Whereas several of the American Spanish provinces have represented to the United States that it has been found expedient for them to associate and form Federal Governments upon the elective and representative plan, and to declare themselves free and independent—Therefore be it
Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That they behold with friendly interest, the establishment of independent sovereignties by the Spanish provinces in America, consequent upon the actual state of the monarchy to which they belonged; that as neighbors and inhabitants of the same hemisphere the United States feel great solicitude for their welfare; and that when those provinces shall have attained the condition of nations, by the just exercise of their rights, the Senate and House of Representatives will unite with the Executive, in establishing with them as sovereign and independent States, such amicable relations and commercial intercourse as may require their Legislative authority.
Foreign Relations.
The order of the day being called for, the Speaker observed, that the gentleman from Virginia on the right of the Chair was entitled to the floor.
Mr. Randolph rose. He expressed his sense of the motive which had induced the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Grundy) to move the adjournment, yesterday, and of the politeness of the House in granting it; at the same time declaring that in point of fact he had little cause to be thankful for the favor, well intended as he knew it to have been—since he felt himself even less capable of proceeding with his argument, than he had been on the preceding day.
It was a question, as it had been presented to the House, of peace or war. In that light it had been argued; in no other light could he consider it, after the declaration made by members of the Committee of Foreign Relations. Without intending any disrespect to the Chair, he must be permitted to say that if the decision yesterday was correct, "That it was not in order to advance any arguments against the resolution, drawn from topics before other committees of the House," the whole debate, nay, the report itself on which they were acting, was disorderly; since the increase of the military force was a subject at that time in agitation by the select committee raised on that branch of the President's Message. But it was impossible that the discussion of a question broad as the wide ocean of our foreign concerns—involving every consideration of interest, of right, of happiness and of safety at home—touching in every point, all that was dear to freemen, "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor!"—could be tied down by the narrow rules of technical routine. The Committee of Foreign Relations had indeed decided that the subject of arming the militia (which he had pressed upon them as indispensable to the public security) did not come within the scope of their authority. On what ground, he had been and still was unable to see, they had felt themselves authorized (when that subject was before another committee) to recommend the raising of standing armies, with a view (as had been declared) of immediate war—a war not of defence, but of conquest, of aggrandizement, of ambition; a war foreign to the interests of this country, to the interests of humanity itself.
He knew not how gentlemen, calling themselves republicans, could advocate such a war. What was their doctrine in 1798-'9, when the command of the army—that highest of all possible trusts in any Government, be the form what it may—was reposed in the bosom of the Father of his Country, the sanctuary of a nation's love, the only hope that never came in vain! When other worthies of the Revolution—Hamilton, Pinckney, and the younger Washington—men of tried patriotism, of approved conduct and valor, of untarnished honor, held subordinate command under him! Republicans were then unwilling to trust a standing army, even to his hands who had given proof that he was above all human temptation. Where now is the Revolutionary hero to whom you are about to confide this sacred trust? To whom will you confide the charge of leading the flower of our youth to the Heights of Abraham? Will you find him in the person of an acquitted felon? What! then you were unwilling to vote an army where such men as had been named held high command! when Washington himself was at the head—did you then show such reluctance, feel such scruples; and are you now nothing loth, fearless of every consequence? Will you say that your provocations were less then than now? When your direct commerce was interdicted—your Ambassadors hooted with derision from the French Court—tribute demanded—actual war waged upon you!
Those who opposed the army then were indeed denounced as the partisans of France; as the same men—some of them at least—are now held up as the advocates of England; those firm and undeviating Republicans who then dared, and now dare, to cling to the ark of the constitution, to defend it even at the expense of their fame, rather than surrender themselves to the wild projects of mad ambition! There was a fatality attending plenitude of power. Soon or late some mania seizes upon its possessors—they fall from the dizzy height through the giddiness of their own heads. Like a vast estate, heaped up by the labor and industry of one man, which seldom survives the third generation—power, gained by patient assiduity, by a faithful and regular discharge of its attendant duties, soon gets above its own origin. Intoxicated with their own greatness the Federal party fell. Will not the same causes produce the same effects now as then? Sir, you may raise this army, you may build up this vast structure of patronage, this mighty apparatus of favoritism; but—"lay not the flattering unction to your souls"—you will never live to enjoy the succession. You sign your political death warrant.
Mr. R. here adverted to the provocation to hostilities from shutting up the Mississippi by Spain in 1803—but more fully to the conduct of the House in 1805-'6, under the strongest of all imaginable provocatives to war; the actual invasion of our country. He read various passages from the President's public Message of December 3, 1805.
Mr. R. said that the peculiar situation of the frontier, at that time insulted, had alone induced the committee to recommend the raising of regular troops. It was too remote from the population of the country for the militia to act, in repelling and chastising Spanish incursion. New Orleans and its dependencies were separated by a vast extent of wilderness from the settlements of the old United States; filled with a disloyal and turbulent people, alien to our institutions, language and manners, and disaffected towards our Government. Little reliance could be placed upon them, and it was plain, that if "it was the intention of Spain to advance on our possessions until she should be repulsed by an opposing force," that force must be a regular army, unless we were disposed to abandon all the country south of Tennessee. That if "the protection of our citizens and the spirit and the honor of our country required that force should be interposed," nothing remained but for the Legislature to grant the only practicable means, or to shrink from the most sacred of all its duties—to abandon the soil and its inhabitants to the tender mercies of hostile invaders.