Chapter I: AM charged with the pleasing duty of presenting to the senate the (1)

proceedings of a public meeting of the people, and two memorials, subscribed by large numbers of my fellow-citizens, in respect to the exciting state of public affairs.

The first I would offer are the resolutions of the young men of Troy, assembled upon a call of upwards of seven hundred of their number. I have recently visited that interesting city. It is one of the most beautiful of a succession of fine cities and villages, that decorate the borders of one of the noblest rivers of our country. In spite of the shade cast upon it by its ancient and venerable sister and neighbor, it has sprung up with astonishing rapidity. When I saw it last fall, I never beheld a more respectable, active, enterprising, and intelligent business community. Every branch of employment was flourishing. Every heart beat high in satisfaction with present enjoyment, and hopes from the prospect of future success. How sadly has the scene changed! How terribly have all their anticipations of continued and increasing prosperity been dashed and disappointed by the folly and wickedness of misguided rulers!

The young men advert to this change, in their resolutions, and to its true cause. They denounce all experiments upon their happiness. They call for the safer counsels which prevailed under the auspices of Washington and Madison, both of whom gave their approbation to charters of a bank of the United States.

But what gives to these resolutions peculiar interest, in my estimation, is, that they exhibit a tone of feeling which rises far above any loss of property, however great, any distress from the stagnation of business, however intense. They manifest a deep and patriotic sensibility to executive usurpations, and to the consequent danger to civil liberty. They solemnly protest against the union of the purse and the sword in the hands of one man. They would not have consented to such a union in the person of the father of his country, much less will they in that of any living man. They feel that, when liberty is safe, the loss of fortune and property is comparatively nothing; but that when liberty is sacrificed, existence has lost all its charms.

The next document which I have to offer is a memorial, signed by nearly nine hundred mechanics of the city of Troy. Several of them are personally known to me. And judging from what I know, see, and hear, I believe there is not any where a more skilful, industrious, and respectable body of mechanics, than in Troy. They bear testimony to the prevalence of distress, trace it to the illegal acts of the executive branch of the government in the removal of the public deposits; ask their restoration, and the recharter of the bank of the United States. And the committee, in their letter addressed to me, say, ‘we are, what we profess to be, working men, dependent upon our labor for our daily bread, confine our attention to our several vocations, and trust in God and the continental congress for such protection as will enable us to operate successfully.’

The first-mentioned depository of their confidence will not deceive them. But I lament to say that the experience during this session, does not authorize us to anticipate that coöperation in another quarter, which is indispensable to the restoration of the constitution and laws, and the recovery of the public purse.

The last memorial I would present, has been transmitted to me by the secretaries to a meeting stated to be the largest ever held in the county of Schenectady, in New York. It is signed by about eight hundred persons. In a few instances, owing to the subscriptions having been obtained by different individuals, the same name occurs twice. The memorialists bring their testimony to the existence of distress, and the disorders of the currency, and invoke the application of the only known, tried, and certain remedy, the establishment of a national bank.

And now, Mr. President, I will avail myself of the occasion to say a few words on the subject matter of these proceedings and memorials, and on the state of the country as we found it at the commencement of the session, and its present state.

When we met, we found the executive in the full possession of the public treasury. All its barriers had been broken down, and in place of the control of the law was substituted the uncontrolled will of the chief magistrate. I say uncontrolled; for it is idle to pretend, that the executive has not unrestrained access to the public treasury, when every officer connected with it is bound to obey his paramount will. It is not the form of keeping the account; it is not the place alone where the public money is kept; but it is the power, the authority, the responsibility of independent officers, checking and checked by each other, that constitute the public security for the safety of the public treasure. This no longer exists, is gone, is annihilated.

The secretary sent us in a report containing the reasons (if they can be dignified with that appellation) for the executive seizure of the public purse. Resolutions were promptly offered in this body, denouncing the procedure as unconstitutional and dangerous to liberty, and declaring the total insufficiency of the reasons. Nearly three months were consumed in the discussion of them. In the early part of this protracted debate, the supporters of distress, pronounced it a panic got up for dramatic effect, and affirmed that the country was enjoying great prosperity. Instances occurred of members asserting that the places of their own residence were in the full enjoyment of enviable and unexampled prosperity, who, in the progress of the debate, were compelled reluctantly to own their mistake, and to admit the existence of deep and intense distress. Memorial after memorial poured in, committee after committee repaired to the capitol to represent the sufferings of the people, until incredulity itself stood rebuked and abashed. Then it was the bank that had inflicted the calamity upon the country; that bank which was to be brought under the feet of the president, should proceed forthwith to wind up its affairs.

And, during the debate, it was again and again pronounced by the partisans of the executive, that the sole question involved in the resolutions was, bank or no bank. It was in vain that we protested, solemnly protested, that that was not the question; and that the true question was of immensely higher import; that it comprehended the inviolability of the constitution, the supremacy of the laws, and the union of the purse and the sword in the hands of one man. In vain did members repeatedly rise in their places, and proclaim their intention to vote for the restoration of the deposits, and their settled determination to vote against the recharter of the bank, and against the charter of any bank. Gentlemen persisted in asserting the identity of the bank question, and that contained in the resolutions; and thousands of the people of the country are, to this moment, deluded by the erroneous belief in that identity.

Mr. President, the arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks a victim; denounces it; and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments. It avails itself of the prejudice and the passions of the people, silently and secretly to forge chains to enslave the people.

Well, sir, during the continuance of the debate, we have been told, over and over again, that, let the question of the deposits be settled, let congress pass upon the report of the secretary, and the activity of business and the prosperity of the country will again speedily revive. The senate has passed upon the resolutions, and has done its duty to the country, to the constitution, and to its conscience.

And the report of the secretary has been also passed upon in the other house; but _how_ passed upon? The official relations which exist between the two houses, and the expediency of preserving good feelings and harmony between them, forbid my saying all that I feel on this momentous subject. But I must say, that the house, by the constitution, is deemed the especial guardian of the rights and interests of the people; and, above all, the guardian of the people’s money in the public treasury. The house has given the question of the sufficiency of the secretary’s reasons the go-by, evaded it, shunned it, or rather merged it in the previous question. The house of representatives have not ventured to approve the secretary’s reasons. It cannot approve them; but, avoiding the true and original question, has gone off upon a subordinate and collateral point. It has indirectly sanctioned the executive usurpation. It has virtually abandoned its constitutional care and control over the public treasury. It has surrendered the keys, or rather permits the executive to retain their custody; and thus acquiesces in that conjunction of the sword and the purse of the nation, which all experience has evinced, and all patriots have believed, to be fatal to the continuance of public liberty.

Such has been the extraordinary disposition of this great question. Has the promised relief come? In one short week, after the house pronounced its singular decision, three banks in this District of Columbia have stopped payment and exploded. In one of them the government has, we understand, sustained a loss of thirty thousand dollars. And in another, almost within a stone’s throw of the capitol, that navy pension fund, created for our infirm and disabled, but gallant tars, which ought to be held sacred, has experienced an abstraction of twenty thousand dollars! Such is the realization of the prediction of relief made by the supporters of the executive.

And what is the actual state of the public treasury? The president, not satisfied with the seizure of it, more than two months before the commencement of the session, appointed a second secretary of the treasury since the adjournment of the last congress. We are now in the fifth month of the session; and in defiance of the sense of the country, and in contempt of the participation of the senate in the appointing power, the president has not yet deigned to submit the nomination of _his_ secretary to the consideration of the senate. Sir, I have not looked into the record, but, from the habitual practice of every previous president, from the deference and respect which they all maintained towards a coördinate branch of the government, I venture to say, that a parallel case is not to be found.

Mr. President, it is a question of the highest importance, what is to be the issue, what the remedy, of the existing evils. We should deal with the people, openly, frankly, sincerely. The senate stands ready to do whatever is incumbent upon it; but unless the majority in the house will relent, unless it will take heed of and profit by recent events, there is no hope for the nation from the joint action of the two houses of congress at this session. Still, I would say to my countrymen, do not despair. You are a young, brave, intelligent, and as yet a free people. A complete remedy for all that you suffer, and all that you dread, is in your own hands. And the events, to which I have just alluded, demonstrate that those of us have not been deceived who have always relied upon the virtue, the capacity, and the intelligence of the people.

I congratulate you, Mr. President, and I hope _you_ will receive the congratulation with the same heartfelt cordiality with which I tender it, upon the issue of the late election in the city of New York. I hope it will excite a patriotic glow in your bosom. I congratulate the senate, the country, the city of New York, the friends of liberty every where. It was a great victory. It must be so regarded in every aspect. From a majority of more than six thousand, which the dominant party boasted a few months ago, if it retain any, it is a meagre and spurious majority of less than two hundred. And the whigs contended with such odds against them――a triple alliance of state placemen, corporation placemen, and federal placemen, amounting to about thirty-five hundred, and deriving, in the form of salaries, compensations, and allowances, ordinary and extra, from the public chests, the enormous sum, annually, of nearly one million of dollars; marshalled, drilled, disciplined, commanded. The struggle was tremendous; but what can withstand the irresistible power of the votaries of truth, liberty, and their country? It was an immortal triumph――a triumph of the constitution and the laws over usurpation here, and over clubs and bludgeons and violence there.

Go on, noble city! Go on, patriotic whigs! follow up your glorious commencement; persevere, and pause not until you have regenerated and disenthralled your splendid city, and placed it at the head of American cities devoted to civil liberty, as it now stands preëminently the first as the commercial emporium of our common country. Merchants, mechanics, traders, laborers, never cease to recollect, that without freedom, you can have no sure commerce or business; and that without law you have no security for personal liberty, property, or even existence! Countrymen of Tone, of Emmet, of Macneven, and of Sampson, if any of you have been deceived, and seduced into the support of a cause dangerous to American liberty, hasten to review and correct your course! Do not forget, that you abandoned the green fields of your native island to escape what you believed the tyranny of a British king. Do not, I adjure you, lend yourselves, in this land of your asylum, this last retreat of the freedom of man, to the establishment here, for you, and for us all, of that despotism which you had proudly hoped had been left behind you, in Europe, for ever! There is much, I would fain believe, in the constitutional forms of government. But at last it is its parental and beneficent operation that must fix its character. A government may in form be free, in practice tyrannical; as it may in form be despotic, and in practice liberal and free.

It was a brilliant and signal triumph of the whigs. And they have assumed for themselves, and bestowed on their opponents, a demonstration which, according to all the analogy of history, is strictly correct. It deserves to be extended throughout the whole country. What was the origin, among our British ancestors, of those appellations? The tories were the supporters of executive power, of royal prerogative, of the maxim that the king could do no wrong, of the detestable doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance. The whigs were the champions of liberty, the friends of the people, and the defenders of the power of their representatives in the house of commons.

During our revolutionary war, the tories took sides with executive power and prerogative, and with the king, against liberty and independence. And the whigs, true to their principles, contended against royal executive power, and for freedom and independence.

And what is the present but the same contest in another form? The partisans of the present executive sustain his power in the most boundless extent. They claim for him _all_ executive authority. They make his sole will the governing power. Every officer concerned in the administration, from the highest to the lowest, is to conform to his mandates. Even the public treasury, hitherto regarded as sacred, and beyond his reach, is placed by them under his entire direction and control. The whigs of the present day are opposing executive encroachment, and a most alarming extension of executive power and prerogative. They are ferreting out the abuses and corruptions of an administration, under a chief magistrate who is endeavoring to concentrate in his own person the whole powers of government. They are contending for the rights of the people, for civil liberty, for free institutions, for the supremacy of the constitution and the laws. The contest is an arduous one; but, although the struggle may be yet awhile prolonged, by the blessing of God, and the spirit of our ancestors, the issue cannot be doubtful.

The senate stands in the breach, ready to defend the constitution, and to relieve the distresses of the people. But, without the concurrence of another branch of congress, which ought to be the first to yield it, the senate alone can send forth no act of legislation. Unaided, it can do no positive good; but it has vast preventive power. It may avert and arrest evil, if it cannot rebuke usurpation. Senators, let us remain steadily by the constitution and the country, in this most portentous crisis; let us oppose, to all encroachments and to all corruption, a manly, resolute, and uncompromising resistance; let us adopt two rules, from which we will never deviate, in deliberating upon all nominations. In the first place, to preserve untarnished and unsuspected the purity of congress, let us negative the nominations of every member for any office, high or low, foreign or domestic, until the authority of the constitution and laws is fully restored. I know not that there is any member of either house capable of being influenced by the prospect of advancement or promotion; I would be the last to make such an insinuation; but suspicion is abroad, and it is best, in these times of trouble and revolution, to defend the integrity of the body against all possible imputations. For one, whatever others may do, I here deliberately avow my settled determination, whilst I retain a seat in this chamber, to act in conformity to that rule. In pursuing it, we but act in consonance with a principle proclaimed by the present chief magistrate himself, when out of power! But, alas! how little has he respected it in power! How little has he, in office, conformed to any of the principles which he announced when out of office!

And, in the next place, let us approve of the original nomination of no notorious brawling partisan and electioneerer; but, especially, of the reappointment of no officer presented to us, who shall have prostituted the influence of his office to partisan and electioneering purposes. Every incumbent has a clear right to exercise the elective franchise. I would be the last to controvert or deny it. But he has no right to employ the influence of his office, to exercise an agency which he holds in trust for the people, to promote his own selfish or party purposes. Here, also, we have the authority of the present chief magistrate for this rule; and the authority of Mr. Jefferson. The senator from Tennessee, (Mr. Grundy,) merits lasting praise for his open and manly condemnation of these practices of official incumbents. He was right, when he declared his suspicion and distrust of the purity of the motives of any officer whom he saw busily interfering in the elections of the people.

Senators! we have a highly responsible and arduous position; but the people are with us, and the path of duty lies clearly marked before us. Let us be firm, persevering, and unmoved. Let us perform our duty in a manner worthy of our ancestors; worthy of American senators; worthy of the dignity of the sovereign states that we represent; above all, worthy of the name of American freemen! Let us ‘pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor,’ to rescue our beloved country from all impending dangers. And, amidst the general gloom and darkness which prevail, let us continue to present one unextinguished light, steadily burning, in the cause of the people, of the constitution, and of civil liberty.

ON THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, MAY 21, 1834.

[THE agitation of the public mind on the subject of the removal
of the deposits from the bank of the United States, continued
during the session of congress in 1834, and memorials were
constantly presented to that body, asking for relief to the
people from the pecuniary pressure occasioned by the arbitrary
measures of president Jackson. On presenting one of these
memorials Mr. Clay made the following brief remarks.]

(From the National Intelligencer of May 22.)

MR. CLAY took occasion, yesterday, in presenting to the senate some memorials, and especially one from Doylestown, in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, to animadvert seriously for the most part, but in part playfully, to the present state of the country. Among the opinions expressed by the memorialists is one which Mr. Clay said he most decidedly entertained in common with them, that, after the vote by one branch of congress, that the removal of the deposits by the secretary of the treasury was unjustifiable and unconstitutional, it was the duty of the secretary of the treasury instantly to have restored the deposits to the place from which they had been illegally taken; and such, he said, would have been the course of any secretary of the treasury who entertained a proper sense of the fallibility of his own judgment, and of the respect which was due to the deliberate opinion of the senate, or of the house of representatives, on such a question as this, when it came in conflict with his own. Mr. Clay added, that if there was, in either house of congress, a single individual whose private judgment approved of the removal of the deposits as an original act, independently of party considerations or posterior circumstances, he had yet to meet with that man.

As to the question yesterday addressed by the senator from Massachusetts, to those who hold the power, whether they meant to adjourn without taking any measure to relieve the country from its present suffering, Mr. Clay said, he verily believed that they do not know what to do; they are afraid to stay, and afraid to return; they are between two fires――afraid of Jackson if they remain, and of their constituents if they go home. If, however, they mean to do _nothing_ to recover possession of the public treasure; if they mean to do nothing to relieve the distress which pervades the country, Mr. Clay said he was himself ready to concur with them in fixing the earliest practicable day for adjournment, after passing the bills necessary to carry on the government.

What would be the consequence of such contempt, by these in power, of the successive evidences of public opinion, presented from day to day, and from week to week, it was easy to foresee. Already, he said, the whole ‘party’ was crumbling away; sinking, like the banks of the Mississippi undermined by the torrent, whole acres at a time. Why, (said Mr. Clay,) I am told that the whole regency of New York, taking the alarm, has fled from Albany, and taken refuge in this city. Whether they would or would not be redemanded by governor Marcy, under the laws in such cases made and provided, he could not say; but if they remained, he hoped they would be allowed the benefit of all the rights of hospitality due to such distinguished strangers. For himself, he condoled with the gentlemen, in this the trying time of their misfortunes, and trusted that they would be able to _bear_ them with manly fortitude and christian resignation.

If any one who heard this part of Mr. Clay’s speech was able to look grave upon it, thank heaven, it was not we.

In the course of Wednesday’s debate, Mr. Clay having denounced, as contrary to the spirit of the constitution, the omission of the president of the United States to nominate to the senate, for confirmation or rejection, the present secretary of the treasury and other officers, though the senate has been now nearly six months in session; Mr. Webster rose, for the purpose of showing the views of this subject entertained by the great first president of the United States, and practiced upon by every administration in this government, up to the beginning of the present. For this purpose, Mr. Webster quoted from the record the following:

_Message from the president of the United States to the senate
of the United States._

_United States, February 9, 1790._

GENTLEMEN OF THE SENATE,

Among the persons appointed, during the last session, to offices
under the national government, there were some who declined
serving. Their names and offices are specified in the first
column of the foregoing list. I supplied these vacancies,
agreeably to the constitution, by temporary appointments, which
you will find mentioned in the second column of the list. These
appointments will expire with your present session, and indeed
OUGHT NOT TO ENDURE LONGER THAN UNTIL OTHERS CAN BE REGULARLY
MADE. For that purpose, I now nominate to you the persons
named in the third column of the list, as being in my opinion
qualified to fill the offices opposite to their names in the
first.

G. WASHINGTON.

ON OUR RELATIONS WITH FRANCE.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, JANUARY 14, 1835.

[IN his annual message to congress, in December, 1834, president
Jackson recommended that a law should be passed, authorizing
reprisals upon French property, in case provision should not
be made for the payment of the claims of the United States,
for aggressions upon our commerce, by France, between the years
1800 and 1817. A treaty had been concluded between the two
governments, at Paris, in 1831, by which the French had agreed
to pay the United States twenty-five millions of francs, for
spoliations on the commerce of the latter, but the French
chambers had refused to vote the necessary appropriation to
execute the treaty. The president, therefore, proposed extreme
measures to congress, which, if they had been approved of, by
that body, would, in all human probability, have involved the
two nations in war. Mr. Clay, as chairman of the committee on
foreign relations, it will be seen by the following, disapproved
of such a course. The controversy was finally settled through
the intervention of William the fourth, king of England.

Mr. Clay, from the committee on foreign relations, reported the
following resolution:

_Resolved_, that it is inexpedient, at this time, to pass any
law vesting in the president authority for making reprisals
upon French property, in the contingency of provision not being
made for paying to the United States the indemnity stipulated
by the treaty of 1831, during the present session of the French
chambers.

The question being on agreeing to this resolution, Mr. CLAY said:]

IT is not my purpose, at the present stage of consideration of this resolution, and I hope it will not be necessary at any stage, to say much with the view of enforcing the arguments in its favor, which are contained in the report of the committee. In the present posture of our relations with France, the course which has appeared to me and to the committee most expedient being to await the issue of those deliberations in the French chambers which may even at this moment be going on, it would not be proper to enter at large, at the present time, into all the particulars touched upon in the report. On all questions connected with the foreign affairs of the country, differences of opinion will arise, which will finally terminate in whatever way the opinion of the people of this country may so tend as to influence their representatives. But, whenever the course of things shall be such that a rupture shall unfortunately take place between this country and any foreign country, (whether France or any other,) I take this opportunity of saying, that, from that moment, whatever of energy or ability, whatever of influence I may possess in my country, shall be devoted to the carrying on of that war with the utmost vigor which the arms and resources of the United States can give to it. I will not anticipate, however, such a state of things; nay, I feel very confident that such a rupture will not occur between the United States and France.

With respect to the justice of our claim upon France for payment of the indemnity stipulated by the treaty, the report of the committee is in entire concurrence with the executive. The opinion of the committee is, that the claims stipulated to be paid are founded in justice; that we must pursue them; that we must finally obtain satisfaction for them, and to do so, must, if necessary, employ such means as the law of nations justifies and the constitution has placed within our power. On these points there is no diversity of sentiment between the committee and the president; there _could_ be no diversity between either the committee or the president and any American citizen.

In all that the president has said of the obligation of the French government to make the stipulated provision for the claims, the committee entirely concur. If the president, in his message, after making his statement of the case, had stopped there, and abstained from the recommendation of any specific measure, there could not have been possibly any diversity of opinion on the subject between him and any portion of the country. But, when he declares the confidence which he entertains in the French government; when he expresses his conviction that the executive branch of that government is honest and sincere in its professions, and recites the promise by it of a renewed effort to obtain the passage of a bill of appropriation by the French chambers, it did appear to the committee inconsistent with these professions of confidence, that they should be accompanied by the recommendation of a measure which could only be authorized by the conviction that no confidence, or, at least, not entire confidence, could be placed in the declaration and professions of the French government. Confidence and distrust are unnatural allies. If we profess confidence any where, especially if that confidence be but for a limited period, it should be unaccompanied with any indication whatever of distrust; a confidence full, free, frank. But to say, as the president, through our minister, has said, that he will await the issue of the deliberations of the chambers, confiding in the sincerity of the king, and this, too, after hearing of the rejection of the first bill of appropriation by the chambers, and now, at the very moment when the chambers are about deliberating on the subject, to throw out in a message to congress what the president himself considered might possibly be viewed as a menace, appeared to the committee, with all due deference to the executive, and to the high and patriotic purposes which may be supposed to have induced the recommendation, to be inconsistent to such a degree as not to be seconded by the action of congress. It also appeared to the committee, after the distinct recommendation by the president on this subject, that there should be some expression of the sense of congress in regard to it. Such an expression is proposed by the resolution now under consideration.

In speculating upon probabilities in regard to the course of the French government, in reference to the treaty, four contingencies might be supposed to arise――first, that the French government may have made the appropriation to carry the treaty into effect _before_ the reception of the president’s message; second, the chambers may make the appropriation _after_ the reception of the president’s message, and notwithstanding the recommendation on this subject contained in it; third, the chambers may, in consequence of that recommendation, hearing of it before they shall have acted finally on the subject, refuse to make any appropriation until what they may consider a menace shall have been explained or withdrawn; or, fourth, they may, either on that ground, or on the ground of dissatisfaction with the provisions of the treaty, refuse to pass the bill of appropriation. Now, in any of these contingencies, after what has passed, an expression of the sense of congress on the subject appears to me indispensable, either to the passage of the bill, or the subsequent payment of the money, if passed.

Suppose the bill to have passed before the reception of the message, and the money to be in the French treasury, it would throw upon the king a high responsibility to pay the money, unless the recommendation of the message should be explained or done away, or at any rate unless a new motive to the execution of the treaty should be furnished in the fact that the two houses of congress, having considered the subject, had deemed it inexpedient to act until the French chambers should have had an opportunity to be heard from. In the second contingency, that of the passage of a bill of appropriation after receiving the message, a vote of congress, as proposed, would be soothing to the pride of France, and calculated to continue that good understanding which it must be the sincere desire of every citizen of the United States to cultivate with that country. If the chambers shall have passed the bill, they will see that though the president of the United States, in the prosecution of a just claim, and in the spirit of sustaining the rights of the United States, had been induced to recommend the measure of reprisals, yet that a confidence was entertained in both branches of congress that there would be a compliance, on the part of the French government, with the pledges it had given, and so forth. In that contingency, the expression of such a sentiment by congress could not but have a happy effect. In the other contingency supposed, also, it is indispensable that some such measure should be adopted. Suppose the bill of appropriation to be rejected, or its passage to be suspended, until the chambers ascertain whether the recommendation by the president is to be carried out by the passage of a law by congress, a resolution like this will furnish the evidence desired of the disposition of congress.

If, indeed, upon the reception of the president’s message the chambers shall have refused to make the appropriation, they will have put themselves in the wrong by not attending to the distribution of the powers of this government, and informing themselves whether those branches which alone can give effect to the president’s recommendation, would respond to it. But, if they take the other course suggested, that of suspending action on the bill until they ascertain whether the legislative department of the government coincides with the executive in the contingent measure recommended, they will then find that the president’s recommendation――the expression of the opinion of one high in authority, indeed, having a strong hold on the affections and confidence of the people, wielding the executive power of the nation, but still an inchoate act, having no effect whatever without the legislative action――had not been responded to by congress, and so forth. Thus under all contingencies happening on the other side of the water, and adapted to any one of those contingencies, the passage of this resolution can do no mischief in any event, but is eminently calculated to prevent mischief, and to secure the very object which the president doubtless proposed to accomplish by his recommendation.

I will not now consume any more time of the house by further remarks, but will resume my seat with the intimation of my willingness to modify the resolution in any manner, not changing its result, which may be calculated to secure, what on such an occasion would be so highly desirable, the unanimous vote of the senate in its favor. I believe it, however, all-essential that there should be a declaration that congress do not think it expedient, in the present state of the relations between the United States and France, to pass any law whatever concerning them.

[After brief remarks by several other members, the resolution
was slightly modified passed by a unanimous vote.]

ON OUR RELATIONS WITH THE CHEROKEE INDIANS.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, FEBRUARY 4, 1835.

[THE situation of the Indian tribes within the boundaries of
the state of Georgia was long a subject of controversy between
that state and the United States; it having been contended that
the general government were bound, by former contracts with
the state, to extinguish the Indian title to the lands occupied
by them, and to provide for their removal therefrom, which
lands were then to belong to the state. In May, 1830, a bill,
providing for the removal of the Cherokees from the limits
of Georgia to territories of the United States west of the
Mississippi river, was passed by congress; but such was the
reluctance of these Indians to remove, that, during a period of
five years thereafter, only about one fourth of their number had
emigrated. The sufferings of those who remained, from the wrongs
perpetrated upon them by the whites, excited a deep sympathy
in their behalf among the people of the United States. The
Cherokees frequently sent memorials to congress, asking for
relief; in presenting one of which, Mr. Clay made the following
remarks, in which will be found much valuable information on an
interesting subject. His opinions and sentiments will accord
with those of every philanthropist.]

MR. CLAY held in his hands, and begged leave to present to the senate, certain resolutions and a memorial, to the senate and house of representatives of the United States, of a council met at Running Waters, consisting of a portion of the Cherokee Indians. The Cherokees have a country――if indeed it can be any longer called their country――which is comprised within the limits of Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina. They have a population which is variously estimated, but which, according to the best information which I possess, amounts to about fifteen thousand souls. Of this population a portion, believed to be much the greater part, amounting, as is estimated, to between nine and ten thousand souls, reside within the limits of the state of Georgia. The senate was well aware that for several years past it had been the policy of the general government to transfer the Indians to the west of the Mississippi river, and that a portion of the Cherokees have already availed themselves of this policy of the government, and emigrated beyond the Mississippi. Of those who remain, a portion――a respectable but also an inconsiderable portion――are desirous to emigrate to the west, and a much larger portion desire to remain on their lands, and lay their bones where rest those of their ancestors. The papers which I now present emanate from the minor portion of the Cherokees; from those who are in favor of emigration. They present a case which appeals strongly to the sympathies of congress. They say that it is impossible for them to continue to live under laws which they do not understand, passed by authority in which they have no share, promulgated in language of which nothing is known to the greater portion of them, and establishing rules for their government entirely unadapted to their nature, education, and habits. They say that destruction is hanging over them if they remain; that, their right of self-government being destroyed, though they are sensible of all the privations, hardships, and sufferings of banishment from their native homes, they prefer exile, with liberty, to residence in their homes, with slavery. They implore, therefore, the intervention of the general government, to provide for their removal west of the Mississippi, and to establish guarantees, never hereafter to be violated, of the possession of the lands to be acquired by them west of the Mississippi, and of the perpetual right of self-government. This was the object of the resolutions and petition which he was about to offer to the senate.

But I have thought that this occasion was one which called upon me to express the opinions and sentiments which I hold in relation to this entire subject, as respects not only the emigrating Indians, but those also who are desirous to remain at home; in short, to express, in concise terms, my views of the relations between the Indian tribes and the people of the United States, the rights of both parties, and the duties of this government in regard to them.

The rights of the Indians were to be ascertained in the first place, by the solemn stipulations of numerous treaties made with them by the United States. It was not his purpose to call the attention of the senate to all the treaties which had been made with Indian tribes bearing on this particular topic; but he felt constrained to ask the attention of the senate to some portions of those treaties which have been made with the Cherokees, and to the memorable treaty of Greenville, which had terminated the war that previously thereto for many years raged between the United States and the north-western Indian tribes. He found, upon consulting the collection of Indian treaties in his hand, that within the last half century, fourteen different treaties had been concluded with the Cherokees, the first of which bore date in the year 1775, and some one or more of which had been concluded under every administration of the general government, from the beginning of it to the present time, except the present administration, and that which immediately preceded it. The treaty of Hopewell, the first in the series, was concluded in 1775, in the third article of which ‘the said Indians, for themselves and their respective tribes and towns, do acknowledge all the Cherokees to be under the protection of the United States of America, _and of no other sovereign whatsoever_.’ The fifth article of the same treaty provides, that ‘if any citizen of the United States, or other person, not being an Indian, shall attempt to settle on any of the lands westward or southward of the said boundary, which are hereby allotted to the Indians for their hunting-grounds, or, having already settled, and will not remove from the same within six months after the ratification of this treaty, such person shall forfeit the protection of the United States, and the Indians may punish him or not, as they please; provided, nevertheless, that this article shall not extend to the people settled between the fork of French Broad and Holston rivers,’ and so forth.

The next treaty in the series, which was concluded after the establishment of the government of the United States, under the auspices of the father of his country, was in the year 1791, on the bank of the Holston, and contains the following provision. ‘Article 7. The United States solemnly guaranty to the Cherokee nation all their lands not hereby ceded.’ This, Mr. Clay said, was not an ordinary assurance of protection, and so forth, but _a solemn guarantee_ of the rights of the Cherokees to the land in question. The next treaty to which he would call the attention of the senate was concluded in 1794, also under the auspices of general Washington, and declares as follows. ‘The undersigned, Henry Knox, secretary for the department of war, being authorized thereto by the president of the United States, in behalf of the said United States, and the undersigned chiefs and warriors, in their own names, and in behalf of the whole Cherokee nation, are desirous of reëstablishing peace and friendship between the said parties in a permanent manner, do hereby declare, that the said treaty of Holston is, to all intents and purposes, in full force, and binding upon the said parties, as well in respect to the boundaries therein mentioned as in all other respects whatever.’ This treaty, it is seen, _renews_ the solemn guarantee contained in the preceding treaty, and declares it to be binding and obligatory upon the parties in all respects whatever. Again, in another treaty, concluded in 1798, under the second chief magistrate of the United States, we find the following stipulations. ‘Article 2. The treaties subsisting between the present contracting parties are acknowledged to be of full and operating force; together with the construction and usage under their respective articles, and so to continue.’ ‘Article 3. The limits and boundaries of the Cherokee nation, as stipulated and marked by the existing treaties between the parties, shall be and remain the same, where not altered by the present treaty.’

There were other provisions, in other treaties, to which, if he did not intend to take up as little time as possible of the senate, he might advantageously call their attention. He would, however, pass on to one of the last treaties with the Cherokees, which was concluded in the year 1817. That treaty recognised the difference existing between the two portions of the Cherokees, one of which was desirous to remain at home and prosecute the good work of civilization, in which they had made some progress, and the other portion was desirous to go beyond the Mississippi. In that treaty, the fifth article, after several other stipulations, concludes as follows. ‘And it is further stipulated, that the treaties heretofore between the Cherokee nation and the United States are to continue in full force with both parts of the nation, and both parts thereof entitled to all the privileges and immunities which the old nation enjoyed under the aforesaid treaties; the United States reserving the right of establishing factories, a military post, and roads, within the boundaries above defined.’ And to this treaty, thus emphatically renewing the recognition of the rights of the Indians, is signed the name, as one of the commissioners of the United States who negotiated it, of the present chief magistrate of the United States.

These were the stipulations in treaties with the Cherokee nation, to which, Mr. Clay said, he thought proper to call the attention of the senate. He would now turn to the treaty of Greenville, concluded about forty years ago, recognising some general principles applicable to this subject. Mr. Clay then quoted the fifth article of that treaty, as follows. ‘To prevent any misunderstanding about the Indian lands relinquished by the United States in the fourth article, it is now explicitly declared, that the meaning of that relinquishment is this: the Indian tribes who have a right to those lands are quietly to enjoy them, hunting, planting, and dwelling thereon so long as they please, without any molestation from the United States; but when those tribes, or any of them, shall be disposed to sell their lands, or any part of them, they are to be sold only to the United States; and until such sale, the United States will protect all the said Indian tribes in the quiet enjoyment of their lands against all citizens of the United States, and against all other white persons who intrude upon the same. And the said Indian tribes again acknowledge themselves to be under the protection of the said United States, and no other power whatever.’

Such, sir, are the rights of the Indian tribes. And what are those rights? They are, that the Indians shall live under their own customs and laws; that they shall live upon their own lands, hunting, planting, and dwelling thereon so long as they please, without interruption or molestation of any sort from the white people of the United States, acknowledging themselves under the protection of the United States, and of no other power whatever; that when they no longer wish to keep the lands, they shall sell them only to the United States, whose government thus secures to itself the preemptive right of purchase in them. These rights, so secured by successive treaties and guarantees, have also been recognised on several occasions, by the highest judicial tribunals. Mr. Clay here quoted, from an opinion of the supreme court, a passage, declaring that the Indians are acknowledged to have an unquestionable and heretofore unquestioned right to their land, until it shall be extinguished by voluntary cession to this government.

But it is not at home alone that the rights of the Indians within the limits of the United States have been recognised. Not only has the executive, the congress of the United States, and the supreme court, recognised these rights, but in one of the most important epochs of this government, and on one of the most solemn occasions in our intercourse with foreign powers, these rights of the Indian tribes have been acknowledged. You, sir, (addressing the president of the senate,) will understand me at once to refer to the negotiation between the government of Great Britain and that of the United States, which had for its object the termination of the late war between the two countries. Sir, it must be within your recollection, and that of every member of the senate, that the hinge upon which that negotiation turned, the ground upon which it was for a long time apprehended that the conference between the commissioners would terminate in a rupture of the negotiation between the two countries, was, the claim brought forward, on that memorable occasion, by Great Britain, in behalf of the Indians within the limits of the United States. It will be recollected that she advanced, as a principle from which she would not recede, as a _sine qua non_, again and again, during the progress of the negotiation, that the Indians, as her allies, should be included in the treaty of peace which the negotiators were about forming; that they should have a permanent boundary assigned them, and that neither Great Britain nor the United States should be at liberty to purchase their lands.

Such were the pretensions urged on that occasion, which the commissioners of the United States had felt it to be their imperative duty to resist. To establish as the boundary the line of the treaty of Greenville, as proposed, which would have excluded from the benefit of American laws and privileges a population of not less than a hundred thousand of the inhabitants of Ohio, American citizens, entitled to the protection of the government, was a proposition which the American negotiators could not for a moment entertain; they would not even refer it to their government, though assured that it would there meet with the same unanimous rejection that it did from them. But it became a matter of some importance that a satisfactory assurance should be given to Great Britain, that the war, which we were about to bring to a conclusion with her, should close also with her allies; and what was that assurance? Mr. Clay said he would not trouble the senate with tracing the whole account of that negotiation, but he begged leave to call their attention to one of the passages of it. You will find on examining the history of the negotiation, that the demand brought forward by the British government through their minister, on this occasion, was the subject of several argumentative papers. Towards the close of this correspondence, reviewing the course pursued towards the aborigines by the several European powers which had planted colonies in America, comparing it with that of the United States, and contrasting the lenity, kindness, and forbearance of the United States, with the rigor and severity of other powers, the American negotiators expressed themselves as follows.

‘From the rigor of this system, however, as practiced by Great Britain, and all the other European powers in America, the humane and liberal policy of the United States has voluntarily relaxed. A celebrated writer on the law of nations, to whose authority British jurists have taken particular satisfaction in appealing, after stating, in the most explicit manner, the legitimacy of colonial settlements in America, to the exclusion of all rights of uncivilized Indian tribes, has taken occasion to praise the first settlers of New England, and of the founder of Pennsylvania, in having purchased of the Indians the lands they resolved to cultivate, notwithstanding their being furnished with a charter from their sovereign. It is this example which the United States, since they became by their independence the sovereigns of the territory, have adopted and organized _into a political system_. Under _that system_ the Indians residing in the United States are so far independent, that _they live under their own customs, and not under the laws of the United States_; that their rights upon the lands where they inhabit or hunt _are secured to them by boundaries_ defined in amicable treaties between the United States and themselves; and that whenever those boundaries are varied, it is also by amicable and voluntary treaties, by which they receive from the United States ample compensation for every right they have to the lands ceded by them,’ and so forth.