor, and won election to the U.S. Senate as a Republican. He was reelected in 1827. Benton supported policies to promote western interests, including hard money, cheap land, internal improvements, and a protective tariff on selected goods. Although a supporter of Henry Clay in the election of 1824, thereafter he became an ardent Democrat and was a leading spokesman in the Senate for the Jackson administration. Benton opposed nullification in 1832 but thought Jackson’s Proclamation on Nullification was too strong. He opposed the compromise tariff act of 1833 because he believed it too favorable to the protective system. Benton vigorously defended Jackson’s veto of the Bank of the United States and his policy for removal of federal deposits from the Treasury. He opposed the annexation of Texas but supported the Mexican War. On slavery, Benton was a moderate who opposed both secessionists and abolitionists. In the debate over the Compromise of 1850, his opposition to Clay’s omnibus bill cost him the support of proslavery forces and led to his defeat in 1850. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1852, and in 1854 opposed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. In the election of 1856, Benton supported Buchanan against Fremont, who was his son-in-law. Benton died in 1858.

Speech of Mr. Benton, of Missouri

[January 20 and 29, February 1 and 2, 1830]

The resolution of Mr. Foot, of Connecticut, relative to the public lands, being under consideration, Mr. Benton addressed the Chair as follows:

Mr. Benton said he could not permit the Senate to adjourn, and the assembled audience of yesterday to separate, without seeing an issue joined on the unexpected declaration then made by the Senator from Massachusetts, [Mr. Webster]—the declaration that the Northeast section of the Union had, at all times, and under all circumstances, been the uniform friend of the West, the South inimical to it, and that there were no grounds for asserting the contrary. Taken by surprise, as I was, said Mr. Benton, by a declaration, so little expected, and so much in conflict with what I had considered established history, I felt it to be due to all concerned to meet the declaration upon the instant—to enter my earnest dissent to it, and to support my denial by a rapid review of some great historical epochs. This I did upon the instant, without a moment’s preparation, or previous thought; but I checked myself in an effusion, in which feeling was at least as predominant as judgment, with the reflection that issues of fact, between Senators, were not to be decided by bandying contradictions across this floor; that it was due to the dignity of the occasion to proceed more temperately, and with proof in hand for every thing that I should urge. I then sat down with the view of recommencing coolly and regularly as soon as I could refresh my memory with dates and references. The warmth of the moment prevented me from observing what was most obvious—namely, that the resolution under discussion was itself the most pregnant illustration of my side of the issue. It is a resolution of direst import to the new States in the West, involving, in its four fold aspect, the stoppage of emigration to that region, the limitation of its settlement, the suspension of surveys, the abolition of the Surveyor’s offices, and the surrender of large portions of Western territory to the use and dominion of wild beasts; and, in addition to all this, connecting itself, in time and spirit, with another resolution, in the other end of the Capitol, for delivering up the public lands, in the new States to the avarice of the old ones, to be coined in gold and silver for their benefit. This resolution, thus hostile in itself, and aggravated by an odious connexion, came upon us from the Northeast, and was resisted by the South. Its origin, and its progress, was a complete exemplification of the relative affection which the two Atlantic sections of the Union bear to the West. Its termination was to put the seal upon the question of that affection. The Senator from Massachusetts, (Mr. Webster) to whom I am now replying, was not present at the offering of that resolution. He arrived when the debate upon it was far advanced, and the temper of the South and West fully displayed. He saw the condition of his friends, and the consequences of the movement which they had made. Their condition was that of a certain army, which had been conducted, by two consuls, into the Caudine Forks; the consequences might be prejudicial to the Northeast—more accurately speaking, to a political party in the Northeast! His part was that of a prudent commander—to extricate his friends from a perilous position; his mode of doing it ingenious, that of starting a new subject, and moving the indefinite postponement of the impending one. His attack upon the South was a cannonade, to divert the attention of the assailants; his concluding motion for indefinite postponement, a signal of retreat and dispersion to his entangled friends. They may obey the signal. They may turn head upon their speeches, and vote for the postponement, and avoid a direct vote upon the resolution, and give up the pursuit after that information which was so indispensable to do justice and to avoid suspicion; but in doing so, they take my ground against the resolution; for indefinite postponement is rejection; and whether rejected or not, the indelible character of the resolution must remain. It was hostile to the West! It came from the Northeast! and was resisted by the South!

Before I proceed to the main object of this reply, I must be permitted, Mr. President, to tear away some ornamental work, and to remove some rubbish, which the Senator from Massachusetts, (Mr. W.) has placed in the way, either to decorate his own march, or to embarrass mine. He has brought before us a certain Nathan Dane, of Beverly, Massachusetts, and loaded him with such an exuberance of blushing honors, as no modern name has been known to merit, or to claim. Solon, Lycurgus, and Numa Pompilius, are the renowned legislators of antiquity to whom he is compared, and, only compared, for the purpose of being placed at their head. So much glory was earned by a single act, and that act, the supposed authorship of the ordinance of 1787, for the Government of the North Western Territory, and especially of the clause in it which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude. Mr. Dane was assumed to be the author of this Ordinance, and especially of this clause, and upon that assumption was founded, not only, the great superstructure of Mr. Dane’s glory, but a claim also upon the gratitude of Ohio, and all the North West, to the unrivalled legislator, who was the author of their happiness, and to the quarter of the Union which was the producer of the legislator. So much encomium, and such grateful consequences, it seems a pity to spoil; but spoilt they must be; for Mr. Dane was no more the author of that Ordinance, Mr. President, than you, or I, who, about that time were “mewling and puling in our nurses’ arms.” That Ordinance, and especially the non-slavery clause, was not the work of Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, but of Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia. It was reported by a Committee of three, Messrs. Jefferson, of Virginia, Chase, of Maryland, and Howell, of R.I.—a majority from slave States, in April 1784, nearly two years before Mr. Dane became a member of Congress. The clause was not adopted at that time, there being but six States in favor of it, and the articles of confederation, in questions of that character, requiring seven. The next year, ’ 85, the clause, with some modification, was moved by Mr. King, of New York, as a proposition to be sent to a Committee, and was sent to the Committee accordingly; but, still did not ripen into a law. A year afterwards, this clause, and the whole Ordinance was passed upon the report of a Committee of six members, of whom, the name of Mr. Dane, stands No. 5 in the order of arrangement on the Journal. There were but eight States present at the passing of this Ordinance, namely, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia; and every one voted for it. [Mr. B. read the parts of the Journal which verified these statements, and continued:] So passes away the glory of this world. But yesterday the name of Nathan Dane, of Beverly, Massachusetts, hung in equipose against half the names of the sages of Greece and Rome. Poetry and eloquence were at work to blazon his fame; marble and brass, and history and song, were waiting to perform their office. The celestial honors of the apotheosis seemed to be only deferred for the melancholy event of the sepulchre. To-day, all this superstructure of honors, human & divine, disappears from the earth. The foundation of the edifice is sapped; and the superhuman glories of him, who, twenty four hours ago, was taking his station among the demi-gods of antiquity, have dispersed and dissipated into thin air,—vanishing like the baseless fabric of a vision, which leaves not a wreck behind.

So much for the ornamental work; now for the rubbish.

The Senator from Massachusetts, (Mr. W.) has dwelt with much indignation upon certain supposed revilings of the New England character. He did not indicate the nature of the revilings, nor the name of the reviler. I, for one, disclaim a knowledge of the thing, and the doing of the thing itself. I deal in no general imputations upon communities. Such reflections are generally unjust, and always unwise. I am no defamer of New England. The man must be badly informed upon the history of these States who does not know the great points of the New England character. He must poorly appreciate national renown in arms and letters,—national greatness, resting on the solid foundations of religion, morality, and learning, who does not respect the people among whom these things are found in rich abundance. Yet, I must say, the speech of yesterday forces me to say it, that, in a political point of view, the population of New England does not stand undivided before me. A line of division is drawn through the mass, whether “horizontally,” leaving the rich and well-born above, the poor and illborn below; or, vertically, so as to present a section of each layer, is not for me to affirm. The division exists. On one side of it we see friends who have adhered to us in every diversity of fortune, who have been with us in six troubles, and will not desert us in the seventh; men who were with us in ’ 98, and in the late war, whose grief and joy rose and sunk with ours in the struggle with England, who wept with us over the calamities of the north-west, and rejoiced in the splendid glories of the south-west! On the other side, we see those who were against us in all these trials; who thought it unbecoming a moral and religious people to celebrate the triumphs of their own country over its enemy, but quite becoming the same people, to be pleased at the victories of the enemy, over their country; who gave a dinner to him that surrendered Detroit. The line of division exists. On one side of it, stands the democracy of New England, to whom we give the right hand of fellowship at home and abroad; on the other side, all that stands opposed to that democracy, for whose personal welfare we have the best wishes, but with whom we must decline, as publicly as it was proffered, the honor of that alliance which was yesterday vouchsafed to the West, if not in direct terms, at least by an implication which no one misunderstood. When, then, the People of New England shall read of these revilings, in that well delivered speech of yesterday, let them remember that an issue of fact is joined upon the assertion, and that it is contained in the same speech which supposes Nathan Dane, of Beverly, Massachusetts, to have been the author of a certain production in the year 1786, which the Journals of Congress shew to have been the work of Thomas Jefferson, of Monticello, Vir., in the year 1784 ! The same speech which claims, for New England, the gratitude of the North-western States for passing that ordinance, when the Journals prove, that it had the votes of four States, from the south of the Potomac, and only one from New England! When it could have passed without the New England vote, but not without three of the Southern ones!

But I did say something which might be understood as a reproach upon some of the leading characters of New England; it was upon the subject of emigration to the West, and their opposition to it. I quoted high authority at the time, the authority of gentlemen who had served in Congress, and made their statements in the Virginia Convention, under the highest moral responsibilities. Their statement is denied. I will, therefore, produce authority from a different quarter, and of a more recent application; the letter of a son of New England, to another son of the same quarter of the Union.

Having read this letter of Mr. Adams, Mr. B. continued. I will make no comment on the language here used. It is sufficiently significant without that trouble.—“Partial—sectarian—clannish—jealous—envious—narrow—contracted—excite—provoke—multiplying—fomenting—principles of repulsion”—are phrases which need no aid from the dictionary to uncover their pregnant meaning. I will only ask for three or four concessions:

1. That the authority of the writer of the letter is canonical, and binding on the church.

2. That it goes the full length of charging the New England leaders of 1813, with opposition to Western emigration.

3. That nothing which I have said of the motives, or conduct of those who oppose this emigration, can compare in severity of expression with the language of Mr. Adams.

4. That the political leaders of whom he spoke as opposing emigration to the West, upon such motives, and by such means, are the same who are now denying it on this floor, and wooing the West into an alliance with them.

I gave yesterday, Mr. President, the brief history of the great attempt in ’ 86, 7, 8, to surrender the navigation of the Mississippi—to surrender it in violation of the articles of confederation, by a majority of seven States, when the requisite majority of nine could not be obtained—the protracted resistance of these attempts by the Southern States—their final defeat by a movement from North Carolina—and the secrecy in which the whole was enveloped. The history of these things were given then; the proofs will be produced now; the epoch and the subject are entitled to the first degree of consideration in this inquiry into the relative affection of two great sections of the Union to a third; for on this question of a surrender of the navigation of the Mississippi, to the King of Spain, commenced that line of separation between the conduct of the Northeast, and of the South, towards the West, which has continued to this day.

The first movement upon this subject was in the winter of ’ 79 – 80. It came through the French Ambassador, the Chevalier de la Luzerne, the United States having no diplomatic relations, at that time, with the King of Spain. The Chevalier, in a secret communication to Congress, informed them, by the command of the King of France, that the King of Spain would join the United States against England upon four conditions, namely:

1. That the settlements and boundary of the United States should not extend further West than to the heads of the rivers that flowed into the Atlantic ocean.

2. That the exclusive navigation of the Mississippi should belong to Spain.

3. That the Floridas should belong to her.

4. That the Southern States should be restrained from making settlements to the west of the Alleghanies, and that all the country beyond these mountains should be considered as British possessions, and proper objects for the arms, and permanent conquest of Spain. (Secret Journals, vol. 2, p. 310.)

The proffered alliance of Spain, upon these conditions, was rejected by Congress. But her alliance was an object of the first importance, and to obtain it if possible, without the worst of these conditions, Mr. Jay was despatched to Madrid. On the subject of the Mississippi, Mr. Jay was directed to make a sine qua non of the free navigation of that river, and the use of a port near its mouth; on the subject of the West, for I limit myself to these points, he was directed to say that the West being settled by citizens of the United States, friendly to the Revolution, Congress would not assign them over to any foreign power. These instructions were unanimously given. This was in the commencement of the year ’ 80. One year afterwards, to wit—the 15th of Feb. ’ 81, one month before the battle of Guilford Court House, the delegates of Virginia, in pursuance to instructions from their constituents, moved to recede from so much of the previous instruction of Mr. Jay, as made the free navigation of the Mississippi, a sine qua non, provided, that Spain should “unalterably” insist upon it, and not otherwise come into the alliance against England; and that the Minister be “ordered to exert every possible effort” to obtain the alliance without the surrender of the navigation of the river. On the question to agree to this modification of the instructions, the vote stood—Yeas, Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland, (the four latter having but one member each present.) Nays, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and North Carolina. New York divided and not counted.

This, Mr. President, is the case mentioned by Mr. Madison, in the Virginia Convention; the instance of willingness, on the part of the Southern States, to give up the navigation of the Mississippi, and its resistance by the Northern States, to which he alluded. The journals show the facts of the case. They control the recollections of Mr. Madison, and leave me not a word to say. But, the question of this navigation, and these instructions, did not stop here. On the 10th of August following, it was proposed to vest the Minister at Madrid with discretionary power over the navigation of the Mississippi, and unanimously rejected. The proposition stands thus, p. 468 of the 4th volume of the journal:

Upon the question of adopting this proposition, the votes were unanimously against it, not of States only, but of Members; every Member of every State present voting in the negative. This was a proud instance of unanimity. The result of it was, the acquisition of the alliance of Spain, without a surrender of the great right of navigation in the King of Floods.

The question of the navigation of this river, then slept for four years, until the summer of 1785, when Don Gardoqui, the Spanish encargado de negocios, arrived in the United States, with powers to negotiate a treaty. Mr. Jay, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was appointed to treat with him. The instructions to Mr. Jay limited his negotiation to two points, namely: boundaries and navigation; and on this latter point, the last clause of his instructions made the free navigation of the Mississippi and the use of a port near its mouth, an indispensable condition to the conclusion of a treaty. These instructions seem to have been given with entire unanimity. No division of sentiment appears on the journal, and nearly a whole year elapsed before any thing appears upon the subject of this negotiation, thus committed to Mr. Jay and Don Gardoqui. At the end of that time, it was brought before Congress, by a letter from Mr. Jay, in secret session, and gave rise to proceedings which I beg leave to read, not chusing to trust any thing to my memory, or to risk the possible substitution of my own language for that of the record, in a case of so much delicacy and moment.

This letter was referred to a committee of three, namely: Mr. King, of N.Y. Mr. Pettit, of Penn. and Mr. Monroe, of Vir. They reported, that the letter should be taken under consideration, in committee of the whole House. This committee resolved to hear the Secretary in person, fixed a day for his attendance, and ordered him to state the difficulties of which his letter had given intimation.

He did so in a written statement, which, including letters from Don Gardoqui, occupies some thirty pages of the Journal. The points of it, so far as they are material to the question now before the Senate, were, that the pending negotiation for boundaries and navigation, should also include commerce; that the U. States should abandon to the King of Spain the exclusive navigation of the Mississippi, for twenty-five or thirty years, and that Spain should purchase many articles from the United States, of which pickled salmon, train oil, and codfish, were particularly dwelt upon. (Vol. 4, pages 45 to 63.) From this instant, Mr. President, the division between the North and South, on the subject of the West, sprung into existence. A series of motions and votes ensued, and a struggle, which continued two years, in which Maryland and all South, voted one way, and New Jersey, and all North, voted the other. The most important of these motions were, 1. a motion by Mr. King, of N. York, to repeal the clause in the instructions to Mr. Jay which made the navigation of the Mississippi a sine qua non, which was carried by the seven Northern States against the others. 2. A motion by Mr. Pinckney, of S. Carolina, to revoke the whole instruction, and stop the negociation; lost by the same vote. 3. A motion by Mr. Pinckney, seconded by Mr. Monroe, to declare it a violation of the articles of the Confederation for seven States to alter the instructions for negotiating a treaty, those articles requiring the consent of nine States on questions of that kind; lost by the same vote. 4. A motion by the Delegates from Virginia to make it a sine qua non, that the citizens of the United States should have the privilege of taking their produce to New Orleans; the U. States to have a Consul, and the citizens Factors there; that the vessels be allowed to return empty, and the produce to be exported on paying a small export duty: lost by the same array of votes. 5. A motion made by Mr. St. Clair, seconded by Mr. King, to make the same proposition, to be obtained, if possible, but not a sine qua non; carried by the ayes of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 7, against the noes of Maryland, Virginia, N. Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, 5, Delaware not present.

I pause a moment, Mr. President, in the narrative of these occurrences to remark that the motion of the Virginia delegation above stated, has been misunderstood; that it has been supposed that that delegation and the South which voted with them, were then in favor of paying tribute to Spain, and abandoning for ever the upward, or ascending navigation of the Mississippi, and that the seven Northern States prevented that calamity to the West. Nothing can be more erroneous than this conception. The attempt of Virginia was to save at all events—to make sure, by a sine qua non, of this poor privilege, of exporting, paying an export duty of 2½ per cent. and returning empty, and this, after seeing that the whole right to the navigation, descending as well as ascending, was to be surrendered for twenty-five or thirty years. The vote of the seven Northern States against the Virginia proposition was to have an opportunity of doing not better, but worse, for the West; to make this same proposition, not an indispensable condition to the conclusion of a treaty, but a mere proposal, to be obtained if it could, and if not, the whole right of navigation to be abandoned for 25 or 30 years. This is what they shewed to be their disposition in adopting Mr. King’s motion immediately after rejecting that of the Virginia delegation. Mr. King’s being a substantial copy of the other, except in the essential particulars of the sine qua non; and for this the seven Northern States voted; the six others opposed it.

I now resume my narrative.

The next motion and vote stands thus upon the Journal of the 28th Sept. ’86.

In April, 1787, Mr. Madison having become a member of Congress, moved two resolutions, one to transfer the negotiation with Spain from the United States to Madrid; the other to charge Mr. Jefferson, then in France, with the conduct of it. (Secret Journals, vol. 4, p. 339.) The object of these resolutions could not be mistaken. They were referred by Congress to Mr. Jay, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and still engaged in the negotiation with Don Gardoqui. He reported at large against the expediency of the transfer, treating it as a project to gain time, and complaining that the secret of the Spanish negotiations had leaked out of Congress. This report and the motion of Mr. Madison, seemed to have been undisposed of, when an incident in real life, and the firm stand of one of the States, brought the majority of Congress to a pause, and extricated the Mississippi from its imminent danger. This was the arrest of a citizen of North Carolina, and the confiscation of his vessel and cargo, by the Spanish Governor, Grandpré at Natchez, and the decisive character of the appeal made by the Legislature, the Governor, and the delegates in Congress from that State, for the redress of that outrage. Mr. Madison availed himself of the feeling produced by these incidents, to make another attempt to get rid of the subject, and, in September 1788, offered a resolution that no further progress be made in the negotiation with Spain, and that the whole subject be referred to the new Federal Government, which was to go into operation the ensuing year. This resolution was agreed to, and the Mississippi saved. Thus ended an arduous and eventful struggle. The termination was fortunate and happy; but the spirit which produced it has never gone to sleep. The idea that the Western rivers are a fund for the purchase of Atlantic advantages, in treaties with Foreign Powers, has been acted upon often since: The Mississippi, the Arkansas, the Red River, the Sabine and the Columbia, can bear witness of this. The idea that the growth of the West was incompatible with the supremacy of the northeast, has since crept into the legislation of the Federal Government, as will be fully developed in the course of this debate.

I have already given the proof of the fact, that the South is entitled to the honor of originating the clause against slavery in the Northwest Territory: the state of the votes upon its adoption also shows that she is entitled to the honor of passing it; there being but eight States present, four from each side of the Potomac, only one from New England, and all voting for it. This shows the great mistake which is committed in claiming the merit of that ordinance for the Northeast, and founding upon that claim a title to the gratitude of the Northwestern States. The ordinance of the same epoch, for the sale of the Western lands, has also been celebrated, and deservedly, for the beauty and science of its system of surveys. The honor of this ordinance is also assumed for the Northeast. Let it be so. I know nothing to the contrary, and what I do know, favors that idea. The ordinance came from a committee of twelve, of whom eight were from the North, four from the South side of the Potomac. But, as it came from that committee, it would have left the whole Northwestern region a haunt for wild beasts and savages. The clause which required that every previous township should be sold out complete, before a subsequent one was offered for sale, would have produced this result, and was intended to produce it. Virginia, the South, and some Northern States, expunged that clause; Massachusetts and some others contended for it to the last. The Northwest is therefore indebted to the South for the sale of its lands: it is also indebted to it for an unsuccessful attempt to promote the settlement of the country by reducing the size of the tracts to be sold. The ordinance, as reported, fixed 640 acres as the smallest division that might be offered for sale. Mr. Grayson, of Virginia, seconded by Mr. Monroe, moved to reduce the quantity to 320 acres, but failed in the attempt. The Virginia delegation voted for it unanimously; South Carolina and Georgia both voted for it, but having but one member present, the vote did not count. Maryland voted for it; all the rest of the States against. Another attempt to benefit the settler, and promote the sale of the country, deserves a notice, though unsuccessful. It was the motion to reduce the price, fixed in the ordinance, from one dollar per acre to sixty-six and two-thirds cents. This motion was made by Mr. Beatty, of New Jersey, seconded by Mr. McHenry of Maryland, and was supported by the votes of four States, to wit: New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and South Carolina; Pennsylvania divided, and counted nothing; the rest of the States, Virginia inclusive, voted against it. The motion failed, though respectably supported; the price remained at one dollar, which is twenty-five cents less than the present minimum price of the same lands after forty-five years picking; and it is worthy of remark, that one-third of the States were then, when the lands were all fresh and unpicked, in favor of establishing a minimum price at sixty-six and two thirds cents per acre; a fraction only over one-half of the present minimum!

I now approach, Mr. President, the subject of most engrossing interest to the young West—its sufferings under Indian wars, and its vain appeals, for so many years, to the Federal Government for succor and relief. The history of twelve years’ suffering in Tennessee, from 1780 to 1792, when the inhabitants succeeded in conquering peace without the aid of federal troops; and of sixteen years carnage in Kentucky, from 1774 to 1790, when the first effectual relief began to be extended—would require volumes of detail, for which we have no time, and powers of description, for which I have no talent. Then was witnessed the scenes of woe and death, of carnage and destruction, which no words of mine can ever paint: instances of heroism in men, of fortitude and devotedness in women, of instinctive courage in little children, which the annals of the most celebrated nations can never surpass. Then was seen the Indian warfare in all its horrors; that warfare which spares neither decrepit age, nor blooming youth, nor manly strength, nor infant weakness—in which the sleeping family awoke from their beds in the midst of flames and slaughter—when virgins were led off captive by savage monsters—when mothers were loaded with their children, and compelled to march; and when unable to keep up, were relieved of their burthen by seeing the brains of infants beat out on a tree—when the slow consuming fire of the stake devoured its victim in the presence of pitying friends and in the midst of exulting demons; when the corn was planted, the fields were ploughed, the crops were gathered, the cows were milked, water was brought from the spring, and God was worshipped, under the guard and protection of armed men; when the night was the season for travelling, the impervious forest the high-way, and the place of safety, most remote from the habitation of man; when every house was a fort, and every fort subject to siege and assault. Such was the warfare in the infant settlements of Kentucky and Tennessee, and which the aged men, actors in the dreadful scenes, have related to me so many times. Appeals to the Federal Government were incessant and vain, during the long progress of these disastrous wars; but as the revolutionary struggle was going on during a part of the time, and engrossed the resources of the Union, I will draw no example from that period. I will take a period posterior to the revolution. Three years after the peace with Great Britain, when the settlements in the West had taken a permanent form, when the Indian hostilities were most inveterate, when the Federal Government had a military peace establishment of seven hundred men; and when the acceptance of the cessions of the public lands in the West, made the duty of protection no less an object of interest to the Union, than of justice and humanity to the inhabitants. I will take the year 1786. What was the relative conduct of the North and South to the infant, suffering, bleeding, imploring West, in this season of calamity to her, and ability in them to give her relief? What was then the conduct of each? It was that of unrelenting severity on the part of the North—of generous and sympathising friendship on the part of the South! The evidence which cannot err will prove this, and will cover with confusion the bold declarations which have imposed upon me the duty of this reply. I speak of the Journals of the Old Congress, quotations from which I now proceed to read.

“Journals of Congress, vol. 4, p. 654.”

Wednesday, June 21, 1786.

“The Secretary of War, to whom was referred a motion of Mr. Grayson, of Virginia, having reported the following resolution:

“That the Secretary of War direct the commanding officer of the troops to detach two companies to the Rapids of the Ohio, to protect the inhabitants from the depredations and incursions of the Indians.”

Mark well, Mr. President, the terms of this resolution; to detach two companies then in service—not to raise them; for the purpose of protecting the inhabitants, not to attack the Indians. No expense in this; a mere change of position to a part of the military force then on foot. Observe the course of treatment the resolution received.

The first movement against it came from the North, in a motion to refer the resolution to a peace committee on Indian Affairs. The yeas and nays on that motion were:

• Massachusetts—Aye.
• New York—Aye.
• Maryland—No.
• Virginia—No.
• North Carolina—No.
• Pennsylvania—Divided.
• New Jersey—Divided.
• New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Georgia—But one member—not counted.
• Delaware and South Carolina—Absent.

The motion to refer was thus lost for want of seven ayes.

The second movement was from the South, Mr. Lee, of Virginia, seconded by Mr. Grayson, having moved to substitute four for two, so as to double the intended protection.

The vote upon this motion was—

• Massachusetts—No.
• New York—No.
• New Jersey—No.
• Pennsylvania—No.
• Maryland—No.
• North Carolina—No.
• New Hampshire—No.
• Virginia—Aye.
• Georgia—Aye.
• Delaware and South Carolina—Absent.

The third trial was on the adoption of the resolution, and exhibited the following vote:

• New Hampshire—Mr. Long,* aye.
• Massachusetts—Mr. Gorham, no, Mr. King, no, Mr. Sedgwick, no, Mr. Dane, no.
• Rhode Island—Mr. Manning,* aye.
• New York—Mr. Haring, aye, Mr. Smith, aye.
• New Jersey—Mr. Symmes, aye, Mr. Hornblower, aye.
• Pennsylvania—Mr. Pettit, aye, Mr. Wilson, aye.
• Maryland—Mr. Henry, aye, Mr. Hindman, aye, Mr. Harrison, aye.
• Virginia—Mr. Grayson, aye, Mr. Monroe aye, Mr. Lee, aye.
• North Carolina—Mr. Bloodworth, aye, Mr. White, aye.
• Georgia—Mr. Few, aye.*

Those marked with an asterisk, having but one number, were not counted. Six States only of those fully represented voted in favor of the resolution; it was consequently lost! Lost for want of the vote of one State, and that State was Massachusetts! The next day that vote was supplied, but not by Massachusetts. Mr. Pinckney and Mr. Huger arrived from South Carolina. Mr. Pinckney, seconded by Mr. Carrington, of Virginia, immediately moved the rejected resolution over again, and South Carolina voting with the ayes, made seven affirmative States, and carried the resolution.

This, Mr. President, is the history of the first relief ever extended by the Federal Government to the inhabitants of Kentucky. Your State, sir, now painted as the enemy of the West, turned the scale in favor of that small but acceptable succor. It hung upon one vote; Massachusetts denied that vote! South Carolina came and gave it!

The instant this much was obtained, the generous delegates of the great and magnanimous Virginia commenced operations to procure the real and effectual protection which the case required, namely, an expedition into the Indian territory north of the Ohio river. The Governor of Virginia, on the 16th of May, ’86, in a letter to Congress, had recommended this course, and offered the militia of his State to execute it. The letter was referred to a committee of three, Messrs. Grayson and Monroe, of Vir. and Mr. Dane, of Massachusetts. On the 29th of June, just seven days after the vote had passed for detaching two companies to the Falls of the Ohio, Mr. Grayson reported upon the recommendation of the Governor of Virginia. It was such a report as might be expected from a committee of which Virginia delegates constituted the majority. It recommended the expedition, and gave the most solid and convincing reasons for agreeing to it. The whole report is spread upon the Journal of that day, (vol. 4, p. 657.) Justice to the patriots who drew it, and justice also to those who supported, and opposed, it, would require it to be read, but time forbids. I can only repeat, in a condensed recital, its leading contents. It showed that the hostile Indians were bent on war; that they had treated with contempt the application which the United States had made to them, to meet commissioners at the mouth of the Great Miami, and conclude a peace; that, issuing from their vast forests beyond the Ohio, and returning to them for refuge, the war was to them a gratification of their savage thirst for blood and plunder, without danger of chastisement; that, while confined to defence on our side, and offence on their side, they had every motive which their savage policy required, to carry on the war, and no motive to stop it; that a march into their country was the only means of compelling them to accept peace; and, it concluded with a resolution that the two companies ordered to the Falls of Ohio, and one thousand Virginia militia, drawn from the district of Kentucky, under the command of a superior officer, be ordered to march into the hostile Indian territory, armed with the double authority of Commissioner and General, to treat as well as to fight.

We will now see the reception which this report and resolution met with.

The first movement upon it was in the way of a side blow, one of those operations in legislation which have the two fold advantage of doing most mischief, and doing it without appearing to be absolutely hostile to the measure. It was a motion to postpone the consideration of the resolution, for the purpose of considering a proposition which was the reverse of Mr. Grayson’s report in all its material facts and conclusions. This new proposition recited, that Congress had received information that small parties of Indians had crossed the Ohio, and committed depredations on the district of Kentucky; but had not sufficient evidence of the aggression or hostile disposition of any tribes of Indians to justify the United States in carrying the war into the Indian country; and proposed a Resolve, that Congress would proceed—in the organization of the Indian Department!!! and adopt such measures as would secure peace to the Indians, and safety to the inhabitants of the frontiers.

Let it be remembered, Mr. President, that this proposition was offered on the 29th of June, 1786, when the Indian war in Kentucky had raged for twelve years, when thousands of men, women, and children, had perished; that it was four years after the great battle of the Blue Licks, that disastrous battle in which the flower of western chivalry was cut down, and the whole land filled with grief and covered with mourning; that it was the very same year in which an offer to treat for peace, at the mouth of the Great Miami, had been contemptuously rejected; and, after recollecting these things, then judge of its statements and conclusions! To me it seems to class itself with the motions afterwards witnessed in the French national convention, to proceed to the order of the day when petitions were presented to save the lives of multitudes upon the point of assassination. The motion to postpone was made; the yeas and nays were called for by Mr. Grayson; the delegations of several States voted for it—and let the journal of the day announce their names.

• New Hampshire.—Mr. Livermore, no, Mr. Long, aye.
• Massachusetts.—Mr. Gorham, aye, Mr. King, aye, Mr. Sedgwick, aye, Mr. Dane, no.
• Rhode Island.—Mr. Manning, no.
• New York.—Mr. Haring, aye, Mr. Smith, aye.
• New Jersey.—Mr. Symmes, no, Mr. Hornblower, aye.
• Pennsylvania.—Mr. Pettit, aye, Mr. Bayard, aye.
• Maryland.—Mr. Henry, aye, Mr. Hindman, no, Mr. Harrison, no, Mr. Ramsay, no.
• Virginia.—Mr. Grayson, no, Mr. Monroe, no, Mr. Carrington, no, Mr. Lee, no.
• North Carolina.—Mr. Bloodworth, no, Mr. White, no.
• South Carolina.—Mr. Pinckney, no, Mr. Huger, no.
• Georgia.—Mr. Few, no.

The motion to postpone was lost, only three States voting for it. Some amendments were agreed in, the resolution put on its passage, and rejected! New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, voting no. Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, aye. Delaware, absent. Rhode Island, but one member present. The vote of Georgia lost by the refusal of a member to vote, [Mr. Houston] who seemed, upon all trial questions between the different sections of the Union, to occupy a false position.

Defeated, but not subdued—repulsed, but not vanquished—invincible in the work of justice and humanity, the Virginia delegation immediately commenced new operations, and devised new plans for the relief of the West. On the very next day, June 30th, a motion was made by Mr. Lee, seconded by Mr. Monroe, to have one thousand men, of the Virginia militia, held in readiness, and called out, in case of necessity, for the protection of the West. Even this was resisted! A motion was made by Mr. King, of Massachusetts, seconded by Mr. Long, of New Hampshire, to strike out the number “one thousand.” It was struck out accordingly, there being but five states, to wit: Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, in favor of retaining it. The resolution, eviscerated of this essential part, was allowed to pass; and thus, on the 30th day of June, in the year 1786, the Governor of Virginia obtained the privilege from the Continental Congress, to order some militia in Kentucky to hold themselves in readiness to protect the country, in case of necessity! Thus, at the end of twelve years from the commencement of the Indian wars, Kentucky obtained the assent of Congress to the defence of herself ! Tennessee never obtained that much! She fought out the war from 1780 to 1792 upon her own bottom, without the assent, and against the commands of Congress. Expresses were often despatched to recall her expeditions going in pursuit of Indians who had invaded her settlements. The decisive expedition to the Cherokee town of Nicojac, which was framed upon the plan of Mr. Grayson, was, in legal acceptation, a lawless invasion of a friendly tribe. The brave and patriotic men who swam the Tennessee river, three quarters of a mile wide, in the dead of the night, shoving their arms before them on rafts, and stormed the town, and drove the Indians from the gap in the mountain—the Thermopylae of the country—and gave peace to the Cumberland settlements—did it with Federal halters round their necks: for the expedition was contrary to law. And now, in the face of history which proclaims, and journals which record, these facts—in contempt of all memory that retains, and tradition that recounts them, Massachusetts and the Northeast, which abandoned the infant west to the rifle, the hatchet, the knife, and the burning stake of the Indians, are to be put forth as the friends of the West! Virginia, and the South, which labored for them with a zeal and perseverance which eventually obtained the kind protection recommended in the report of Mr. Grayson—the expedition of Harmar, St. Clair, and Wayne—are to be set down as their enemies! And upon this settlement of the account, the West is now to be wooed into an alliance with the trainbands of New England federalism—the elite of the Hartford Convention—for the oppression of Virginia and the South, and the subjugation of New England Democracy! History and the journals are to be faced down with the assertion that the protecting arm of the Government was forever stretched over the infant settlements of the West, the North taking the lead of the South in its defence and protection!

Two more brief references to incidents of different characters, but highly pertinent and instructive, will complete my selection of examples from the history of the Old Congress. One was a refusal, on the 25th of July, 1787, to treat for a cession of Indian lands either on the North, or the South side of the Ohio; the other was a refusal, on the 2 d of August of the same year, to let Virginia “be credited” with the expenses of an expedition which she had carried on in the Winter of ’86–’87, against the Indians on both sides of the Ohio river, because that expedition was “not authorized” by the United States. The journals of the day will shew the particulars, and exhibit the delegation of Massachusetts that Nathan Dane included, who is now to be set up as the founder, legislator, and benefactor of the Northwest—as heading the opposition on both occasions. And here I submit, that, thus far, the assertion of the Senator from South Carolina, [Mr. Hayne] that the West had received hard treatment from the Federal Government, is fully sustained. His remark was chiefly directed to the hard terms on which they get lands; but it holds good on the important point of long neglect, the effect of Northern jealousy, in giving protection against the Indians.

January 29, 1830.—Second Day.

I resume my Speech, said Mr. B. at the point at which it was suspended, when I gave way to the natural and laudable impatience of the Senator from South Carolina, who sits on my right (Mr. Hayne) to vindicate himself, his State, and the South, from what appeared to me to be a most gratuitous aggression. Well and nobly has he done it. Much as he had done before to establish his reputation as an orator, a statesman, a patriot, and a gallant son of the South, the efforts of these days eclipse and surpass the whole. They will be an era in his Senatorial career which his friends and his country will mark and remember, and look back upon with pride and exultation.

Before I go on with new matter, said Mr. B., I must be permitted to reach back, and bring up, in the way of recapitulation, and for the purpose of joining together the broken ends of my speech, the heads and substance of the great facts which I quoted and established at the commencement of this reply. They are:

1. The attempt of the seven Northern States in 1786, 87—88, to surrender the navigation of the Mississippi, to the King of Spain.

2. The attempt to effect that surrender, in violation of the articles of confederation, by the votes of seven States when nine could not be had.

3. The design of this surrender, to check the growth of the West.

4. The clause in the first Ordinance for the sale of the public lands, in the North Western Territory, which required the previous townships to be sold out complete before the subsequent ones could be offered for sale.

5. The refusal to sell a less quantity than 640 acres together.

6. The refusal to reduce the minimum price from one dollar, to sixty six and two thirds cents, per acre.

7. The opposition, in 1786, to the motion to detach two companies to the Falls of the Ohio, for the protection of Kentucky against the incursions and depredations of the Indians.

8. The opposition to Mr. Grayson’s unanswerable report, in the same year, in favor of sending an expedition into the hostile Indian country.

9. The refusal, at the same time, to permit Virginia to hold “one thousand” of her own militia in readiness to protect Kentucky.

10. The refusal, in 1787, to treat for a cession of Indian lands on either side of the Ohio.

11. The refusal in the same year to let Virginia “be credited” with the expenses of an expedition, carried on in the winter of ’ 86, ’ 87, by her troops, on both sides of the Ohio river for the defence of the West.

12. The refusal for twelve years, from ’ 74 to ’ 86, to send any aid to Kentucky.

13. The refusal, throughout the entire war, to send any aid to the Cumberland settlements in Tennessee.

14. The opposition to western emigration, as proved by Mr. Adams’s letter.

In all these instances, and I have omitted a thousand others, having confined myself to a single and brief period by way of example, and that period the one when the termination of the revolutionary war, peace with all the world, and a standing force of 700 men, made it easy to give protection to the West; and when the cession of the western lands to the federal government for the payment of the revolutionary debt, and the establishment of new States in the Northwest, devolved the business of Western protection upon the federal government, no less as an object of interest to themselves, than of duty to the settlers. In all these instances I have exhibited the States of Massachusetts and Virginia as antagonist powers, the one opposing, the other supporting, the measures favorable to the West, and each supported by more or less of its neighboring States.

The Senator from Massachusetts, (Mr. Webster,) has since occupied the floor two days, and has taken no notice of facts so highly authenticated, drawn from sources so wholly unimpeachable, and so pointedly conflicting with the denials and assertions which he has made on this floor. It is not for me to account for this neglect, or forbearance. Rhetoricians lay down two cases in which silence upon the adversaries’ arguments, is the better part of eloquence; first, where they are too insignificant to merit any notice; secondly, where they are too well fortified to be overthrown. In such cases it is recommended as the safest course, to pass them by without notice, and, as if they had not been heard. I do not intimate which, or if either of these rules governed the conduct of the Senator from Massachusetts. I can very well conceive of a third, and very different reason for this inattention—a reason which was seen in the fulness of the occupation which the Senator from South Carolina (Gen. Hayne) had given him. True, the Senator from Massachusetts tells us that he felt nothing of all that—that the arrows did not pierce—and makes a question whether the arm of the Senator from South Carolina was strong enough to spring the bow? This he repeated so many times, and with looks so well adjusted to the declaration, that we all must have been reminded of what we have read in ancient books, of the brave gladiator who, receiving the fatal thrust which starts the cry of “hoc habet” from the whole amphitheatre, instead of displaying his wound, and beseeching pity, collects himself over his centre of gravity, assumes a graceful attitude, dresses his face in smiles, bows to the ladies, and acts the unhurt hero in the agonies of death.

But admitting that the arrows did not pierce: What then? Is it proof of the weakness of the arm that sprung the bow, or of the impenetrability of the substance that resisted the shaft? We read in many books of the polished brass that resists, not only arrows, but the iron-headed javelins, thrown by gigantic heroes. But, pierced or not pierced, we have all witnessed one thing; we have seen the Senator from Massachusetts occupy one whole day in picking these arrows out of his body; and to judge from the length and seriousness of this occupation, he might be supposed to have been stuck as full of them as the poor fellow whose transfixed effigy on the first leaf of our annual almanacs attracts the commiseration of so many children.

I pass by these inquiries, Mr. President, and come to the things which concern me most;—the renewed and repeated declarations of the Senator from Massachusetts, (Mr. W.) that from first to last, from the beginning to the ending of the chapter of this Government, all the measures favorable to the West, have been carried by northern votes, in opposition to southern votes; that this has always been the case; that there are no grounds for asserting the contrary; and that the West is ungrateful to desert these ancient friends in the North for a new alliance in the South. These, sir, are the things for me to attend to. They concern me somewhat, because I have asserted the contrary; they concern the Union much more, because upon the propagation and belief of these assertions depends a most unhallowed combination for the Government of this Confederacy, commencing in the oppression of one half of it, and ending in the ruin of the whole. These considerations impel me forward, and impose upon me the high obligation to make out my case; to shew the South to be the ever generous friend of the West,—the democracy of the North the same,—and the political adversaries of both, to have been the unrelenting enemies of the West, until new views, and recent events, have substituted the soft and sweet game of amorous seduction for the ancient and iron system of contempt and hostility. In discharging this duty, I shall confine myself to an elevated selection of historical facts,—to the great epochs, and great questions, which are cardinal in their nature, notorious in their existence, eventful in their consequences, and pertinent in their application, to the trial of the issue joined. On this plan, skipping over many minor measures, I come to the great epoch of the Louisiana purchase, and the resulting measures connected with that event.

The first point of view under which we must look at that great measure, Mr. President, is its incredible value, and the absolute necessity, then created by extraordinary events, for making the acquisition. The West at that period (1803,) was filling up with people, and covering over with wealth and population. It was no more the feeble settlement which the Congress of the Confederation had seen, and whose right, few as they were, to the free navigation of the Mississippi, had given birth to the most arduous struggle ever beheld in that Congress. States had superceded these infant settlements. Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, had been admitted into the Union; the territories of Indiana, Illinois, and Mississippi were making their way to the same station. The Western settlements of Pennsylvania and Virginia lined the left bank of the Ohio for half the length of its course. All was animated with life, gay with hope, independent in the cultivation of a grateful soil, and rich in the prospect of sending their accumulated productions to all the markets of the world, through the great channel which conducted the King of Rivers to the bosom of the Ocean. The treaty with Spain in the year 1795 had guaranteed this right of passage; had stipulated, moreover, for a right of deposit in New Orleans; with the further stipulation that, if this place of deposit should ever be denied, another should immediately be assigned, equally convenient for storing produce and merchandize, and for the exchange of cargoes between the river and the sea vessels. This right of deposit, thus indispensable, and thus secured, was violated in the fall of 1802. New Orleans, at that time, was suddenly shut up, and locked against us, and no other place was assigned at which western produce could be landed, left, or sold. The news of this event stunned the West. I well recollect the effect upon the country, for I saw it, and felt it in my own person. I was a lad then, the eldest of a widow’s sons—was living in Tennessee, and had come into Nashville to sell the summer’s crop, and lay in the winter’s supplies. We raised cotton, then, in that Southern part of Tennessee, and the price of fifteen cents a pound which had been paid for it, and three or four hundred pounds to the acre, and so many acres to the hand, had filled us all with golden hopes. I came into Nashville to sell the Summer’s crop. I offered it to the merchant—a worthy man—with whom we dealt. His answer, and the reason, came together, and gave the first intelligence of my own loss and the calamity of the country. Not a cent could he give for the cotton, for he was not a griper to take it for a nominal price. Not an article could be advanced upon the faith of it—not even the indispensable item of one barrel of salt. The salt and the articles were indeed furnished, and upon indulgent terms, but not upon the faith of the cotton; that was recommended to be laid away, and to wait the course of events. This was the state of one and of all—of the entire country—Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, the western counties of Pennsylvania and Virginia; the territories of Indiana, Illinois and Mississippi. Every where, at every farm, the labor of the year was annihilated; the produce of the fields seemed to be changed into dust—struck by the wand of an enchanter which transformed cotton, tobacco, and hemp, into the useless leaves of the forests. The shock was incredible, the sensation universal, the resentment overwhelming, the cry for redress loud and incessant. Congress met. That great man was then President, whose memory it has been my grief and shame to see struck at, this day, on this floor. The energy of the People, and the blessing of God, had just made Thomas Jefferson President of these United States. It was a blessed election, and a providential one, for the People of the West! Upon that event depended the acquisition of Louisiana! Congress met. The outrage at New Orleans was the main topic in the President’s message. His public message to the House of Representatives, replete with the spirit which filled the West, is known to the Union. His confidential message in the Senate is not known. It has been locked up, until lately, in the sealed book of our secret proceedings. That seal is now broken, and I will read the part of this confidential message which developed the means of recovering, enlarging, and securing our violated rights, and asked the aid of the Senate in doing so. It is the message which nominated the Ministers to France who made the purchase of Louisiana.

The Message—Extract.

“While my confidence in our Minister Plenipotentiary at Paris is entire and undiminished, I still think that these objects might be promoted by joining with him a person sent from hence directly, carrying with him the feelings and sentiments of the nation excited on the late occurrence, impressed by full communications of all the views we entertain on this interesting subject, and thus prepared to meet and improve, to an useful result, the counter propositions of the other contracting party, whatsoever form their interest may give to them; and to secure to us the ultimate accomplishment of our object: I, therefore, nominate R. R. Livingston to be Minister Plenipotentiary, and James Monroe to be Minister Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, with full powers to both jointly, or to either, on the death of the other, to enter into a treaty or convention with the First Consul of France, for the purpose of enlarging, and more effectually securing, our rights and interests in the river Mississippi, and in the territories Eastward thereof.”

The reason for sending an additional Minister is here stated, and stated with force and clearness. Mr. Livingston was in Paris, and, however faithful and able he might be, he was a stranger to the feelings excited by the occasion. The addition of Mr. Monroe would only make an embassy of two persons. Embassies of three, as in the mission to the French Republic in ’98, and of five, as at Ghent, in 1815, have been seen in our country. An embassy of two, in such a case as the violation of our right of deposite at New Orleans, and only one of them fresh from the United States, could not be considered extraordinary, or extravagant. The selection of Mr. Monroe was, of all others, the most fit and acceptable. He was a citizen of Virginia—that great State, which had been the most early, stedfast, and powerful friend of the West; he was the champion of the Mississippi in that struggle of two years, under lock and key, when seven States undertook to surrender the navigation of that river; he was the Ambassador called for by the public voice of the South and West, and Mr. Randolph was the organ of that voice on the floor of the House of Representatives, when he declared that Mr. Jefferson could nominate no other person than Mr. Monroe. He was nominated. I have shewn the message that did it, and the reasons that influenced the President. Let us now continue our reading of the journal, and see how that nomination was received by the Senators from the North and from the South.

The Journal.

“Wednesday, January 12th, 1803.

“The Senate took into consideration the message of the President of the United States, of January 11th, nominating Robert R. Livingston to be Minister Plenipotentiary, and James Monroe to be Minister Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, to enter into a treaty or convention with the First Consul of France, for the enlarging and more effectually securing our rights and interests on the river Mississippi; and

“Resolved, That they consent and advise to the appointment of R. R. Livingston, agreeably to the nomination.

“On the question, Will the Senate consent and advise to the nomination of James Monroe? the yeas were, Messrs. Anderson, Baldwin, Bradley, Breckenridge, Clinton, Cocke, Ellery, T. Foster, Franklin, Jackson, Logan, Nicholas, Stone, Sumpter, and Wright—15. The nays, Messrs. Dayton, Dwight, Foster, Hillhouse, Howard, J. Mason, Morris, Ogden, Olcott, Plumer, Tracey, Wells, and White—12.”

Fifteen for, twelve against, the nomination of Mr. Monroe. A majority of three votes in his favor; which is a difference of two voters; so that the nomination of Mr. Monroe, lacked but two of being rejected. Whence came these twelve? Every one from the North of the Potomac, nearly all from New England, and the whole from the ranks of that political party whose survivors, and residuary legatees, are now in hot pursuit of the alliance of the West! If any evidence is wanting to shew that the vote against Mr. Monroe was a vote against the object of his mission, it will be found, ten days afterwards, in the same journal upon the passage of a Bill appropriating two millions of dollars to accomplish the purposes of the mission. On this bill the vote stood:

Mr. Monroe went. Fortune was at work for the West while nearly one half of the American Senate, and a large proportion of the House of Representatives, were at work against her. War between France and England was impending; the loss of Louisiana in that war was among the most certain of its events; to get rid of the Province before the declaration of hostilities, was the policy of the First Consul; and the cession to the United States was determined on before our Minister could arrive. This was the work of Providence, or Fortune, which no one here could foresee; which few are lawyerlike enough to lay hold of to justify the previous opposition to Mr. Monroe, and the vote against the two millions. The treaty of cession was signed by the First Consul; was brought home, made known to the nation, and received in the South and West, with one universal acclaim of joy. Throughout the South and West it was hailed as a national benefaction, prepared by Fortune, seized by Jefferson, and entitled to the devout thanksgiving of the American people. Not so in the northeast. There a violent opposition broke out against it, upon the express ground that it would increase the power of the West; and when the treaty came up for ratification in the Senate, it received seven votes against it, being so many of the same party which had voted against the nomination of Mr. Monroe and the appropriation of two millions. In the House of Representatives the money bill for carrying the treaty into effect was voted against by twenty-five members, nearly the whole from the geographical quarter, and from the political party, that had opposed the treaty in the Senate.

The crisis was over; the great event was consummated. Louisiana was acquired; the navigation of the Mississippi secured; the prosperity of the West established forever. The glory of Jefferson was complete. He had found the Mississippi the boundary, and he made it the centre of the Republic. He reunited the two halves of the Great Valley, and laid the foundation for the largest empire of freemen that Time or Earth ever beheld. He planted the seed of imperishable gratitude in the hearts of myriads of generations who shall people the banks of the Father of Floods, and raise the votive altar, and erect the monumental statue, to the memory of him who was the instrument of God in the accomplishment of so great a work. And great is my grief and shame to have lived to see his name attacked in the American Senate! To have been myself the unconscious instrument of clearing the way for an impeachment of his word! and that upon the recollections of memories from whose tablets the stream of time may have washed away this small part of their accumulated treasures.

Let us pause, Mr. President, and reflect for a moment, upon the consequences to the West, and to the Union, if President Jefferson had not seized the opportunity of purchasing Louisiana; or, having purchased it, the Senate, or the House of Representatives, should have rejected the acquisition. In the first place, it is to be remembered, that France, emerging from the vortex of her revolution, overflowing with warriors, and governed by the Conqueror, who was catching at the sceptre of the world, was then the owner of Louisiana. The First Consul had extorted it from the King of Spain in the year 1800; and the violation of the right of deposit at New-Orleans, was his first act of ownership over the new possession, and the first significant intimation to us, of the new kind of neighbor that we had acquired. Cotemporaneously with this act of outrage upon us, was the concentration of twenty-five thousand men, under the general of division, afterwards Marshal Victor, in the ports of Holland, for the military occupation of Louisiana. So far advanced were the preparations for this expedition, that the troops were ready to sail; and commissaries to provide for their reception, were engaged in New-Orleans and St. Louis, when the transfer of the province was announced. Now, sir, put it on either foot: Louisiana remains a French, or becomes a British, possession. In the first contingency, we must have become the ally, or the enemy, of France. The system of Bonaparte admitted of no neutrals; and our alternatives would have been, between falling into the train of his continental system, or maintaining a war against him upon our own soil. We can readily decide, that the latter would have been most honorable; but it is hard to say, which would have been most fatal to our prosperity, and most disastrous to our republican institutions. In the second contingency, and the almost certain one, we should have had England established on our western, as well as on our northern frontier; and I may add, our southern frontier also; for Florida, as the property of the ally of France, would have been a fair subject of British conquest in the war with France and Spain, and a desirable one, after the acquisition of Louisiana, and as easily taken as wished for; the vessel that brought home the news of the victory at Trafalgar, being sufficient to summon and reduce the places of Mobile, Pensacola, St. Marks, and St. Augustine. This nation, thus established upon three sides of our territory, the most powerful of maritime powers, jealous of our commerce, panting for the dominion of the seas, unscrupulous in the use of savage allies, and nine years afterwards to be engaged in a war with us! The results of such a position, would have been, the loss, for ages and centuries, of the navigation of the Mississippi; the permanent occupation of the Gulf of Mexico by the British fleet; the consequent control of the West Indies; and the ravage of our frontiers by savages in British pay. These would have been the permanent consequences, to say nothing of the fate of the late war, commenced with our enemy encompassing us on three sides with her land forces, and covering the ocean in front with her proud navy, victorious over the combined fleets of France and Spain, and swelled with the ships of all nations. From these calamitous results, the acquisition of Louisiana delivered us; and the heart must be but little turned to gratitude and devotion, which does not adore the Providence that made the great man President, who seized this gift of fortune, and overthrew the political party that would have rejected it.

The treaty was ratified, and not much to spare; one-third of the Senate would have defeated it, and the votes stood 7 to 24. But the ratification was only one half the business; many legislative enactments were necessary to make the new acquisition available and useful, and the whole of these measures received more or less of determined opposition from the same geographical quarter and political party which had opposed the purchase. I will specify a few of the leading measures to which this opposition extended.

1. The bill to enable the Senate to take possession of Louisiana: Nays in the Senate—Messrs. Adams, Hillhouse, Olcott, Pickering, Plumer, Tracy.

2. The bill to create a fund in stock for the Louisiana debt: Nays—Messrs. Hillhouse, Pickering, Tracy, Wells and White.

3. The bill for extending certain laws of the United States to Louisiana: Nays—Messrs. Adams, Plumer, and Wells.

Among the laws to be thus extended, were all those for the regulation of the Custom House, navigation and commerce. If it had been rejected, New Orleans could not have been used as an American port.

4. The bill to establish a separate territory in Upper Louisiana: Nays—Messrs. Adams, Olcott, Hillhouse, Plumer and Stone.

5. The bill to extend the powers of the Surveyors General to Louisiana: Nays—Messrs. Adair, Adams, Bayard, Bradley, Gilman, Hill-house, Pickering, Plumer, Smith, of Md. Smith, of Vermont, Wright—all North of the Potomac except one.

This vote, Mr. President, is the connecting link between the nonsettlement clause, or the sell-out-complete clause, in the ordinance of 1785, and the non-survey, and non-emigration resolution now under debate. The three acts stand at twenty years apart—a wide distance in point of time—but they lie close together in spirit and intention, and announce a never-sleeping watchfulness over the prevention of Western settlement and Western improvement.

6. Various bills for the confirmation of private claims, generally opposed by the like number of votes and voters.

7. The bill for the admission of the State of Louisiana into the Union: Nays—Messrs. Bayard, Champlin, Dana, Gorman, Gilman, Goodrich, Horsey, Lloyd, Pickering and Reed.

8. The bill to authorize the State of Louisiana to accept an enlargement of its territory: Nays—Messrs. Bradley, Franklin, Gorman, Gilman, Lambert, Lloyd and Reed.

This bill was passed after West Florida was reduced to the possession of the United States. Its object was to permit the State of Louisiana, if she thought proper, to include within her limits all the territory East of the lakes Ponchartrain and Maurepas, the river Iberville, and East of the Mississippi, (above that river) to the line of the Mississippi Territory, and out to Pearl river. The importance of it will be seen by knowing that the State of Louisiana, at that time, included no territory East of the Mississippi, but the Isle of Orleans.

9. The resolutions of the Legislature of Massachusetts, in June, 1813, asserting the unconstitutionality of the act of Congress which admitted the State of Louisiana into the Union, and extended the laws of the United States thereto, and instructing the Massachusetts delegation in Congress to do their best to obtain its repeal. I will read them:

This was the solemn act of Massachusetts, governed by that political party, which now seeks the command of the West, under the name of an alliance! The Senator from Louisiana, who sits on my left, (Mr. Johnston) adheres with a generous devotion—I call it generous, for it survives the downfall of its object—to that party which passed these resolutions, and would have kept his State out of the Union, and by consequence, himself out of this chamber. I do not reproach such generosity, but I contend for its limitation. The heart of that Senator belongs to his country, and I trust that his country will again possess him. He and I were once together. Our separation was from a point, and by slight degrees, though now so wide, like the travellers in the desert, parting from each other on two diverging lines; for a long time within hail—a long time in view—at last completely separated—but never way-layers nor destroyers of each other. I shall hope to see him return to the right line, and join his old companions. Nothing has happened to make him, or them, blush, at finding themselves again together. [Mr. B. here said something to Mr. Johnston (who sat near him) in an under tone, and in a playful mood—en badinant —the purport of which was, that he would wish to see him laid on the shelf, for a while, notwithstanding.]

The admission of the State of Mississippi into the Union furnishes me with the next example in support of my side of the issue joined. It was no part of the Territory of Louisiana, but a part of the original territory of the United States. Constitutional objections could not reach it, yet it met with the usual quantum of opposition. It was a Western measure, and what was worse, a Southwestern measure, and the Journals of the Senate exhibit eleven nays to its admission. They were Messrs. Ashmun, Dagget, Goldsborough, Hunter, King, Macon, Mason, of N. H., Smith, Thompson, Tichenor, and Varnum. The name of the venerable Macon, which appears in this list, may be seized upon to cover the motives of all the others; but to do that it should first be shewn that he and they voted upon the same motive. We know that votes may sometimes be alike and the motives be different. That the vote of Mr. Macon was unfriendly to the Southwest, is a supposition contradicted by the acts of half a century; that the vote of the others was unfriendly, may be decided by the same test, the tenor of all previous conduct. After all, the instance would go but a short distance towards proving, “that every measure, favorable to the West, had been carried by New England votes in opposition to Southern votes.”

I come now to the admission of Missouri, but do not mean to dwell upon it. The event is too recent—the facts connected with it, too notorious—to require proof, or even to admit of recital, here. The struggle upon that question, divided itself into two parts; the first, to prevent the existence of slavery in Missouri; the second, to secure the entrance of free blacks and mulattoes into it. Each part of the struggle divided the Union into two parts, the Potomac and Ohio the dividing line, with slight exceptions; the South in favor of the rights of Missouri, the North against them. In the ranks of the latter were seen all the survivors of the ancient advocates for the surrender of the Mississippi—all the survivors of those who in the Congress of the confederation opposed the protection of the West; all the opponents to the acquisition of Louisiana; all the power of the federal party; and all the gentlemen of the Northeast who are now paying their addresses to the West. The contest, upon its face, was a question of slavery and the rights of free negroes and mulattoes; in its heart, it was a question of political power, and so declared upon this floor by Mr. King, of New York. It was a terrible agitation, and convulsed the country, and, in a certain quarter of the country, swept all before it. The gentleman who has moved this resolution—the resolution now under discussion—was the victim of that storm, (Mr. Foot, of Conn.) He was then a member of the the House of Representatives. He would not join in this crusade against Missouri, and he fell under the dipleasure of his constituents. But he fell on the side of honor and patriotism, with his conscience and his integrity in his arms; and the consequence of such a fall is to rise again, and to ascend higher than ever. The gentleman will appreciate the spirit in which I speak. My encomiums, poor as they may be, here, or elsewhere, are neither profuse nor indiscriminate. I do justice to the motive which has made him the mover of the resolution to which I am so earnestly opposed. He believes it to be right, and that belief, erroneous as I hold it to be, is the effect of that unhappy part of our political system which makes the representatives of remote States judges of the local measures of another State, with the proprieties of which they have no means of personal information. I oppose his resolution to the uttermost, but I respect his motive; I thank him for his vote in favor of Missouri in the crisis of her struggle, and for his motion some days ago in favor of donations to actual settlers. We may contend upon points of policy; but here, and elsewhere, and above all in Missouri, if found there, I, and mine, will do honor to him and his.

Yes, sir, the Missouri struggle is too recent to admit of recitals, or to require proofs. It was but the other day that it all occurred; but the other day that the Representative and the Senators of that State, myself one of them, were repulsed from the doors of Congress, and deforced, for one entire session, of their legitimate seats among you. And, what is now incredibly strange, what surpasses imagination, and staggers credulity, is to see myself called upon to deny that scene; called upon to treat the whole as an optical illusion; to reverse it, in fact, and submit to the belief that those whose blows we felt kicking and shoving us out, were the ones that drew us in! and those whose helping hands we felt drawing and hauling us in, are the identical ones who kicked and shoved us out!

The State of Missouri, Mr. President, was kept out of the Union one whole year for the clause which prohibited the future entry and settlement of free people of color. And what have we seen since? The actual expulsion of a great body of free colored people from the State of Ohio, and not one word of objection, not one note of grief, from those who did all in their power to tear up the Constitution and break the Union to pieces, because, at some future day, it might happen that some free blacks would wish to emigrate to Missouri, and could not do it for this clause in her Constitution! The papers state the compulsory expatriation from Cincinnati at two thousand souls; the whole number that may be compelled to expatriate from the State of Ohio, at ten thousand! This is a remarkable event, sir, paralleled only by the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, and the Hugonots from France. Let me not be misunderstood: I am not complaining of Ohio, I admit her right to do what she did. We are informed that this severe measure was the consequence of enforcing an old law, made for the benefit of the slave holding States, and now found to be as necessary to Ohio as to them, and by which she has relieved herself, in thirty days, of the accumulated evil of thirty years. I complain not of this. My present business is with those who kept me out of my seat, kept my State out of the Union, and did all in their power to break up this Confederacy, because free people of color were prohibited from coming to live in Missouri!

My occupation, for the present, is with these characters—“Les Amis des Noirs” —the friends of the blacks—then so plenty, now so scarce! Where are they? Where gone? How shrunk up? Not even one friend, one voice here! Where are the crowds that then thronged the public meetings? Where are the tongues which were then so fluent? The sighs, then so piercing? The eyes, then so wet with tears? All gone; all silent; all hushed! The thronged crowd has disappeared; the fluent tongue has cleaved to the roof of the mouth, the piercing sigh has died away, and the streaming eye, exhausted of its fluid contents, has dried up to the innermost sources of the lachrymal duct, and hangs over the pitiable scene, with the arid composure of a rainless cloud in the midst of the sandy desert. The Senator from Massachusetts, [Mr. W.] so copious and encomiastic upon the subject of Ohio, so full and affecting upon the topic of freedom, and the rights of freemen in that State, was incomprehensibly silent, and fastidiously mute, upon the question of this wonderful expatriation; an expatriation which sent a generation of free people from a republican State to a monarchical province, to seek, in a strange land, and beyond the icy lakes, the hospitality and protection of a foreign king! For them he had nothing to say. Their condition attracted no part of his regards. They are gone; unwept and unsung, they have gone to experience the fate, and to renew the history, of the abducted slaves of the Revolution, who were taken from their homes and their masters, collected into a settlement in the British province of Nova Scotia, became a pestilence there, and were exiled to Sierra Leone, to perish under the climate and the savages. For these people, and the pitiable fate that awaits them, the eloquent declaimer upon the blessings of liberty in Ohio, had nothing to say. I thought, indeed, at one time, he was taking their track: it was when he was engaged in that lively personification of the soil of Ohio, which would not hear the tread of a slave’s foot upon it; which rebelled, and revolted, against the servile impression until it threw off and discharged, the base, incongruous load; something like a kicking up horse, when a monkey is put upon his back. I thought, at that time, that the metaphorical orator, pushing his tropes and figures to that “bourne” from which some flights of eloquence have never returned, was going to put the climax upon the regurgitative faculties of this miraculous soil, and show us, in this great emigration of free blacks, that it would not bear the tread of a foot that ever had been in slavery! But, suddenly, and to me unexpectedly, his ideas took another turn. Instead of crossing the Lakes to pity the blacks, he crossed the river to pity the whites. He faced about to the South, crossed over into Kentucky, made a domiciliary visit into the country—and fell, incontinently, to shingling the ground, and blacking the inhabitants, until they all looked like ebonies, and were mired, thirty layers deep, in conflicting land titles. When I saw that, Mr. President, I smote my breast, and heaved a sigh, at the sad vicissitude of human affections. I felt, if I did not cry out, for Kentucky! Poor Kentucky! But yesterday, the loved and cherished object of all affection! the engrossing theme of every praise! Now scanned and criticised! Her faults all told, and counted! Her value cast up! The sum found less! and the late adored object, thrown “as a worthless weed away!”

February 1, 1830. Third Day.

I was on the subject of slavery, Mr. President, as connected with the Missouri question, when last on the floor. The Senator from South Carolina, [Mr. Hayne,] could see nothing in the question before the Senate, nor in any previous part of the debate, to justify the introduction of that topic: neither could I. He thought he saw the ghost of the Missouri question brought in among us: so did I. He was astonished at the apparition: I was not; for a close observance of the signs in the West had prepared me for this development from the East. I was well prepared for that invective against slavery, and for that amplification of the blessings of exemption from slavery, exemplified in the condition of Ohio, which the Senator from Massachusetts indulged in, and which the object in view required to be derived from the North East. I cut the root of that derivation by reading a passage from the Journals of the old Congress; but this will not prevent the invective and encomium from going forth to do their office; nor obliterate the line which was drawn between the free State of Ohio and the slave State of Kentucky. If the only results of this invective and encomium were to exalt still higher the oratorical fame of the speaker, I should spend not a moment in remarking upon them. But it is not to be forgotten that the terrible Missouri agitation took its rise from the “substance of two speeches” delivered on this floor; and, since that time, anti-slavery speeches, coming from the same political and geographical quarter, are not to be disregarded here. What was said upon that topic was certainly intended for the North side of the Potomac and Ohio; to the People, then, of that division of the Union, I wish to address myself, and to disabuse them of some erroneous impressions. To them I can truly say, that slavery, in the abstract, has but few advocates or defenders in the slave-holding States, and that slavery as it is, an hereditary institution descended upon us from our ancestors, would have fewer advocates among us than it has, if those who have nothing to do with the subject, would only let us alone. The sentiment in favor of slavery was much weaker before those intermeddlers began their operations than it is at present. The views of leading men in the North and the South were indisputably the same in the earlier periods of our Government. Of this our legislative history contains the highest proof. The foreign slave trade was prohibited in Virginia as soon as the Revolution began. It was one of her first acts of sovereignty. In the Convention of that State which adopted the Federal Constitution, it was an objection to that instrument that it tolerated the African slave trade for twenty years. Nothing that has appeared since has surpassed the indignant denunciations of this traffic by Patrick Henry, George Mason, and others in that Convention. The clause in the Ordinance of ’ 86 against slavery in the North-West, as I have before shown, originated in a Committee of three members, of whom two were from slave-holding States. That clause, and the whole Ordinance, received the vote of every slave State present, at its final passage. There were but eight States present, four from the South of the Potomac, and only one from New England. It required seven States to pass the Ordinance; it could have been passed without the New England State, but not without three at least of the Southern ones. It had all four: Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia. Compare this with the vote on the Missouri restriction, when intermeddlers and designing politicians had undertaken to regulate the South upon the subject of slavery! The Report in the House of Representatives, some twenty years ago, against the application from Indiana, for a limited admission of slaves, was drawn by Mr. Randolph; the same Mr. Randolph whose declaration in the House of Representatives only three years ago, that he would hang any man who would bring an African into Virginia—was falsified for the basest purposes, by substituting “Irishman” for African! Yes, sir, slavery as it is, and as it exists among us, would have fewer advocates, if those who have nothing to do with it would let it alone. But they will not let it alone. A geographical party, and chiefly a political caste, are incessantly at work upon this subject. Their operations pervade the States, intrude into this chamber, display themselves in innumerable forms, and the thickening of the signs announces the forthcoming of some extraordinary movement. Sir, I regard with admiration, that is to say with wonder, the sublime morality of those, who cannot bear the abstract contemplation of slavery, at the distance of five hundred or a thousand miles off. It is entirely above, that is to say, it affects a vast superiority over the morality of the primitive Christians, the Apostles of Christ, and Christ himself. Christ and the Apostles appeared in a province of the Roman empire, when that empire was called the Roman world, and that world was filled with slaves. Forty millions