INCREASE OF THE ARMY.
Debate Between Senator Seward and John P. Hale.
The Army in Utah—Dangers of Military Despotism—Partisanship and the Public Good.
From the Congressional Globe.
IN SENATE, Tuesday, Feb, 2,1858.
The Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, resumed the consideration of the bill to increase the military establishment of the United States, the pending question being on the motion of Mr. TOOMBS to strike out the first section of the bill, Mr. SEWARD—Mr. President, when this bill was under debate on a previous occasion, I intimated that I had some words to speak on the subject, and I will proceed to make my remarks now. I shall not detain the Senate long; and, in what I say, I shall hardly labor to convince Senators to bring them over to my opinions, for I am, in regard to this bill, but half convinced myself. My object is to place myself right upon the record, in order that the reasons for the votes I shall give may be understood hereafter.
It would be impossible, Mr. President, to engage with any advantage in this debate; for, so far as I have observed its progress, there is no dispute on principle involved in the subject. On the one side, the bill is opposed by those who deprecate a standing army, and we have pictures drawn of the dangers of a standing army in the country; and, on the other side, the argument is only to show that this bill does not contemplate a dangerous in-crease of the standing army. Now, upon princi-ple, I suppose we are all agreed; there is no one here that is in favor of a large, dangerous, standing army—one that would menace the liberties of the country, or bring them into jeopardy. So, on the other side, I think there is no one here who sup-poses that the police of this great Empire can be conducted without some military force, some regu-lar troops. There is no one who is for a large standing army; there is no one who is for no regu-lar force; there is no one in favor of a universal or general police; there is also no one who is for no Federal police; there is no one who will argue that the fortifications of the country ought to be abandonded, and suffered to go to desolation and ruin; and so there is no one who will argue that any greater force than is necessary for the present emergencies, whatever they may be, shall be raised; there is no one who is in favor of a standing army of one hundred thousand men; there is no one, so far as I know, who is against a standing of five thousand men.
The trouble, then, arises out of collateral ques-tions, out of a view of the exigencies to which the armed power of the country may be applied if it shall be increased; and our difficulty on this sub-ject is to discuss and consider it fairly in the ab-sence of a knowledge of what will be the action of the Government on some other questions I am perfectly clear in my own mind about what I would do. I would grant this increase of force if I knew that when it was granted the army which is now in Kansas would be withdrawn from that Territory. I am reluctant to increase the armed forces of the United States, while an army is re-maining in Kansas; but I cannot know, nor can any one else know, what will be the disposition of the army in Kansas. I can only make up my judgment in regard to it from the facts which are before me; and taking the condition of the Kansas question as it stands, I have made up my mind that it approaches its solution, and that whether the Administration favors a Free State, or whether it continues its intervention there in favor of a Slave State in Kansas, things are reaching such a crisis that the President of the United States will not dare to maintain an army in Kansas to enforce a Constitution which the people of that State re-ject, and against which they array themselves with armed force; and that is the issue which I expect to see if such a Constitution shall be forced on Kansas.
I do not expect to see the Lecompton Constitu-tion carried through Congress—a Constitution to establish Slavery in the Territory of Kansas with-out the consent of the people; a Constitution framed by a Convention which they never called, which they have absolutely repudiated three dis-tinct times, and at the moment when the Territo-rial Legislature representing, under the sanction of Congress, the people of that Territory, have abolished Slavery and are sustained, as we all know they are, by five-sixths or sixth-sevenths of the whole people. Sir, I think there has been great skill in manipulating returns from Kansas Territory; I think there has been great skill mani-fested at the other end of the avenue in bringing this question before Congress; but I have no fear that there is such political skill here or in the Ter-ritory, separately or combined, as will be able to force that Constitution upon Kansas, nor such boldness and desperation as to attempt to main-tain it by the use of the army.
My impression, therefore, is, that the army which is in Kansas will have to be withdrawn. Then I have endeavored to frame an amendment to this bill, which would compel the withdrawal of the troops in Kansas. I have been unable to frame one that would be practicable, and I have, there-fore, to give that up. Suppose I shall be disap-pointed in this, and the army is to be retained in Kansas: what then? Well, Sir, if the army is to be retained in Kansas, it has got to be paid, and it is Congress that is to grant the supplies for the Army. When I look over this Chamber and the other, and see how they are constituted, I have no fear that the Congress of the United States this year will appropriate money to maintain an army in Kansas to enforce a Constitution on the people which they have rejected, and to which they will never submit.
It is only a year ago, when we were much weaker here than we are now, that we brought this Government to a dead stand upon the appro-priations for an army to maintain the usurpation of the Missouri invaders in Kansas, and to enforce Slavery on that people. If all had stood with the same firmness that I stood, and that I recom-mended to others, the Government would have stood to this day before a soldier would have been in Kansas. There I shall stand now, and it may as well be understood first as last, that those who attempt to send an army into Kansas to maintain that Constitution, must look into the Senate and House of Representatives elsewhere than to me, or any upon whom my opinions may operate, for support.
This disposes of the matter in that aspect. Yes-terday I was quite disposed to take the substitute offered by my honorable and esteemed friend from Massachusetts, (Mr. WILSON.) That Senator pro-poses to raise five thousand volunteers, and that they shall be disbanded at the expiration of one year. It is attractive, as showing a preference for a volunteer force to a regular force; but on reflec-tion I see that his proposition is embarrassed with precisely the same difficulties with my own. If we raise five thousand volunteers upon the system which he recommends, and they are to be sent to Utah and employed there exclusively, as his prop-osition suggests, then the Army may all be left in Kansas, or five thousand regular troops may be left in Kansas, while the volunteers are sent to fight our battles in Utah; and, therefore, I do not find in that proposition any relief.
My very much respected friend from the State of Maine, [Mr. FESSENDEN,] suggests that I am impressed with too deep a sense of the importance of an increased army in the present emergency, I will only restate what I have stated before. It does not seem to me unreasonable to suppose that this great empire, extending now from the Atlan-tic coast, with fortifications there on every hill which overlooks a port, with garrisons stretched across, on two or three lines, from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean, with the Indian population gath-ered into compact bodies, and pressed to the point of starvation, is to be maintained so as to preserve peace on the frontiers and in our provincial or ter- ritorial settlements, without a force of seventeen thousand, or eighteen thousand, or twenty thou-sand men, under any circumstances. I am pre-pared to expect that the Army of the United States must increase with the removal of the borders of the United States in every direction; and I am prepared to see those borders continually extend-ing—I mean the borders of settlement. I suppose the Army to be adequate to the present emergen-cies, except for the urgent difficulties that have arisen in the Territory of Utah; and it is with reference to this, and this alone, that I am willing to increase the armed force of the United States, and to increase it as far as may be necessary for that purpose.
When I present this as my single reason for favoring this bill, I am told by my excellent friend from Maine, that the Government does not put its proposition on this ground, and that therefore we have no official evidences of an exigency existing in the Territory of Utah which would require this increase of the Army. I must admit that he speaks with much reason; but the sources of information are open to us, as well as open to the official or-gans of the Government—the Executive Depart-ments. If the Secretary of War, if the whole Cabinet, were to tell me that there is no danger of disturbance, no danger of resistance, no danger of civil war in Utah, I would not believe one wor that they should tell me, because I must judge from the facts which I know. The facts which I know are simply these: that a leprous band of foreigners are concentrated in a valley in the cen-ter of this continent; that they, having been un-wisely favored by the Government of the United States with the appointment of their own officers and the making of their own laws, and the admin-istration of their own laws, and the execution of their judgments, till they have come to regard themselves as independent in their isolation and to defy the Government, are now found in combi-nation with the Indian tribes by whom they are surrounded, and that the lives and the property of emigrants passing upon the highway across which they are located, between the Atlantic and Pa-cific, are exposed to depredations which are com-mitted by them with the aid of the Indians.
Now, Mr. President, we are told that, notwith-standing these indications of a hostile nature on the part of that people, still there may be no col-lision. I agree to that. I trust there will be no collision. I am prepared to go further, and say that there will be no collision—that there will be no outbreak—that there will be no civil war; but it is upon one condition, and that is that an armed demonstration, which has now become necessary, and which, whether necessary or not, has been adopted by the Administration, and is in the course of execution, shall be made so imposing as to com-mand respect and extort obedience. Therefore it is that, with a view to save the public peace, and with a view to bring the Territory of Utah into submission to the authorities of the land without bloodshed, I favor the increase of force which is to be sent there, and for no other reason. I would have it continue only so long as is necessary for that purpose.
I am told that these Mormons will not fight; and I know that it is not until after a long time that any community makes up its mind to defy an imperial power like this; but, Sir, these Mor-mons are exceptional, in the first place. They have done nothing but fight from the beginning. They are an armed and military sect, a supersti-tious sect, and war is an element of their progress. They fought themselves out of the State of New-York, when they were but a handful of men, into Ohio. They wrangled themselves out of Ohio into Missouri. Civil war grew up around them in Missouri, and they fought their way into Illi-nois, and established themselves at Nauvoo, and a civil war attended their exit from Nauvoo to the Salt Lake. They are worthless for any other purpose but to fight. Their religion makes them fighting men; for it is a religion which can submit to no civil authority that is administered or exer-cised over them by a Christian people. It is a religion which gives license, in the name of gov-ernment and God, to the indulgence of the basest propensity of human nature. I never yet have read, I never yet have heard, I never yet have seen, any superstition of this kind that did not take in, as its weapon for proselytism, the sword.
Sir, the worst that can come of all this is, that I shall have committed an error; I shall have con-sented that the Government of the United States shall employ an additional force of five or six thousand men for this occasion. It will be a safe error, whatever may happen. If my proposition shall be adopted, as I trust, it will, it will be guard-ed by a stipulation that the additional force shall be disbanded as soon as order is restored in Utah. To those who may object to that, I have but a sin-gle argument to urge in favor of the proposition. If there shall be a necessity. Congress will then be able to continue the force. If, on the other hand, my apprehensions are right in regard to the disturbances in Utah, and their probable course and development, then I shall feel that, whatever responsibility may rest upon me for errors of judg-ment here, there will not rest on me the responsi-bility of having left, by my own act or default or neglect, a single citizen of the United States to suf-fer violence at the hands of this belligerent people for want of the necessary supplies of troops and money, to compel them to respect the authorities under which we live, and forbear from cruelty upon the citizens of the Government which has fostered and protected them.
Mr. HALE.—Mr. President, it is with great reluc-tance that I throw myself on the indulgence of the Senate for a few moments; for I had hoped not again to feel the necessity of trespassing on the patience of the Senate; but I am impelled by a sense of duty to say a word or two after the re-marks which have fallen from the Senator from New-York. He will not deem me unkind, if l say that I have listened with extreme pain and disap-pointment and mortification to the speech which he has made—a pain equal to that with which I heard the great statesman of New-England, DANIEL WEB-STER, some eight years ago, with the ripe honors of nearly three score and ten years, bring himself and his fame and his reputation, and lay them down as an offering at the footstool of the Slave power, to find himself used and spurned afterwards. This is no question of detail, no matter of unim-portant legislation; but it is a deep, vital, funda-mental question that must divide the people of this country, and must rally the friends of free, inde-pendent and liberal government on the one side, and the supporters of power on the other. Sir, the question of increasing the military power has been a question which has divided the friends and the opponents of free government in all times; and as the Senator from Georgia (Mr. TOOMBS) well said, the experience of forty centuries speak to us, in characters of blood, lessons of warning upon this great question. Let me say that the army which this bill proposes is no small, no insignifi-cant, no unimportant force. It will, if completed, according to the terms of the bill, be equal to twenty-five thousand men. Give me a President disposed to use that military force, in order to coerce the people of these States to his purposes, and with the command of the Federal Treasury, and with the means of concentration which our multiplied system of railroads and steamboats fur-nishes, and he can come like the lightning of heaven at any moment, with this concentrated and tremendous power, upon any State, or upon any portion of the people that he chooses.
I do not desire to go to the Departments; I do not wish to go to the Secretary of War, or to the President, or to anybody else, to tell me what he wants with this Army. Here I will do all credit to the distinguished gentleman who has charge of the bill, the chairman of the Committee on Mili-tary Affairs, Mr. DAVIS. He tells us it is not for Utah; it is for no pressing emergency; it is for nothing of to-day; it is not to be used to meet the dangers which now environ us, and then to be laid aside; but he wants it for a permanent increase of the standing army of this country. The use to which this standing army is to be put is exempli-fied by the use which is now made of it in the Ter-ritory of Kansas. Two thousand five hundred troops are kept there; and the Honorable Senator from New-York says he would not vote for an in-crease if he thought they would be sent there. Sir, if I may be indulged in quoting a remark of a very illustrious and a very distinguished patriot and orator of the Revolution, I would say that I have no light to guide my path except that of experi-ence; and the experience of the past year, the ex-perience of the present moment, tells me to what uses the army is to be put.
Here let me say, that while that most danger-ous, that most fallacious, that most monstrous doctrine which has lately been broached and prac-ticed upon by the Executive of this country, that under the general power to see the laws faithfully executed, he has a right to call out at his will the Army and the Navy, under the name of a posse; while that doctrine is proclaimed and acted upon, it is not a time for me, however it may be for others, to strengthen the hands of a man who is disposed to use it for such purposes and on such authority. I deny here, utterly and totally and forever that he has any such right; and I say that it is an usurpation, a dangerous, an alarming, a fatal one—one that if it be tolerated by this Gov-ernment, will bury our liberties beyond the reach of resurrection. No, Sir; we cannot stand it. There is not a crowned head in Europe that would desire a greater power over the standing army of his realm than to make him the guardian to see that the laws are faithfully executed, and under that grant to have power to call in the army to do it. Sir, is it a time for me, is it a time for my friends, is it a time for the distinguished Senator from New-York—upon whom the eyes and the hearts of the friends of liberty have centred and clustered—when such dangerous, and fatal, and damnable doctrines are proclaimed and practiced upon by the Executive of the United States, to vote seven thousand extra men to him? No, Sir, it is not for me, however it may be for others.
The honorable Senator refers to the experience of two years ago, when the Government was brought to a dead lock, and when, he says, we were not so strong as we are now. We were not then so strong on this floor as we are now; but we are not so strong now but that our strength is weakness, for we are but a third of this body, with a majority of two-thirds against us; and we were stronger then in the House of Representa-tives than we are to-day, by a very considerable number. What was the result of that dead lock? Why the President said it was his duty to see that the laws were faithfully executed, and he issued his proclamation immediately, called Congress to-gether, and kept them until they became subservi-ent to his purposes. That is the history of that dead lock, and I do not doubt the President would like such another, with the same result.
In the history of my political life, I have seen a time when I stood solitary and alone the repre-sentative of the views which I entertain. I have looked with joy, with gladness, with gratitude to the increasing hosts that have rallied around our banner in the Free States, until the Democratic Party has been stricken down in the large major-ity of them. I have seen these accretions made to our ranks with gratitude, but I have seen also I the accretions of other men coming to our ranks, who might have relieved me from a position which I occupied with reluctance, and that was to be the representative of this party, when it was nothing but a sentiment, and political power was not even among its dreams. But, Sir, when a new star is dawning; when light is beaming in upon us; when one party has been shattered so that its his-tory may be written as among the things of the past, and when from its ruins and its wrecks we were building up a new fortress to storm the bat-tlements of the heretofore impregnable Democracy—at such a time as this, it does fill my heart with pain and my mind with fearful apprehensions, when I see any one upon whom I have looked with the hope that he might lead great hosts to the consummation of their hopes and their wishes, baiting upon a question which, in my humble ap-prehension, is fundamental, vital, and characterizes the whole controversy.
We must come to an issue on this subject. The history of the republics that have lived and gone down is full of warning on this subject. We are apt to boast of what we are, and of what we have done, and to look back on our history with exulta-tion and pride. Why, Sir, we are not yet one hun-dred years old. The Republic of Rome lived more than six hundred years, strong, conquering the world, and adding new kingdoms to her territory; but she at last fell, and her liberties perished under the insidious policy which converted her into a great military power: until, at last, the imperial crown was set up at auction, and knocked down to the highest bidder from the walls of the Praetorian camp.
I confess that upon this subject I have very deep feelings; for, if the party with whom I act, the party with whom are my hopes and my expectations, do not take ground on this subject, firm and deci-ded ground, against the increase of the military power of this Government, they will go down, and they ought to go down, and my humble voice and my humble services shall be found rallying the people to set the seal of their condemnation on a party with great professions and high principles, but, in my humble judgment, wanting in the car-rying out of those measures which their policy and principles should dictate.
If I had supposed that I should speak on this subject to-day, I should have referred to an author-ity, and I should have had the author by me. I was reading it not long ago, an ancient history, in which, speaking of the final destruction of the Roman Empire, the author said that whenever the people began to get turbulent, whenever there be-gan to be danger to the agrarian law being car-ried, or any great measure of popular liberty indi-cated, it was the favorite policy of the aristocracy to get up a foreign war; "for," said the historian, "in war the State is strong and factions weak." I believe it is just exactly that policy which dic-tated a foreign war whenever the public liberty was in danger of being vindicated in Ancient Rome, that dictates this Utah war now.
Let me ask, if I must go to that, where is the evidence that the affairs in Utah are more threat-ening now than they were when President PIERCE appointed BRIGHAM YOUNG Governor? Are their sentiments any more leprous, or their practices any more abominable now, than they were then? Not that I know of. I have seen no evidence that their depravity or their principles have made pro-gress since that time, and I am utterly at a loss, if this is an army to go to Utah, to know of any rea-son or any fact which would justify sending an army to Utah, when there is not, so far as I am advised, any difference in the state of affairs now from what there was when they were basking in the sunshine of Executive favor
Mr. DAVIS—Will the Senator allow me to ask him what is the date at which President PIERCE appointed BRIGHAM YOUNG Governor of Utah.
Mr. HALE—He was appointed by President FILL-MORE.
Mr. DAVIS—You said President PIERCE.
Mr. HALE—Well, he continued him.
Mr. DAVIS—Ah !
Mr. HALE—He continued him in office.
Mr. DAVIS—He did not remove him.
Mr. HALE—Well, he did not remove him, but he kept him in, just in the same way that he kept in all his Federal officers, I am obliged to the Sena-tor from Mississippi for correcting me; because when he makes such such a very slight correction as that, it shows he is watching me closely, and sees that I am very correct, [laughter,] and need only that slight correction. The state of affairs there, so far as I am advised, is no different now from what it was then.
The Hon. Senator from New-York—I know he will not misinterpret what I am saying—says that if he errs it will be a safe error. I should like to make a very small addition there and let it read “unsafe," and I shall then agree with him entire-ly. It is an unsafe error. It is an error that I fear cannot be retrieved. For several years past we have been marching in the path of increasing our army; and it is avowed here on this floor, that this bill provides for a permanent increase. I see no backward steps. I am like the cautious ani-mal who, when he was reproached for not going into the sick lion's den to pay his respects to the monarch, said he would have gone in, but, as he looked around to see the tracks, he found that they were all going in and none coming out. So it is with the increase of the army; all the measures are for increasing and none for decreasing it; they are all one way; and I feel called upon to take my stand here, and say I will not vote another man, or another dollar, to increase the expenses of the army.
The honorable Senator suggests another thing; which, it seems to me, has an infirmity about it which does not often attach to suggestions or ar-guments that come from his lips. He says we will give them this army, and then we shall have the power over them, because we will not pay them if we are not satisfied with the uses to which they are put; or we can refuse the pay. So we can; but we can refuse the men much easier. The argument is a great deal stronger for refusing the men, than it will be for refusing the pay after you have granted the men. If we are going to exercise that wholesome control over the Executive, which in theory belongs to this body and the body at the other end of the Capitol, here is the place, and now is the time to stop.
If things were twice as threatening as the honor-able Senator thinks they are in Utah, let me ask you if we have not an army more than four times sufficient for all the emergencies? I have heard it said by those who pretend to know, and who, I think, do know, that five thousand men will be as many as you can possibly use in Utah, even if there shall be a necessity for them, which is not conceded. We have an army now capable of being filled up to eighteen thousand men, and, I am told, practically, it is fifteen thousand at this moment. I do not know the necessity of increas-ing the force beyond that, when they will not want one-third of that force to put down the troubles in Utah.
Nor am I disposed to make very great drafts on my confidence in behalf of the manner in which this affair has been managed thus far, from the accounts which I have read, and which purport to be official accounts of the manner in which the force, that is now on its way to Utah, has been precipitated there. Utterly regardless, if you are to believe the accounts which have come to us, of any single suggestion, not only of military fore-sight, but of common prudence, you have sent your men there to suffer their beasts to die, and expose them to the inclemencies of the Winter, where they are locked up in the mountains. I think half the animals sent out with them died from mere starvation and the effects of cold. If this was a bill to furnish the Executive with pru-dence and discretion, I would vote liberal appro-priations; but it being a bill to increase the mili-tary force at a time when I think the friends of liberty would be jealous of increasing it; and it being a time when, if the accounts that, we read be true, there has not been such conduct displayed as should entitle them to our confidence, I shall vote against it.
For these and many other reasons I am utterly opposed to the bill. Opposed as I am to it, I should not have said a word if there was not danger, from the position which the distinguished Senator from New-York occupies, and justly occupies, in the public estimation, that the words which fell from his oracular lips might be supposed to compro-mit or compromise feebler and humbler men who I sit at his feet. But for that, I should not have ven-tured thus openly before the Senate and the coun-try to dissent from what be has said; but looking upon it, as I do, as a very dangerous error, and one which I am ill prepared to have go out under the sanction of his name unchallenged, I have deemed it my duty, in all the kindness that I entertain for him, and all the profound respect that I feel for him, thus publicly to differ from him on a question which I consider vital and fundamental to the dearest and best interests of the country.
Mr. SEWARD.—Mr. President; I certainly shall not complain of my honorable friend from New Hampshire, or regard it as any unkindness that he has presented this subject in a manner which makes an issue between him and myself, or between me and others with whom I am accus-tomed to act in the country. I know his gen-erosity; I know his independence; I know his spirit, and I know his devotion to the great prin-ciples which are common to us all. So far from complaining of it, I give him my thanks with all my heart. I never yet have seen the time when I could not bear a difference with friends, as I never yet have seen the time when I cared in the least for unkind or hostile reproaches from my enemies. But, Sir, I shall not imitate the example of my honorable friend, for I think he himself will come to the conclusion that, so far as the special objects which he and I have in view are concerned, it would have been quite as well to indulge me in an explanation of the reasons why I dissented from the course which he had adopted for his government, and to let it pass without being sig-nalized as a great difference calculated to divide great bodies of men who follow his lead, or my own, or that of some other man.
I have not one word of complaint or reproof for the honorable Senator. I must, however, say for myself that I am not influenced by the appeal which the honorable Senator makes to me in re-gard to the success of the party of which he speaks. Sir, I have been some twenty years, more or less, in the public service, here and in my own State. Since I have been here I think every word that I have uttered in this Chamber has been recorded in books, and will go down to history; and so of a large portion of what I uttered in other places. I think I may claim that, when ten years shall have passed over the debates of to-day—when ten years of rest shall have been allowed to me after my service here shall have been completed—there will be no man living who, with the records all open before him, will be able to tell whether I belonged to one party or another. No, Sir; I know noth-ing, I care nothing—I never did, I never shall—for party. I should be unfit to be here if I had not learned to postpone my own advantage to that of the respective and honored friends with whom I cooperate in public life; and if I had not learned to postpone their advantage and their benefit to the greater good of the whole country. If there is a reproach that is more proverbial against me throughout this land than any other, it is that I dare postpone the good of the whole country under a false and demoralizing Administration, to the rights and interests of mankind under the laws of eternal truth and justice. Sir, I am not to be de-terred from giving an honest vote by any fear of the party with which I act going down. I have a different idea about parties going down. I have a different idea about men going down. They are not thrown down by false analogies.
The honorable Senator has referred to a great statesman, now dead, who, for a large portion of his life, led the vanguard of the army of freedom—of freedom in the Territories, of freedom in the States; and who, on the great day when the con-test came to a decisive issue, surrendered that great cause here in his place, and derided the pro-viso of freedom, the principle of the ordinance of 1787. The Senator considers this analogous to my case, because here I think five thousand sol-diers not too many, and he thinks five thousand less just enough. That is all. If the question was, whether one hundred thousand should be the standing army, we should both be against it. If the question was whether it should be five thou-sand, we should both vote in favor of that num-ber. There is no principle in this dispute. It is a question of the application of great principles.
Now, I may say for myself, in regard to this point, that, having bad a sense more profound, per-haps, than others have conceived, for twenty years of my life, that it belonged to somebody to restore the equilibrium of freedom, which was depressed in the scales held by this Government so as to give Slavery a preponderating balance, I, with as much power and ability as I have, have devoted myself to cooperate with the honorable Senator, and all others who might engage in that great and benefi-cent enterprise. I knew, Sir, that there would be times when I should have to stand alone. I saw him stand alone; and I think the first ally who came to his side here was myself, which meeting could not be accomplished until one great State of the Union had been revolutionized, so as to pro-duce a combination in favor of his purposes and mine. I knew that I should have to stand alone; I have stood often alone; but I have never com-plained of it, and I do not now. I knew that in standing alone in this cause I exposed myself to a danger which easily besets the reformer; and that danger is, that the sense of injustice, the sense of isolation, will make him sometimes un-just, unwise, partisan and factious. The danger of every reforming party is the danger of seeking to build itself up by drawing in false, spurious and collateral issues, having nothing whatever to do with the main question. I am sorry to say, but I must say it, that my experience has only shown that there was, in the position which I have occupied, an ex-posure to this great danger of being beset to cut own this measure, of the Administration here; cut off the head of this appointee of the Admin-istration there; defeat the Administration on this appropriation for a railroad; defeat the Adminis-tration upon this measure of organization; cut off the supplies of the clerks in some of the depart-ments; refuse to give to those who will not vote for your measures and your policy your support for measures to which they may be attached.
I determined, knowing that I was exposed to this danger, that with the grace of God I never would be found wanting in my place to assert and maintain my principles, and the measures and policy which were to carry them out; and on the other hand, that when I should retire from the Senate, there should be no man living who could charge that I had ever given a vote influenced by passion or prejudice against the interests, and fame, and honor of my whole country. If I have not been unsuccessful, I have done this. That is just what I am doing now, and the result will be just the same when we reach the end of this mat-ter.
I remember that an excellent friend, half a dozen years ago, solicited me to lend my aid and my name to the organization of the American Party, because it was necessary to give success to the principles of freedom which otherwise would be lost without it. "Well," I said, "suppose I should, what would be gained?" "Well, then, your cause would prevail, and you yourself would be elevated to a place," much higher than I dare speak of. "But," said I, "that movement is ephemeral; it will last only to-morrow, and how is the party to be relieved from the consequences of the falseness of its position then?" "Oh," said he, "we will look for you to do that." I was to lead them in and I was to lead them out!
I have but one word more to say, and I shall not detain the Senate. I am very sorry that the faith of the honorable Senator from New-Hampshire is less than my own. He apprehends continual dis-aster. He wants this battle continued and fought by skirmishes, and to deprive the enemy of every kind of supplies. Sir, I regard this battle as al-ready fought; it is over. All the mistake is that the Honorable Senator and others do not know it. We are fighting for a majority of Free States. There are already sixteen to fifteen, and whatever the Administration may do—whatever anybody may do—before one year from this time we shall be nineteen to fifteen. If that is so, what danger are we exposed to? It is that the Free States will, nevertheless, go for Slavery. If they will, that is a matter that we are not to help in this way. I do not believe that either. I think it is simply a question whether the Administration shall surren-der and grant freedom to Kansas, under the Con-stitution of her choice, or whether they shall break their necks in resistance to it. The result is pre-cisely the same in either way; and I come to my conclusion, notwithstanding I am so unfortunate as to differ from my honorable friend, that it is the safest side to vote the men and the money to save the lives and property of the American people.
