yourself into it blindfold; you are talking about acknowledging the independence of the republic of Texas, and you are thirsting to annex Texas, ay, Coahuila, and Tamaulipas, and Santa Fe, from the source to the mouth of the Rio Bravo, to your already over-distended dominions. Five hundred thousand square miles of the territory of Mexico would not even now quench your burning thirst for aggrandizement. But will your foreign war for this be with Mexico alone? No, sir. As the weaker party, Mexico, when the contest shall have once begun, will look abroad, as well as among your negroes, and your Indians, for assistance. Neither Great Britain nor France will suffer you to make such a conquest from Mexico; no, nor even to annex the independent state of Texas to your confederation, without their interposition. You will have an Anglo-Saxon intertwined with a Mexican war to wage. Great Britain may have no serious objection to the independence of Texas, and may be willing enough to take her under her protection, as a barrier both against Mexico and against you. But, as aggrandizement to you she will not readily suffer it; and, above all, she will not suffer you to acquire it by conquest and the re-establishment of slavery. Urged on by the irresistible, overwhelming torrent of public opinion, Great Britain has recently, at a cost of one hundred millions of dollars, which her people have joyfully paid, abolished slavery throughout all her colonies in the West Indies. After setting such an example, she will not--it is impossible that she should -stand by and witness a war, for the re-establishment of slavery; where it had been for years abolished, and situated thus in the immediate neighborhood of her islands. She will tell you, that if you must have Texas as a member of your confederacy, it must be without the trammels of slavery, and if you will wage a war to handcuff and fetter your fellow-man, she will wage the war against you to break his chains. Sir, what a figure, in the eyes of mankind, would you make, in deadly conflict with Great Britain: she fighting the battles of emancipation, and you the battles of slavery; she the benefactress, and you the oppressor, of human kind! In such a war, the enthusiasm of emancipation, too, would unite vast numbers of her people in aid of the national rivalry, and all her natural jealousy against our aggrandizement. No war was ever so popular in England, as that war would be against slavery, the slave-trade, and the Anglo-Saxon descendant from her own loins. As to the annexation of Texas to your confederation, for what do you want it? Are you not large and unwieldy enough already? Do not two millions of square miles cover surface enough for the insatiate rapacity of your land-jobbers? I hope there are none of them within the sound of my voice. Have you not Indians enough to expel from the land of their fathers' sepulchres, and to exterminate? What, in a prudential and military point of view, would be the addition of Texas to your domain? It would be weakness, and not power. Is your southern and southwestern frontier not sufficiently extensive? not sufficiently feeble? not suf ficiently defenceless? Why are you adding regiment after regiment of dragoons to your standing army? Why are you struggling, by direction and by indirection, to raise per saltum that army from less than six to more than twenty thousand men? Your commanding general, now returning from his excursion to Florida, openly recommends the increase of your army to that number. Sir, the extension of your seacoast frontier from the Sabine to the Rio Bravo would add to your weakness enfold; for it is only weakness with reference to Mexico. It would then be weakness with reference to Great Britain, to France, even perhaps to Russia, to every naval European power, which might make a quarrel with us for the sake of settling a colony; but above all, to Great Britain. She, by her naval power, and by her American colonies, holds the keys of the Gulf of Mexico. What would be the condition of your frontier from the mouth of the Mississippi to the mouth of the Rio del Norte, in the event of a war with Great Britain. Sir, the reasons of Mr. Monroe for accepting the Sabine as the boundary were three. First, he had no confidence in the strength of our claim as far as the Rio Bravo; secondly, he thought it would make our Union so heavy that it would break into fragments by its own weight; thirdly, he thought it would protrude a long line of seacoast, which, in our first war with Great Britain, she might take into her own possession, and which we should be able neither to defend nor recover. At that time, there was no question of slavery or of abolition involved in the controversy. The country belonged to Spain; it was a wilderness, and slavery was the established law of the land. There was then no project for carving out nine slave states, to hold eighteen seats in the other wing of this capitol, in the triangle between the mouths and the sources of the Mississippi and Bravo rivers. But what was our claim? Why it was that La Salle, having discovered the mouth of the Mississippi, and France having made a settlement at New Orleans, France had a right to one half the seacoast from the mouth of the Mississippi to the next Spanish settlement, which was Vera Cruz. The mouth of the Rio Bravo was about half way from the Balize to Vera Cruz; and so as grantees, from France of Louisiana, we claimed the Rio del Norte, though the Spanish settlement of Santa Fe was at the head of that river. France, from whom we had received Louisiana, utterly disclaimed ever having even raised such a pretension. Still we made the best of the claim that we could, and finally yielded it for the Floridas, and for the line of the forty-second degree of latitude from the source of the Arkansas river to the South Sea. Such was our claim; and you may judge how much confidence Mr. Monroe could have in its validity. The great object and desire of the country then was to obtain the Floridas. It was General Jackson's desire; and in that conference with me to which I have heretofore alluded, and which it is said he does not recollect, he said to me that so long as the Florida rivers were not in our possession, there could be no safety for our whole southern country. But, sir, suppose you should annex Texas to these United States; another year would not pass before you would have to engage in a war for the conquest of the island of Cuba. What is now the condition of the island ?-Still under the nominal protection of Spain. And what is the condition of Spain herself? Consuming her own vitals in a civil war for the succession of the crown. Do you expect, that whatever may be the issue of that war, she can retain even the nominal possession of Cuba? After having lost all her continental colonies in North and South America, Cuba will stand in need of more efficient protection; and above all, the protection of a naval power. Suppose that naval power should be Great Britain. There is Cuba at your very door; and if you spread yourself along a naked coast, from the Sabine to the Rio Bravo, what will be your relative position towards Great Britain, with not only Jamaica, but Cuba, and Porto Rico in her hands, and abolition for the motto to her union cross of St. George and St. Andrew? If by the utter imbecility of the Mexican confederacy, this revolt of Texas should lead immediately to its separation from that republic, and its annexation to the United States, I believe it impossible that Great Britain should look on, while this operation is performing, with indifference. She will see that it must shake her own whole colonial power on this continent, in the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Carrib bean seas, like an earthquake; she will see, too, that it endangers her own abolition of slavery in her own colonies. A war for the restoration of slavery, where it has been abolished, if successful in Texas, must extend over all Mexico; and the example will threaten her with imminent danger of a war of colors in her own islands. She will take possession of Cuba and of Porto Rico, by cession from Spain, or by the batteries from her wooden walls; and if you ask her by what' authority she has done it, she will ask you, in return, by what authority you have extended your seacoast from the Sabine to the Rio Bravo. She will ask you a question more perplexing, namely-by what authority you, with freedom, independence, and democracy upon your lips, are waging a war of extermination to forge new manacles and fetters, instead of those which are falling from the hands and feet of man. She will carry emancipation and abolition with her in every fold of her flag; while your stars, as they increase in numbers, will be overcast with the murky vapors of oppression, and the only portion of your banners visible to the eye, will be the blood-stained stripes of the task master! Mr. Chairman, are you ready for all these wars? A Mexican war? a war with Great Britain, if not with France? a general Indian war? a servile war? and as an inevitable consequence of them all, a civil war? For it must ultimately termin ate in a war of colors as well as of races. And do you imagine that while with your eyes open you are wilfully kindling, and then closing your eyes and blindly rushing into them; do you imagine that while, in the very nature of things, your own southern and southwestern states must be the Flanders of these complicated wars, the battle-field upon which the last great conflict must be fought between slavery and emancipation; do you imagine that your congress will have no constitutional authority to interfere with the institution of slavery, in any way, in the states of this confederacy? Sir, they must and will interfere with it-perhaps to sustain it by war; perhaps to abolish it by treaties of peace; and they will not only possess the constitutional power so to interfere, but they will be bound in duty to do it by the express provisions of the constitution itself. From the instant that your slaveholding states become the theatre of war, civil, servile, or foreign, from that instant the war powers of congress extend to interference with the institution of slavery in every way by which it can be interfered with, from a claim of indemnity for slaves taken or destroyed, to the cession of the state burdened with slavery to a foreign power. Sir, it is by virtue of this same war power, as now brought into exercise by this Indian war in Florida, Alabama, and Georgia, that I vote for the resolution before the committee. By virtue of this, I have already voted in the course of this session to increase your standing army by a second regiment of dragoons, to authorize your President to accept the services of ten thousand volunteers, and to appropriate millions of the public money to suppress these Indian hostilities—all for the common defence, all for the general welfare. And if, on this occasion, I have been compelled to avail myself of the opportunity to assign my reasons for voting against the first resolution reported by the slavery committee, it is because it was the pleasure of the majority of the House this morning to refuse me the permission to assign my reasons for my vote, when the question was put upon those resolutions themselves. Sir, it is a melancholy contemplation to me, and raises fearful forebodings in my mind, when I consider the manner in which that report and those resolutions have been disposed of by the House. I have twice asked permission of this House to offer two resolutions calling for information from the President upon subjects of infinite importance to this question of slavery, to our relations with Mexico, and to the peace of the country. When I last made the attempt, a majority of the House voted by yeas and nays to suspend the rules to enable me to offer one of the two resolutions-but the majority not amounting to two-thirds, my resolution has not yet obtained from the House the favor of being considered. Had it been the pleasure of the House to indulge the call, or to allow me the privilege of assigning my reasons for my vote on the resolution this morning, the remarks that I have now made might have been deemed more appropriate to those topics of discussion, than to the question more immediately now before the committee. They are reflections, however, which I deem it not less indispensable to make, than they are painful to be made-extorted from me by a condition of public affairs unexampled in the history of this country. Heretofore, calls upon the executive department for information, such as that which I have proposed to make, were considered as among the rights of the members of this House, which it was scarcely deemed decent to resist. A previous question, smothering all discussion upon resolutions reported by a committee, affecting the vital principles of the Constitution, moved by one of the members who reported the resolutions, and sustained by the members of that committee itself, is an occurrence which never before happened in the annals of this government. The adoption of those resolutions of the House had not even been moved. Upon the mere question whether an extra number of the reports of the committee should be printed, a member moves the recommitment of the report, with instructions to report a new resolution. On this motion the previous question is moved, and the Speaker declares that the main question is not on the motion to recommit, not on the motion to print an extra number of copies of the report, but upon the adoption of three resolutions, reported, but never even moved in the House. If this is to be the sample of our future legislation, it is time to awake from the delusion, that freedom of speech is among the rights of the members of the minority of this House. Little reason have the inhabitants of Georgia and of Alabama to complain that the government of the United States has been remiss or neglectful in protecting them from Indian hostilities; the fact is directly the reverse. The people of Alabama and Georgia are now suffering the recoil of their own unlawful weapons. Georgia, sir, Georgia, by trampling upon the faith of our national treaties with the Indian tribes, and by subjecting them to her state laws, first set the example of that policy which is now in the process of consummation by this Indian war. In setting this example, she bade defiance to the authority of the government of the nation; she nullified your laws; she set at naught your executive guardians of the common Constitution of the land. To what extent she carried this policy, the dungeons of her prisons and the records of the Supreme Judicial Court of the United States can tell. To those prisons she committed inoffensive, innocent, pious ministers of the gospel of truth, for carrying the light, the comforts, and the consolations of that gospel to the hearts and minds of these unhappy Indians. A solemn decision of the Supreme Court of the United States pronounced that act a violation of your treaties and of your laws. Georgia defied that decision; your executive government never carried it into execution; the imprisoned missionaries of the gospel were compelled to purchase their ransom from perpetual captivity, by sacrificing their rights as freemen to the meekness of their principles as Christians; and you have sanctioned all these outrages upon justice, law, and humanity, by succumbing to the power and the policy of Georgia, by accommodating your legislation to her arbitrary will; by tearing to tatters your old treaties with the Indians, and by constraining them, under peine forte et dure, to the mockery of signing other treaties with you, which, at the first moment when it shall suit your purpose, you will again tear to tatters and scatter to the four winds of heaven, till the Indian race shall be exunct upon this continent, and it shall become a problem, beyond the solution of antiquaries and historical societies, what the red man of the forest was. This, sir, is the remote and primitive cause of the present Indian war; your own injustice, sanctioning and sustaining that of Georgia and Alabama. This system of policy was first introduced by the present administration of your national gov ernment. It is directly the reverse of that system which had been pursued by all the preceding administrations of this government under the present Constitution. That system consisted in the most anxious and persevering efforts to civilize the Indians; to attach them to the soil upon which they lived; to enlighten their minds, to soften and to humanize their hearts; to fix in permanency their habitations; and to turn them from the wandering and precarious pursuits of the hunter, to the tillage of the ground, to the cultivation of corn and cotton; to the comforts of the fireside; to the delights of home. This was the system of Washington and of Jefferson, steadily pursued by all their successors, and to which all your treaties and all your laws of intercourse with the Indian tribes were accommodated. The whole system is now broken up; and instead of it you have adopted that of expelling by force or by compact, all the Indian tribes from their own territories and dwellings, to a region beyond the Mississippi, beyond the Missouri, beyond the Arkansas, bordering upon Mexico; and there you have deluded them with the hope that they will find a permanent abode-a final resting place from your never ending rapacity and persecution. There you have undertaken to lead the willing and to drive the reluctant, by fraud or by force: by treaty, or by the sword and the rifle; all the remnants of the Seminoles, of the Creeks, of the Cherokees, of the Choctaws, and of how many other tribes I cannot now stop to enumerate. In the process of this violent and heartless operation, you have met with all the resistance which men in so helpless a condition as that of the Indian tribes could make. Of the immediate causes of the war we are not yet fully informed; but I fear you will find them, like the remoter causes, all attributable to yourselves. It is in the last agonies of a people, forcibly torn and driven from the soil which they had inherited from their fathers, and which your own example, and exhortations, and instructions, and treaties, had riveted more closely to their hearts; it is in the last convulsive struggles of their despair, that this war has originated; and if it brings with it some portion of the retributive justice of heaven upon our own people, it is our melancholy duty to mitigate, as far as the public resources of the national treasury will permit, the distress of the innocent of our own kindred and blood, suffering under the necessary consequences of our own wrong. I shall vote for the resolution.*Speech in the House of Representatives, May, 1836. * This speech was delivered without premeditation or notes. No report of it was made by any of the usual reporters for the newspapers. Mr. Adams has written it out himself, from recollection, at the request of several of his friends, for publication. It is, of course, not in the precise language used by him in the House. There are some amplifications of the arguments which he used, and, perhaps, some omissions which have escaped his recollection. The substance of the speech is the same. |