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encroachment, or that advocated by gentlemen on the other side, who are for demanding the territory because it is ours? Shall we take it openly and boldly, by a straight-forward, manly course?—or shall we get it covertly, slily, stealthily? No! I will not say stealthily; I will not employ any term that may imply the slightest disrespect to the honorable senator: I will not say stealthily, but I will say circuitously; yes, that is the word-circuitously. I would not say any thing that could be a cause of offence to the honorable gentleman from South Carolina. I have no such feelings towards him. I hold that honorable senator in too much respect; I have too much esteem and regard for him. I would not, for the world, pluck one leaf from the laurel that enwreathes his venerated brow. He has ably served his country in many and various important stations. I hope and trust he will do nothing that shall mar the page in this nation's history which he is destined to fill. I respect his acquisitions; above all, I venerate his virtues-the spotless purity of his private life. But the senator's course is circuitous ours is direct. Which, I ask, will do most honor to a country like this? Which will read the best? Sir, how will it read alongside of the history of '76? Then the whole population of a range of Atlantic colonies, sooner than submit to the exaction of a slight tax, took up arms, and went into the appeal of battle. They stood for their rights in many a bloody field; and they conquered those rights from the mightiest and the haughtiest power the world ever saw. Such was the first chapter of our history, read and studied by the nations of the Old World. But what is to be the second chapter ? At first we had but three millions of people; now we have twenty millions. Our wealth, our power, our energy, have increased in more than a like proportion. And now the same old enemy claims a great empire on our western coast; and the descendants of the same people resolve, sooner than resist, to surrender their rights, and let her take it. I trust no such chapter is to be written in our history.

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Mr. President, I have but uttered the rights of my country; and by their side I plant myself, ready to abide the issue-come peace, come war.

* U. S. Senator from Indiana.

E. A. HANNEGAN,*

RUFUS CHOATE.

85

62. THE HEROISM OF THE PILGRIMS.

If one were called on to select the most glittering of the instances of military heroism to which the admiration of the world has been most constantly attracted, he would make choice, I imagine, of the instance of that desperate valor, in which, in obedience to the laws, Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans cast themselves headlong, at the passes of Greece, on the myriads of their Persian invaders. From the simple page of Herodotus, longer than from the Amphyctionic monument, or the games of the commemoration, that act speaks still to the tears and praise of all the world.

Judge if, that night, as they watched the dawn of the last morning their eyes could ever see; as they heard with every passing hour the stilly hum of the invading host, his dusky lines stretched out without end, and now almost encircling them around; as they remembered their unprofaned home, city of heroes and of the mothers of heroes,-judge if, watching there, in the gate-way of Greece, this sentiment did not grow to the nature of madness, if it did not run in torrents of literal fire to and from the laboring heart; and when morning came and passed, and they had dressed their long locks for battle, and when, at a little after noon, the countless invading throng was seen at last to move, was it not with a rapture, as if all the joy, all the sensation of life was in that one moment, that they cast themselves, with the fierce gladness of mountaintorrents, headlong on that brief revelry of glory?

I acknowledge the splendor of that transaction in all its aspects. I admit its morality, too, and its useful influence on every Grecian heart, in that greatest crisis of Greece.

And yet, do you not think, that whoso could, by adequate description, bring before you that winter of the Pilgrims,—its brief sunshine; the nights of storm, slow waning; the damp and icy breath, felt to the pillow of the dying; its destitutions, its contrasts with all their former experience in life; its utter insulation and loneliness; its death-beds and burials; its memories; its apprehensions; its hopes; the consultations of the prudent; the prayers of the pious; the occasional cheerful hymn, in which the strong heart threw off its burden, and, asserting its unvanquished nature, went up, like a bird of dawn, to the skies;-do ye not think that whoso could describe them calmly waiting in that defile, lonelier and darker than Thermopylæ, for a morning that might never dawn, or might show them, when

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it did, a mightier arm than the Persian, raised as in act to strike, would he not sketch a scene of more difficult and rarer heroism? A scene, as Wordsworth has said, melancholy, yea, dismal, yet consolatory and full of joy;" a scene, even better fitted to succor, to exalt, to lead the forlorn hopes of all great causes, till time shall be no more!

I have said that I deemed it a great thing for a nation, in all the periods of its fortunes, to be able to look back to a race of founders, and a principle of institution, in which it might rationally admire the realized idea of true heroism. That felicity, that pride, that help, is ours. Our past, with its great eras, that of settlement, and that of independence, should announce, should compel, should spontaneously evolve as from a germ, a wise, moral, and glowing future. Those heroic men and women should not look down on a dwindled posterity. That broad foundation, sunk below frost or earthquake, should bear up something more permanent than an encampment of tents, pitched at random, and struck when the trumpet of march sounds at next daybreak. It should bear up, as by a natural growth, a structure in which generations may come, one after another, to the great gift of the Social Life.

RUFUS CHOATE.*

63. POPULAR EXCITEMENT IN ELECTIONS.

SIR, I not only maintain that the people are exempt from the charge of violence, but that there is a tendency to carry the feeling of indifference to public affairs to a dangerous extreme. From the peculiar structure and commercial spirit of modern society, and the facilities presented, in our country, for the acquisition of wealth, the eager pursuit of gain predominates over our concern for the affairs of the Republic. This is, perhaps, our national foible. Wealth is the object of our idolatry, and even liberty is worshipped in the form of property. Although this spirit, by stimulating industry, is unquestionably excellent in itself, yet it is to be apprehended that, in a period of peace and tranquillity, it will become too strong for patriotism, and produce the greatest of national evils-popular apathy.

We have been frequently told, that the farmer should attend to his plough, and the mechanic to his handicraft, during the

*U. S. Senator from Massachusetts.

GEORGE MCDUFFIE.

87

canvass for the Presidency. Sir, a more dangerous doctrine could not be inculcated. If there is any spectacle from the contemplation of which I would shrink with peculiar horror, it would be that of the great mass of the American people sunk into a profound apathy on the subject of their highest political interests. Such a spectacle would be more portentous to the eye of intelligent patriotism, than all the monsters of the earth, and fiery signs of the heavens, to the eye of trembling superstition. If the people could be indifferent to the fate of a contest for the Presidency, they would be unworthy of freedom. If I were to perceive them sinking into this apathy, I would even apply the power of political galvanism, if such a power could be found, to rouse them from their fatal lethargy. Keep the people quiet! Peace! peace! Such are the whispers by which the people are to be lulled to sleep, in the very crisis of their highest concerns. Sir, "you make a solitude, and call it peace!" Peace? 'Tis death! Take away all interest from the people, in the election of their Chief Ruler, and liberty is no more. What, sir, is to be the consequence? If the people do not elect the President, some body must. There is no special providence to decide the question. Who, then, is to make the election, and how will it operate? You throw a general paralysis over the body politic, and excite a morbid action in particular members. The general patriotic excitement of the people, in relation to the election of the President, is as essential to the health and energy of the political system, as circulation of the blood is to the health and energy of the natural body. Check that circulation, and you inevitably produce local inflammation, gangrene, and ultimately death. Make the people indifferent, destroy their legitimate influence, and you communicate a morbid violence to the efforts of those who are ever ready to assume the control of such affairs-the mercenary intriguers and interested officehunters of the country. Tell me not, sir, of popular violence! Show me a hundred political factionists-men who look to the election of a President as the means of gratifying their high or their low ambition--and I will show you the very materials for a mob, ready for any desperate adventure connected with their common fortunes. The reason of this extraordinary excitement is obvious. It is a matter of self-interest, of personal ambition. The people can have no such motives. They look only to the interest and glory of the country.

GEORGE MCDUFFIE.*

* U. S. Representative from South Carolina.

64.

THE DESTINY OF THE UNITED STATES.

SIR, is not the language of Berkley in the progress of fulfilment, when he wrote that immortal line

"Westward the star of empire takes its way?"

When Oregon shall be in our possession, when we shall have established a profitable trade with China through her ports, when our ships traverse the Pacific as they now cross the Atlantic, and all the countless consequences of such a state of things begin to flow in upon us, then will be fulfilled that vision which rapt and filled the mind of Nunez as he gazed over the placid waves of the Pacific.

I will now address myself for a moment to the moral aspect of this great question. Gentlemen have talked much and eloquently about the horrors of war. I should regret the necessity of a war; I should deplore its dreadful scenes; but if the possession of Oregon gives us a territory opening upon the nation prospects such as I describe, and if, for the simple exercise of our rights in regard to it, Great Britain should wage war upon us-an unjust war-the regret which every one must feel will, at least, have much to counterbalance it. One of England's own writers has said: "The possible destiny of the United States of America, as a nation of one hundred millions of freemen, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, living under the laws of Alfred, and speaking the language of Shakspeare and Milton, is an august conception."

It is an august conception, finely embodied; and I trust in God that it will, at no distant time, become a reality. I trust that the world will see, through all time, our people living, not only under the laws of Alfred, but that they will be heard to speak throughout our wide-spread borders the language of Shakspeare and Milton. Above all is it my prayer that, as long as our posterity shall continue to inhabit these mountains and plains, and hills and valleys, they may be found living under the sacred institutions of Christianity. Put these things together, and what a picture do they present to the mental eye! Civilization and intelligence started in the East; they have travelled, and are still travelling, westward; but when they shall have completed the circuit of the earth, and reached the extremest verge of the Pacific shores, then, unlike the fabled god of the ancients, who dipped his glowing axle in the western wave, they will take up their permanent abode; then shall we

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