Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2)

These were sagacious views, clearly and strongly presented, and new to the public. Few had contemplated the evils of our paper system, and the folly and danger of depending upon it for currency, under this extended and comprehensive aspect; but all saw it as soon as it was presented; and this actual dependence of our banks upon that of England became a new reason for the governmental dissolution of all connection with them. Happily they were working that dissolution themselves, and producing that disconnection by their delinquencies which they were able to prevent Congress from decreeing. An existing act of Congress forbid the employment of any non-specie paying bank as a government depository, and equally forbid the use of its paper. They expected to coerce the government to do both: it did neither: and the disconnection became complete, even before Congress enacted it.

The President had recommended, in his first annual message, the passage of a pre-emption act in the settlement of the public lands, and of a graduation act to reduce the price of the lands according to their qualities, governed by the length of time they had been in market. The former of these recommendations had been acted upon, and became law; and the President had now the satisfaction to communicate its beneficial operation.

"On a former occasion your attention was invited to various considerations in support of a pre-emption law in behalf of the settlers on the public lands; and also of a law graduating the prices for such lands as had long been in the market unsold, in consequence of their inferior quality. The execution of the act which was passed on the first subject has been attended with the happiest consequences, in quieting titles, and securing improvements to the industrious; and it has also, to a very gratifying extent, been exempt from the frauds which were practised under previous pre-emption laws. It has, at the same time, as was anticipated, contributed liberally during the present year to the receipts of the Treasury. The passage of a graduation law, with the guards before recommended, would also, I am persuaded, add considerably to the revenue for several years, and prove in other respects just and beneficial. Your early consideration of the subject is, therefore, once more earnestly requested."

The opposition in Congress, who blamed the administration for the origin and conduct of the war with the Florida Indians, had succeeded in getting through Congress an appropriation for a negotiation with this tribe, and a resolve requesting the President to negotiate. He did so – with no other effect than to give an opportunity for renewed treachery and massacre. The message said:

"In conformity with the expressed wishes of Congress, an attempt was made in the spring to terminate the Florida war by negotiation. It is to be regretted that these humane intentions should have been frustrated, and that the efforts to bring these unhappy difficulties to a satisfactory conclusion should have failed. But, after entering into solemn engagements with the Commanding General, the Indians, without any provocation, recommenced their acts of treachery and murder. The renewal of hostilities in that Territory renders it necessary that I should recommend to your favorable consideration the measure proposed by the Secretary at War (the armed occupation of the Territory)."

With all foreign powers the message had nothing but what was friendly and desirable to communicate. Nearly every question of dissension and dispute had been settled under the administration of his predecessor. The accumulated wrongs of thirty years to the property and persons of our citizens, had been redressed under President Jackson. He left the foreign world in peace and friendship with his country; and his successor maintained the amicable relations so happily established.

CHAPTER XLI.

DIVORCE OF BANK AND STATE; DIVORCE DECREED

This measure, so long and earnestly contested, was destined to be carried into effect at this session; but not without an opposition on the part of the whig members in each House, which exhausted both the powers of debate, and the rules and acts of parliamentary warfare. Even after the bill had passed through all its forms – had been engrossed for the third reading, and actually been read a third time and was waiting for the call of the vote, with a fixed majority shown to be in its favor – the warfare continued upon it, with no other view than to excite the people against it: for its passage in the Senate was certain. It was at this last moment that Mr. Clay delivered one of his impassioned and glowing speeches against it.

"Mr. President, it is no less the duty of the statesman than the physician, to ascertain the exact state of the body to which he is to minister before he ventures to prescribe any healing remedy. It is with no pleasure, but with profound regret, that I survey the present condition of our country. I have rarely, I think never, known a period of such universal and intense distress. The general government is in debt, and its existing revenue is inadequate to meet its ordinary expenditure. The States are in debt, some of them largely in debt, insomuch that they have been compelled to resort to the ruinous expedient of contracting new loans to meet the interest upon prior loans; and the people are surrounded with difficulties; greatly embarrassed, and involved in debt. Whilst this is, unfortunately, the general state of the country, the means of extinguishing this vast mass of debt are in constant diminution. Property is falling in value – all the great staples of the country are declining in price, and destined, I fear, to further decline. The certain tendency of this very measure is to reduce prices. The banks are rapidly decreasing the amount of their circulation. About one-half of them, extending from New Jersey to the extreme Southwest, have suspended specie payments, presenting an image of a paralytic, one moiety of whose body is stricken with palsy. The banks are without a head; and, instead of union, concert, and co-operation between them, we behold jealousy, distrust, and enmity. We have no currency whatever possessing uniform value throughout the whole country. That which we have, consisting almost entirely of the issues of banks, is in a state of the utmost disorder, insomuch that it varies, in comparison with the specie standard, from par to fifty per cent. discount. Exchanges, too, are in the greatest possible confusion, not merely between distant parts of the Union, but between cities and places in the same neighborhood. That between our great commercial marts of New York and Philadelphia, within five or six hours of each other, vacillating between seven and ten per cent. The products of our agricultural industry are unable to find their way to market from the want of means in the hands of traders to purchase them, or from the want of confidence in the stability of things. Many of our manufactories stopped or stopping, especially in the important branch of woollens; and a vast accumulation of their fabrics on hand, owing to the destruction of confidence and the wretched state of exchange between different sections of the Union. Such is the unexaggerated picture of our present condition. And amidst the dark and dense cloud that surrounds us, I perceive not one gleam of light. It gives me nothing but pain to sketch the picture. But duty and truth require that existing diseases should be fearlessly examined and probed to the bottom. We shall otherwise be utterly incapable of conceiving or applying appropriate remedies. If the present unhappy state of our country had been brought upon the people by their folly and extravagance, it ought to be borne with fortitude, and without complaint, and without reproach. But it is my deliberate judgment that it has not been – that the people are not to blame – and that the principal causes of existing embarrassments are not to be traced to them. Sir, it is not my purpose to waste the time or excite the feelings of members of the Senate by dwelling long on what I suppose to be those causes. My object is a better, a higher, and I hope a more acceptable one – to consider the remedies proposed for the present exigency. Still, I should not fulfil my whole duty if I did not briefly say that, in my conscience, I believe our pecuniary distresses have mainly sprung from the refusal to recharter the late Bank of the United States; the removal of the public deposits from that institution; the multiplication of State banks in consequence; and the Treasury stimulus given to them to extend their operations; the bungling manner in which the law, depositing the surplus treasure with the States, was executed; the Treasury circular; and although last, perhaps not least, the exercise of the power of the veto on the bill for distributing, among the States, the net proceeds of the sales of the public lands."

This was the opening of the speech – the continuation and conclusion of which was bound to be in harmony with this beginning; and obliged to fill up the picture so pathetically drawn. It did so, and the vote being at last taken, the bill passed by a fair majority – 24 to 18. But it had the House of Representatives still to encounter, where it had met its fate before; and to that House it was immediately sent for its concurrence. A majority were known to be for it; but the shortest road was taken to its passage; and that was under the debate-killing pressure of the previous question. That question was freely used; and amendment after amendment cut off; motion after motion stifled; speech after speech suppressed; the bill carried from stage to stage by a sort of silent struggle (chiefly interrupted by the repeated process of calling yeas and nays), until at last it reached the final vote – and was passed – by a majority, not large, but clear – 124 to 107. This was the 30th of June, that is to say, within twenty days of the end of a session of near eight months. The previous question, so often abused, now so properly used (for the bill was an old measure, on which not a new word was to be spoken, or a vote to be changed, the only effort being to stave it off until the end of the session), accomplished this good work – and opportunely; for the next Congress was its deadly foe.

The bill was passed, but the bitter spirit which pursued it was not appeased. There is a form to be gone through after the bill has passed all its three readings – the form of agreeing to its title. This is as much a matter of course and form as it is to give a child a name after it is born: and, in both cases, the parents having the natural right of bestowing the name. But in the case of this bill the title becomes a question, which goes to the House, and gives to the enemies of the measure a last chance of showing their temper towards it: for it is a form in which nothing but temper can be shown. This is sometimes done by simply voting against the title, as proposed by its friends – at others, and where the opposition is extreme, it is done by a motion to amend the title by striking it out, and substituting another of odium, and this mode of opposition gives the party opposed to it an opportunity of expressing an opinion on the merits of the bill itself, compressed into an essence, and spread upon the journal for a perpetual remembrance. This was the form adopted on this occasion. The name borne at the head of the bill was inoffensive, and descriptive. It described the bill according to its contents, and did it in appropriate and modest terms. None of the phrases used in debate, such as "Divorce of Bank and State," "Sub-treasury," "Independent Treasury," &c., and which had become annoying to the opposition, were employed, but a plain title of description in these terms: "An act to provide for the collection, safe-keeping, and disbursing of the public money." To this title Mr. James Cooper, of Pennsylvania, moved an amendment, in the shape of a substitute, in these words: "An act to reduce the value of property, the products of the farmer, and the wages of labor, to destroy the indebted portions of the community, and to place the Treasury of the nation in the hands of the President." Before a vote could be taken upon this proposed substitute, Mr. Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, proposed to amend it by adding "to enable the public money to be drawn from the public Treasury without appropriation made by law," and having proposed this amendment to Mr. Cooper's amendment, Mr. Cushing began to speak to the contents of the bill. Then followed a scene in which the parliamentary history must be allowed to speak for itself.

"Mr. Cushing then resumed, and said he had moved the amendment with a view of making a very limited series of remarks pertinent to the subject. He was then proceeding to show why, in his opinion, the contents of the bill did not agree with its title, when

"Mr. Petrikin, of Pennsylvania, called him to order.

"The Speaker said the gentleman from Massachusetts had a right to amend the title of the bill, if it were not a proper title. He had, therefore, a right to examine the contents of the bill, to show that the title was improper.

"Mr. Petrikin still objected.

"The Speaker said the gentleman from Pennsylvania would be pleased to reduce his point of order to writing.

"Mr. Proffit, of Indiana, called Mr. Petrikin to order; and after some colloquial debate, the objection was withdrawn.

"Mr. Cushing then resumed, and appeared very indignant at the interruption. He wished to know if the measure was to be forced on the country without affording an opportunity to say a single word. He said they were at the last act in the drama, but the end was not yet. Mr. C. then proceeded to give his reasons why he considered the bill as an unconstitutional measure, as he contended that it gave the Secretary power to draw on the public money without appropriations by law. He concluded by observing that he had witnessed the incubation and hatching of this cockatrice, but he hoped the time was not far distant when the people would put their feet on the reptile and crush it to the dust.

"Mr. Pickens, of South Carolina, then rose, and in a very animated manner said he had wished to make a few remarks upon the bill before its passage, but he was now compelled to confine himself in reply to the very extraordinary language and tone assumed by the gentleman from Massachusetts. What right had he to speak of this bill as being forced on the country by "brutal numbers?" That gentleman had defined the bill according to his conception of it; but he would tell the gentleman, that the bill would, thank God, deliver this government from the hands of those who for so many years had lived by swindling the proceeds of honest labor. Yes, said Mr. P., I thank my God that the hour of our deliverance is now so near, from a system which has wrung the hard earnings from productive industry for the benefit of a few irresponsible corporations.

"Sir, I knew the contest would be fierce and bitter. The bill, in its principles, draws the line between the great laboring and landed interests of this confederacy, and those who are identified with capitalists in stocks and live upon incorporated credit. The latter class have lived and fattened upon the fiscal action of this government, from the funding system down to the present day – and now they feel like wolves who have been driven back from the warm blood they have been lapping for forty years. Well may the gentleman [Mr. Cushing], who represents those interests, cry out and exclaim that it is a bill passed in force by fraud and power – it is the power and the spirit of a free people determined to redeem themselves and their government.

"Here the calls to order were again renewed from nearly every member of the opposition, and great confusion prevailed.

"The Speaker with much difficulty succeeded in restoring something like order, and as none of those who had so vociferously called Mr. P. to order, raised any point,

"Mr. Pickens proceeded with his remarks, and alluding to the words of Mr. Cushing, that "this was the last act of the drama," said this was the first, and not the last act of the drama. There were great questions that lay behind this, connected with the fiscal action of the government, and which we will be called on to decide in the next few years; they were all connected with one great and complicated system. This was the commencement, and only a branch of the system.

"Here the cries of order from the opposition were renewed, and after the storm had somewhat subsided,

"Mr. P. said, rather than produce confusion at that late hour of the day, when this great measure was so near a triumphant consummation, and, in spite of all the exertions of its enemies, was about to become the law of the land, he would not trespass any longer on the attention of the House. But the gentleman had said that because the first section had declared what should constitute the Treasury, and that another section had provided for keeping portions of the Treasury in other places than the safes and vaults in the Treasury building of this place; that, therefore, it was to be inferred that those who were to execute it would draw money from the Treasury without appropriations by law, and thus to perpetrate a fraud upon the constitution. Mr. P. said, let those who are to execute this bill dare to commit this outrage, and use money for purposes not intended in appropriations by law, and they would be visited with the indignation of an outraged and wronged people. It would be too gross and palpable. Such is not the broad meaning and intention of the bill. The construction given by the gentleman was a forced and technical one, and not natural. It was too strained to be seriously entertained by any one for a moment. He raised his protest against it.

"Mr. P. regretted the motion admitted of such narrow and confined debate. He would not delay the passage of the bill upon so small a point. He congratulated the country that we had approached the period when the measure was about to be triumphantly passed into a permanent law of the land. It is a great measure. Considering the lateness of the hour, the confusion in the House, and that the gentleman had had the advantage of an opening speech, he now concluded by demanding the previous question.

"On this motion the disorder among the opposition was renewed with tenfold fury, and some members made use of some very hard words, accompanied by violent gesticulation.

"It was some minutes before any thing approaching order could be restored.

"The Speaker having called on the sergeant-at-arms to clear the aisles,

"The call of the previous question was seconded, and the main question on the amendment to the amendment ordered to be put.

"The motion for the previous question having received a second, the main question was ordered.

"The question was then taken on Mr. Cushing's amendment to the amendment, and disagreed to without a count.

"The question recurring on the substitute of Mr. Cooper, of Pennsylvania, for the original title of the bill,

"Mr. R. Garland, of Louisiana, demanded the yeas and nays, which having been ordered, were – yeas 87, nays 128."

Eighty-seven members voted, on yeas and nays, for Mr. Cooper's proposed title, which was a strong way of expressing their opinion of it. For Mr. Cushing's amendment to it, there were too few to obtain a division of the House; and thus the bill became complete by getting a name – but only by the summary, silent, and enforcing process of the previous question. Even the title was obtained by that process. The passage of this act was the distinguishing glory of the Twenty-sixth Congress, and the "crowning mercy" of Mr. Van Buren's administration. Honor and gratitude to the members, and all the remembrance which this book can give them. Their names were:

In the Senate: – Messrs. Allen of Ohio, Benton, Brown of North Carolina, Buchanan, Calhoun, Clay of Alabama, Cuthbert of Georgia, Fulton of Arkansas, Grundy, Hubbard of New Hampshire, King of Alabama, Linn of Missouri, Lumpkin of Georgia, Mouton of Louisiana, Norvell of Michigan, Pierce of New Hampshire, Roane of Virginia, Sevier of Arkansas, Smith of Connecticut, Strange of North Carolina, Tappan of Ohio, Walker of Mississippi, Williams of Maine.

In the House of Representatives: – Messrs. Judson Allen, Hugh J. Anderson, Charles G. Atherton, William Cost Johnson, Cave Johnson, Nathaniel Jones, John W. Jones, George M. Keim, Gouverneur Kemble, Joseph Kille, Daniel P. Leadbetter, Isaac Leet, Stephen B. Leonard, Dixon H. Lewis, Joshua A. Lowell, William Lucas, Abraham McClellan, George McCulloch, James J. McKay, Meredith Mallory, Albert G. Marchand, William Medill, John Miller, James D. L. Montanya, Linn Banks, William Beatty, Andrew Beirne, William Montgomery, Samuel W. Morris, Peter Newhard, Isaac Parrish, William Parmenter, Virgil D. Parris, Lemuel Paynter, David Petrikin, Francis W. Pickens, John H. Prentiss, William S. Ramsey, John Reynolds, R. Barnwell Rhett, Francis E. Rives, Thomas Robinson, Jr., Edward Rogers, James Rogers, Daniel B. Ryall, Green B. Samuels, Tristram Shaw, Charles Shepard, Edward J. Black, Julius W. Blackwell, Linn Boyd, John Smith, Thomas Smith, David A. Starkweather, Lewis Steenrod, Theron R. Strong, Thomas D. Sumter, Henry Swearingen, George Sweeney, Jonathan Taylor, Francis Thomas, Philip F. Thomas, Jacob Thompson, Hopkins L. Turney, Aaron Vanderpoel, Peter D. Vroom, David D. Wagener, Harvey M. Watterson, John B. Weller, Jared W. Williams, Henry Williams, John T. H. Worthington.

CHAPTER XLII.

FLORIDA ARMED OCCUPATION BILL: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH: EXTRACTS

Armed occupation, with land to the occupant, is the true way of settling and holding a conquered country. It is the way which has been followed in all ages, and in all countries, from the time that the children of Israel entered the promised land, with the implements of husbandry in one hand, and the weapons of war in the other. From that day to this, all conquered countries had been settled in that way. Armed settlement, and a homestead in the soil, was the principle of the Roman military colonies, by which they consolidated their conquests. The northern nations bore down upon the south of Europe in that way: the settlers of the New World – our pilgrim fathers and all – settled these States in that way: the settlement of Kentucky and Tennessee was effected in the same way. The armed settlers went forth to fight, and to cultivate. They lived in stations first – an assemblage of blockhouses (the Roman presidium), and emerged to separate settlements afterwards; and in every instance, an interest in the soil – an inheritance in the land – was the reward of their enterprise, toil, and danger. The peninsula of Florida is now prepared for this armed settlement: the enemy has been driven out of the field. He lurks, an unseen foe, in the swamps and hammocks. He no longer shows himself in force, or ventures a combat; but, dispersed and solitary, commits individual murders and massacres. The country is prepared for armed settlement.

It is the fashion – I am sorry to say it – to depreciate the services of our troops in Florida – to speak of them as having done nothing; as having accomplished no object for the country, and acquired no credit for themselves. This was a great error. The military had done an immensity there; they had done all that arms could do, and a great deal that the axe and the spade could do. They had completely conquered the country; that is to say, they had driven the enemy from the field; they had dispersed the foe; they had reduced them to a roving banditti, whose only warfare was to murder stragglers and families. Let any one compare the present condition of Florida with what it was at the commencement of the war, and see what a change has taken place. Then combats were frequent. The Indians embodied continually, fought our troops, both regulars, militia, and volunteers. Those hard contests cannot be forgotten. It cannot be forgotten how often these Indians met our troops in force, or hung upon the flanks of marching columns, harassing and attacking them at every favorable point. Now all this is done. For two years past, we have heard of no such thing. The Indians, defeated in these encounters, and many of them removed to the West, have now retired from the field, and dispersed in small parties over the whole peninsula of Florida. They are dispersed over a superficies of 45,000 square miles, and that area sprinkled all over with haunts adapted to their shelter, to which they retire for safety like wild beasts, and emerge again for new mischief. Our military have then done much; they have done all that military can do; they have broken, dispersed, and scattered the enemy. They have driven them out of the field; they have prepared the country for settlement, that is to say, for armed settlement. There has been no battle, no action, no skirmish, in Florida, for upwards of two years. The last combats were at Okeechobee and Caloosahatchee, above two years ago. There has been no war since that time; nothing but individual massacres. The country has been waiting for settlers for two years; and this bill provides for them, and offers them inducements to settle.