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tria; and was admitted into a hussar regiment on the confines of Turkey, without commission, but with the pay, clothing, and ration of a corporal; with the privilege of associating with officers, and a right to expect a commission if he proved himself worthy. These are the exact terms, substituting sergeant for corporal, on which cadets were received into the army, and attached to companies, in Washington's time. Young Thorn proved himself to be worthy; received the commission; rose in five years to the rank of first lieutenant; when, the war breaking out between the United States and Mexico, he asked leave to resign, was permitted to du so, and came home to ask service in the regular army of the United States. His application was made through Senator Cass and others, he only asking for the lowest place in the gradation of officers, so as not to interfere with the right of promotion in any one. The application was refused on the ground of illegality, he not having graduated at West Point. Afterwards I took up the case of the young man, got President Polk to nominate him, sustained the nomination before the Senate; and thus got a start for a young officer who soon advanced himself, receiving two brevets for gallant conduct and several wounds in the great battles of Mexico; and was afterwards drowned, conducting a detachment to California, in crossing his men over the great Colorado of the West.

due advantages to some parts of the commu nity over the rest. Officers can now rise from the ranks in all the countries of Europe-in Austria, Russia, Prussia, as well as in Great Britain, of which there are constant and illustrious examples. Twenty-three marshals of the empire rose from the ranks-among them Ney, Massena, Oudinot, Murat, Soult, Bernadotte. In Great Britain, notwithstanding her Royal Military College, the largest part of the commissions are now given to citizens in civil life, and to non-commissioned officers. A return lately made to parliament shows that in eighteen years from 1830 to 1847-the number of citizens who received commissions, was 1,266; the number of non-commissioned officers promoted, was 446; and the number of cadets appointed from the Royal Military College was 473. These citizen appointments were exclusive of those who purchased commissions-another mode for citizens to get into the British army, and which largely increases the number in that class of appointments-sales of commissions, with the approbation of the government, being there valid. But exclusive of purchased commissions during the same period of eighteen years, the number of citizens appointed, and of noncommissioned officers promoted, were, together, nearly four times the number of government cadets appointed. Now, how has it been in our se.vice during any equal number of years, or all the years, since the Military Academy got into Thus Thorn was with difficulty saved. The full operation under the act of 1812? I confine other case was that of the famous Kit Carson the inquiry to the period subsequent to the war of also nominated by President Polk. I was not 1812, for during that war there were field and present to argue his case when he was rejected, general officers in service who came from civil and might have done no good if I had been, the life, and who procured the promotion of many place being held to belong to a cadet that was meritorious non-commissioned officers; the act waiting for it. Carson was rejected because he not having at first been construed to exclude did not come through the West Point gate. Bethem. How many? Few or none, of citizens ap-ing a patriotic man, he has since led many expointed, or non-commisioned officers promoted peditions of his countrymen, and acted as guide -only in new or temporary corps-the others to the United States officers, in New Mexico, being held to belong to the government cadets. where he lives. He was a guide to the detachI will mention two instances coming within ment that undertook to rescue the unfortunate my own knowledge, to illustrate the difficulty Mrs. White, whose fate excited so much comof obtaining a commission for a citizen in the miseration at the time; and I have the evidence regular regiments-one the case of the late Capt. that if he had been commander, the rescue would Hermann Thorn, son of Col. Thorn, of New- have been effected, and the unhappy woman York. The young man had applied for the place saved from massacre. of cadet at West Point; and not being able to obtain it, and having a strong military turn, he sought service in Europe, and found it in Aus

This rule of appointment (the graduates of the academy to take all) may now be considered the law of the land, so settled by construction

All was right in the time of Washington, and afterwards, up to the act of 1812. None became cadets then but those who had a stomach for the hardships, as well as taste for the pleasures

and senatorial acquiescence; and consequently that no American citizen is to enter the regular army except through the gate of the United States Military Academy; and few can reach that gate except through the weight of a family of a soldier's life—who, like the Young Norval connection, a political influence, or the instrumentality of a friend at court. Genius in obscurity has no chance; and the whole tendency of the institution is to make a governmental, and not a national army. Appointed cadet by the President, nominated officer by him, promoted upon his nomination, holding commission at his pleasure, receiving his orders as law, looking to him as the fountain of honor, the source of pre-sions and be provided for by the government; ferment, and the dispenser of agrecable and profitable employment-these cadet officers must naturally feel themselves independent of the people, and dependent upon the President; and be irresistibly led to acquire the habits and felings which, in all ages, have rendered regular armies obnoxious to popular governments.

on the Grampian Hills, had felt the soldier's blood stir in their veins, and longed to be off to the scene of war's alarms, instead of standing guard over flocks and herds. Cadets were not then sent to a superb school, with the emoluments of officers, to remain four years at public expense, receiving educations for civil as well as military life, with the right to have commis

students to the Military Academy; and be subject to the established regulations thereof."

or with the secret intent to quit the service as soon as they could do better-which most of them soon do. The act of 1812 did the mischief; and that insidiously and by construction, while ostensibly keeping up the old idea of cadets serving with their companies, and only detached when the President pleased, to get inThe instinctive sagacity of the people has struction at the academy. It runs thus: "The long since comprehended all this, and conceived cadets heretofore appointed in the service of the an aversion to the institution which has mani- United States, whether of artillery, cavalry, riflefested itself in many demonstrations against it men, or infantry, or may be in future appointed -sometimes in Congress, sometimes in the or hereinafter provided, shall at no time exceed State legislatures, always to be met, and trium-250; that they may be attached, at the discrephantly met, by adducing Washington as the tion of the President of the United States as father and founder of the institution.-No adduction could be more fallacious. Washington is no more the father of the present West Point The deception of this clause is in keeping up than he is of the present Mount Vernon. The the old idea of these cadets being with their West Point of his day was a school of engineer- companies, and by the judgment of the Presiing and artillery, and nothing more; the cadet of dent detached from their companies, and attachhis day was a young soldier, attached to a com-ed, as students, to the Military Academy. The pany, and serving with it in the field and in the President is to exercise a discretion," by camp, "with the pay, clothing, and ration of ser- which the cadet is transferred for a while from geant" (act of 1794); and in the intervals of ac- his company to the school, to be there as a stutive service, if he had shown an inclination for the dent; that is to say, like a student, but still profession, and a capacity for its higher branch-retaining his original character of quasi officer es, then he was sent, in the "discretion" of the President, to West Point, to take instruction in those higher branches, namely, artillery and engineering, and nothing more. All the drills both of officer and private-all the camp duty-all the trainings in the infantry, the cavalry, and the rifle —were then left to be taught in the field and the camp-a better school than any academy; and under officers who were to lead them into action-better teachers than any school-room professors. And all without any additional expense to the United States.

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in his company. This change from camp to school, upon the face of the act, was to be, as formerly, a question for the President to decide, dependent for its solution upon the military indications of the young man's character, and his capacity for the higher branches of the service; and this only permissive in the President. He "may" attach, &c. Now, all this is illusion. Cadets are not sent to companies, whe ther of artillery, infantry, cavalry, or riflemen. The President exercises no discretion" about detaching them from their company and attach

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ing them as students. They are appointed as there were only about half a dozen then in serstudents, and go right off to school, and get vice; so that this great national establishment four years' education at the public expense, is mainly a school for the gratuitous education whether they have any taste for military life, or of those who have influence to get there. The not. That is the first large deception under act provides that these students are to be inthe act: others follow, until it is all deception. structed in the lower as well as the higher Another clause says, the cadet shall "sign arti- branches of the military art; they are to be cles, with the consent of his parent or guardian," trained and taught all the duties incident to to serve five years, unless sooner discharged." a regular camp." Now, all this training and This is deceptive, suggesting a service which has teaching, and regular camp duty, was done in no existence, and taking a bond for what is not Washington's time in the regular camp itself, to be performed. It is the language of a sol- and about as much better done as substance is dier's enlistment, where there is no enlistment; better than form, and reality better than imitaand was a fiction invented to constitutionalize tion, with the advantage of training each officer the act. The language makes the cadet an en- to the particular arm of the service to which he listed soldier, bound to serve the United States was to belong, and in which he would be exthe usual soldier's term, when this paper sol-pected to excel. dier-this apparent private in the ranks-is in Gratuitous instruction to the children of the reality a gentleman student, with the emolu- living is a vicious principle, which has no founments of an officer, obtaining education at pub-dation in reason or precedent. Such instruclic expense, instead of carrying a musket in the tion, to the children of those who have died ranks. The whole clause is an illusion, to use for their country, is as old as the first ages of no stronger term, and put in for a purpose the Grecian republics, as we learn from the which the legislative history of the day well oration which Thucydides puts into the mouth explains; and that was, to make the act consti- of Pericles at the funeral of the first slain of tutional on its face, and enable it to get through the Peloponnesian war: and as modern as the the forms, and become a law. There were mem- present British Military Royal Academy; which, bers who denied the constitutional right of although royal, makes the sons of the living Congress to establish this national eleemosy- nobility and gentry pay; and only gives gratunary university; and others who doubted the itous instruction and support to the sons of policy and expediency of officering the army in those who have died in the public service. And this manner. To get over these objections, the so, I believe, of other European military schools. selection of the students took the form, in the statute, of a soldier's enlistment; and in fact they sign articles of enlistment, like recruits, but only to appease the constitution and satisfy scruples; and I have myself, in the early periods of my service in the Senate, seen the original articles brought into secret session and exhibited, to prove that the student was an enlisted soldier, and not a student, and therefore constitutionally in service. The term of five years being found to be no term of service at all, as the student might quit the service within a year after his education, which many of them did, it was extended to eight; but still without effect, except in procuring a few years of unwilling service from those who mean to quit; as the greater part do. I was told by an officer in the time of the Mexican war that, of thirty-six cadets who had graduated and been commissioned at the same time with himself,

These are vital objections to the institution; but they do not include the high practical evil which the wisdom of Mr. Macon discerned, and with which this chapter opened—namely, a monopoly of the appointments. That is effected in the fourth section, not openly and in direct terms (for that would have rendered the act unconstitutional on its face), but by the use of words which admit the construction and the practice, and therefore make the law, which now is, the legal right of the cadet to receive a com mission who has received the academical diplo ma for going through all the classes. This gives to these cadets a monopoly of the offices, to the exclusion of citizens and non-commissioned officers; and it deprives the Senate of its constitutional share in making these appointments. By a "regulation," the academic professors are to recommend at each annual examination, five cadets in each class, on account of their particu

make further provision for two hundred and fifty students at a national military and civil university. As now constituted, our academy is an imitation of the European military schools, which create governmental and not national of

create military genius-and which block up the way against genius-especially barefooted genius-such as this country abounds in, and which the field alone can develope. "My children, "-the French generals were accustomed to say to the young conscripts during the Revolution-"My children, there are some captains among you, and the first campaign will show who they are, and they shall have their places." And such expressions, and the system in which they are founded, have brought out the military genius of the country in every age and nation, and produced such officers as the schools can never make.

lar merit, whom the President is to attach to companies. This expunges the Senate, opens the door to that favoritism which natural parents find it hard to repress among their own children, and which is proverbial among teachers. By the constitution, and for a great pub-ficers-which make routine officers, but cannot lic purpose, and not as a privilege of the body, the Senate is to have an advising and consenting power over the army appointments: by practice and construction it is not the President and Senate, but the President and the academy who appoint the officers. The President sends the student to the academy: the academy gives a diploma, and that gives him a right to the commission-the Senate's consent being an obligatory form. The President and the academy are the real appointing power, and the Senate nothing but an office for the registration of their appointments. And thus the Senate, by construction of a statute and its own acquiescence, has ceased to have control over these appointments: and the whole body of army officers is fast becoming the mere creation of the President and of the military academy. The effect of this mode of appointment will be to create a governmental, instead of a national army; and the effect of this exclusion of non-commissioned officers and privates from promotion, will be to degrade the regular soldier into a mercenary, serving for pay without affection for a country which dishonors him. Hence the desertions and the correlative evil of diminished enlistments on the part of native-born Americans.

Courts of law have invented many fictions to facilitate trials, but none to give jurisdiction. The jurisdiction must rest upon fact, and so should the constitutionality of an act of Congress; but this act of 1812 rests its constitutionality upon fictions. It is a fiction to suppose that the cadet is an enlisted soldier-a fiction to suppose that he is attached to a company and thence transferred, in the "discretion" of the President, to the academy-a fiction to suppose that he is constitutionally appointed in the army by the President and Senate. The very title of the act is fictitious, giving not the least hint, not even in the convenient formula of "other purposes" of the great school it was about to create.

It is entitled, "An act making further provision for the corps of engineers; " when five

out of the six sections which it contains go to

The adequate remedy for these evils is to repeal the act of 1812, and remit the academy to its condition in Washington's time, and as enlarged by several acts up to 1812. Then no one would wish to become a cadet but he that had the soldier in him, and meant to stick to his profession, and work his way up from the "pay, ration, and clothing of a sergeant," to the rank of field-officer or general. Struggles for West Point appointments would then cease, and the boys on the "Grampian Hills" would have their chance. This is the adequate remedy. If that repeal cannot be had, then a subordinate and half-way remedy may be found in giving to citizens and non-commissioned officers a share of the commissions, equal to what they get in the British service, and restoring the Senate to its constitutional right of rejecting as well as confirming cadet nominations.

These are no new views with me. I have kept aloof from the institution. During the almost twenty years that I was at the head of the Senate's Committee on Military Affairs, and would have been appropriately a "visitor” at West Point at some of the annual examinations, I never accepted the function, and have never even seen the place. I have been always against the institution as now established, and have long intended to bring my views of it before the country; and now fulfil that intention.

CHAPTER LVI.

BANK OF THE UNITED STATES.-NON-RENEWAL

OF CHARTER.

exist in our country. But I knew it was not sufficient to pull down: we must build up also. The men of 1811 had committed a fatal error, when most wisely refusing to re-charter the institution of that day, they failed to provide a substitute for its currency, and fell back upon the local banks, whose inadequacy speedily made a call for the re-establishment of a national bank. I felt that error must be avoided-that another currency of general circulation must be provided to replace its notes; and I saw that currency in the gold coin of the constitution, then an ideal currency in the United States, having been totally banished for many years by the erroneous valuation adopted in the time of Gen. Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury. I proposed to revive that currency, and brought it forward at the conclusion of my first speech (February, 1831) against the Bank, thus:

FROM the time of President Jackson's intimations against the recharter of the Bank, in the annual message of 1829, there had been a ceaseless and pervading activity in behalf of the Bank in all parts of the Union, and in all forms —in the newspapers, in the halls of Congress, in State legislatures, even in much of the periodical literature, in the elections, and in the conciliation of presses and individuals—all conducted in a way to operate most strongly upon the public mind, and to conclude the question in the forum of the people before it was brought forward in the national legislature. At the same time but little was done, or could be done on the other side. The current was all setting one way. I determined to raise a voice against it in the Senate, and made several efforts before I succeeded—the thick array of the Bank friends throwing every obstacle in my way, and even friends holding me back for the regular course, which was to wait until the application for the renewed charter to be presented; and then to oppose it. I foresaw that, if this course was followed, the Bank would triumph without a contest-that she would wait until a majority was installed in both Houses of Congress-then present her application-hear a few barren speeches in opposition;-and then gallop the renewed charter through. In the session of 1830, '31, I succeeded in creating the first opportunity of delivering a speech against it; it was done a little irregularly by submitting a negative resolution against the renewal of the charter, and taking the opportunity while asking leave to introduce the resolution, to speak fully against the re-charter. My mind was fixed up-mand the money of the world; that is to say, on the character of the speech which I should make-one which should avoid the beaten tracks of objection, avoid all settled points, avoid the problem of constitutionality-and take up the institution in a practical sense, as having too much power over the people and the government,—over business and politics-and too much disposed to exercise that power to the prejudice of the freedom and equality which should prevail in a republic, to be allowed to

"I am willing to see the charter expire, withbank. I am willing to see the currency of the out providing any substitute for the present federal government left to the hard money mentioned and intended in the constitution; I am willing to have a hard money government, as that of France has been since the time of assignats and mandats. Every species of paper might be left to the State authorities, unrecognized by the federal government, and only touched by it for its own convenience when filled France with the precious metals, when equivalent to gold and silver. Such a currency England, with her overgrown bank, was a prey to all the evils of unconvertible paper. It furnished money enough for the imperial governthree times more numerous, and the expense ment when the population of the empire was of government twelve times greater, than the population and expenses of the United States; and, when France possessed no mines of gold or command the specie of other countries. The silver, and was destitute of the exports which United States possess gold mines, now yielding half a million per annum, with every prospect of equalling those of Peru. But this is perior to mines, namely, the exports which comnot the best dependence. We have what is su

the food which sustains life, and the raw materials which sustain manufactures. Gold and suits the men of middle property and the worksilver is the best currency for a republic; it ing people best; and if I was going to establish a working man's party, it should be on the basis of hard money: a hard money party, against a paper party.”

In the speech which I delivered, I quoted copiously from British speakers-not the brilliant rhetoricians, but the practical, sensible, upright

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