Mr. B. said, as he should not be a member of the new Committee of Conference, he would read the amendment which had been so much discussed in the old committee:
“Be it enacted, That the said volunteers shall form themselves into companies, and designate their company officers, who, if he approve of such designations, shall be commissioned by the President, after they shall have been mustered into service; and that the President be, and hereby is, authorized to organize the volunteers so mustered into service, as aforesaid, into battalions, squadrons, regiments, brigades and divisions, as soon as the number of volunteers shall render such organization, in his judgment, expedient, and shall then appoint the necessary officers, which appointment shall be submitted to the Senate at its next session.”
CHAPTER XIV.
1837–1840.
BILL TO PREVENT THE INTERFERENCE OF FEDERAL OFFICERS WITH ELECTIONS—DEVOTION OF THE FOLLOWERS OF JACKSON—THE WHIG PARTY LESS COMPACT IN CONSEQUENCE OF THE RIVALRY BETWEEN MR. CLAY AND MR. WEBSTER—RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW OF THE BANK QUESTION—THE SPECIE CIRCULAR—GREAT FINANCIAL DISASTERS.
Toward the close of General Jackson’s administration a bill was pending in the Senate to prevent the interference of certain federal officers with elections; a subject which has not yet lost its interest. On this bill, on the 14th of February, 1839, Mr. Buchanan made the following speech:
Mr. President: The question raised for discussion by the bill now before the Senate, is very simple in its character. This bill proposes to punish, by a fine of five hundred dollars—the one moiety payable to the informer, and the other to the United States—and by a perpetual disability to hold office under the United States, any officer of this Government, below the rank of a district attorney, who “shall, by word, message, or writing, or in any other manner whatsoever, endeavor to persuade any elector to give, or dissuade any elector from giving, his vote for the choice of any person to be elector of President and Vice President of the United States,” or to be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or to be a governor or lieutenant-governor, or senator or representative, within any State of the Union, “or for the choice of any person to serve in any public office established by the law of any of the States.” The officers of the United States against whom the penalties of this bill are denounced, consist of marshals and their deputies, postmasters and their deputies, receivers and registers of land offices, and their deputies and clerks; surveyors general of the public lands, and their deputies and assistants; collectors, surveyors, naval officers, weighers, gaugers, appraisers, or other officers or persons concerned or employed in the charging, collecting, levying or managing the customs, or any branch thereof; and engineers, officers, or agents, employed or concerned in the execution or superintendence of any of the public works.
The Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Crittenden), before he commenced his remarks, moved to amend the bill by striking from it the pecuniary penalty and perpetual disability against these officers, and substituting, in their stead, the penalty of a removal from office by the President, upon the production of evidence satisfactory to him that any of them had been guilty of the offence.
Now, for myself (said Mr. B.), I shall not vote for this amendment. I will not take advantage of the amiable weakness of my friend from Kentucky, in yielding to the solicitation of others that which his own judgment approved. I will more especially not give such a vote, because the proposed amendment makes no change in the principle of the bill. There is a beautiful harmony and consistency in its provisions as it came fresh from its author which ought to be preserved. I shall not assist in marring any of its fair proportions. Let it remain in its perfect original form, and let its friends upon this floor come up to the baptismal font, and act as its sponsors; and let its avowed principles be recognized as the established doctrines of the political church to which they are all devoted. No, sir, no; if a village postmaster should dare to exercise the freedom of speech, guarantied to him by an antiquated instrument, called the Constitution of the United States, and have the audacity “to endeavor to persuade any elector” to vote for Martin Van Buren, or what would be a much more aggravated offence, dissuade any good Whig from voting for the other distinguished Senator from Kentucky, (Mr. Clay), a mere forfeiture of his office would bear no just proportion to the enormity of the crime. Let such a daring criminal be fined five hundred dollars; let him be disqualified forever from holding any office under the Government; and let him be pointed at as a man of blasted reputation all the days of his life. With honest Dogberry, in the play of “Much ado about Nothing,” I pronounce the offence to be “flat burglary as ever was committed.”
There is another reason why I shall vote against the amendment. An issue has been fairly made between the Senator from Kentucky and my friend from New Jersey, (Mr. Wall), who, from what we have heard in the course of this debate, has but a few shattered planks left on which he can escape from a total shipwreck of his fair fame. In mercy to him I would not remove any of them. Let him have a chance for his life. He has dared to make a report against the bill in its original form, as it was referred to the committee of which he is the chairman; and for this cause has encountered all the withering denunciations of the Senators from Kentucky and Virginia, (Messrs. Crittenden and Rives). In justice to him, the aspect of the question should not now be changed. Let us, then, have the bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill, against which his report was directed.
It would seem almost unnecessary to discuss the question whether this bill be constitutional or not; as the Senator from Kentucky, throughout the whole course of his argument, never once attempted to point to any clause of the Constitution on which it could be supported. It is true that he did cite some precedents in our legislation, which he supposes have a bearing on the subject; but which, I shall undertake to prove, hereafter, are wholly inapplicable. The Senator from Virginia (Mr. Rives) has gone further into the argument, and has attempted to prove that this bill is constitutional. At the proper time, I shall endeavor to furnish the proper answer to his remarks. By-the-by, this Constitution is a terrible bugbear. Whilst a member of the other House, I once heard an old gentleman exclaim, when it was cited against one of his favorite measures, “what a vast deal of good it prevents us from doing!” After this bill shall have passed, it will be a bugbear no longer, so far as the freedom of speech or the press is concerned. It will not then alarm even political children.