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the mischief is done, and the Administration has retired! I can conceive of nothing more preposterous. If an injury is done to the country, that injury cannot be repaired. Hold the President responsible! Hold John Tyler responsible for his Texas treaty. The fact is, that there is but little responsibility in the Executive when he is in office, and none at all when he has retired; and you might with as much propriety talk of holding a bankrupt responsible for a debt, as of holding any President responsible after he has retired from office.
But it is said that we are in war and must light it out we must have peace. I agree with gentlemen that we are in war, and I go with them most ardently in desiring peace. But the question is, how shall it be obtained? Fight it out, we are told. If that was the only mode of obtaining peace, I might join in the cry. But it seems to me that we are not brought to this extremity. Let us propose to Mexico just and honorable terms of peace, and if she refuses to treat, then there will be some propriety in prosecuting the war. I am aware that it will be said, that we have made overtures for peace, and they have been rejected. We have made no direct overtures that I am aware of. We have made a proposition to open negotiations, but it was attended by a condition totally unworthy of this country or this age, viz., that we should continue prosecuting the war vigorously, not only till the treaty was signed, but until it should be ratified by the Mexican Government! The President had no just reason to expect that Mexico would close with such a proposition—a proposition which we should have spurned with indignation, had it been made to us.
Mr. Chairman, while I confess I see no reason to expect a speedy return of peace, I believe that it is in the power of this Congress to arrest this war within three months; and thus bring, not only the blessings of peace, but lasting honor upon our country. I would adopt a Joint Resolution, advising the President to announce to Mexico and the world, that we have no desire to despoil her of her possessions; that we ask nothing but a settlement of our boundary on fair and liberal terms, and the payment of the indemnity justly due to our citizens; that we will at once withdraw our army from her territory, and, on her consenting to treat, our fleet should be withdrawn from her ports. Let this fair and honorable proposition be made to Mexico, and I have no doubt but that she would accept it. She would see at once that it was favorable to both parties, and, believing it to be our ultimatum, she would expect nothing better. The great nations of Europe, England and France, would use their influence to induce her to comply; and thus friendly relations would be restored between the two great North American Republics.
But I fear that other counsels will prevail; that thirst for dominion will overcome our love of justice; that a false sense of honor will lead us on in the unholy work of human butchery, and that our young men, by tens of thousands, are yet to perish in the "high places of the field," to gratify the mad ambition of a weak and wicked Administration. For one, I will wash my hand of " blood unprofitably shed;" and will do all in my power to avert the awful calamity which the prosecution of an unrighteous war may bring upon the nation. If Jefferson, in his day, was compelled to say, in view of the existence of slavery, "I tremble for my country, when I reflect that God is just;" what must be the apprehension of the Christian states man, when he contemplates this great Republic, boasting of its freedom, exerting its powers to dismember a free Republic in order to extend slavery over a territory now free a territory as large as the old thirteen States!
