Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2)

CHAPTER VI.

FLORIDA TREATY AND CESSION OF TEXAS

I was a member of the bar at St. Louis, in the then territory of Missouri, in the year 1818, when the Washington City newspapers made known the progress of that treaty with Spain, which was signed on the 22d day of February following, and which, in acquiring Florida, gave away Texas. I was shocked at it – at the cession of Texas, and the new boundaries proposed for the United States on the southwest. The acquisition of Florida was a desirable object, long sought, and sure to be obtained in the progress of events; but the new boundaries, besides cutting off Texas, dismembered the valley of the Mississippi, mutilated two of its noblest rivers, brought a foreign dominion (and it non-slave-holding), to the neighborhood of New Orleans, and established a wilderness barrier between Missouri and New Mexico – to interrupt their trade, separate their inhabitants, and shelter the wild Indian depredators upon the lives and property of all who undertook to pass from one to the other. I was not then in politics, and had nothing to do with political affairs; but I saw at once the whole evil of this great sacrifice, and instantly raised my voice against it in articles published in the St. Louis newspapers, and in which were given, in advance, all the national reasons against giving away the country, which were afterwards, and by so many tongues, and at the expense of war and a hundred millions, given to get it back. I denounced the treaty, and attacked its authors and their motives, and imprecated a woe on the heads of those who should continue to favor it. "The magnificent valley of the Mississippi is ours, with all its fountains, springs and floods; and woe to the statesman who shall undertake to surrender one drop of its water, one inch of its soil, to any foreign power." In these terms I spoke, and in this spirit I wrote, before the treaty was even ratified. Mr. John Quincy Adams, the Secretary of State, negotiator and ostensible author of the treaty, was the statesman against whom my censure was directed, and I was certainly sincere in my belief of his great culpability. But the declaration which he afterwards made on the floor of the House, absolved him from censure on account of that treaty, and placed the blame on the majority in Mr. Monroe's cabinet, southern men, by whose vote he had been governed in ceding Texas and fixing the boundary which I so much condemned. After this authoritative declaration, I made, in my place in the Senate, the honorable amends to Mr. Adams, which was equally due to him and to myself. The treaty was signed on the anniversary of the birth-day of Washington, and sent to the Senate the same day, and unanimously ratified on the next day, with the general approbation of the country, and the warm applause of the newspaper press. This unanimity of the Senate, and applause of the press, made no impression upon me. I continued to assail the treaty and its authors, and the more bitterly, because the official correspondence, when published, showed that this great sacrifice of territory, rivers, and proper boundaries, was all gratuitous and voluntary on our part – "that the Spanish government had offered us more than we accepted;" and that it was our policy, and not hers, which had deprived us of Texas and the large country, in addition to Texas, which lay between the Red River and Upper Arkansas. This was an enigma, the solution of which, in my mind, strongly connected itself with the Missouri controversy then raging (1819) with its greatest violence, threatening existing political parties with subversion, and the Union with dissolution. My mind went there – to that controversy – for the solution, but with a misdirection of its application. I blamed the northern men in Mr. Monroe's cabinet: the private papers of General Jackson, which have come to my hands, enable me to correct that error, and give me an inside view of that which I could only see on the outside before. In a private letter from Mr. Monroe to General Jackson, dated at Washington, May 22d, 1820 – more than one year after the negotiation of the treaty, written to justify it, and evidently called out by Mr. Clay's attack upon it – are these passages: "Having long known the repugnance with which the eastern portion of our Union, or rather some of those who have enjoyed its confidence (for I do not think that the people themselves have any interest or wish of that kind), have seen its aggrandizement to the West and South, I have been decidedly of opinion that we ought to be content with Florida for the present, and until the public opinion in that quarter shall be reconciled to any further change. I mention these circumstances to show you that our difficulties are not with Spain alone, but are likewise internal, proceeding from various causes, which certain men are prompt to seize and turn to the account of their own ambitious views." This paragraph from Mr. Monroe's letter lifts the curtain which concealed the secret reason for ceding Texas – that secret which explains what was incomprehensible – our having refused to accept as much as Spain had offered. Internal difficulties, it was thus shown, had induced that refusal; and these difficulties grew out of the repugnance of leading men in the northeast to see the further aggrandizement of the Union upon the South and West. This repugnance was then taking an operative form in the shape of the Missouri controversy; and, as an immediate consequence, threatened the subversion of political party lines, and the introduction of the slavery question into the federal elections and legislation, and bringing into the highest of those elections – those of President and Vice-President – a test which no southern candidate could stand. The repugnance in the northeast was not merely to territorial aggrandizement in the southwest, but to the consequent extension of slavery in that quarter; and to allay that repugnance, and to prevent the slavery extension question from becoming a test in the presidential election, was the true reason for giving away Texas, and the true solution of the enigma involved in the strange refusal to accept as much as Spain offered. The treaty was disapproved by Mr. Jefferson, to whom a similar letter was written to that sent to General Jackson, and for the same purpose – to obtain his approbation; but he who had acquired Louisiana, and justly gloried in the act, could not bear to see that noble province mutilated, and returned his dissent to the act, and his condemnation of the policy on which it was done. General Jackson had yielded to the arguments of Mr. Monroe, and consented to the cession of Texas as a temporary measure. The words of his answer to Mr. Monroe's letter were: "I am clearly of your opinion, that, for the present, we ought to be contented with the Floridas." But Mr. Jefferson would yield to no temporary views of policy, and remained inflexibly opposed to the treaty; and in this he was consistent with his own conduct in similar circumstances. Sixteen years before, he had been in the same circumstances – at the time of the acquisition of Louisiana – when he had the same repugnance to southwestern aggrandizement to contend with, and the same bait (Florida) to tempt him. Then eastern men raised the same objections; and as early as August 1803 – only four months after the purchase of Louisiana – he wrote to Dr. Breckenridge: "Objections are raising to the eastward to the vast extent of our boundaries, and propositions are made to exchange Louisiana, or a part of it, for the Floridas; but as I have said, we shall get the Floridas without; and I would not give one inch of the waters of the Mississippi to any foreign nation." So that Mr. Jefferson, neither in 1803 nor in 1819, would have mutilated Louisiana to obtain the cession of Florida, which he knew would be obtained without that mutilation; nor would he have yielded to the threatening discontent in the east. I have a gratification that, without knowing it, and at a thousand miles from him, I took the same ground that Mr. Jefferson stood on, and even used his own words: "Not an inch of the waters of the Mississippi to any nation." But I was mortified at the time, that not a paper in the United States backed my essays. It was my first experience in standing "solitary and alone;" but I stood it without flinching, and even incurred the imputation of being opposed to the administration – had to encounter that objection in my first election to the Senate, and was even viewed as an opponent by Mr. Monroe himself, when I first came to Washington. He had reason to know before his office expired, and still more after it expired, that no one (of the young generation) had a more exalted opinion of his honesty, patriotism, firmness and general soundness of judgment; or would be more ready, whenever the occasion permitted, to do justice to his long and illustrious career of public service. The treaty, as I have said, was promptly and unanimously ratified by the American Senate; not so on the part of Spain. She hesitated, delayed, procrastinated; and finally suffered the time limited for the exchange of ratifications to expire, with out having gone through that indispensable formality. Of course this put an end to the treaty, unless it could be revived; and, thereupon, new negotiations and vehement expostulations against the conduct which refused to ratify a treaty negotiated upon full powers and in conformity to instructions. It was in the course of this renewed negotiation, and of these warm expostulations, that Mr. Adams used the strong expressions to the Spanish ministry, so enigmatical at the time, "That Spain had offered more than we accepted, and that she dare not deny it." Finally, after the lapse of a year or so, the treaty was ratified by Spain. In the mean time Mr. Clay had made a movement against it in the House of Representatives, unsuccessful, of course, but exciting some sensation, both for the reasons he gave and the vote of some thirty-odd members who concurred with him. This movement very certainly induced the letters of Mr. Monroe to General Jackson and Mr. Jefferson, as they were contemporaneous (May, 1820), and also some expressions in the letter to General Jackson, which evidently referred to Mr. Clay's movement. The ratification of Spain was given October, 1820, and being after the time limited, it became necessary to submit it again to the American Senate, which was done at the session of 1820-21. It was ratified again, and almost unanimously, but not quite, four votes being given against it, and all by western senators, namely: Colonel Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky; Colonel John Williams, of Tennessee; Mr. James Brown, of Louisiana, and Colonel Trimble, of Ohio. I was then in Washington, and a senator elect, though not yet entitled to a seat, in consequence of the delayed admission of the new State of Missouri into the Union, and so had no opportunity to record my vote against the treaty. But the progress of events soon gave me an opportunity to manifest my opposition, and to appear in the parliamentary history as an enemy to it. The case was this: While the treaty was still encountering Spanish procrastination in the delay of exchanging ratifications, Mexico (to which the amputated part of Louisiana and the whole of Texas was to be attached), itself ceased to belong to Spain. She established her independence, repulsed all Spanish authority, and remained at war with the mother country. The law for giving effect to the treaty by providing for commissioners to run and mark the new boundary, had not been passed at the time of the ratification of the treaty; it came up after I took my seat, and was opposed by me. I opposed it, not only upon the grounds of original objections to the treaty, but on the further and obvious ground, that the revolution in Mexico – her actual independence – had superseded the Spanish treaty in the whole article of the boundaries, and that it was with Mexico herself that we should now settle them. The act was passed, however, by a sweeping majority, the administration being for it, and senators holding themselves committed by previous votes; but the progress of events soon justified my opposition to it. The country being in possession of Mexico, and she at war with Spain, no Spanish commissioners could go there to join ours in executing it; and so the act remained a dead letter upon the statute-book. Its futility was afterwards acknowledged by our government, and the misstep corrected by establishing the boundary with Mexico herself. This was done by treaty in the year 1828, adopting the boundaries previously agreed upon with Spain, and consequently amputating our rivers (the Red and the Arkansas), and dismembering the valley of the Mississippi, to the same extent as was done by the Spanish treaty of 1819. I opposed the ratification of the treaty with Mexico for the same reason that I opposed its original with Spain, but without success. Only two senators voted with me, namely, Judge William Smith, of South Carolina, and Mr. Powhatan Ellis, of Mississippi. Thus I saw this treaty, which repulsed Texas, and dismembered the valley of the Mississippi – which placed a foreign dominion on the upper halves of the Red River and the Arkansas – placed a foreign power and a wilderness between Missouri and New Mexico, and which brought a non-slaveholding empire to the boundary line of the State of Louisiana, and almost to the southwest corner of Missouri – saw this treaty three times ratified by the American Senate, as good as unanimously every time, and with the hearty concurrence of the American press. Yet I remained in the Senate to see, within a few years, a political tempest sweeping the land and overturning all that stood before it, to get back this very country which this treaty had given away; and menacing the Union itself with dissolution, if it was not immediately done, and without regard to consequences. But of this hereafter. The point to be now noted of this treaty of 1819, is, that it completed, very nearly, the extinction of slave territory within the limits of the United States, and that it was the work of southern men, with the sanction of the South. It extinguished or cut off the slave territory beyond the Mississippi, below 36 degrees, 30 minutes, all except the diagram in Arkansas, which was soon to become a State. The Missouri compromise line had interdicted slavery in all the vast expanse of Louisiana north of 36 degrees, 30 minutes; this treaty gave away, first to Spain, and then to Mexico, nearly all the slave territory south of that line; and what little was left by the Spanish treaty was assigned in perpetuity by laws and by treaties to different Indian tribes. These treaties (Indian and Spanish), together with the Missouri compromise line – a measure contemporaneous with the treaty – extinguished slave soil in all the United States territory west of the Mississippi, except in the diagram which was to constitute the State of Arkansas; and, including the extinction in Texas consequent upon its cession to a non-slaveholding power, constituted the largest territorial abolition of slavery that was ever effected by the political power of any nation. The ordinance of 1787 had previously extinguished slavery in all the northwest territory – all the country east of the Mississippi, above the Ohio, and out to the great lakes; so that, at this moment – era of the second election of Mr. Monroe – slave soil, except in Arkansas and Florida, was extinct in the territory of the United States. The growth of slave States (except of Arkansas and Florida) was stopped; the increase of free States was permitted in all the vast expanse from Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, and to Oregon; and there was not a ripple of discontent visible on the surface of the public mind at this mighty transformation of slave into free territory. No talk then about dissolving the Union, if every citizen was not allowed to go with all his "property," that is, all his slaves, to all the territory acquired by the "common blood and treasure" of all the Union. But this belongs to the chapter of 1844, whereof I have the material to write the true and secret history, and hope to use it with fairness, with justice, and with moderation. The outside view of the slave question in the United States at this time, which any chronicler can write, is, that the extension of slavery was then arrested, circumscribed, and confined within narrow territorial limits, while free States were permitted an almost unlimited expansion. That is the outside view; the inside is, that all this was the work of southern men, candidates for the presidency, some in abeyance, some in præsenti; and all yielding to that repugnance to territorial aggrandizement, and slavery extension in the southwest, which Mr. Monroe mentioned in his letter to General Jackson as the "internal difficulty" which occasioned the cession of Texas to Spain. This chapter is a point in the history of the times which will require to be understood by all who wish to understand and appreciate the events and actors of twenty years later.

CHAPTER VII.

DEATH OF MR. LOWNDES

I had but a slight acquaintance with Mr. Lowndes. He resigned his place on account of declining health soon after I came into Congress; but all that I saw of him confirmed the impression of the exalted character which the public voice had ascribed to him. Virtue, modesty, benevolence, patriotism were the qualities of his heart; a sound judgment, a mild persuasive elocution were the attributes of his mind; his manners gentle, natural, cordial, and inexpressibly engaging. He was one of the galaxy, as it was well called, of the brilliant young men which South Carolina sent to the House of Representatives at the beginning of the war of 1812 – Calhoun, Cheves, Lowndes; – and was soon the brightest star in that constellation. He was one of those members, rare in all assemblies, who, when he spoke, had a cluster around him, not of friends, but of the House – members quitting their distant seats, and gathering up close about him, and showing by their attention, that each one would feel it a personal loss to have missed a word that he said. It was the attention of affectionate confidence. He imparted to others the harmony of his own feelings, and was the moderator as well as the leader of the House and was followed by its sentiment in all cases in which inexorable party feeling, or some powerful interest, did not rule the action of the members; and even then he was courteously and deferentially treated. It was so the only time I ever heard him speak – session of 1820-21 – and on the inflammable subject of the admission of the State of Missouri – a question on which the inflamed passions left no room for the influence of reason and judgment, and in which the members voted by a geographical line. Mr. Lowndes was of the democratic school, and strongly indicated for an early elevation to the presidency – indicated by the public will and judgment, and not by any machinery or individual or party management – from the approach of which he shrunk, as from the touch of contamination. He was nominated by the legislature of his native State for the election of 1824; but died before the event came round. It was he who expressed that sentiment, so just and beautiful in itself, and so becoming in him because in him it was true, "That the presidency was an office neither to be sought, nor declined." He died at the age of forty-two; and his death at that early age, and in the impending circumstances of the country, was felt by those who knew him as a public and national calamity. I do not write biographies, but note the death and character of some eminent deceased contemporaries, whose fame belongs to the country, and goes to make up its own title to the respect of the world.

CHAPTER VIII.

DEATH OF WILLIAM PINKNEY

He died at Washington during the session of the Congress of which he was a member, and of the Supreme Court of which he was a practitioner. He fell like the warrior, in the plenitude of his strength, and on the field of his fame – under the double labors of the Supreme Court and of the Senate, and under the immense concentration of thought which he gave to the preparation of his speeches. He was considered in his day the first of American orators, but will hardly keep that place with posterity, because he spoke more to the hearer than to the reader – to the present than to the absent – and avoided the careful publication of his own speeches. He labored them hard, but it was for the effect of their delivery, and the triumph of present victory. He loved the admiration of the crowded gallery – the trumpet-tongued fame which went forth from the forum – the victory which crowned the effort; but avoided the publication of what was received with so much applause, giving as a reason that the published speech would not sustain the renown of the delivered one. His forte as a speaker lay in his judgment, his logic, his power of argument; but, like many other men of acknowledged pre-eminence in some great gift of nature, and who are still ambitious of some inferior gift, he courted his imagination too much, and laid too much stress upon action and delivery – so potent upon the small circle of actual hearers, but so lost upon the national audience which the press now gives to a great speaker. In other respects Mr. Pinkney was truly a great orator, rich in his material, strong in his argument – clear, natural and regular in the exposition of his subject, comprehensive in his views, and chaste in his diction. His speeches, both senatorial and forensic, were fully studied and laboriously prepared – all the argumentative parts carefully digested under appropriate heads, and the showy passages often fully written out and committed to memory. He would not speak at all except upon preparation; and at sexagenarian age – that at which I knew him – was a model of study and of labor to all young men. His last speech in the Senate was in reply to Mr. Rufus King, on the Missouri question, and was the master effort of his life. The subject, the place, the audience, the antagonist, were all such as to excite him to the utmost exertion. The subject was a national controversy convulsing the Union and menacing it with dissolution; the place was the American Senate; the audience was Europe and America; the antagonist was Princeps Senatus, illustrious for thirty years of diplomatic and senatorial service, and for great dignity of life and character. He had ample time for preparation, and availed himself of it. Mr. King had spoken the session before, and published the "Substance" of his speeches (for there were two of them), after the adjournment of Congress. They were the signal guns for the Missouri controversy. It was to these published speeches that Mr. Pinkney replied, and with the interval between two sessions to prepare. It was a dazzling and overpowering reply, with the prestige of having the union and the harmony of the States for its object, and crowded with rich material. The most brilliant part of it was a highly-wrought and splendid amplification (with illustrations from Greek and Roman history), of that passage in Mr. Burke's speech upon "Conciliation with the Colonies," in which, and in looking to the elements of American resistance to British power, he looks to the spirit of the slaveholding colonies as a main ingredient, and attributes to the masters of slaves, who are not themselves slaves, the highest love of liberty and the most difficult task of subjection. It was the most gorgeous speech ever delivered in the Senate, and the most applauded; but it was only a magnificent exhibition, as Mr. Pinkney knew, and could not sustain in the reading the plaudits it received in delivery; and therefore he avoided its publication. He gave but little attention to the current business of the Senate, only appearing in his place when the "Salaminian galley was to be launched," or some special occasion called him – giving his time and labor to the bar, where his pride and glory was. He had previously served in the House of Representatives, and his first speech there was attended by an incident illustrative of Mr. Randolph's talent for delicate intimation, and his punctilious sense of parliamentary etiquette. Mr. Pinkney came into the House with a national reputation, in the fulness of his fame, and exciting a great expectation – which he was obliged to fulfil. He spoke on the treaty-making power – a question of diplomatic and constitutional law; and he having been minister to half the courts of Europe, attorney general of the United States, and a jurist by profession, could only speak upon it in one way – as a great master of the subject; and, consequently, appeared as if instructing the House. Mr. Randolph – a veteran of twenty years' parliamentary service – thought a new member should serve a little apprenticeship before he became an instructor, and wished to signify that to Mr. Pinkney. He had a gift, such as man never had, at a delicate intimation where he desired to give a hint, without offence; and he displayed it on this occasion. He replied to Mr. Pinkney, referring to him by the parliamentary designation of "the member from Maryland;" and then pausing, as if not certain, added, "I believe he is from Maryland." This implied doubt as to where he came from, and consequently as to who he was, amused Mr. Pinkney, who understood it perfectly, and taking it right, went over to Mr. Randolph's seat, introduced himself, and assured him that he was "from Maryland." They became close friends for ever after; and it was Mr. Randolph who first made known his death in the House of Representatives, interrupting for that purpose an angry debate, then raging, with a beautiful and apt quotation from the quarrel of Adam and Eve at their expulsion from paradise. The published debates give this account of it: "Mr. Randolph rose to announce to the House an event which he hoped would put an end, at least for this day, to all further jar or collision, here or elsewhere, among the members of this body. Yes, for this one day, at least, let us say, as our first mother said to our first father —