retreating
armies into her territory ... and inasmuch as it was certain that she
was unable to make indemnity in money, we must necessarily take it in
land. Conquest was not the motive for the prosecution of the war;
satisfaction, indemnity, security, was the motive--conquest and
territory the means."[242]

Once again Douglas reviewed the origin of the war re-arguing the case
for the administration. If the arguments employed were now well-worn,
they were repeated with an incisiveness that took away much of their
staleness. This speech must be understood as complementary to that
which he had made in the House at the opening of hostilities. But he
had not changed his point of view, nor moderated his contentions. Time
seemed to have served only to make him surer of his evidence. Douglas
exhibited throughout his most conspicuous excellencies and his most
glaring defects. From first to last he was an attorney, making the
best possible defense of his client. Nothing could excel his adroit
selection of evidence, and his disposition and massing of telling
testimony. Form and presentation were admirably calculated to disarm
and convince. It goes without saying that Douglas's mental attitude
was the opposite of the scientific and historic spirit. Having a
proposition to establish, he cared only for pertinent evidence. He
rarely inquired into the character of the authorities from which he
culled his data.

That this attitude of mind and these unscholarly habits often were his
undoing, was inevitable. He was often betrayed by fallacies and hasty
inferences. The speech before us illustrates this lamentable mental
defect. With the utmost assurance Douglas pointed out that Texas had
actually extended her jurisdiction over the debatable land between the
Nueces and the Rio Grande, fixing by law the times of holding court in
the counties of San Patricio and Bexar. This was in the year 1838. The
conclusion was almost unavoidable that when Texas came into the Union,
her actual sovereignty extended to the Rio Grande. But further
examination would have shown Douglas, that the only inhabited portion
of the so-called counties were the towns on the right bank of the
Nueces: beyond, lay a waste which was still claimed by Mexico. Was he
misinformed, or had he hastily selected the usable portion of the
evidence? Once again, in his eagerness to show that Mexico, so
recently as 1842, had tacitly recognized the Rio Grande as a boundary
in her mili