troops for the further prosecution of the war against
Mexico; and we have been informed that that measure is shortly to be
followed, in this branch of the legislature, by a bill to raise twenty
regiments of volunteers for the same service. I was desirous of
expressing my opinions against the object of these bills, against the
supposed necessity which leads to their enactment, and against the
general policy which they are apparently designed to promote.
Circumstances personal to myself, but beyond my control, compelled me to
forego, on that day, the execution of that design. The bill now before
the Senate is a measure for raising money to meet the exigencies of the
government, and to provide the means, as well as for other things, for
the pay and support of these thirty regiments.

Sir, the scenes through which we have passed, and are passing, here, are
various. For a fortnight the world supposes we have been occupied with
the ratification of a treaty of peace, and that within these walls, "the
world shut out," notes of peace, and hopes of peace, nay, strong
assurances of peace, and indications of peace, have been uttered to
console and to cheer us. Sir, it has been over and over stated, and is
public, that we have ratified a treaty, of course a treaty of peace,
and, as the country has been led to suppose, not of an uncertain, empty,
and delusive peace, but of real and substantial, a gratifying and an
enduring peace, a peace which would stanch the wounds of war, prevent
the further flow of human blood, cut off these enormous expenses, and
return our friends, and our brothers, and our children, if they be yet
living, from the land of slaughter, and the land of still more dismal
destruction by climate, to our firesides and our arms.

Hardly have these halcyon notes ceased upon our ears, when, in resumed
public session, we are summoned to fresh warlike operations; to create
a new army of thirty thousand men for the further prosecution of the
war; to carry the war, in the language of the President, still more
dreadfully into the vital parts of the enemy, and to press home, by fire
and sword, the claims we make, and the grounds which we insist upon,
against our fallen, prostrate, I had almost said, our ignoble enemy. If
we may judge from the opening speech of the honorable Senator from
Michigan, and from other speeches that have been made upon this floor,
there has been no time, from the commencement of the war, when it has