ss of the United States, by solemn act,
was to authorize the State of Arkansas to repudiate her solemn
obligations. Recollect, this was not a case of Mississippi bonds, of
which State Mr. Davis was then a Representative in Congress, but it was
the case of Arkansas, another State, having on the floor of Congress its
own Senators and Representatives. But it is a very remarkable fact, that
Mississippi, for many years, had then repudiated her own bonds, that Mr.
Davis justified and sustained that repudiation, and that now he appears
on behalf of Arkansas to induce Congress, by solemn act, to authorize
that State to repudiate her obligations also. Thus was it that Mr. Davis
travelled out of his own State into another, to make the Government of
the United States a party to the repudiation of her bonds by the State
of Arkansas. Let me not be misunderstood. I do not mean to say, that Mr.
Davis proposed or intended that the Government of the United States
should repudiate its faith, plighted to the British Court of Chancery,
to make good this fund. That is not the question. It is entirely
collateral. But, what he did do was this, and there stands his own
resolution, offered by himself in the Congress of the United States,
which, if carried into effect, would have released the State of Arkansas
from these bonds, or, in Mr. Davis's own words, 'The said State shall be
and is hereby declared to be _absolved from the promises_ on the face
of her bonds, by which the said State heretofore _pledged her faith_
for the due payment of the principal and interest of said bonds.'

Why should Congress release Arkansas from the payment of her State
obligations? Why thus justify the repudiation of her bonds? Can any
other reason be assigned than this, that Mr. Jefferson Davis was looking
to the repudiated bonds of Mississippi, and was endeavoring to establish
a precedent, by solemn act of the Congress, by which, if adopted as a
principle, Mississippi, and every other defaulting State, could be
justified in the repudiation of their bonds also. It is to the credit of
the Congress of the United States, that Mr. Davis's resolution was
rejected without a division, and without a count. When it is
recollected, that at this very time, I, as Secretary of the Treasury,
was appropriating the five per cent. found payable by the Government to
the State of Arkansas toward the liquidation of these bonds against the
protest of that State, the further meaning of