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SENATE.]

Expunging Resolution.

opportunity of confronting the accuser and his witnesses face to face, and the trial was had before a competent tribunal.

These trials, which cast so much reproach on our puritan fathers, bear no comparison to the one under consideration. Nor does this sentence in the resolution bear any comparison with the summary judgment and execu tion of that relentless tyrant who stalks through our streets, carrying in his train terror and dismay. There, sir, public indignation bursts forth with fury, (ever to be dreaded,) but soon subsiding. Here, sir, the worm, the canker-worm, is at the heart of the constitution. Yes, sir, in this hall, this citadel of constitutional rights; in this temple, within the veil, the judicial ermine has been stained, the constitution violated, and a blot cast upon our national escutcheon; a blot which many waters cannot wash out, nor many years efface. What, then, shall be done? Let us expunge the resolution. Not, sir, because it detracts from the character of the President, or will in any way affect it. His reputation, his fame, are imperishable. He lives in the hearts and affections of the present generation; and history will place him beside the founder of our republic, and after ages will hail him as the saviour of it. Andrew Jackson has no equal; his whole life is a miracle. See him in youth, a fatherless, friendless, penniless boy, the son of a foreigner, a stranger in a strange land. Examine him in every stage of his existence, and we are impelled to exclaim, wonderful man! reared by Providence to guide the destinies of his country, and to exhibit the perfection and moral grandeur of human nature. I am not clear, sir, but it was necessary to the perfection of his charac ter that he was thus violently assailed and condemned by this resolution.

If this resolution had not been passed, his masterly answer, one of the proudest monuments of his fame, would never have been seen. Like the oak, which has withstood the blasts for years, it must endure the fury of the whirlwind and the tempest, before it can become the king of the forest. That answer, sir, like its author, was doomed to undergo the most violent attacks, the foulest aspersions. It was even denied a place on the files of the Senate; and, like its author, too, it gained admiration wherever it was known. I said, sir, that Andrew Jackson stood alone. Where can you find his fellow! Look among the sovereigns of the earth. Look where you will, and you look in vain. Go to the records of the mighty dead, and where will you find his equal? Shall such a man stand condemned on the records of this honorable Senate, unaccused and unheard? "Tell it not in Gath."

Again, sir, I would expunge this resolution, lest it should be considered as a precedent. If, sir, it is permitted to remain, at some future period of great excitement, when passion and prejudice shall triumph over reason, and the constitution shall be made to subserve the purposes of disappointed ambition; when a President, less powerful than General Jackson, shall be in the way of presidential aspirants, we may see the same scenes of March, 1834, acted over again; and the power of the Chief Magistrate broken, and that branch of the Government prostrated at the feet of this. Then, sir, will our Government be ended, and the last hope of Icivil liberty be extinguished. Far, far distant be that evil day.

Another reason, sir, why I would expunge this resolution is, because it violates a vital principle in our constitution and destroys one of the dearest and most important rights we possess, viz: a full, fair, and impartial trial; and because, sir, the Chief Magistrate of this nation--one who has done more for it than any man living--yes, the very man "who has filled the measure of his country's glory"--has unjustly and unconstitutionally

[JAN. 13, 1837.

Nor is

been deprived of this privilege, one to which the mean-
est citizen is entitled, and has been condemned without
a hearing. And again, sir, I would blot out this resolu
tion from our records, because the American people
have pronounced judgment against it; and not only they,
but the people of both continents have done it.
this all, sir. The resolution is derogatory to the char-
acter and dignity of our Government, and violates the
great principles of our national compact. A duty we
owe ourselves, as a co-ordinate branch of the Govern-
ment, requires that we should not suffer this resolution
to remain on our records. It is an open, bold, and un-
precedented attack, made by this branch of our Govern-
ment upon the Chief Executive; an act which, had it
been successful, must have prostrated our constitution,
destroyed our Government, and laid our institutions of
civil and religious liberty in the dust. Then, sir, let me
say to this honorable body, as we value these rights and
privileges, as we respect our own characters and the
high reputation of the Senate, let us at once blot out
this stain.

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Mr. President, one word in reply to the honorable gentleman last up, [Mr. CRITTENDEN,] and I will weary your patience no longer. Sir, we were yesterday admonished of our duties, and the sacredness of our oaths, and cautioned not to violate them in expunging this resolution. I trust, sir, that we are not unmindful of the obligations resting upon us, nor indifferent to the manner in which we perform them. And, in turn, let me, sir, remind that honorable Senator, and those who act with him, that this same constitution, which he would so carefully guard, expressly provides that the House of Representatives shall have the sole power of impeachment." And let me farther remind him and his friends, that the House of Representatives never have impeached President Jackson, and yet he stands condemned by this resolution. Where, then, is the constitution, and where the sanctity of oaths by which it is guarded? Again, sir, the honorable gentleman more than intimated that the vindicators of the President's character were his worshippers. Sir, it is too late to begin now to worship him; it is more natural to worship the rising sun; and appearances indicate that the honorable gen. tleman and his friends have already selected their object of adoration. As to myself, sir, I have no inclination to worship General Jackson. I have no personal acquaintance with him; have seen him once, and once only, and for five minutes. I have never received any appointment or favor from him, and never expect so to do; yet I esteem him one of the greatest of men, and purest of patriots; and rely upon it that the page of history which shall record his deeds, will be read with enthusiasm through all coming time. His cotemporaries will go down to posterity with him. His coadjutors will gather lustre from his fame, and his revilers, though they may not bask in the effulgence of this great luminary, yet they may continue to be seen as spots upon it, like the spots which bedim the great orb of day.

Mr. President, I am thankful that I have had an opportunity of expressing the views and feelings of my constituents, together with my own, and notwithstanding the awful consequences predicted by the gentlemen opposed to expunging this resolution; yet, sir, I have none of those fears, none at all; but shall esteem it the best act, and one of the happiest days of my life, should I be permitted to record my name in favor of expunging this resolution.

If, Mr. President, in my remarks submitted, I have deviated in any thing from the ordinary course of discussion, I trust some apology will be found in the novelty of my situation, never having been a member of any Legislature until I had the honor of a seat in this body.

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Mr. PRESTON next rose and addressed the Senate as follows:

[SENATE.

popular doctrines of a free Government; and all who witnessed the animating sight must have concluded that, Nothing, Mr. President, (said he,) was farther from throughout her existence, she would ever continue to my intention, than to have said a single word on this vindicate and to perpetuate the doctrine and the spirit subject. Nor do I now propose to discuss it. That of liberty. Sir, I could have wished that the honorable has been done so fully and elaborately on both sides, gentleman who now represents that distinguished State that I shall not enter upon the argument. I thought I could have found in his own mind reasons for taking a should not have said a word, but I feel a sort of impos- different course from that which he has pursued in this sibility of withholding the expression of my utter re- matter. With the powers which he unquestionably pospugnance to this procecding. If we had not arrived at sesses, with his liberal education and large experience, the very issue; if the question were not ready to be and especially with the good fortune of growing up taken, I should have retained my seat, for I have long amidst the very men who laid the foundations of our rebeen endeavoring to school and to subdue my heart public, I had hoped that he would have invoked the down to this submission. During the entire course of ancient spirit of his State, and would have added the events which has gradually brought my mind to the suffrage of his voice to save the trembling constitution, conclusion that this resolution would at some time pass, about to be immolated at the footstool of executive I have endeavored to discipline my feelings, to curb and power. But it was my lot to be disappointed; and I restrain them, and bring down my mind to the event, so mourn, from the bottom of my heart, the instruction unthat when at last the sad moment should arrive, I might der which he feels himself constrained to vote for this meet it with a becoming resignation; and I did suppose extraordinary resolution. Where are the sedateness, that I had succeeded. I had long seen the growing the gravity, the calm and cautious wisdom of Madison? popularity of this measure. I was no stranger to the Where the philosophic spirit, the enlarged views, and arts and the industry by which the progress of that pop- popular predilections of Jefferson? Where the sturdy ularity had been stimulated and urged on from day to republicanism of John Taylor? Where those bright day. I well knew the power and the popularity of the names which make her history? They are gone-gone Chief Magistrate. I had heard of his own personal exand others control her destiny. Sir, I lament, I mourn, ertions to promote this object. I saw that it was re- that my native State should have lent herself and the solved upon as a party measure, and I saw the party remnant of her glory to promote and gloss over this prowhich had resolved upon it rapidly and triumphantlyceeding. I take consolation, however, Mr. President, succeeding throughout a large part of the Union. These that there is one State, one free and fearless State, things certainly are sufficient to have forewarned me, which has kept herself aloof from this combination; and I had hoped, and till this moment believed, that whose unbroken spirit, whose pride and honor, demand they had forearmed me also. But there was added to of me, her representative, to make, as I now do, on beall these the still less equivocal evidence arising from half of South Carolina, her public and solemn protest the proceedings of several of the State Legislatures. against this open and flagrant violation of the constituSir, when first I heard that a State Legislature had in- tion. structed her Senators on this floor to vote in favor of this thing, it struck me with inexpressible sorrow and dism:ay. But when I from time to time beheld various other State Legislatures, acting under the same dictation, or at least misled into the same mistake, sorrow assumed in my bosom the complexion of despair. But there was still one ingredient to be added to this cup, to render the odious draught more intolerably bitter. I could, I will confess it, with some comparative degree of philosophy, have seen certain States of this confederacy one after another giving way, and bringing their successive sacrifices to this altar of executive power. I could have borne to see this and that and the other State prostrating herself and aiding in the general conspiracy to prostrate the Senate. But when at length it came to pass that the ancient and powerful Commonwealth of Virginia was brought to bow her venerable locks before the footstool of power, forgot her past history, forgot who and what she is and what she has been, and associated herself in a combination like this, how shall I describe to you my feelings! As a politician, I might have been mortified at such a spectacle; as a statesman, belonging to the United States, I turned from it with shame; but as a native of Virginia, I de. plore, I lament, from the bottom of my heart, that she too has joined the funeral procession of the constitution. Sir, I was proud to remember her in her proud day; to consider her as she once was, and perhaps still is the mother of great men; to look back to that bright, that immortal period in our history when she recalled her children from these halls of national legislation into her own Legislature, there to vindicate the rights and independence of the State, and to reassert the violated constitution against the usurpations of this Government. Then, indeed, Virginia preserved that illustrious character which had descended with her from the Revolution. Then she put herself on her State rights, and on the

But, sir, I have done. The argument is exhausted; the verdict has been rendered; the judgment given; execution is demanded-ay, sir, and let me add, the executioners are here with ready hands. Exercise your function, gentlemen. You have been called on to do execution-do it. The axe is in your hand; perform that which is so loudly called for. Execution, sir? Of what? Of whom? Is the axe aimed at me, and at those of us who voted for the resolution you are about to expunge? Is it us you strike at? If so, I would say, and with comparative satisfaction, in God's name, let the blow come, and while the fatal edge fell upon my neck, I would declare, with honest sincerity, that I had rather be the criminal of 1834 than the executioner of 1836. Proceed, gentlemen, do your holy work. Grant judg ment. Do execution-execution upon your own records-execution upon the constitution of your country. I do not envy you your office. Personally, however, it does not touch us. No, sir; I am glad, I rejoice, that on that record my name is found as one against whom this act is aimed. I would appeal from the present time to posterity, and ask whether the names of my self and my associates or the names of our executioners are then most likely to be venerated as guardians of the constitution. But can you suppose that your work is to be done on that body of representatives of the States who voted for the obnoxious record? That you will execute us? Our reputation, our character, and standing? No, sir; it is not in the power of your black lines to touch us. 1, indeed, was but a common soldier, and served in the ranks under greater men. But would gentlemen strike out of the record of this Government the names of those who offered that resolution? No, no. They are far beyond your reach, and the only result of your impotent attack will be the more firmly to establish their fame. Wrong they may have been, but their business and their aim was to sustain the constitution. An act had been

SENATE.]

Expunging Resolution.

[JAN. 13, 1837.

decisions, but performing mechanical execution on a bit
of paper.
He is not to be occupied in his ordinary and
legal functions. No, sir. He is to perform the duty of
a common hangman. Might it not be as well to order
in a file of soldiers with their bayonets? Or would it not
be better still to purify the journal by fire? Fire is the
ancient ordeal. Give the victim to the flames; and then,
like a company of the native Sagamores, sit round and in-
hale the agreeable fragrance as the smoke of the guilty
lines shall darkly ascend to heaven. When the act is per-
formed, you will have set a memorable precedent. And
do you think there will be no improvement on this pat
ent mode of conciliating the Executive? May it not be
profitably applied to some other purposes? Why not
expunge those who made the record? If the proceed-

novel and extraordinary course, the men themselves who
perpetrated the deed-it is they who should be expung-
ed. Men who entered so foul a page upon your journals
cannot be worthy of a seat here. Remove us. Turn us
out. Expel us from the Senate. Would to God you
could. Call in the prætorian guard. Take us-appre-
hend us-march us off.

done of equivocal import, and attended with tremendous consequences. Those consequences swept over the Union like an inundation, and in that dark hour, and in the face of a popularity before which nothing could stand, they dared to raise their voice in this ball, and, so far as an expression of opinion could go, to record their censure of that act. And will gentlemen pretend to tell me that these men will not receive the gratitude of posterity? This expunging process may, for a season, promote the reputation of those who perform it; but this deed will bring fresh into remembrance the names of those who passed that resolution which they cannot suf fer to stand on the records of the Senate. Some of these individuals are present, and I must forbear. But long after we shall have passed away, when the history of our country is written, and fondly and proudly dwelting had a guilt so monstrous as to render necessary this upon by our posterity, their names will be mentioned. They will be familiar as household words, and will be taught to children as the names of Washington, and Adams, and Hancock, and Lee, and Lafayette, are now taught to our children. If the hope, if the design, is to efface those names from the leaves of our national memorials, it will fail. Every effort to extinguish will but increase the splendor which surrounds them. An attack upon the constitution may, indeed, confer on those who perpetrate it a sort of immortality, but it is not such as will belong to its defenders. We remember, indeed, but we execrate, the name of the miscreant who, for a sort of fame, destroyed a venerable temple of antiquity. And whom, I again ask, will you do execution upon? Upon the record? Is it the object of offence? Will you make your war on the paper' Will you wreak your spite upon so much rags and cotton? Who or what is it that is to be prostrated and broken down? It is the Senate of the United States. It is one of the co-ordinate branches of the General Government. Proceed, then, to the sacrifice. Do execution on the SenConsummate your solemn farce, and then rise and congratulate yourselves that you are yourselves members of the very body that you have bowed to the foot-hostility towards the President. But did it ever enter stool of power. Offer your glad hosannas-ay, triumph and boast that you have brought that Senate, of which you

ate.

form a part, to this pass. But while you are making the welkin ring, I will mourn at your jubilee. I shall be present at the scene, but not of it, and my only consolation, will be that I can reply to my country,

Thou canst not say I did it." The people, it seems, have decided against the Senate. The people order the Senate to take the constitution in their band-to bring it into the presence of the "miraculous man," as an honorable Senator [Mr. DANA] has just termed him, and, as an offering for his great services, for his uneqalled popularity, for the unsurpassed confidence which he enjoys, sing hosannas in his ears, and while the sky reechoes to your shouts of exultation, burn the constitution as incense under his nostrils. This, and nothing less than this, will satisfy the idolatrous devotion of his admirers. Do execution on the records of your land. Obliterate your own journal? Do not introduce the report of a committee. Do not revoke your former act by recording a resolution; but perform a physical act of execution. Why, sir, does the Senate of to-day differ from the Senate of yesterday? Has the Senate of 1837 different views from the Senate of 1834? Does the Senate now think that the Senate then grossly transcended its power? And is not language capable of expressing this? Are there no words to express a difference of opinion? Cannot you state the strength of your conviction in all the compass of your mother tongue? No. You must do a physical act. You must put nothing on record. You must perform a deed. You must do something that has no precedent. Your Clerk is to be exhibited, not reading, not writing, not enunciating your

But the honorable Senator who has just resumed his seat takes the ground that this expunging resolution is merely a strong mode of expressing an opinion. I put it to the candor of that honorable gentleman whether this is a mere expression of opinion? The resolution which is to be expunged asserted, on behalf of the Senate, a difference of opinion from the President of the United States. It expressed that difference fairly and openly. The whole extent of its offence is, the expression of a difference of opinion from the President on a constitutional question. It never once entered the minds of the authors of that resolution to stain your record by an official act of hatred. I admit, indeed, that the bosoms of some of them may not have been wholly free from some feelings of that description, and that some of the speeches on this floor manifested at times a strong sentiment of

their thoughts to make the journal of this body a record of personal spite? They expressed a difference of sentiment, and this surely may be done in the very kindest spirit. But sir, is that the temper of the present proceeding? Is it to express a difference of opinion that we are now invited? Is it to express an opinion at all? What is it the expression of? Vengeance. That is what is to be expressed. The compass of the English language is not able to bring forth a tone sufficient for the purpose.. Vengeance! vengeance! must be taken on the records. They are to be put in mourning. They are to be hung with black. In this there may be a double purpose. The Senate may intend that their journals shall bear imperishable evidence of their deep mourning that the feelings of the President should have been wounded. The record is to be carried into his presence, that we may show the Chief Magistrate that we have put ourselves permanently into mourning for the offence we have committed, and to express our humble hope that this may go some little way towards healing the wounds which have been inflicted on his sensibility. Possibly the President may deign to listen to us; nay, he may even give a gracious smile of approbation, a glance of complacency, on those who humbly present to him this most grateful oblation. Yes, sir, the proceeding is intended to inscribe upon our records more than language can impart, more than we are willing or able to put into words; a deed, an overt ac', wil, it is humbly hoped, prove more grateful than any words could have been rendered to the august, the "miraculous" being who is to be propitiated. Attend, sir, to the palinode which has just been sung to the honor and glory of the President of the United States. The attenuated period, both of political and

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[SENATE.

their rival pages on that deathless theme, they will at least be relieved from the pains of uncertain conjecture as to the nativity of the hero of their story.

It is said, from high authority, that men make to them

to censure this propensity of our nature; and I know when the idol is fashioned it is difficult to restrict its worshippers as to the mode of worship, or the extent of the sacrifice. To the idols in the East men sacrifice themselves, and sometimes their wives and children. But these gentlemen are far wiser. They do not sacri fice themselves--nothing is farther from their thoughts. Such a thing does not enter into their purposes. But still the sacrifice must be conspicuous, impressive, such as will produce effect. They look round for a victim. But will they, like Eastern devotees, cast themselves beneath the onward crushing car of executive power. Oh, no, sir. Nothing like it. They stand cautiously out of the way of its career, and cast down the constitution of their country. That is the victim--crush it. There is the official record of the Senate--crush it. There is the very body itself, the collected Senate of the United States--crush it. And do you crush it, gentlemen? Do you expunge the Senate for daring to speak a word in its last expiring hours, to indicate that it is still a co-ordinate branch of the Government, and in favor of the dying liberty of the land? I ask, again, whom it is that you thus offer to stigmatize? On whom is this resolu tion to act? Against what body is your, blow directed? What body will you brand with infamy, as the aristocratic branch of the Government? It is the Senate of the United States; your own Senate. That is the victim dragged out for immolation to the powers that be.

physical existence, of the President, makes me very reluctant indeed to offer any remarks on the very extravagant language in which he has been praised; nor should I advert to the gentleman's speech at all, but to notice the ground on which this measure is advocated. "Ex-selves idols and worship them, and I shall not now pause pange! expunge!" cries the gentleman; expunge a resolution which is an attack on the good, the glorious, the popular, the powerful, the miraculous,' President of the United States!" This, sir, was the tone, and this the argument, in three fourths, nay, in four fifths of the venerable gentleman's discourse. He puts this resolution on the ground of his eulogy of the President. That is the sole argument. Because President Jackson is praiseworthy and glorious, expunge! expunge! Why, sir, what is the connexion? The Senator has certainly not given us a very logical conclusion. General Jackson is to be praised; that forms the premises of his argument. This record is to be expunged; that is the conclusion. We are to obliterate our records, and bring them, in the babiliments of mourning, to his feet, because President Jackson is gracious, glorious, popular, powerful, miracu'ous! And all these properties, and all this glory, is to be transferred bodily to another gen. tleman who is just like himself. Alter et idem. We are to abolish our journal, because General Jackson is thus and thus, and his successor will be thus and thus. That is the argument. I say nothing now of the truth of the premises, because this is not a convenient opportunity for the investigation of that subject. Those who are in ecstasies, who are in exultations of admiration, who are shouting, clapping hands, and singing hallelujahs, are not exactly in a condition of mind to listen or be argued with. They may be within the extreme pale of reason, but they are, to say the least, on the confines of enthu- But this expunging process is defended by the gentlesiasm. But, admitting that the President is that exalted, man from Virginia, on the ground that it is a great engine that immaculate, that unequalled, that miraculous person to maintain the cause of human liberty. And how does which he is represented; allowing that he leaves out of he attempt to maintain his position? Why, truly, besight all that history has left us of ancient Rome, and all cause it was resorted to in England in support of the that we have read of modern worth and virtue; and ad-right of popular election. Ay? And will gentlemen mitting that all this is transferable, and has been trans- seek to wrest out of the hands of the British whigs a ferred, for the glory and blessedness of our country, to weapon so powerfully wielded by them, but in a cause one worthy to be his successor, let me ask, how does so different? For whom did they employ it? and against this bring us to the conclusion that the record of our whom? Was it not used to protect popular rights? to proceedings is to be expunged? guard the rights of popular bodies? the rights of the Let the gentleman introduce a resolution imbody-people and the rights of Parliament against the arbitrary ing the substance of his speech, to wit: that General power of the King and of the royal party in the House of Jackson is the greatest and best man that now lives, has Commons? Was it wielded for the whigs against the tolived, or will ever live again; that he is worthy of all ries or for the tories against the whigs? Let the gentlehonor and glory, that the constitution is to be sacrificed, man answer. Yes; when the beams of liberty struggle out and the records of one branch of the Government de- to day and gild the British history once in two hundred faced and mutilated, for his gratification. Let him lay years, you find this process of expunging resorted to by that resolution before the people, to whose verdict he our sturdy ancestors in their struggles with the Crown, bas appealed, and see how it will be received. and as an extreme measure, to resist the encroachments The honorable gentleman, however, stated one fact in of lawless power; not, as here, to wipe out and obliterate reference to the President, which is more novel, at least, forever the last effort for freedom. If the resolution of than many of the remarks with which he favored the Parliament in the great Westminster election had been Senate. It is, if I mistake not, something entirely novel in favor of Wilkes, and against Mr. Luttrel, would it on this floor. He told us that the President was miracu- have been expunged? No, sir. It was because it was lous. But the miracle, it seems, lies in the fact that he entered at the instance of Luttrel against John Wilkes, was born a foreigner, and is President of the United the Patroclus over whose body this fight for freedom States. Sir, General Jackson, I admit, has overcome was maintained; that was the reason of its expunction great difficulties. He has fought the battle of life; be from the journals. And it forms one of the most omihas fought it every where for success, and with success. nous signs of the times we live in, that here, the most But I never knew, until I was now officially informed, that powerful engines wielded in the land of our ancestors in he was born in Ireland. [A laugh.] To prevent his fu- favor of popular rights, are all seized upon and employed ture historians from falling into a difficulty like that which for the increase and advancement of executive power. happened in the case of a more obscure individual in All that belongs to the people is invoked only to betray Greece, for whose birthplace seven cities are said to them. The people, the people, the voice of the peohave contended, the gentleman from Maine has kind-ple, gentlemen claim as their own. They cite every poply fixed the spot; and when that cloud of future historians of whom we have been told, and who are themselves to become immortal by writing General Jackson's life, shall be searching for panegyric to adorn VOL. XIII.-26

ular argument; and all for what? To hold up the cause of the many against the few; of the millions against the grasping power of the one? No, sir; no, no. All these mighty motive powers are called up to exalt the execu

SENATE.]

Expunging Resolution.

tive, and to put down the legislative power; to increase the power of the one against the rights of the many. They are brought forward to silence, for all future time, the voice of the Senate, whenever it shall be raised against the encroachments of power. Yes, sir, they seek to hang up in terrorem over your head, and in ful! view of every Senator, a scourge, to be applied without mercy to any who shall dare to use aught but the language of eulogy.

"Horribili sedere flagello,"

that is the fate which awaits him. It is to be set up by way of memento, to muzzle this body for all future time. No, sir, our voice must never be heard save in strains of adulation, and in chanting palinodes like that which has recently been furnished as a pattern to this body.

[JAN. 13, 1837.

that all traces of such a thing must be obliterated from our records? that it must be effaced-expunged-purged off? Why, sir, the President differs from us constantly on constitutional points; and both he and this Senate dif fer widely from President Washington on a constitutional point, viz: on the constitutionality of the Bank of the United States. Why is not the opinion of Washington to be expunged? Why not go back, and hold him up as a sacrifice? It has, indeed, in some sort, been already done. You have have not broken into the sepulchre of Mount Vernon, and dug up his bones and burnt them, like Wickliffe's, but you have immolated his name; his virtues, his glory, have been taken from him and transferred to another. Why not make your sacrifice complete? If the principle on which you act is jealousy for the honor and power of the Executive, why not, when former Presidents have sent us messages containing unconstitutional notions, expunge their messages from your archives? The President sent us a message in the panic session of 1834. How would gentlemen have taken it, had those who constituted the majority at that day proposed to expunge it from the records?

A gentleman, whose talents and intelligence I highly honor, has asked us to strip this matter of all the humbuggery which has been thrown around it. Well, sir, let us do so. And what is it, when thus denuded, but a bit in the mouth of this Senate, to bring it down when it becomes too restive for the taste or safety of those in power; so that the Chief Magistrate may, undisturbed by its curvettings, proceed to seize upon the national treas- Both Houses of Congress have differed from other ure, and repeal the decisions of the Supreme Court; and Presidents. Does any gentleman here dream of a leadif any adventurous mouth shall dare to whisper he is acting member in either House under the Jefferson adminising against the constitution, such rashness may instantly be checked by the warning "hush! take care! remember the expunging resolution!--do you wish to bring us again under the discipline of the black lines?" I suppose the fac simile of that blotted and defaced page of our records will be fixed up in some conspicuous position above the seat of our presiding officer, so that when we would dare to think, to feel, and to speak, as freemen and American legislators, we may look up, and, beholding the awful monitor, may put our hands on our mouths, and our mouths in the dust, and repent, while it is yet time, all such presumptuous aspirations.

In other days it has often happened that successive Senates have differed from each other in opinions and policy, and have in like manner differed from the Exec. utive, and each Senate has freely expressed its own sentiments. In regard to the United States Bank, for example, the opinions of this body have varied at different periods. The Senate, at one time, thought that bank constitutional; at another time, they thought it unconstitutional; a majority now consider it as a monster. Why not, then, expunge? Why not draw your black lines round that part of your journal which records the act by which that bank was chartered? The resolution against which your magnanimous wrath is now directed has done no harm. It has led to no action. It has brought no long train of evils on the country. But the charter of the Bank of the United States-what did not that effect? That was no empty declaration of opinion. It was a substantial act. And to what a long black catalogue of national calamities did it not in your opinion lead? If any thing is to be expunged, why not expunge that? It seems not to have entered the imaginations of gentlemen on the other side to draw their lines round that resolution. Yet the honorable Senator from Virginia believes most sincerely that the act was unconstitutional. He holds that it led to consequences greatly detrimental to the national good, and tells us that the President deserves the everlasting gratitude of the country for having abolished and destroyed the bank. Well, sir, if it is not fit in that case, how and why is it fit in this? Because this violates the rights of the people? So did that. Is this unconstitutional? So was the other. Is this derogatory to the feelings and wishes of the President? So was that. Is the Senate bound in duty to express its disapprobation of this act? Why not of the other? But is it really so great an offence to differ from the President on a constitutional question, insomuch

tration proposing to expunge any presidential opinion which did not correspond with his own? Or would any supporter of the wise, the grave, the sedate, the temperate, the forbearing Madison, ever conceive the notion that he was to be propitiated by effacing the records' Did he ever require his friends to depart from their public duties, neglect the exigencies of the public business, and address themselves to this most extraordinary method of silencing the indignation of a President? There was a great struggle in '98, and after a long course of most bitter and acrimonious party warfare, the republican party eventually triumphed, and came into power; but in the very heat of conquest, and still covered, as it was, with the sweat and the dust of battle, did it once enter into their heads to expunge from the public journals the acts of their predecessors? Or could it now occur to the minds of intelligent and honorable men that they are called upon to vindicate the ashes of the illustrious dead by removing from the national archives all traces of difference of opinion on the part of either House of Congress from the departed saviours of our country? Dare the honorable Senator from Pennsylvania rise in his place, and, with a reverend regard to yonder image of Washington, introduce a resolution to expunge whatever on our journal intimates a difference of opinion from that great man? Will he venture to look into that venerable and vener ated countenance, and make such a motion in this cham- ber? No, sir. His own beart tells him that the image would frown upon him from its frame, and, could it speak, would cry, Forbear. Destroy not your constitution. Dishonor not your own archives. Draw no black lines upon your journal on my account. Write no history for me. My history is written in a nation's eyes. I desire you to play off no mountebank farce for my glory; it is safe in the keeping of my countrymen. Yes, sir; such would be the language of Washington; and I well know that the honorable Senator from Pennsylvania has its response in his heart. And, sir, if we are not called to do this for the illustrious, great, and good, who have departed, shall we do it for the living, because he is powerful? Because he is the dispenser of office, who is to propagate his own system of policy through another generation, and to transfuse his own vital spirit into a living branch of the same stem? If this sacrifice was to be offered to the illustrious dead, whom history has already fixed in niches of imperishable honor, we might

*Mr. Buchanan sat opposite to the picture of Washington.

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