Mr. Calhoun concluded this speech on the Oregon bill, in which he promulgated his latest dogmas on slavery, with referring the future hypothetical dissolution of the Union, to three phases of the slavery question: 1. The ordinance of '87. 2. The compromise of 1820. 3. The Oregon agitation of that day, 1848. These were his words:
"Now, let me say, Senators, if our Union and system of government are doomed to perish, and we to share the fate of so many great people who have gone before us, the historian, who, in some future day, may record the events tending to so calamitous a result, will devote his first chapter to the ordinance of 1787, as lauded as it and its authors have been, as the first in that series which led to it. His next chapter will be devoted to the Missouri compromise, and the next to the present agitation. Whether there will be another beyond, I know not. It will depend on what we may do."
These the three causes: The ordinance of 1787, which was voted for by every slave State then in existence: The compromise of 1820, supported by himself, and the power of the South: The Oregon agitation of 1848, of which he was the sole architect—for he was the founder of the opposition to free soil in Oregon. But the historian will have to say that neither of these causes dissolved the Union: and that historian may have to relate that a fourth cause did it—and one from which Mr. Calhoun recoiled, "because it could not be attempted without disturbing the peace and the harmony of the Union."
[CHAPTER CLXXVI.]
COURT-MARTIAL ON LIEUTENANT-COLONEL FREMONT.
Columbus, the discoverer of the New World, was carried home in chains, from the theatre of his discoveries, to expiate the crime of his glory: Frémont, the explorer of California and its preserver to the United States, was brought home a prisoner to be tried for an offence, of which the penalty was death, to expiate the offence of having entered the army without passing through the gate of the Military Academy.
The governor of the State of Missouri, Austin A. King, Esq., sitting at the end of a long gallery at Fort Leavenworth, in the summer of 1846, where he had gone to see a son depart as a volunteer in General Kearney's expedition to New Mexico, heard a person at the other end of the gallery speaking of Frémont in a way that attracted his attention. The speaker was in the uniform of a United States officer, and his remarks were highly injurious to Frémont. He inquired the name of the speaker, and was told it was Lieutenant Emory, of the Topographical corps; and he afterwards wrote to a friend in Washington that Frémont was to have trouble when he got among the officers of the regular army: and trouble he did have: for he had committed the offence for which, in the eyes of many of these officers, there was no expiation except in ignominious expulsion from the army. He had not only entered the army intrusively, according to their ideas, that is to say, without passing through West Point, but he had done worse: he had become distinguished. Instead of seeking easy service about towns and villages, he had gone off into the depths of the wilderness, to extend the boundaries of science in the midst of perils and sufferings, and to gain for himself a name which became known throughout the world. He was brought home to be tried for the crime of mutiny, expanded into many specifications, of which one is enough to show the monstrosity of the whole. At page 11 of the printed record of the trial, under the head of "Mutiny" stands this specification, numbered 6:
"In this, that he, Lieutenant-colonel John C. Frémont, of the regiment of mounted riflemen, United States army, did, at Ciudad de los Angeles, on the second of March, 1847, in contempt of the lawful authority of his superior officer, Brigadier-general Kearney, assume to be and act as governor of California, in executing a deed or instrument of writing in the following words, to wit: 'In consideration of Francis Temple having conveyed to the United States a certain island, commonly called White, or Bird Island, situated near the mouth of San Francisco Bay, I, John C. Frémont, Governor of California, and in virtue of my office as aforesaid, hereby oblige myself as the legal representative of the United States, and my successors in office, to pay the said Francis Temple, his heirs or assigns, the sum of $5,000, to be paid at as early a day as possible after the receipt of funds from the United States. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the Territory of California to be affixed, at Ciudad de los Angeles, the capital of California, this 2d day of March, A. D. 1847.—John C. Frémont.'"
And of this specification, as well as of all the rest, two dozen in number, Frémont was duly found guilty by a majority of the court. Now this case of mutiny consisted in this: That there being an island of solid rock, of some hundred acres extent, in the mouth of the San Francisco bay, formed by nature to command the bay, and on which the United States are now constructing forts and a light-house to cost millions, which island had been granted to a British subject and was about to be sold to a French subject, Colonel Frémont bought it for the United States, subject to their ratification in paying the purchase money: all which appears upon the face of the papers. Upon this transaction (as upon all the other specifications) the majority of the court found the accused guilty of "mutiny," the appropriate punishment for which is death; but the sentence was moderated down to dismission from the service. The President disapproved the absurd findings (seven of them) under the mutiny charge, but approved the finding and sentence on inferior charges; and offered a pardon to Frémont: which he scornfully refused. Since then the government has taken possession of that island by military force, without paying any thing for it; Frémont having taken the purchase on his own account since his conviction for "mutiny" in having purchased it for the government—a conviction about equal to what it would have been on a specification for witchcraft, heresy, or "flat burglary." And now annual appropriations are made for forts and the light-house upon it, under the name of Alcatraz, or Los Alcatrazes—that is to say, Pelican Island; so called from being the resort of those sea birds.