Mr. Troup said he knew that orders had been given to remove them, but of their removal and dispersion he had not heard. He said he had further understood that there were, in the county of Madison alone, two or three thousand intruders, and many of them settled on Indian lands, whose owners they excited to hostilities. There was another fact, of which the House might keep possession. Among these intruders was one of the name of Harrison, he believed, who claimed under what was called the Tennessee Yazoo claims, and who settled on the land with his retainers, and deliberately began to apportion it among them. Whether he had been dispossessed, Mr. T. said he did not know. It was absolutely necessary to ascertain the situation of that country, and therefore he should vote for the reference of the petition to a committee.
The petition was ordered to lie on the table—67 to 27.
Tuesday, June 13.
Miranda's Exhibition.
The House went into Committee of the Whole on the following resolution, reported by the committee appointed to consider the petition of thirty-six citizens concerned in Miranda's expedition, and now confined in the vaults of Carthagena, South America:
"Resolved, That the President of the United States be requested to adopt the most immediate and efficacious means in his power to obtain the liberation of the prisoners, if it shall appear to his satisfaction that they were involuntarily drawn into the unlawful enterprise in which they were engaged; and that ---- dollars be appropriated for that purpose."
Mr. McKim observed, that he believed nothing further would be necessary for the attainment of this object than an application by the Government of the United States; he then moved to fill the blank in the resolution with such a sum ($3,500) as would defray the expense of sending a vessel there and clothing the prisoners previous to their return.
Mr. Randolph said he believed there would be no better time than on this motion to express the disapprobation which he felt of the report; for he was unwilling in his representative capacity, to give one cent of the public money for bringing back into the bosom of the body politic these unfortunate but guilty men. He knew how invidious a task it was to appear to lean to the side of inhumanity; he knew how very natural it was for the mind of man to relent after the commission of a crime, and to see nothing in a culprit but his misfortunes, forgetting his guilt; but there were occasions, and he took this to be one, where to lean apparently to the side of humanity is an act of as great injustice and cruelty to society as the Legislature can commit. What were the House about to do? To make an appropriation of money for an extraordinary purpose of foreign intercourse. Was not the President of the United States already invested with power to negotiate with the Spanish Government on this, as well as with any other Government on any subject? Was the President of the United States presumed to have turned a deaf ear to the cries of our suffering countrymen in captivity in a foreign nation? Mr. R. said this was not like a question of redeeming our countrymen from slavery in Barbary or Tripoli; but it was a question whether this Government would lend its countenance to that class of men who were concerned in the expeditions of Miranda and Aaron Burr. He for one said, that he would not consent to it; and that those persons who, above the dull pursuits of civil life, had enlisted under these leaders, might take for him, however he might feel for their situation as men, the lot which they themselves had selected. He said he considered them as voluntarily expatriated from this country, and among the articles of commerce and manufacture, which it might be contemplated to encourage by bounty and premiums, he confessed for one, that the importation of such citizens as these was not an article of traffic which would meet with any encouragement from him. So far from being afraid of any ill consequences resulting from the sparseness of our population, he was afraid that our population, (and experience has tested the fact,) sparse as it was in number, in quality was redundant. We have been told, said Mr. R., and I believe it, that but the other day the Foreign Office in Great Britain cast its eyes on Colonel Burr, and that they either did commit him—I understand that he was committed and stood so for some time, and was only released on condition of quitting the country—that they either did commit or threaten to imprison that unfortunate man. I want to know, sir, if he had stood so committed, in what respect his case, in a political point of view, would have stood contradistinguished from that of these petitioners? I can see no difference but such as, in my mind, would have operated to his advantage. There is an equality of guilt, but on his part a superiority of intellectual character which would have rendered him, if there is to be an accession to the State by bringing back to its bosom those who have voluntarily thrown themselves out of the protection of the country, a more valuable acquisition, or rather a less valuable loss, than these unfortunate men.
It appears to me, sir, that in passing this resolution we shall hold up a premium to vice; for, if this proposition be agreed to, when some new Miranda or Burr comes forward with his project, he will tell his conspirators that they will have nothing more to do, should the matter turn out adversely, than to put up a face and tell Congress that they were involuntarily drawn into it. An extraordinary mode, to be sure, of volunteering to go against their will. These involuntary volunteers will be told they will have nothing to do but throw the whole weight of the blame on the original mover of the expedition, and Congress will tax their fellow-creatures—who, poor souls, had not enlarged and liberal minds, and were content with the dull pursuits of civil life—for redeeming them, clothing them, and bringing them back again to society. I wish the committee to take the thing into consideration. As men and Christians our conduct is to be governed by one rule; as representatives of the people other considerations are proper. There is, in the proposed interference, no justice; there may be much mercy, but it is a mercy which carries cruelty, if not deliberate, the most pernicious of all possible species of cruelty, along with it. Suppose these men had been arrested and tried in this country, what would have been their lot? It is difficult for me to say. I am no lawyer; but I suppose, under the mild institutions in some of our States, they would have been condemned to hard labor for life. In what do they differ, to their advantage from other felons? In nothing. Who would step forward to rescue them from that punishment due to their crime if convicted by our own courts? Nobody. Everybody would have said that they deserved it. Now, on the contrary, having escaped the hand of justice in this country, and fallen into the grasp of the strong hand of power in another country, we are not contented to let them reap what they have sown; we are not contented to leave them in the hands of justice. I believe that there exists a proper disposition in the Executive to interfere, where American citizens are wrongfully treated abroad. And, shall we come forward and open the public purse, and assume on ourselves the responsibility of that act which the President refuses to do, and thus share among us the imputation, such as it may be, which society chooses to cast upon us in consequence of it, instead of letting it fall singly and individually upon him, in case he chooses to incur it? No, sir. I have no disposition to pass this resolution to take the responsibility upon myself. In short, I should have been glad, if instead of telling us that these men are unfortunate and miserable, (for who are so unfortunate and miserable as the truly guilty?) that the members of that committee, or the respectable chairman himself, had come forward and shown the claim of these petitioners to the peculiar patronage of the country. So far from any disposition to bring them back, I would allow a drawback or bounty on the exportation of every man of similar principles.
Mr. Emott said, that as he had been a member of the committee whose report was now under consideration, he felt the propriety of making a few observations to show the expediency of adopting the resolution. In order to obtain the release of these miserable and deluded men, it was necessary that the Government should interfere, because the Spanish Government never would release them till such application was made. The only money necessary to be paid was not to the Spanish Government, but to defray the expense of bringing back the prisoners. It was not to buy their liberty, but to employ a person to go there to request it.