Mr. Morton rose.
Mr. Sumner. I know what my friend from Indiana is about to say,—that all this is accidental. This is hard to believe. Nine accidents in one column! Nine accidents of menace against a sister republic! There is a maxim of law, which I was taught early and have not entirely forgotten, that we are bound to presume that every document is executed solemnly and in conformity with rule. Sir, we are bound to believe that the President’s Message was carefully considered. There can be no accident in a President’s Message. A President’s Message is not a stump speech. It is not a Senate speech. It is a document, every line of which must have been carefully considered, not only by the President himself, but by every member of his Cabinet.
There are Senators here who have been familiar with Messages in other years, and know how they are prepared. I have one in my mind which within my knowledge occupied the consideration of the Cabinet three full days,—I think four, if not five,—every single sentence being carefully considered, read by itself, revised, sounded with the hammer, if I may so express myself, like the wheels of a railroad car, to see that it had the true ring. Of course the Message of a President of the United States must go through such an examination. I will not follow the Senator from Indiana in doing the injustice to the President of supposing that his Message was ill-considered, that it was not carefully read over with his Cabinet, that every sentence was not debated, and that these words were not all finally adopted as expressing the sentiments of the President. At any rate, there they stand in the Message. Now any word in a Message, as in a Queen’s Speech, even loosely or inconsiderately proposing anything adverse to the independence of a country, is in the nature of a menace. My language is not too strong. In such a case a word is a blow.
History is often said to repeat itself. More or less it does. It repeats itself now. This whole measure of annexion, and the spirit with which it is pressed, find a parallel in the Kansas and Nebraska Bill, and in the Lecompton Constitution, by which it was sought to subjugate a distant Territory to Slavery. The Senator from Indiana was not here during those days, although he was acting well his part at home; but he will remember the pressure to which we were then exposed. And now we witness the same things: violence in a distant island, as there was violence in Kansas; also the same Presidential appliances; and shall I add, the same menace of personal assault filling the air? All this naturally flowers in the Presidential proposition that the annexion shall be by joint resolution of the two Houses of Congress; so that we have violence to Dominica, violence to Hayti, violence to Public Law, including violence to the Constitution of Dominica, and also to a Treaty between Dominica and Hayti, crowned by violence to the Constitution of the United States.
In other days, to carry his project, a President tried to change a committee. It was James Buchanan.[265] And now we have been called this session to witness a similar endeavor by our President. He was not satisfied with the Committee on Foreign Relations as constituted for years. He wished a change. He asked first for the removal of the Chairman. Somebody told him that this would not be convenient. He then asked for the removal of the Senator from Missouri [Mr. Schurz]; and he was told that this could not be done without affecting the German vote. He then called for the removal of my friend the Senator from New Hampshire, [Mr. Patterson,] who unhappily had no German votes behind him. It was finally settled that this could not be done.
I allude to these things reluctantly, and only as part of the case. They illustrate the spirit we are called to encounter. They illustrate the extent to which the President has fallen into the line of bad examples.
Sir, I appeal to you, as Vice-President. By official position and by well-known relations of friendship you enjoy opportunities which I entreat you to use for the good of your country, and, may I add, for the benefit of that party which has so justly honored you. Go to the President, I ask you, and address him frankly with the voice of a friend to whom he must hearken. Counsel him to shun all approach to the example of Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Andrew Johnson; tell him not to allow the oppression of a weak and humble people; ask him not to exercise War Powers without authority of Congress; and remind him, kindly, but firmly, that there is a grandeur in Justice and Peace beyond anything in material aggrandizement, beyond anything in war.
Again I return to the pending resolution, which I oppose as a new stage in the long-drawn machination. Am I wrong in holding up this negotiation, which has in it so much of violence,—violence toward Dominica, violence toward Hayti? Of course the proposed treaty assumes and adopts the civil war pending in the territory annexed. This is the terrible incumbrance. No prudent man buys a lawsuit; but we are called to buy a bloody lawsuit. I read now the recent testimony of Mr. Hatch, who, while in favor of annexion, writes as follows, under date of South Norwalk, Connecticut, December 12, 1870:—
“I have not, however, looked with favor upon the project as it has been attempted to be effected; and I firmly believe, if we should receive that territory from the hands of President Baez, while all the leading men of the Cabral party, the most numerous, the most intelligent, and the wealthiest, are in prison, in exile, or in arms against Baez, without their having a voice in the transfer, it would result in a terrible disaster.”