two-thirds of the votes in one house, and nearly two-thirds in the other. It so happened that the bill has not passed both Houses at the same session, or during the same Congress, until now, and, therefore, it was never before sent to the President for his approval. Among the Democrats who have voted on this bill at one time, or at another, I find the names of Borland, of Arkansas; Downs, of Louisiana; Norris, of New Hampshire; Rusk, of Texas; Shields, of Illinois; Soulé, of Louisiana; Sturgeon, of Pennsylvania, and others of the Senate; and in the House, Bissell, of Illinois; Cobb, of Alabama; Gilmore, of Pennsylvania; Ingersoll, of Connecticut; Peaslee, of New Hampshire; Polk, of Tennessee; Churchwell, of Tennessee; Dawson, of Pennsylvania; Florence, of Pennsylvania; Seymour, of Connecticut; Smith, of Alabama; Harris, of Alabama; Beale, of Virginia; and many others. I mention these things to show that if there was error in passing this bill, it was an error very common among Democrats. Nor can it be said that the constitutional question was not raised. It was raised in both Houses, and as fully discussed as senators and representatives chose to discuss it. I speak on this subject after a careful inspection of the record. Mr. Borland defended the constitutionality of the bill in the Senate, and he has been sent abroad. Messrs. Soulé, Peaslee, and others of its friends, have received the highest marks of the President's consideration and confidence. The President refers to two acts heretofore passed by Congress, which he admits furnish precedents for the passage of this bill. One of these is an act passed March 3, 1819, granting a township of land to the deaf and dumb, in Connecticut; and the other is an act passed April 5, 1826, making a like grant to the Kentucky asylum for the education of the same unfortunate class. It is worthy of remark that the lands thus granted were necessarily located outside of the states of Kentucky and Connecticut. And were in this, as in all other respects, granted, just as we propose to grant these lands, and for an object very similar to this, not, I think, so praiseworthy. 66 The President admits that these are precedents, but adds, they should serve rather as a warning than as an inducement to tread in the same path." I entertain the highest respect for the opinions of President Pierce; but he will excuse me if I say that precedents set by such men as James Monroe, John C. Calhoun, Wm. H. Crawford, James K. Polk, James Buchanan, Wm. R. King, Edward Livingston, Levi Woodbury, Geo. McDuffie, and others, do not serve as warnings to me, unless it be the warning that the beacon gives to the mariner. Those great men were bright and shining lights; their example has illumined the path we are now treading. Mr. Monroe was president, and approved the act of 1819. Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Crawford were members of his cabinet, and all the others, as senators or representatives, voted for one or the other of the bills spoken of by the President. If, in following the lead of Democratic presidents, Democratic secretaries, ambassadors, and senators, who have attained to the highest honors in the republic, and enjoyed the highest places in the confidence of the people, I have been led into error, I hope my error will find an easy pardon at the hands of my constituents. I have now, Mr. President, performed an unpleasant duty. It would have given me great pleasure to have found my vote sustained by the President; but I could neither abandon the vote I had given, nor the convictions which justified me in giving it, because the President refused to sustain what I had done. I have felt called upon to defend my course. This I have done; how perfectly, is left to time and the public judgment to decide. It has been my studied purpose to avoid everything that by possibility could be construed into an attack upon the conduct of the President. If he is right, the Constitution has been happily saved from violation. If he is wrong, time will correct his error. But whether right or wrong, I have not a word to say against the purity of his motives. He had his convictions, and he has acted on them, and I am not the man to insinuate that he has been moved thereto by any other than the highest considerations of duty to the country, and devotion to the Constitution. ALIEN SUFFRAGE. SPEECH IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, MAY 25, 1854, ON THE INTENDING to vote for the amendment of the senator from Maryland, I wish to assign very briefly the reasons why I shall do so, advertising the Senate, however, that I have no speech to make on this bill. The fifth section of the bill provides :- "That every free white male inhabitant above the age of twenty-one years, who shall be an actual resident of said territory, and shall possess the qualifications hereinafter prescribed, shall be entitled to vote at the first election, and shall be eligible to any office within the said territory, but the qualifications of voters, and of holding office, at all subsequent elections, shall be such as shall be prescribed by the Legislative Assembly: Provided, That the right of suffrage and of holding office shall be exercised only by citizens of the United States❞— Now comes the part proposed to be stricken out: "and those who shall have declared on oath their intention to become such, and shall have taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States and the provisions of this act: And provided further, That no officer, soldier, seaman, or marine, or other person in the army or navy of the United States, or attached to troops in the service of the United States, shall be allowed to vote or hold office in said territory by reason of being on service therein." If the section passes as it stands, it is, beyond all question, that foreigners in the territory, and not being in the service of the United States, may vote, no difference what may have been their character abroad, or what their inducement to come here-however discreditable to the country from which they came, they have nothing to do but to make a bare declaration of their intention to become a citizen, and take an oath to support the Constitution, to entitle them to vote; while American citizens, who have been so from their birth, and whose characters are above reproach, if they are in the military service of their country in these territories, will, by the same act, be denied the right to vote. I ask senators to pause before they legislate to give foreigners rights which are denied to our own citizens upon American soil. How will this act operate practically, if you pass it in the words in which it now stands? The officers commanding your army, the soldiers who are serving under your banner, and who are placed upon your frontiers to defend your women and children from the tomahawk of the savage, will be denied the elective franchise, while the thousands and tens of thousands who are pouring upon our shores from every part of God's habitable globe, will be entitled to that sacred privilege. Why, sir, if Santa Anna should be expelled from Mexico to-morrow, as he may be, and should take up his residence in one of these territories, he may vote the day after he gets there, if this bill passes; and Winfield Scott, whose name is emblazoned on every page of his country's history, and whose impress is on every battle-field from the St. Lawrence to the city of Mexico, if he was there stationed at the order of the President, would not be allowed the same privilege. I ask honorable senators if it is not so, that by the proposed legislation we are about to say to the General-in-chief of the American army, you shall not vote in a territory conquered by your arms; and to the deserter from the enemy's camp, you may vote! Shall we do this? Shall we say to the venerable soldier who has served his country for forty years, who has fought more battles, and fought them better than any living man, shall we say to Winfield Scott, who, whatever may be his faults as a politician, deserves his country's gratitude, you shall not vote in Kansas or Nebraska; and then shall we say to the outcasts of the Old World, to the wanderers and vagabonds, to the prison-birds and spawn of infamy, you may vote? I hope not. Let no man charge that I am hostile to foreigners. We invite them to our shores, and I would receive them kindly and treat them generously; but when I am asked to stand up in the American Senate and give to foreigners the right of suffrage, and in the same breath deny it to American citizens, I say plainly I cannot do it. I have heard before of putting foreigners on equal footing with Americans, but this is the first time when I have been called upon to give them an advantage. And what is the reason assigned? Look at the bill. No officer or soldier of the army shall be allowed to vote in the territory by reason of his being on service there. It is sufficient for his exclusion from the polls that he bears his country's arms, that he encounters the dangers of the camp, and the perils of the battle-field. But a foreigner-what of him? He may spurn your arms, insult your flag, spit upon your laws; and then say he means to become a citizen, and swear to support your Constitution, and you let him vote. A thousand soldiers, with Scott or Wool at their head, may be ordered to Nebraska the day after this bill passes, and not one of them can vote. By reason of being on service in the territory they are excluded; while a thousand foreigners, just landed, may vote, and the next day abandon the territory for ever. For, mark you, they are to declare their intention to become citizens of the United States-not of Nebraska. Just think of Scott or Wool, at the head of a thousand Americans, guarding a thousand Irish or Dutch against Indian assaults while they vote, and then guarding them on their march out of the country, and hear Pat or Haunce blessing this land of liberty, where foreigners vote and Americans look on in silence! I am told, sir, by way of alarm on this subject, that if the bill is sent back to the House it will be lost. I have had no evidence of that; and if I had, I would not be so alarmed as to do that which my judgment does not sanction. I am here as an American senator, to vote upon my responsibility; and I must do it with the aid of such lights as are before me. Mr. President, we are to-day making up a record which will be looked to by coming generations. What do we every day? Why, sir, we go back to the records of the past, and inquire what those have done who went before us? Do we always examine into the reasons which influenced the votes? No, sir. Senators get up and say, on a question which they claim as a precedent, so many voted in the affirmative, and so many in the negative. When the present passes away, this vote will be recorded against you; and you will be told, that here, on the 25th day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty-four, the American Senate, deliberately, upon a motion to strike out this provision, refused to do it by so many yeas to so many nays, thereby declaring to all the world, that foreigners may vote on a bare declaration of intention to become citizens of the United States and an oath to support the Constitution; while a citizen soldier may not, by reason of his being in his country's service, do the same thing. This is the precedent you are making to-day. The Chinese have a proverb, That curses, like chickens, come home to roost. I pray that this precedent may not come home to us, in after time, with the double power of a political curse. Sir, the interests, the rights, the honor of my constituents are to be put at hazard on this vote. I have already said our own citizens, if they are soldiers, will be denied the right to participate in the proceedings in these territories in any manner, shape, or form. If we have a thousand American citizens there, and they happen to be soldiers, they are to stand off and see their rights and interests committed to foreigners. These foreigners may have no interest in your country, may not have read its Constitution, and may be wholly incapable of feeling any attachment for our institutions. I call upon senators to reflect before they proceed further in this business. I tell you this record will be brought up in future time, just as the records of our ancestors are brought up now; and our descendants will be told that, because we did this today, they may do it in all time to come. I am not unbalanced by this appeal to our fears. The House of Representatives may not do its duty; but that does not prove that we must fail to do ours. I intend to do my duty, and if others fail to do theirs, let each member be responsible to his conscience, to his constituents, and to his God. Again, I have been told that a certain class of senators will now vote to strike out this provision, though they sustained it before, with the view of embarrassing the bill. I do not know what these gentlemen mean to do. I am not in their company or confidence. I have had no consultation with them; but they will show that on this, or on a former occasion, they failed of acting from conscientious convictions, if they give the vote suggested. When the motion was formerly made by the senator from Delaware [Mr. Clayton], they all voted against it; and if they go for it now, merely that they may embarrass the bill, their motives will be subjected to severe criticism. I do not believe they will; I know nothing about it; but, whatever they may do, I mean, as I said before, to discharge my duty as an American senator. I want these abolition gentlemen to understand distinctly that I am not to be chased about from one side of the bill to the other, just as they think proper to shape their course. If I vote for a proposition and they against it, when they come in favor of it I am not bound to be against it-there is no consistency in that. While I arraign the motives of no man, call no man's motives in question, I think there is precious little judgment in acting on a policy of that kind. Let us all act upon our honest, conscientious convictions of what is right. I said, in the beginning, that I had no speech to make on this subject, and I have none; but I cannot reconcile it to my sense of right to vote for a proposition which gives to a foreigner, I care not who he may be, or under what circumstances he may come to our shore, the right to vote in these territories, and then deny the same right to any American citizen who may happen to be in the territory in the service of the country as a soldier or officer in the army. I will not, I cannot do that. I do not say that if the amendment fails I shall vote against the bill. Ever since I came into Congress I have been the firm and steadfast opponent of this Missouri restriction. Nay, sir, ever since I raised my voice as a politician, from my earliest service as a public man, I have warred against the measure as a great and monstrous outrage upon the Constitution of the United States, and upon the rights and honor of the southern people. I am prepared to make many and very great sacrifices to get clear of this odious restriction; to vote for many things of which I cannot approve, by way of getting clear of it. But I am here asked to retain this alien provision; and the vote is to be taken on this proposition separately and distinctly. It stands by itself, and is to be valid, to the exclusion of everything else. Now, our votes are to stand in all after-time as an indication of our sentiments on this particular section. of the bill, separately and distinctly. Is it right in itself, and by itself? That is the question; and honorable senators will see at once that it is a very important question. I know very well that frequently a bill like this, covering, as this does, thirty-seven pages of printed matter, and making in one of our daily newspapers some seven or eight columns, may pass without every member being able to scrutinize and examine every provision in it; but when a matter of this sort is brought up in bold relief before you, with a clear and distinct proposition to strike out a particular section, and the mind of every senator is drawn distinctly to the language of it, it must be some great, powerful, overruling influence which would justify any senator in refusing to give his vote to strike it out, if, in his heart, he thinks it wrong. I have seen no such influence. I apprehend that, if the bill goes back to the House of Representatives, they will either agree or disagree to our amendment. If they disagree to it, a committee of conference is the necessary consequence; and if, in the end, we must yield sooner than lose the bill, that will be another proposition. Without a single member of the House being committed on this question in any shape or form, so far as the voting shows, am I to be told that I must swallow this bitter pill, gulp it down, and not say a word against. it, for fear of endangering the success of the bill? I feel none of that sort of apprehension; for you have the balance of this year before you in the Senate. There is no press of time. The session is not going to |