The Congressional Globe, Volume 13, Part 2: Twenty-Eighth Congress, First Session Page: 48
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48
APPENDIX TO THE CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE.
Jan. 1844.
28th Cong 1st Sess.
Improvement of the Western rivers, &>'c.—Mr. Seymour.
H. of Reps.
Keif on the justice of the controlling powers of the
Constitution, and his station makes it his duty to in-
cur that ri^k. * * * * It is incumbent, how-
ever, only on those who acceptgreat charges, to risk
themselves on great occasions, when the safety of
the nation, or some of its very highest interests, are
at stake. An officer is bound to obey orders; yet
he jvould be a bad one who should do it in cases for
which they were not intended, and which involved
the most important consequences. The line of 'dis-
crimination between cases may be difficult; but the
good officer is bound to draw it at his own peril,
and to throw himself on the justice of his country
and the rectitude of his motives."
These, sir, are the opinions of Mr. Jefferson, ex-
pressed in 1810; and they go the whole extent of the
principles on which we vindicate the conduct of
General Jackson in declaring martial law. How
does the gentleman from New York escape from the
force and power of such authoiity? Simply by
saying, that although the great law of necessity may,
in some cases, authorize the exercise of such au-
thority, yet in this case there was no sufficient or ade-
quate necessity. No adequate necessity, sir? When
did General Jackson overrate any danger impend-
ing over him or the brave army he commanded?
What could have induced him to overestimate the
dangers at New Orleans? Was he not on theground?
Could he not hear every discharge of the enemy's
artillery? Could he not see every signal of his rock-
ets, ana every advance of his columns? What, then,
could have led him to an exaggerated estimate of
the danger? Not the fears of General Jackson, I am
sure; for he had been born and had lived insensible
to fear. There had never been a day nor an hour in
his life when he might not have exclaimed, but for
its excessive egotism—
-Danger knows full well,
That C*e«ar is more dangerous than he;
We were two hons littered in one day,
And I the elder and more terrible."
The gentleman knows but little of the personal or
military history of that great man if he supposes
him capable of having been influenced by so ignoble
a passion.
This extraordinary position is attempted to be
sustained, however, on another ground: that New
Orleans and its environs never were actually invad-
ed—that the enemy, in other words, never did enter
within its charted boundaries. And why did he not?
It was because General Jackson and his brave com-
rades met him on the lines, drove back his legions,
routed and dispersed them, with a coin-age and a tri-
umph that filled America with joy, and the world with
admiration? New Orleans and its environs were never
actually invaded! Well, let the gentleman have it
so. Let him have it that the enemy was at the
lines, but not within the lines-of the city. Does he
not know that if the enemy had once entered within
the city, ail would have been lost? His fires would
have been seen blazing from every steeple, and Irs
artillery would have battered down every public and
private building. Then might you have realized
the full import of their watchword, in the screams
of American wives and daughters, under the rude
grasp of a licentious British soldiery. Sir, 1 re-
peat it- if ever the enemy had once entered withni
the city, all would have been lost. Your heroic
general and his brave officers would have been
slum; your noble army would have been captured
or dispersed; your city would have been sacked and
burnt, and the then young, but rising, and now
mighty West, would have been ruined. Sir, I love
the West. It is the land of my youth, and the
home of my manhood. I love her lofty mountains,
her v. ide luxunant valleys, hci deep majestic rivers.
Need I say that I love and honor and cherish in
my heart of hearts, that immortal man who saved
and preserved them nil' To guard against a great
and rmghty calamity like this, he proclaimed mar-
tial law. Let me read to you his own eloquent ex-
position of the motives which impelled him to the
'let. It is to be found in his defence before an inex-
orable judge, sitting in the very city he had just
saved, and before he had left the scene of his tri-
umph aucl glory:
"In this crisis, and under a firm persuasion that none
of these objects could be effected by the exercise of
trie ordinary powers confided to him; under a solemn
conviction that the country committed to his care
could be saved by that measure only from utter
rum; under a leligious belief that he was perform-
ing the most important and sncred duty,-—the. re-
proclaimed mmi'ud /«' *. H® intended, by
that measure, to supersede such civil powers as in
their operation interfered with those he was obliged
to exercise. He thought that, in such a moment,
constitutional forms must be suspended for the per-
manent preservation of constitutional rights, and
that there could be no question whether it were best
to depart for a moment from the exercise of our
dearest privileges, or have them wrested from
us forever. He knew that, if the civil magistrate
were permitted to exercise his usual functions, none
of the measures necessary to avert the awful fate
that threatened us could be expected. Personal
liberty cannot exist at a time when every man is
required to become a soidier. Private property can-
not be secured when its use is indispensable for the
public safety. Unlimited liberty of speech is in-
compatible with the discipline of a camp; and that
of the press is the more dangerous, when it is made
the vehicle of conveying intelligence to the enemy,
or exciting mutiny among the soldiery. To have
suffered the uncontrolled enjoyment of any one of
those rights during the time of the late invasion,
would have been to abandon the defence of the coun-
try. The civil magistrate is the guardian of those
rights; and the proclamation of martial law was
therefore intended to supersede the exercise of his
authority, so far as it interfered with the necessa-
ry restriction of those rights, but no farther."
Here, sir, is his own exposition of the pure
and patriotic motives—an exposition that ouglit to
have softened down the heart of that "British ine-
briate," though that heart had been made of stone.
Nothing, however, could move the inexorable judge:
he spurned the defence from the record, and the
enormous fine of one thousand dollars was imposed
on the saviour of the city. It was excessive—it
was enormous; so excessive, so enormous, that it
ought to be remitted. Here is common ground
where all can stand. Here the gentleman from
New York, fiom Massachusetts, from Kentucky,
might stand; common ground, where both of my
colleagues [Messrs. Peyton and Dickerson] might
have stood, both in their speeches and their votes—
the enormity of this fine. It equalled the net in-
come of one whole year of General Jackson's re-
sources. Whatever any man may think of his pow-
er to declare martial law, no man can doubt the pu-
rity of his motives. That purity should have dis-
armed the law of its vengeance, and wrapped its
victim in the mantle of mercy, gratitude and honor.
Mr. Chairman, I fear that much of the reluctance
of gentlemen to the passage of this bill is to be
found in the fact that this was a pecuniary punish-
ment. Suppose, instead of a fine your command-
ing general had been cast, into the prisons of Lou-
isiana: suppose the same mail that brought you
the news of that unparalleled victory, had brought
the news that your General was m a dungeon; that
whilst the brave army which he had commanded
had returned home in safety and honor, its heroic
commander was pining in prison for the very act
which had closed the second war of independence
in a blaze of glory: how long, think you, would
Mr. Madison, then President of the United States,
have permitted him to remain unpardoned and un-
hbcrated from that loathsome condition? How long
would it have been before the Congress of the
United States, then in session, would have inter-
ceded, if necessary, in his behalf? Sir, that whole
Congress would have rushed from both ends of the
Capitol, and gone in solemn procession to implore
his instant liberation. Would the gentleman from
New York [Mr. Barntard] have deserted from the
lines of that procession, and exclaimed, as ho has
now done, "We have a Constitution to preserve,"
and therefore let him rot in jail? Would the gen-
tleman from Kentucky [Mr. Grider] then have
said, let him pine in his dungeon, because he and
his constituents were entitled to their share of the
glory of his achievements3 Would my colleague
[Mr. Peyton] have travelled onward in a proces-
sion whose object, if obtained, would strike down
the noblest monument of his glory, pluck the
proudest feather from lus war-plume, and dim
the lustre of the brightest jewel that glitteis in the
coronet of his fame? Would the venerable gentle-
man from Massachusetts [Mr. Adams] have been
seen then lingering far behind in that procession,
and refusing to ask for the liberation of the man by
whose defence on a previous occasion he had secur-
ed his warmest lodgment in the hearts of his coun-
trymen? No, sir; there would have been no halting
and hesitating in such a case in the Congress of
1815. All men of all parties—save only those who
loved England, whose proad myrmidons he had
conquered, more than they loved their own coun-
try—would have rushed to the executive mansion,
and implored the liberation of General Jackson. His
punishment by fine stands on the same principle as
his punishment by imprisonment. With the same
patriotic ardor that the Congress of 1815 would have
implored the remission of the one, the Congress of
1844 ought to remit the other.
But the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Schenck] has
just told us that this was not the right time; that, if
done at all, it should have been done on the day
when the fine was imposed. I fear, sir, the right
time will never come with him and his party friends,
who evince such a never-dying opposition to this
bill. Thirty years have now rolled over the mem-
orable scenes of New Orleans; but they have neither
dimmed the gratitude of his country, nor softened
down the malevolence of his enemies. This is the
8th of January, the day which he has rendered ever
memorable in the annals of his country; it is the
very day on which this cruel and unjust judgment
should be reversed—when this excessive and enor-
mous fine should be remitted. He has rendered it
illustrious by the noblest victory on record; let us
render it, if possible, still more illustrious, by a great
act of national justice and honor.
REMARKS OF MR. SEYMOUR,
OF NEW YORK,
In the House of Representatives, January 9, 1844—
In Committee of the Whole, on the reference of
the President's message.
The House having gone into Committee of the
Whole on the state of the Union, (Mr Winthrof
of Massachusetts in the chair,) resumed the consid-
eration of the reference of the President's message,
upon which the following resolution had been offer-
ed by Mr. Wise:
Resolved, That so much of the President's mes-
sage as relates to the policy of attending to the lakes
and rivers of the West, be referred to the Com-
mittee on Commerce.
And to which an amendment had been proposed
by Mr. Thomasson, as follows:
Resolved, That so much of the President's mes-
sage as relates to the improvement of the Western
rivers and harbors upon the lakes, be referred to a
select committee of nine members.
Mr. SEYMOUR addressed the committee as fol-
lows:
Mr. Chairman: I rise not to eulogize the great
West. Enough has already been said of its im-
portance, and its glorious prospects. It needs not
my humble praise. Look at that vast area of more
than half a million of square miles, watered by the
noblest rivers, and surpassed by no other country
on the face of the earth in soil and climate, and you
pronounce at once the sentence of the future gran-
deur and importance of this portion of our Repub-
lic. Upon us, as the legislators of the nation, has
devolved the important duty of developing the re-
sources not only of that region, but of the whole
country.
Sir, I object entirely to the spirit and the argu-
ment in which the question before the committee
has been discussed It has partaken too much of
sectional feeling. It seems as if gentlemen supposed
that none could feel interested in the projects of
internal improvement to which our attention has
been called by the President's message, except
those who are located in that section of country to
which it refers. This is too narrow a view of
the subject for me to adopt. To my constituents I
owe my best efforts as their representative on this
floor; but I never can sacrifice, even to them, that
which I owe to myself and to the whole country—a
regard for all American interests. And I say to
Western men, those noble rivers and mighty inland
seas are not yours, nor uuis; they are the pride of
the nation, and the open public highway of every
citizen of the nation. I look at this whole subject
as a national question; and 1 shall not inquire wheth-
er an appropriation be sought to be expended on this
or on the other side of the mountains, at the North,
or the South; but the only inquiries which I shall
make are, whether it will advance the interests of the
Union, and whether it comes within the prescribed
limits of constitutional legislation.
^We have been referred, in the language of that
portion of the message upon which the resolution
under consideration is founded, to the "rivers of the
West," and particularly to the great father of waters,
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United States. Congress. The Congressional Globe, Volume 13, Part 2: Twenty-Eighth Congress, First Session, book, 1844; Washington D.C.. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth2368/m1/58/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.