praises bestowed upon our government. Beware how you forfeit
this exalted character. Beware how you give a fatal sanction, in this
infant period of our Republic, scarcely yet twoscore years old, to
military insubordination. Remember that Greece had her Alexander, Rome
her Caesar, England her Cromwell, France her Bonaparte, and that if we
would escape the rock on which they split we must avoid their errors.

How different has been the treatment of General Jackson and that
modest, but heroic young man, a native of one of the smallest States in
the Union, who achieved for his country, on Lake Erie, one of the most
glorious victories of the late war. In a moment of passion he forgot
himself and offered an act of violence which was repented of as soon as
perpetrated. He was tried, and suffered the judgment to be pronounced
by his peers. Public justice was thought not even then to be
satisfied. The press and Congress took up the subject. My honorable
friend from Virginia, Mr. Johnson, the faithful and consistent sentinel
of the law and of the Constitution, disapproved in that instance, as he
does in this, and moved an inquiry. The public mind remained agitated
and unappeased until the recent atonement, so honorably made by the
gallant commodore. And is there to be a distinction between the
officers of the two branches of the public service? Are former
services, however eminent, to preclude even inquiry into recent
misconduct? Is there to be no limit, no prudential bounds to the
national gratitude? I am not disposed to censure the President for not
ordering a court of inquiry, or a general court-martial. Perhaps,
impelled by a sense of gratitude, he determined, by anticipation, to
extend to the general that pardon which he had the undoubted right to
grant after sentence. Let us not shrink from our duty. Let us assert
our constitutional powers, and vindicate the instrument from military
violation.

I hope gentlemen will deliberately survey the awful isthmus on which we
stand. They may bear down all opposition; they may even vote the
general the public thanks; they may carry him triumphantly through this
House. But, if they do, in my humble judgment, it will be a triumph of
the principle of insubordination, a triumph of the military over the
civil authority, a triumph over the powers of this House, a triumph
over the Constitution of the land. And I pray most devoutly to Heaven
that it may not prove, in its ul