I hope I shall be pardoned, if I allude to myself. A most persistent attempt has been made in newspapers to connect me with this arrest, to the extent of according to me and my imagined influence the credit or the discredit of it. This is a mistake. I have been from the beginning an absolute stranger to it. The arrest was made originally without suggestion or hint from me, direct or indirect, and it has been continued without any such suggestion or hint from me. I knew nothing about it at the beginning, and know nothing about it now. There is no intimate friend or family relative of the prisoner more entirely free from all connection with it than myself.
EXPULSION OF TRUSTEN POLK, OF MISSOURI.
Resolution and Remarks in the Senate, December 18, 1861.
December 18, 1861, Mr. Sumner offered the following resolution, which, on his motion, was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
“Resolved, That Trusten Polk, of Missouri, now a traitor to the United States, be expelled, and he hereby is expelled, from the Senate.”
Mr. Sumner produced a letter from Mr. Polk, which had found its way into the newspapers, where he says: “Dissolution is now a fact,—not only a fact accomplished, but thrice repeated. Everything here looks like inevitable and final dissolution. Will Missouri hesitate a moment to go with her Southern sisters? I hope not.”
Mr. Saulsbury, of Delaware, thought the letter was “not genuine,” and added:—