spirit and precepts of a
religion which he held to be divine. As a statesman and magistrate, he
loved peace, because war was not merely injurious to national prosperity,
but because, whether successful or adverse, it was subversive of liberty.
Democracies are prone to war, and war consumes them. He favored,
therefore, all the philanthropic efforts of the age to cultivate the
spirit of peace, and looked forward with benevolent hope to the ultimate
institution of a General Congress of nations for the adjustment of their
controversies. But he was no visionary and no enthusiast. He knew that as
yet war was often inevitable--that pusillanimity provoked it, and that
national honor was national property of the highest value; because it was
the best national defence. He admitted only defensive war--but he did not
narrowly define it. He held that to be a defensive war, which was waged to
sustain what could not be surrendered or relinquished without compromising
the independence, the just influence, or even the proper dignity of the
State. Thus he had supported the war with Great Britain--thus in later
years he sustained President Jackson in his bold demonstration against
France, when that power wantonly refused to perform the stipulations it
had made in a treaty of indemnity; and thus he yielded his support to what
was thought a warlike measure of the present administration in the
diplomatic controversy with Great Britain concerning the Territory of
Oregon. The living and the dead have mutual rights, and therefore it must
be added that he considered the present war with Mexico as unnecessary,
unjust, and criminal. His opinion on this exciting question is among those
on which he referred himself to that future age which he so often
constituted the umpire between himself and his contemporaries.

With such principles on the subject of war, he regarded the establishment
of a system of national defence as a necessary policy for consolidating
the Republic. He prosecuted, therefore, on a large scale, the work of
fortification, and defended against popular opposition the institution for
the cultivation of military science, which has so recently vindicated that
early favor through the learning, valor, patriotism and humanity exhibited
by its pupils on the fields of Mexico. But with that jealousy of the
military spirit which never forsakes the wise republican statesman, he
cooperated in reducing the army to the lowest scale commensurate wit