Republican Senator Jacob Collamer of Vermont
Earlier this month, I quoted Vermont's Republican Sen. Jacob Collamer on Congressional war power from a speech of his dated Feb. 21, 1859 as printed in The Congressional Globe, in which he was responding to comments from pro-slavery Democratic President James Buchanan asking for Presidential powers to take military action against nations south of the border. This was a continuation of long-standing Slave Power attempts to take Cuba and other Latin American territories to form new slave states.
In that same speech, he addressed those concerns more explicitly:
Mr. President [addressing the President of the Senate], as to the mode of obtaining these countries - I mean Central America, and, if you please, Mexico - do you not perceive that one of the objects which the southern people entertain is this very thing: how is it to be done? The President [Buchanan] apparently indorses [sic] their view. He sends in his message here recommending to us that he be clothed with power to establish military posts in Chihauhua and Sonora. ... The truth is, as he says, that our poor little weak neighbors down south of us are constantly marauding upon our people, invading their rights, violating their personal liberties, depriving them of their property, they are a sort of gang of outlaws upon us. It seems we have no good neighbors, especially if they are weak ones. Now, what is to be done with them? The president asks of us to invest him with power - and a bill is now before us for that purpose - to use the fore of the Army and Navy of the United States in procuring redress for such a violation. The bill before us does not provide anything in relation to making defense; it is not to defend our people that that bill is introduced. [my emphasis]The slave state representatives in Congress pushed more and more over time for military expansion to secure more slave territory. This was the major issue at stake in the domestic arguments over the Mexican War (Guerra de los Estados Unidos a México) of 1846-48.
Collamer continues later in the speech:
The honorable Senator from Louisiana very eloquently described to us the condition of the West India Islands, and the havoc which he said had been produced by their attempt at emancipation, and the introduction of coolies, and other abortive efforts of that kind; and he says the danger is that the whole of that fertile region of the tropics will be entirely desolated, unless we take it and introduce our system of slavery. To aid us further in that, he proceeds to describe to us the tyranny inflicted on that people. First, having informed us that the slave-owners in Cuba, for nearly two hundred years have been using up African slaves, and coining them into sugar, molasses coffee, tobacco, and cigars, at the rate of some sweeping amount, so that twenty or thirty years suffice to carry over the whole mass of them [i.e., they die out in that period of time] - such is the cruelty and severity with which slavery is conducted in that country - he then tells us how much these very slave-owners are domineered and tyrannized over by the power of Spain. He then, I take it, addresses this nation now to come to the rescue. This is addressed to the whole United States - the people of the free States - to come to the rescue. This is addressed to the whole United States - the people of the free States - to come to the rescue. What is it? He seems to assume that it is our mission upon this earth to undertake a great crusade to right the wrongs of Cuba, and especially to relieve those cruel and domineering men who coin the blood of Africans into sugar to relieve themselves from the oppressions of Spain. Are they not a strange people to appeal to us for such help? Is it possible that gentlemen can use an argument of that kind with any idea that it will reach the hearts of the northern people? Do they mean to say to our people, "we want you to make slavery perpetual thorough all the West India Islands and the tropics, and help the masters from being in any way frustrated in this design by any foreign country?" The eloquence of the Senator from Louisiana for such a purpose is almost equal to, and almost as reasonable as, the eloquence of Peter the Hermit, when he preached the crusades of the middle ages. Sir, we will respond to nothing of that kind. We do not believe these men entitled to our help. They have manifested no such character as lays foundation for any claim upon our humanity; nor does the great purpose for which he asks our aid, address itself any better to our assistance. [my emphasis]The cynicism of the Southern expansionists in trying to justify a war of aggression and conquest to expand slavery as a way to save others from tyranny and abusive conditions is amazing, even at this distance in time. And it's a reminder of how much even foreign policy questions had come to be dominated by the Slave Power's increasingly desperate desire to defend and expand their Peculiar Institution.
The last couple of sentences also imply none-too-subtly that slaveowners in the Southern US also have rather dubious claims on the cooperation of the free states more generally.
Collamer also addresses a key strategic question that seems to get insufficient weight in today's considerations of the stakes in the Civil War. The slave representatives had argued as a reason for taking Cuba that it could potentially be used as a base for restricting American commerce through New Orleans. Collamer rejects that notion as false. But he picks up on it to explain how the existence of a Southern Confederacy would strategically affect the United States:
One of those sentiments entertained, against which the honorable Senator from South Carolina labored with his people, was this desire of separation, secession, division of the Union. Among our great securities against such a result, was this very river Mississippi. We have believed that while the Alleghany Mountains stood where they do, and while the Mississippi flows where it does, a division of this Union is impracticable - absolutely impracticable. The whole of the head waters of the Mississippi and its branches are inhabited by the people of the free States. There never was, and never will be, a successful commercial people upon the face of this earth, that have the outlet and the inlet to their commerce in the hands of a foreign nation. It never can be endured. Our first settlement upon the Ohio, when the mouth of the Mississippi river was in the hands of Spain, was broken up; at least, it did not progress any; but the moment Spain refused to renew her treaty, they threatened to go down there and take possession of that country, even in that infancy of the Government. Now, sir, the natural outlet of all that region drained by the Mississippi and its upper tributaries, the whole region beyond the Ohio, Kentucky, western Virginia on each side, or, if you please, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, is by the way of the Mississippi.This is also a reason that it's absurd to argue, as Lost Cause advocates often do, that the South just wanted to secede and live peacefully with the United States. Not only would the disputes over escaping slaves have intensified if the Union had been weak and foolish enough to adopt such an approach. But the stranglehold of the Confederacy over commerce on the Mississippi would have allowed them to exert tremendous pressure to pull additional states into the Confederacy and out of the Union.
This is the great channel of commerce, and always must be. I can merely say, if the slave States of this Union form a Confederacy, and choose to make a separate nation by themselves, they cannot retain the mouth of the Mississippi unless they take those western States in with them; and then they will be in the same condition of division and conflict that they are now. Those States [the free states along the northern Mississippi River] will of course take possession of it; and that divides your supposed and projected kingdom utterly in two.
Despite the common stereotype of Thomas Jefferson as sentimentally pro-French, during his Presidency's early years, control of New Orleans was the critical issue in his foreign policy. In his view, whatever power controlled New Orleans was the natural enemy of the United States.
Tags: confederate heritage month 2009, new orleans
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