SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.* CONTINENTAL RIGHTS AND RELATIONS. JANUARY 26, 1858. MR. PRESIDENT: On the 23d day February, 1848, John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, who had completed a circle of public service filling fifty years, beginning with an inferior diplomatic function, passing through the chief magistracy, and closing with the trust of a representative in Congress, departed from the earth, certainly respected by mankind, and, if all posthumous honors are not insincere and false, deplored by his countrymen. On a fair and cloudless day in the month of June, 1850, when the loud and deep voice of wailing had just died away in the land, the senator from Michigan, of New England born, and by New England reared, the leader of a great party, not only here, but in the whole country, rose in the senate-chamber, and after complaining that a member of the family of that great statesman of the east, instead of going backward with a garment to cover his infirmities, had revealed them by publishing portions of his private diary, himself proceeded to read the obnoxious extracts. They showed the author's strong opinions, that by the federal compact the slaveholding class had obtained, and they had exercised, a controlling influence in the government of the country. Placing these extracts by the side of passages taken from the Farewell Address of Washington, the senator from Michigan said-"He is unworthy the name of an American who does not feel at his heart's core the difference between the lofty patriotism and noble sentiments of one of these documents, and—; but I * Continued from vol. i., p. 388. will not say what the occasion would justify. I will only say, and that is enough, the other, for it is another."-"It can not, nor will it, nor should it, escape the censure of an age like this.” "Better that it had been entombed, like the ancient Egyptian records, till its language was lost, than thus to have been exposed to the light of day." The senator then proceeded to set forth by contrast his own greater justice and generosity to the southern states, and his own higher fidelity to the Union. This was in the senate of the United States. And yet no one rose to vindicate the memory of John Quincy Adams, or to express an emotion even of surprise, or of regret, that it had been thought necessary thus to invade the sanctity of the honored grave where the illustrious statesman who had so recently passed the gates of death was sleeping. I was not of New England, by residence, education, or descent, and there were reasons enough why I should then endure in silence a pain that I shared with so many of my countrymen. But I determined, that when the tempest of popular passion that was then raging in the country should have passed by, I would claim a hearing here-not to defend or vindicate the sentiments which the senator from Michigan had thus severely censured, for Mr. Adams himself had referred them, together with all his actions and opinions concerning slavery—not to this tribunal, or even to the present time, but to that after-age which gathers and records the impartial and ultimate judgment of mankind-but to show how just and generous he had been in his public career toward all the members of this confederacy, and how devoted to the Union of the states, and to the aggrandizement of this republic. I am thankful that the necessity for performing that duty has passed by, and that the statesman of Quincy has, earlier than I hoped received his vindication, and has received it, too, at the hands of him from whom it was justly due-the accuser himself. I regret only this-that the vindication was not as generously as it was effectually made. There are two propositions arising out of our interests in and around the gulf of Mexico, which are admitted by all our statesmen. One of them is, that the safety of the southern states requires a watchful jealousy of the presence of European powers in the southern portions of the North American continent; and the other is, that the tendency of commercial and political events invites the United States to assume and exercise a paramount influence in the affairs of the nations situated in this hemisphere; that is, to become and remain a great western continental power, balancing itself against the possible combinations of Europe. The advance of the country toward that position constitutes what, in the language of many, is called "progress;" and the position itself is what, by the same class, is called "manifest destiny." It is held by all who approve that progress, and expect that destiny, to be necessary to prevent the re-colonization of this continent by the European states, and to save the island of Cuba from passing out of the possession of decayed Spain, into that of any one of the more vigorous maritime powers of the old world. In December, 1823, James Monroe, president of the United States, in his annual message to Congress, proclaimed the first of these two policies substantially as follows: "The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European power; and while existing rights should be respected, the safety and interest of the United States require them to announce that no future colony or dominion shall, with their consent, be planted or established in any part of the North American continent." This is what is called, here and elsewhere, the Monroe doctrine, so far as it involves re-colonization. John Quincy Adams and John C. Calhoun were then members, chief members, of Monroe's administration. John Quincy Adams afterward acknowledged that he was the author of that doctrine or policy; and John C. Calhoun, on the 15th of May, 1848, in the senate, testified on that point fully. A senator had related an alleged conversation, in which Mr. Adams was represented as having said that three memorable propositions contained in that message, of which what I have quoted was one. had originated with himself. Mr. Calhoun replied, that "Mr. Adams, if he had so stated, must have referred to only the one proposition concerning re-colonization [the one now in question]," and then added as follows: "As respects that, his (Mr. Adams's) memory does not differ from mine. * * * * It originated entirely with Mr. Adams."-App. Cong. Globe, 1847-248, p. 631. Thus much for the origin of the Monroe doctrine on re-coloni |