The Works of Daniel Webster, Volume 1

The great event of the administration of President Polk was the war with Mexico. The time has not yet arrived when the counsels under which this war was brought about can be fully unfolded. On the 2d of December, 1845, in his first annual message, having communicated to Congress the acceptance by Texas of the terms of annexation offered by the joint resolution, President Polk thus expressed himself:—

“This accession to our territory has been a bloodless achievement. No arm of force has been raised to produce the result. The sword has had no part in the victory. We have not sought to extend our territorial possessions by conquest, or our republican institutions over a reluctant people. It was the deliberate homage of each people to the great principle of our federative Union.”

The proffered annexation of Texas had been declined both cxlvi by General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren, on the ground that, unless made with the consent of Mexico, it would involve a war with that power. That this would be the effect was not less certain on the 2d of December, 1845, when Congress were congratulated on the “bloodless” acquisition, than it was when, on the 13th of January following, General Taylor was instructed to occupy the left bank of the Rio del Norte. In fact, in the very message in which President Polk remarks to Congress “that the sword had had no part in the victory,” he gives them also the significant information, that, upon the earnest appeal both of the Congress and convention of Texas, he had ordered “an efficient military force to take a position between the Nueces and the Del Norte.”

This force, however efficient in proportion to its numbers and in virtue of the gallantry and skill of its commander, was found to be inadequate to sustain the brunt of the Mexican arms. Rapid movements on the part of Generals Ampudia and Arista, commanding on the frontier, seriously endangered the safety of General Taylor’s force, and it became necessary for Congress to strengthen it by prompt reinforcements. In this way the war was commenced. No formal declaration had taken place, nor had it been in the power of Congress to make known its will on the subject, till an absolute necessity arose of reinforcing General Taylor, and the subject had ceased to be one for legislative discretion.

Under these circumstances it was of course impossible for Mr. Webster to approve the war. It had been brought on by the executive will, and without the concurrence of Congress till Congress had ceased to have an option, and its well-known ulterior objects were such as he could not but contemplate with equal disapprobation and alarm. Still, however, in common with the body of his political friends, in and out of Congress, he abstained from all factious opposition, and all measures calculated to embarrass the government. The supplies were voted for by him, but he never ceased to urge upon the President to pursue a magnanimous policy toward the distracted and misgoverned country with which we had been brought in collision. Nor did his opinions of the character of the war lead him to discourage the inclination of his younger son, Mr. Edward Webster, to accept a commission in the regiment of Massachusetts cxlvii Volunteers. This young gentleman had evinced an energy beyond his years, and practical talent of a high order, as a member of the commission for marking the boundary line between Maine and the British Provinces under the treaty of Washington. His friends looked forward with confidence to his running a brilliant military career. These hopes, like those which accompanied so many other gallant and patriotic spirits to the scene of action, were destined to be early blasted. Major Webster fell a victim to the labors and exposures of the service, and to the climate of the country, under the walls of Mexico.

To avoid all misconception, it may be proper to state that Mr. Webster has at all times entertained an unfavorable opinion of the various administrations by which Mexico, almost ever since her revolution, has been successively misgoverned. He has felt constrained to regard the greater part of them as military factions, bent more upon supplanting each other than upon promoting the welfare of their country. He was fully aware of the justice of many of the complaints of citizens of the United States for wrongs inflicted and justice withheld. Both while in the executive government himself, and as a member of Congress, he had uniformly expressed himself in terms of severe condemnation of the conduct of the Mexican government in withholding or delaying redress; and he foresaw and foretold that, in obstinately refusing to recognize the independence of Texas, she was laying up for herself a store of consequences the most humiliating and disastrous. Nothing but the most deplorable infatuation could have led the government of Mexico to suppose, that, after the independence of Texas had been recognized by the United States, Great Britain, France, and Belgium, it would be possible for a power as feeble as that of Mexico to reduce the rebellious province to submission. If any confirmation of these statements is needed, it may be found in Mr. Webster’s letter to Mr. de Bocanegra, in the sixth volume of this collection.

The settlement of the controversy with England relative to the boundary of Oregon was effected in the first year of Mr. Polk’s administration. The foundations for this adjustment had long been laid; in fact, as long ago as the administration of Mr. Monroe, the United States had offered to England the obvious basis of the extension of the forty-ninth degree of latitude cxlviii to the Pacific. Great Britain allowed herself to be influenced by the Hudson’s Bay Company so far, as to insist upon following the course of the Columbia down to the sea. She even took the extravagant ground that, although the United States, by the Louisiana and Florida treaties, combined the Spanish and the French titles with that of actual contiguity and prior discovery of the Columbia River, they had no exclusive title to any portion of the territory, but that it was all subject to her own joint and rival claim. This unreasonable pretension brought the two countries to the verge of war. The Baltimore Convention, in the year 1844, set up a claim, equally unreasonable, to the whole of the territory. President Polk in his inaugural message, quoting the words of the resolution of the Baltimore Convention, pronounced our title to the territory to be “clear and unquestionable.”

The assertion of these opposite extremes of pretension happily resulted in the final adjustment on the forty-ninth degree. Mr. Webster had uniformly been of opinion that this was the fair basis of settlement. Had he supposed that an arrangement could have been effected on this basis with Lord Ashburton, he would gladly have included it in the treaty of Washington. After Mr. Webster’s retirement from the Department of State, it is stated by President Polk that Mr. Upshur instructed Mr. Everett to offer that line to the British government; but the negotiation had in the mean time, by the appointment of Mr. Pakenham, been transferred to Washington. The offer of the forty-ninth degree of latitude was renewed to Mr. Pakenham, but accompanied with conditions which led him to decline it, and to express the hope that the United States would make “some further proposal for the settlement of the Oregon question more consistent with fairness and equity, and with the reasonable expectations of the British government.” The offer thus injudiciously rejected was withdrawn by the administration. In this dangerous juncture of affairs, the following incidents occurred, which we give in the words of the “London Examiner”:

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

1

Fifty dollars. The knowledge of this fact is derived from the “Gloucester News,” to which it was no doubt communicated by Master Tappan.

2

Belknap’s History of New Hampshire, Vol. III. p. 328.

3

The old school-house was burned down many years ago. The spot on which it stood belongs to Mr. Robert J. Bradley, who has inherited from his father a devoted friendship for Mr. Webster, and who would never suffer any other building to be erected on the spot, and says that none shall be during his life.

4

Lives of the Chancellors, Vol. VII. p. 218; see also p. 301.

5

The friend to whom the letter referred to by Mr. March was written, was Mr. Justice Story, who adds: “Such praise from such a man ought to be very gratifying. Consider that he is now seventy-five years old, and that he speaks of his recollections of some eighteen years ago with a freshness which shows how deeply your reasoning impressed itself upon his mind. Keep this in memoriam rei.”

6

1 New Hampshire Reports, p. 113.

7

American Review, Vol. IX. p. 434.

8

“Crescit enim cum amplitudine rerum vis ingenii, nec quisquam claram et inlustrem orationem efficere potest, nisi qui causam parem invenit.” The dialogue De Oratoribus, § 37, usually printed with the works of Tacitus.

9

Mr. Webster makes the following playful allusion to this circumstance in a speech at a public dinner in Syracuse (New York), in the month of May of the present year:—

10

“It has so happened that all the public services which I have rendered in the world, in my day and generation, have been connected with the general government. I think I ought to make an exception. I was ten days a member of the Massachusetts legislature, and I turned my thoughts to the search for some good object in which I could be useful in that position; and, after much reflection, I introduced a bill which, with the general consent of both houses of the Massachusetts legislature, passed into a law, and is now a law of the State, which enacts that no man in the State shall catch trout in any other manner than in the old way, with an ordinary hook and line.”

The leading ideas in this and the following paragraph may be found in a review of Mr. Webster’s Speeches, in the North American Review, Vol. XLI. p. 241, written by the author of this Memoir.

11

See North American Review, Vol. XVII. p. 414.

12

This case is known as that of Carver’s Lessees against John Jacob Astor, and is reported in 4 Peters, I.

13

Mr. Chambers referred to the case in court just mentioned, in which Mr. Webster was engaged, and in which the argument had already begun.

14

Mr. Hayne subsequently disclaimed having used this word.

15

Reminiscences of Congress.

16

Chancellor Kent’s remarks are given entire in the introduction to Mr. Webster’s Speech at the New York Dinner, Vol. I. p. 194.

17

Mr. Geo. P. A. Healey.

18

North American Review, Vol. XXXI. p. 537.

19

This passage does not appear in the report preserved in the volume containing his Select Speeches.

20

It is not wholly unworthy of remark in this place, as illustrating the dependence on Mr. Webster’s aid which was felt at the White House, that, on the day of his reply to Mr. Calhoun, the President’s carriage was sent to Mr. Webster’s lodgings, as was supposed with a message borne by the President’s private secretary. Happening to be still at the door when Mr. Webster was about to go to the Capitol, it conveyed him to the Senate-chamber.

21

March’s Reminiscences of Congress, pp. 291, 292.

22

Not long after the publication of this speech, the present Lord Overstone, then Mr. S. Jones Lloyd, one of the highest authorities upon financial subjects in England, was examined upon the subject of banks and currency before a committee of the House of Commons. He produced a copy of the speech of Mr. Webster before the committee, and pronounced it one of the ablest and most satisfactory discussions of these subjects which he had seen. In writing afterwards to Mr. Webster, he spoke of him as a master who had instructed him on these subjects.

23

This chapter is republished, with but slight modifications, from the volume of Mr. Webster’s Diplomatic and Official Papers which appeared in 1848, to which it served as the Introduction.

24

Mr. Stevenson.

25

Senate Papers, Twenty-seventh Congress, First Session, No. 33.

26

Younger son of Mr. Webster, who died in Mexico, in 1848, being a major in the regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers.

27

The authorities are given in Story’s Commentaries Vol. III. pp. 675, 676; Conflict of Laws, pp. 520, 522; and in Kent’s Commentaries, Vol. I. pp. 36, 37.

28

The following passage from a letter of Robert Walsh, Esq., to the editors of the National Intelligencer, dated Paris, 28th October, 1842, furnishes confirmation of the remark in the text:—

“The former journal [The Times], of the 18th instant, acknowledges that Mr. Webster ‘has not exaggerated the hardships and evils which the practice of impressment occasioned in the last war.’ It ratifies his ideas of the probable aggravation of them, if the practice should be ever renewed; it would even dispense with press-warrants at home, as adverse to the general principles of British liberty and law: it advises some general measure for the entire abolition of arbitrary impressment both at home and abroad, and it expresses its belief of a very strong probability, that, in the event of a war, no instructions for the impressment of British seamen found in American merchant-vessels will be issued to her Majesty’s cruisers. The Standard chimes with the great oracle, and concludes in this strain: ‘We may infer that, whatever may be the plan hereafter for managing our navy, impressment will never again be resorted to; this is beyond a doubt: the practice complained of by Mr. Webster will be abandoned.’”

29

Mr. Cushing.