incy Adams was the champion of this cause, as of
that against the Gag Resolutions, and, again and again, it was through
him that the memorials were presented.

Objections were frequently made to the presentation of these
memorials. On December 19, Legare of South Carolina said: "As sure as
you live, Sir, if this course is permitted to go on, the sun of this
Union will go down--it will go down in blood and go down to rise no
more. I will vote unhesitatingly against nefarious designs like
these. They are treason."[435] In 1839, while the House was
considering an outfit for a charge d'affaires to Holland, Slade of
Vermont began a speech in favor of appointing a diplomatic agent to
Haiti. He spoke until the House refused to hear the continuation of
his remarks.[436] A resolution was offered later to appoint a
commercial agent to Haiti, but it was ruled out of order.[437] In the
same year, the Committee on Foreign Affairs asked to be discharged
from the "further consideration of sundry memorials asking for the
opening of international relations with Haiti."[438] In spite of this
request, the next year, 1840, petitions urging the recognition were
continued.[439] That Garrison was active in this agitation of the
abolition period is shown by the statement of Wise, of Virginia: "it
is but part and parcel of the English scheme set on foot by Garrison,
and to bring abolition as near as possible...."[440]

In 1844, the Committee on Foreign Affairs made a report on the subject
of commercial intercourse with the republic of Haiti. Ten thousand
copies were ordered to be printed.[441] As a result of this report,
and the agitation of years back, a commission was appointed to Haiti
in 1844 and again in 1851.[442] In the latter year, an invitation was
made to the United States Government to join France and England in an
offensive interference in Haiti.[443] The correspondence and the
reports of one of the American Commissioners, Robert Walsh, was made
public in 1852, and they were widely discussed.[444] The reports were
unjust and unfair estimations even of the Haitian commercial
situation. A reliable estimate of the trade of Haiti with the United
States, at this time, places the trade as equal to the total trade of
Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, the Cisalpine Republics and Peru with
the United States. Mexico, with more than sixteen times as large a
population as Haiti, exported from the United States in 1851, $330,000
less than Haiti a