Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

three feet of me, is Mr. Vinton himself, to acknowledge the letter, and to repeat the assertion! While here, again, is another letter from the honorable Washington Hunt, to say that he was absent from Washington on the morning on which the meeting was held, and did not return until the following day!

Mr. Chairman, the most charitable explanation that can be given of this extraordinary and unfounded allegation, which the honorable member from Ohio has so perseveringly brought against me, is that suggested in the letter of my late colleague and friend, Mr. Hudson, who gives it as his opinion, that the honorable member may have confounded this meeting with one which was held in regard to the Oregon notice resolution, when he was the open advocate of measures that looked to war, and I declared myself in favor of measures for the maintenance of peace!

But I leave the honorable member and his friends to find explanations for themselves. It is enough for me to pronounce the charge to be false, and to prove it to be so. Having done this, I now hold it up to the House and to the country, as a fair sample of the charges which have been arrayed against me from the same quarter. Ex uno, disce omnes.

Sir, I have done with these personalities. They have not been of my seeking. They are unnatural and revolting to my disposition. I am entirely new to this style of debate. During a ten years' occupancy of a seat in this House, I have never before had occasion to resort to it. I trust that I may never have another such occasion. But I could no longer submit in silence to such gross and groundless aspersions. Gentlemen may vote against me whenever they please. There is no office in the gift of the House, of the people, or of the President, which I covet, or for which I would quarrel with any one for not giving me his support. But no man shall slander me with impunity. No man shall pervert and misrepresent my words and acts, and falsify the record of my public career, without exposure.

That career has been one of humble pretension, and presents no claim of distinguished service of any sort. But such as it is, I am willing that it should be investigated. Examine the record. There may be votes upon it which require explanation;

others on this or any other point, I have no hesitation in giving it to you in compli ance with your request.

As to the meeting held some time previous, on the "Oregon question,” as it is familiarly termed, I have to state, that it is impossible that I could have confounded it in my memory with the meeting first mentioned, as I did not attend that meeting, and knew nothing of its existence until a day or two after it had been held. I am, very truly and respectfully, your obedient servant,

Wm. Schouler, Esq.

JOHN W. HOUSTON.

MR. HOUSTON. That is my letter, and I have no alteration to make in it.

MR. WINTHROP.

There are other letters here, Sir, equally

distinct and conclusive.

But the honorable member summons Mr. E. D. Culver, of New York, a late member of this House, to his aid, and insists that Mr. Culver has substantiated his charge. Sir, I think it is in Sheridan's play of the Rivals, that one of the characters is made to say-" Whenever I draw on my invention for a good current lie, I always forge indorsements as well as the bill." Now, I do not intend to apply the offensive part of this language to the honorable member. I disclaim doing so. Still less do I intend any reflection upon Mr. Culver. But I say that the letter of Mr. Culver does little or nothing to sustain the honorable member's accusation, and that he must procure stronger indorsements, if he expects his bill to pass current.

What says the Honorable E. D. Culver, in the letter upon which the honorable member relies?

"In reply to your note of the 14th, (says he,) which came to hand last evening, I would state that I was at the Whig caucus, in the northeast corner of the Capitol, on the morning of the 11th of May, 1846. The subject of our deliberations was the anticipated War bill. I think Mr. Winthrop, Mr. Vinton, Mr. Hunt, and yourself, and others were present and spoke. The precise sentiments advanced by Mr. Winthrop I cannot call to mind; but the purport, the general scope of his remarks, was, that we (the Whigs) must not oppose the measure; that policy would require us to support it. I do not recollect his allusion to the Federalists and the war of 1812." (It seems that this impartial cross-examiner had asked some leading questions.) "I think Mr. Vinton took a similar view. Yours was quite the reverse."

Now, Sir, in answer to these thinkings and indistinct remembrances of what Mr. Winthrop said, and what Mr. Vinton said, and what Mr. Hunt said, I have here a letter from Mr. Vinton, to say that he never attended that meeting, and here, within

three feet of me, is Mr. Vinton himself, to acknowledge the letter, and to repeat the assertion! While here, again, is another letter from the honorable Washington Hunt, to say that he was absent from Washington on the morning on which the meeting was held, and did not return until the following day!

Mr. Chairman, the most charitable explanation that can be given of this extraordinary and unfounded allegation, which the honorable member from Ohio has so perseveringly brought against me, is that suggested in the letter of my late colleague and friend, Mr. Hudson, who gives it as his opinion, that the honorable member may have confounded this meeting with one which was held in regard to the Oregon notice resolution, when he was the open advocate of measures that looked to war, and I declared myself in favor of measures for the maintenance of peace!

But I leave the honorable member and his friends to find explanations for themselves. It is enough for me to pronounce the charge to be false, and to prove it to be so. Having done this, I now hold it up to the House and to the country, as a fair sample of the charges which have been arrayed against me from the same quarter. Ex uno, disce omnes.

Sir, I have done with these personalities. They have not been of my seeking. They are unnatural and revolting to my disposition. I am entirely new to this style of debate. During a ten years' occupancy of a seat in this House, I have never before had occasion to resort to it. I trust that I may never have another such occasion. But I could no longer submit in silence to such gross and groundless aspersions. Gentlemen may vote against me whenever they please. There is no office in the gift of the House, of the people, or of the President, which I covet, or for which I would quarrel with any one for not giving me his support. But no man shall slander me with impunity. No man shall pervert and misrepresent my words and acts, and falsify the record of my public career, without exposure.

That career has been one of humble pretension, and presents no claim of distinguished service of any sort. But such as it is, I am willing that it should be investigated. Examine the record. There may be votes upon it which require explanation;

votes about which honest men may differ; votes as to which I myself may have doubted at the time, and may still doubt. But examine the record fairly and candidly; nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice; and you will find that I have neither been false to the North nor to the South, to the East nor to the You will find that, while I have been true to my constituents, I have been true, also, to the Constitution and to the Union. This, at least, I know, Sir- my conscience this day bearing me witness-that I have been true to myself, to my own honest judgment, to my own clear convictions of right, of duty, and of patriotism. And we all remember how justly, as well as how nobly, it has been said:

"This above all, to thine own self be true;

And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

And now, Mr. Chairman, I would gladly turn to some serious consideration of the great questions of the day, but I am admonished that my hour is almost exhausted, and I must reserve what I had proposed to say on these topics for another, and I trust an early opportunity. Having once swept this offensive rubbish of personalities out of my path, I shall no longer be obstructed in dealing with the weightier matters which are before us. I cannot conclude, however, on this occasion, without a few distinct declarations.

In the first place, Sir, I have no hesitation in saying, that the admission of California into the Union as a State, under the constitution which she has herself adopted, is, in my judgment, the first and greatest measure to be accomplished at the present session of Congress. For that I am ready; and I shall bring to it whatever powers I possess.

In the second place, Sir, I do not believe that slavery does now exist, or can ever exist, in any of the Territories recently acquired from Mexico, without the positive sanction of law. And such a sanction, I, for one, shall never aid in giving.

In the third place, Sir, while I reserve to myself the full liberty to act and to vote upon every question which may hereafter arise, as my judgment at the time, and under the circumstances, may dictate; I have no hesitation in expressing my

opinion, that the plan proposed by the President of the United States is the plan to which we must come at last, for the settlement of these exciting and difficult questions. I do not say that it is the plan of all others which some of us could have wished to carry out. But the question is not what we wish, but what can we accomplish. "If to do, were as easy as to know what it were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages rich men's palaces." We must aim at something practical and practicable. The President has done so; and, by following out his suggestions, I believe southern sensibilities may be allayed, northern principles satisfactorily vindicated, domestic peace maintained, and the American Union preserved.

And, Mr. Chairman, the American Union must be preserved. I speak for Faneuil Hall. Not for Faneuil Hall, occupied, as it sometimes has been, by an Anti-slavery or a Liberty party convention, denouncing the Constitution and Government under which we live, and breathing threatenings and slaughter against all who support them; but for Faneuil Hall, thronged as it has been so often in times past, and as it will be so often for a thousand generations in times to come, by as intelligent, honest, and patriotic a people as the sun ever shone upon; I speak for Faneuil Hall, and for the great masses of true-hearted American freemen, without distinction of party, who delight to dwell beneath its shadow, and to gather beneath its roof; I speak for Faneuil Hall, when I say, "the Union of these States must not, shall not, be dissolved!"

The honorable member from Ohio, (Mr. Giddings) alluded, the other day, in terms of reproach and condemnation, to a sentiment which I proposed at a public dinner, in this same Faneuil Hall, on the 4th of July, 1845. I am willing that the House and the country should pass judgment upon that sentiment. I am sorry that it is not better; but, such as it is, I reiterate it here to-day. I stand by it now and always. It is my living sentiment, and will be my dying sentiment:

"OUR COUNTRY-Whether bounded by the St. John's and the Sabine, or however otherwise bounded or described, and be the measurements more or less; still our country, to be cherished in all our hearts, to be defended by all our hands!"

« AnteriorContinuar »