But I advise the contrivers to give up this scheme. Polk and Texas are strong, and can carry a great deal, but not every thing. The oriental story informs us that it was the last ounce which broke the camel's back? What if a mountain had been put first on the poor animal's back? Nullification is a mountain! Disunion is a mountain! and what could Polk and Texas do with two mountains on their backs? And here, Mr. President, I must speak out. The time has come for those to speak out who neither fear nor count consequences when their country is in danger. Nullification and disunion are revived, and revived under circumstances which menace more danger than ever, since coupled with a popular question which gives to the plotters the honest sympathies of the patriotic millions. I have often intimated it before, but now proclaim it. Disunion is at the bottom of this long-concealed Texas machination. Intrigue and speculation co-operate; but disunion is at the bottom, and I denounce it to the American people. Under the pretext of getting Texas into the Union, the scheme is to get the South out of it. A separate confederacy, stretching from the Atlantic to the Californias (and hence the secret of the Rio Grande del Norte frontier), is the cherished vision of disappointed ambition; and for this consummation every circumstance has been carefully and artfully contrived. A secret and intriguing negotiation, concealed from Congress and the people: an abolition quarrel picked with Great Britain to father an abolition quarrel at home: a slavery correspondence to outrage the North: war with Mexico: the clandestine concentration of troops and ships in the southwest: the secret compact with the President of Texas, and the subjection of American forces to his command: the flagrant seizure of the purse and the sword: the contradictory and preposterous reasons on which the detected military and naval movement was defended—all these announce the prepared catastrophe; and the inside view of the treaty betrays its design. The whole annexed country is to be admitted as one territory, with a treaty-promise to be admitted as States, when we all know that Congress alone can admit new States, and that the treaty-promise, without a law of Congress to back it, is void. The whole to be slave States (and with the boundary to the Rio Grande there may be a great many); and the correspondence, which is the key to the treaty, and shows the design of its framers, wholly directed to the extension of slavery and the exasperation of the North. What else could be done to get up Missouri controversies and make sure of the non-admission of these States? Then the plot is consummated: and Texas without the Union, sooner than the Union without Texas (already the premonitory chorus of so many resolves), receives its practical application in the secession of the South, and its adhesion to the rejected Texas. Even without waiting for the non-admission of the States, so carefully provided for in the treaty and correspondence, secession and confederation with the foreign Texas is already the scheme of the subaltern disunionists. The subalterns, charged too high by their chiefs, are ready for this; but the more cunning chiefs, want Texas in as a territory—in by treaty—the supreme law of the land—with a void promise for admission as States. Then non-admission can be called a breach of the treaty. Texas can be assumed to be a part of the Union; and secession and conjunction with her becomes the rightful remedy. This is the design, and I denounce it; and blind is he who, occupying a position at this capitol, does not behold it!
I mention secession as the more cunning method of dissolving the Union. It is disunion, and the more dangerous because less palpable. Nullification begat it, and if allowed there is an end to the Union. For a few States to secede, without other alliances, would only put the rest to the trouble of bringing them back; but with Texas and California to retire upon, the Union would have to go. Many persons would secede on the non-admission of Texian States who abhor disunion now. To avoid all these dangers, and to make sure of Texas, pass my bill! which gives the promise of Congress for the admission of the new States—neutralizes the slave question—avoids Missouri controversies—pacifies Mexico—and harmonizes the Union.
The senator from South Carolina complains that I have been arrogant and overbearing in this debate, and dictatorial to those who were opposed to me. So far as this reproach is founded, I have to regret it, and to ask pardon of the Senate and of its members. I may be in some fault. I have, indeed, been laboring under deep feeling; and while much was kept down, something may have escaped. I marked the commencement of this Texas movement long before it was visible to the public eye; and always felt it to be dangerous, because it gave to the plotters the honest sympathies of the millions. I saw men who never cared a straw about Texas—one of whom gave it away—another of whom voted against saving it—and all of whom were silent and indifferent while the true friends of the sacrificed country were laboring to get it back: I saw these men lay their plot in the winter of 1842-'43, and told every person with whom I talked every step they were to take in it. All that has taken place, I foretold: all that is intended, I foresee. The intrigue for the presidency was the first act in the drama; the dissolution of the Union the second. And I, who hate intrigue, and love the Union, can only speak of intriguers and disunionists with warmth and indignation. The oldest advocate for the recovery of Texas, I must be allowed to speak in just terms of the criminal politicians who prostituted the question of its recovery to their own base purposes, and delayed its success by degrading and disgracing it. A western man, and coming from a State more than any other interested in the recovery of this country so unaccountably thrown away by the treaty of 1819, I must be allowed to feel indignant at seeing Atlantic politicians seizing upon it, and making it a sectional question, for the purposes of ambition and disunion. I have spoken warmly of these plotters and intriguers; but I have not permitted their conduct to alter my own, or to relax my zeal for the recovery of the sacrificed country. I have helped to reject the disunion treaty; and that obstacle being removed, I have brought in the bill which will insure the recovery of Texas (with peace, and honor, and with the Union) as soon as the exasperation has subsided which the outrageous conduct of this administration has excited in every Mexican breast. No earthly power but Mexico has a right to say a word. Civil treatment and consultation beforehand would have conciliated her; but the seizure of two thousand miles of her undisputed territory, an insulting correspondence, breach of the armistice, secret negotiations with Texas, and sending troops and ships to waylay and attack her, have excited feelings of resentment which must be allayed before any thing can be done.
The senator from South Carolina compares the rejected treaty to the slain Cæsar, and gives it a ghost, which is to meet me at some future day, as the spectre met Brutus at Philippi. I accept the comparison, and thank the senator for it. It is both classic and just; for as Cæsar was slain for the good of his country, so has been this treaty; and as the spectre appeared at Philippi on the side of the ambitious Antony and the hypocrite Octavius, and against the patriot Brutus, so would the ghost of this poor treaty, when it comes to meet me, appear on the side of the President and his secretary, and against the man who was struggling to save his country from their lawless designs. But here the comparison must stop; for I can promise the ghost and his backers that if the fight goes against me at this new Philippi, with which I am threatened, and the enemies of the American Union triumph over me as the enemies of Roman liberty triumphed over Brutus and Cassius, I shall not fall upon my sword, as Brutus did, though Cassius be killed, and run it through my own body; but I shall save it, and save myself for another day, and for another use—for the day when the battle of the disunion of these States is to be fought—not with words, but with iron—and for the hearts of the traitors who appear in arms against their country.
The comparison is just. Cæsar was rightfully killed for conspiring against his country; but it was not he that destroyed the liberties of Rome. That work was done by the profligate politicians, without him, and before his time; and his death did not restore the republic. There were no more elections. Rotten politicians had destroyed them; and the nephew of Cæsar, as heir to his uncle, succeeded to the empire on the principle of hereditary succession.
And here, Mr. President, History appears in her grand and instructive character, as Philosophy teaching by example: and let us not be senseless to her warning voice. Superficial readers believe it was the military men who destroyed the Roman republic. No such thing! It was the politicians who did it! factious, corrupt, intriguing, politicians! destroying public virtue in their mad pursuit after office! destroying their rivals by crime! deceiving and debauching the people for votes! and bringing elections into contempt by the frauds and violence with which they were conducted. From the time of the Gracchi there were no elections that could bear the name. Confederate and rotten politicians bought and sold the consulship. Intrigue, and the dagger, disposed of rivals. Fraud, violence, bribes, terror, and the plunder of the public treasury, commanded votes. The people had no choice: and long before the time of Cæsar nothing remained of republican government, but the name, and the abuse. Read Plutarch. In the life of Cæsar, and not three pages before the crossing of the Rubicon, he paints the ruined state of the elections—shows that all elective government was gone—that the hereditary form had become a necessary relief from the contests of the corrupt—and that in choosing between Pompey and Cæsar, many preferred Pompey, not because they thought him republican, but because they thought he would make the milder king. Even arms were but a small part of Cæsar's reliance when he crossed the Rubicon. Gold, still more than the sword, was his dependence: and he sent forward the accumulated treasures of plundered Gaul, to be poured into the laps of rotten politicians. There was no longer a popular government; and in taking all power to himself, he only took advantage of the state of things which profligate politicians had produced. In this he was culpable, and paid the forfeit with his life; but in contemplating his fate, let us never forget that the politicians had undermined and destroyed the republic, before he came to seize and to master it.
It was the same in our day. We have seen the conqueror of Egypt and Italy overturn the Directory, usurp all power, and receive the sanction of the people. And why? Because the government was rotten, and elections had become a farce. The elections of forty-eight departments, at one time, in the year 1798, were annulled, to give the Directory a majority in the legislative councils. All sorts of fraud and violence were committed at the elections. The people had no confidence in them, and submitted to Bonaparte.
All elective governments have failed in this manner; and, in process of time, must fail here, unless elections can be taken out of the hands of the politicians, and restored to the full control of the people. The plan which I have submitted this day, for dispensing with intermediate bodies, and holding a second election for President when the first fails, is designed to accomplish this great purpose; and will do much good if adopted. Never have politicians, in so young a country, shown such a thirst for office—such disregard of the popular will, such readiness to deceive and betray the people. The Texas treaty (for I must confine myself to the case before us) is an intrigue for the presidency, and a contrivance to get the Southern States out of the Union, instead of getting Texian States into it; and is among the most unscrupulous intrigues which any country every beheld. But we know how to discriminate. We know how to separate the wrong from the right. Texas, which the intriguers prostrated to their ambitious purposes (caring nothing about it, as their past lives show), will be rescued from their designs, and restored to this Union as naturally, and as easily, as the ripened pear falls to the earth. Those who prepared the result at the Baltimore convention, in which the will of the people was overthrown, will be consigned to oblivion; while the nominees of the convention will be accepted and sustained: and as for the plotters of disunion and secession, they will be found out and will receive their reward; and I, for one, shall be ready to meet them at Philippi, sword in hand, whenever they bring their parricidal scheme to the test of arms.