1404 THOMAS CORWIN (1794-1865) HE speech on the Mexican War, made in the United States tor from Ohio, is one of the most remarkable ever delivered in America. Seemingly futile, and apparently leaving Corwin almost in a minority of one among the public men of his day, it gave him an assured immortality and an influence that will endure in America as long as American institutions continue to be inspired by the love of justice which animated him in that supreme effort of his life. His prophecy of civil war as a result of the acquisition of territory by conquest from Mexico was literally fulfilled. In three years after the speech was delivered, the Civil War had virtually begun when lines were drawn on the admission of California, and, the influence of such conservatives as Clay and Webster being broken, the extremists of both sections gained such an overwhelming influence, that the maintenance of peace became impossible. It is sometimes supposed that the speech retired Corwin from politics, but this was not the case. Although he was left to make his stand alone, he was really representative in making it and he had the silent sympathy perhaps of a majority, and certainly, as the result shows, of a controlling balance of power, not only in Ohio, but in the country at large. The Whig party had been disorganized by the blunders, and the vacillation of its leaders on the questions of the tariff, of nullification, of the annexation of Texas, and of Slavery as a permanent institution, but the latent sentiment of repugnance to the conquest and dismemberment of Mexico, which Corwin represented, gave the party what has been called a postmortem victory," the last it ever achieved in national politics. The Democratic party in administration had fought the war with almost no expense to the national treasury, had achieved a series of most remarkable victories, had marched triumphantly through the heart of the enemy's country, and had occupied their capital, and, without a single reverse to dim the military glory for which it had striven, had added to the country an immense domain, secured at a merely nominal price. Nevertheless, the immediate result was the defeat of the Democratic presidential ticket by the Whigs in the campaign immediately ensuing, and, hard on this reverse, the successful organization of the Republican party, whose radical sentiment was represented by James Russell Lowell, in his characteristic line, «You have got to get up airly if you hope to get 'round God." Corwin, after making his speech of 1847, and probably as a result of it, became Secretary of the Treasury in the Whig Cabinet, holding that place from 1850 to 1853, and thereafter working to assist the Republican party, which, as a result of the forces he represented in his speech of 1847, carried the election of 1860 and held power continuously for a quarter of a century. Corwin himself was elected to Congress from Ohio in 1859 and served to 1861, when President Lincoln appointed him United States Minister to Mexico, an office he held until 1864. He was born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, July 29th, 1794, and died at Washington, December 18th, 1865. In reading his impassioned protests against dismembering Mexico, it is often difficult to imagine what he lacked of the highest rank as an orator, but the speech, when read as a whole, suggests that he failed of leadership, not because of the courage and the compelling sense of justice which inspired him, but rather because of lacking the sustained force necessary for great achievement. He was content to go on record in a splendid outburst of impassioned protest against what his whole nature condemned as a wrong; and, being so content, he left to others the work of inflicting that retribution which he had seen so clearly was inevitable as a result of the operation of laws which govern human as they do universal nature. Doubtless, he lived more happily and died more contentedly than if it had been otherwise, but it is hard to see how any one who studies American history can impute his failure to maintain leadership to the speech which gave him so remarkable an opportunity for it. W. V. B. AGAINST DISMEMBERING MEXICO (From a Speech in the United States Senate, February 11th, 1847) You ou may wrest provinces from Mexico by war; you may hold them by the right of the strongest; you may rob her; but a treaty of peace to that effect with the people of Mexico, legitimately and freely made, you never will have! I thank God that it is so, as well for the sake of the Mexican people as ourselves; for, unlike the Senator from Alabama [Mr. Bagby], I do not value the life of a citizen of the United States above the lives of a hundred thousand Mexican women and children rather cold sort of philanthrophy in my judgment. For the sake of Mexico, then, as well as our own country, I rejoice that it is a an impossibility that you can obtain by treaty from her those territories, under the existing state of things. I am somewhat at a loss to know on what plan gentlemen having charge of this war intend to proceed. We hear much said of the terror of your arms. The affrighted Mexican, it is said, when you have drenched his country in blood, will sue for peace, and thus you will indeed "conquer peace." This is the heroic and savage tone in which we have heretofore been lectured by our friends on the other side of the Chamber, especially by the Senator from Michigan [Mr. Cass]. But suddenly the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations comes to us with the smooth phrase of diplomacy, made potent by the gentle suasion of gold. The Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs calls for thirty millions of money and ten thousand regular troops; these, we are assured, shall "conquer peace," if the obstinate Celt refuses to treat till we shall whip him in another field of blood. What a delightful scene in the nineteenth century of the Christian era! What an interesting sight to see these two representatives of war and peace moving in grand procession through the Halls of the Montezumas! The Senator from Michigan [Mr. Cass], red with the blood of recent slaughter, the gory spear of Achilles in his hand, and the hoarse clarion of war at his mouth, blowing a blast "so loud and deep" that the sleeping echoes of the lofty Cordilleras start from their caverns and return to the sound, till every ear from Panama to Santa Fé is deafened with the roar. By his side, with "modest mien and downcast look," comes the Senator from Arkansas [Mr. Sevier], covered from head to foot with a gorgeous robe, glittering and embossed with three millions of shining gold, putting to shame "the wealth of Ormus or of Ind." The olive of Minerva graces his brow; in his right hand is the delicate rebeck, from which are breathed in Lydian measure notes "that tell of naught but love and peace." I fear very much that you will scarcely be able to explain to the simple mind of the half-civilized Mexican the puzzling dualism of this scene, at once gorgeous and grotesque. Sir, I scarcely understand the meaning of all this myself. If we are to vindicate our rights by battles-in bloody fields of war let us do it. If that is not the plan, why, then, let us call back our armies into our own territory, and propose a treaty with Mexico, based upon the proposition that money is better for her and land for us. Thus we can treat Mexico like an equal, and do honor to ourselves. But what is it you ask? You have taken from Mexico one-fourth of her territory, and you now propose to run a line comprehending about another third, and for what? I ask, Mr. President, for what? What has Mexico got from you, for parting with two-thirds of her domain? She has given you ample redress for every injury of which you have complained. She has submitted to the award of your commissioners, and, up to the time of the rupture with Texas, faithfully paid it. And for all that she has lost (not through or by you, but which loss has been your gain), what requital do we, her strong, rich, robust neighbor, make? Do we send our missionaries there "to point the way to heaven" ? Or do we send the schoolmasters to pour daylight into her dark plans, to aid her infant strength to conquer, and reap the fruit of the independence herself alone had won? No, no; none of this do we. But we send regiments, storm towns, and our colonels prate of liberty in the midst of the solitudes their ravages have made. They proclaim the empty forms of social compact to a people bleeding and maimed with wounds received in defending their hearthstones against the invasion of these very men who shoot them down and then exhort them to be free. Your chaplains of the navy throw away the New Testament and seize a bill of rights. The Rev. Don Walter Colton, I see, abandons the Sermon on the Mount and betakes himself to Blackstone and Kent, and is elected a justice of the peace! He takes military possession of some town in California, and instead of teaching the plan of the atonement and the way of salvation to the poor ignorant Celt, he presents a Colt's pistol to his ear and calls on him to take "trial by jury and habeas corpus," or nine bullets in his head. Ah, Mr. President, are you not the light of the earth, if not its salt? You, you are indeed opening the eyes of the blind in Mexico with a most emphatic and exoteric power. Sir, if all this were not a mournful truth it would be the ne plus ultra of the ridiculous. But, sir, let us see what, as the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations explains it, we are to get by the combined processes of conquest and treaty. What is the territory, Mr. President, which you propose to wrest from Mexico? It is consecrated to the heart of the Mexican by many a well-fought battle with his old Castilian master. His Bunker Hills, and Saratogas, and Yorktowns are there! The Mexican can say, "There I bled for liberty! and shall I sur render that consecrated home of my affections to the AngloSaxon invaders? What do they want with it? They have Texas already. They have possessed themselves of the territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. What else do they want? To what shall I point my children as memorials of that independence which I bequeath to them, when those battlefields shall have passed from my possession ? » Sir, had one come and demanded Bunker Hill of the people of Massachusetts, had England's lion ever showed himself there, is there a man over thirteen and under ninety who would not have been ready to meet him? Is there a river on this continent that would not have run red with blood? Is there a field but would have been piled high with unburied bones of slaughtered Americans before these consecrated battlefields of liberty should have been wrested from us? But this same American goes into a sister Republic, and says to poor, weak Mexico, "Give up your territory, you are unworthy to possess it; I have got one-half already, and all I ask of you is to give up the other!" England might as well, in the circumstances I have described, have come and demanded of us, "Give up the Atlantic slope-give up this trifling territory from the Alleghany Mountains to the sea; it is only from Maine to St. Mary's-only about one-third of your Republic, and the least interesting portion of it." What would be the response? They would say we must give this up to John Bull. Why? "He wants room. The Senator from Michigan says he must have this. worthy Christian brother; on what principle of justice? "I want room!" Why, my With twenty Sir, look at this pretense of want of room. millions of people, you have about one thousand millions of acres of land, inviting settlement by every conceivable argument, bringing them down to a quarter of a dollar an acre, and allowing every man to squat where he pleases. But the Senator from Michigan says we will be two hundred millions in a few years, and we want room. If I were a Mexican I would tell you, "Have you not room enough in your own country to bury your dead? If you come into mine, we will greet you with bloody hands, and welcome you to hospitable graves. Why, says the Chairman of this Committee on Foreign Relations, it is the most reasonable thing in the world! We ought to have the Bay of San Francisco! Why? Because it is the best |