e Washington
sat, and so remembering, let him answer as Washington would answer. As
a nation should not, and the Almighty will not, be evaded, so let him
attempt no evasion--no equivocation. And if, so answering, he can show
that the soil was ours where the first blood of the war was shed,--that
it was not within an inhabited country, or, if within such, that the
inhabitants had submitted themselves to the civil authority of Texas or
of the United States, and that the same is true of the site of Fort Brown,
then I am with him for his justification. In that case I shall be most
happy to reverse the vote I gave the other day. I have a selfish motive
for desiring that the President may do this--I expect to gain some votes,
in connection with the war, which, without his so doing, will be of
doubtful propriety in my own judgment, but which will be free from the
doubt if he does so. But if he can not or will not do this,--if on any
pretence or no pretence he shall refuse or omit it then I shall be fully
convinced of what I more than suspect already that he is deeply conscious
of being in the wrong; that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood
of Abel, is crying to heaven against him; that originally having some
strong motive--what, I will not stop now to give my opinion concerning
to involve the two countries in a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny
by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military
glory,--that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood, that
serpent's eye that charms to destroy,--he plunged into it, and was swept
on and on till, disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which
Mexico might be subdued, he now finds himself he knows not where. How like
the half insane mumbling of a fever dream is the whole war part of his
late message! At one time telling us that Mexico has nothing whatever that
we can get--but territory; at another showing us how we can support the
war by levying contributions on Mexico. At one time urging the national
honor, the security of the future, the prevention of foreign interference,
and even the good of Mexico herself as among the objects of the war; at
another telling us that "to reject indemnity, by refusing to accept a
cession of territory, would be to abandon all our just demands, and to
wage the war, bearing all its expenses, without a purpose or definite
object." So then this national honor, security of the future, and
everything but territ