As for this road, we are told at every turn that it is ridiculous to talk of war in connection with it, for we will have no wars except those with the Indians. Both England and France dare not go to war with us. I say this course of argument is not only unwise and delusive, but if such sentiments take hold on the country, they will be mischievous; they will almost to a certainty lead to a daring and reckless policy on our part; and as each government labors under a similar delusion as to what the other will not dare to do, what is more probable than that both may get into such a position—the result of a mutual mistake—that war must ensue? It is worth while to reflect upon the difference between the policy of Great Britain and this country in her diplomatic correspondence and debates in Parliament. When we make a threat, Great Britain does not threaten in turn. We hear of no gasconade on her part. If we declare that we have a just right to latitude 54 degrees 40', and will maintain our right at all hazard, she does not bluster, and threaten, and declare what she will do, if we dare to cany out our threat. When we talk about the Mosquito king, of Balize, and of the Bay Islands, and declare our determination to drive her from her policy and purposes in regard to them, we do not hear of an angry form of expression from her. We employed very strong language last year in regard to the rights of American fishermen; but the reply of Great Britain scarcely assumed the tone of remonstrance against the intemperate tone of our debates. Her policy upon all such occasions is one of wisdom. Her strong and stern purpose is seldom to be seen in her diplomatic intercourse, or in the debates of her leading statesmen; but if you were about her dock-yards, or in her foundries, or her timber-yards, and her great engine manufactories, and her armories, you would find some bustle and stir. There, all is life and motion.
I have always thought that the proper policy of this country is to make no threats—to make no parade of what we intend to do. Let us put the country in a condition to defend its honor and interests; to maintain them successfully whenever they may be assailed; no matter by what Power, whether by Great Britain, or France, or both combined. Make this road; complete the defenses of the country, of your harbors, and navy yards; strengthen your navy—put it upon an efficient footing; appropriate ample means for making experiments to ascertain the best model of ships-of-war, to be driven by steam or any other motive power; the best models of the engines to be employed in them; to inquire whether a large complement of guns, or a few guns of great calibre, is the better plan. We may well, upon such questions, take a lesson from England. At a recent period she has been making experiments of this nature, in order to give increased efficiency to her naval establishment. How did she set about it? Her Admiralty Board gave orders for eleven of the most perfect engines that could be built by eleven of the most skillful and eminent engine-builders in the United Kingdom, without limit as to the cost, or any other limitation, except as to class or size. At the same time orders were issued for the building of thirteen frigates of a medium class by thirteen of the most skillful shipbuilders in the kingdom, in order to ascertain the best models, the best running lines, and the best of every other quality desirable in a war vessel. This is the mode in which Great Britain prepares for any contingencies which may arise. She cannot tell when they may occur, yet she knows that she has no immunity from those chances which, at some time or other, are seen to happen to all nations. In my opinion, the construction of this road from the Mississippi to the Pacific is essential to the protection and safety of this country, in the event of a war with any great maritime Power. It may take ten years to complete it; but every hundred miles of it, which may be finished before the occurrence of war, will be just so much gained—so much added to our ability to maintain our honor in that war. In every view of this question I can take, I am persuaded that we ought at least prepare to commence the work, and do it immediately.
JUDAH PHILIP BENJAMIN (1811-1884)
Judah P. Benjamin, the "Beaconsfield of the Confederacy," was born at St. Croix in the West Indies, where his parents, a family of English-Jews, on their way to settle in New Orleans, were delayed by the American measures against intercourse with England. In 1816 his parents brought him to Wilmington, North Carolina, where, and at Yale College, he was educated. Not until after he was ready to begin life at the bar, did he reach New Orleans, the destination for which his parents had set out before he was born. In New Orleans, after a severe struggle, he rose to eminence as a lawyer, and his firm, of which Mr. Slidell was a partner, was the leading law firm of the State. He was elected to the United States Senate as a Whig in 1852 and re-elected as a Democrat in 1859. With Mr. Slidell, who was serving with him in the Senate, he withdrew in 1861 and became Attorney-General in the Confederate cabinet. He was afterwards made Secretary of War, but as the Confederate congress censured him in that position he resigned it and Mr. Davis immediately appointed him Secretary of State. After the close of the war, when pursuit after members of the Confederate cabinet was active, he left the coast of Florida in an open boat and landed at the Bahamas, taking passage thence to London where he rose to great eminence as a lawyer. He was made Queen's Counsel, and on his retirement from practice, because of ill health, in 1883, a farewell banquet was given him by the bar in the hall of the Inner Temple, probably the most notable compliment paid in England to any orator since the banquet to Berryer. He died in 1884.
Benjamin was called the "brains of the Confederacy" and in acuteness of intellect he probably surpassed most men of his time. He resembled Disraeli in this as well as in being a thorough-going believer in an aristocratic method of government rather than in one based on universal suffrage and the will of the masses determined by majority vote.
FAREWELL TO THE UNION (On Leaving the United States Senate in 1861)
Mr. President, if we were engaged in the performance of our accustomed legislative duties, I might well rest content with the simple statement of my concurrences in the remarks just made by my colleague [Mr. Slidell]. Deeply impressed, however, with the solemnity of the occasion, I cannot remain insensible to the duty of recording, among the authentic reports of your proceedings, the expression of my conviction that the State of Louisiana has judged and acted well and wisely in this crisis of her destiny.
Sir, it has been urged, on more than one occasion, in the discussions here and elsewhere, that Louisiana stands on an exceptional footing. It has been said that whatever may be the rights of the States that were original parties to the Constitution, —even granting their right to resume, for sufficient cause, those restricted powers which they delegated to the general government in trust for their own use and benefit,—still Louisiana can have no such right, because she was acquired by purchase. Gentlemen have not hesitated to speak of the sovereign States formed out of the territory ceded by France as property bought with the money of the United States, belonging to them as purchasers; and, although they have not carried their doctrine to its legitimate results, I must conclude that they also mean to assert, on the same principle, the right of selling for a price that which for a price was bought.
I shall not pause to comment on this repulsive dogma of a party which asserts the right of property in free-born white men, in order to reach its cherished object of destroying the right of property in slave-born black men—still less shall I detain the Senate in pointing out how shadowy the distinction between the condition of the servile African and that to which the white freeman of my State would be reduced, if it, indeed, be true that they are bound to this government by ties that cannot be legitimately dissevered without the consent of that very majority which wields its powers for their oppression. I simply deny the fact on which the argument is founded. I deny that the province of Louisiana, or the people of Louisiana, were ever conveyed to the United States for a price as property that could be bought or sold at will. Without entering into the details of the negotiation, the archives of our State Department show the fact to be, that although the domain, the public lands, and other property of France in the ceded province, were conveyed by absolute title to the United States, the sovereignty was not conveyed otherwise than in trust.
A hundredfold, sir, has the Government of the United States been reimbursed by the sales of public property, of public lands, for the price of the acquisition; but not with the fidelity of the honest trustee has it discharged the obligations as regards the sovereignty.