The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1858-12-16
MR.. HALE ON THE PRESIDENT.
In Senate, December 6, 1853.

Mn. BALE ON IdE PRESIDENT.
In Senate, December 6, 1853.
The Presidents annual message having been
read
Mr.. Bigler offered the following orders:
" Ordered, That the message and accompany
ing documents be printed.
" Ordered, That twenty thousand additional
copies of the message and accompanying docu-
uments be printed, for the use of the Senate
MIR. HALE said If the President, in this mes
sage, had confined himself to what believe to
be his constitutional prerogative-that is, " from
time to time to give to the Congress information
OF the state of the Union, and recommend to
their consideration such measures as he shall
Judge necessary and expedient," let the charac-
ter OF those measures be what it might, should
not have felt called upon to say anything on this
occasion; but l think the President has abused
his constitutional prerogative, and gone out of
the way to interpolate statement of transac-
tons that have long since transpired, and that
have nothing to do with any recommendation
which he has seen fit to make, ndwhich state.
mem, in my humble judgment, is not consistent
with the truth of history.
he President has undertaken, too, to give a
judicial exposition of what the Supreme Court
has decided. He says that court has decided
tAoe GA AHcTlCdu CltlZeQS nave an eQual
right to take into the Territories whatever is
held as property under the laws of any of the
States, and to hold such property there, under
the guardianship of the Federal Constitution,
so long as the Territorial condition shall re-
MAN." l do not know but that the Supreme
Court of the United States may thus decide
when such question shall be presented, but it
Is news to me that they have decided it. have
seen nothing OF that sort. The decision to which
the President refers is obnoxious to censmre
enough, IN my humble judgment; but think
no member OF that court will ever say they have
made such decision as the President asserts
Let me here say, once for all-for / had hoped
We were done with the bred Scott decision
that can tell the President, and whoever sees
tit to bring that decision before the Congress of
the American people, and to challenge for it the
respect which is due to a solemnly -adiudicated
decision of that high tribunal, that whenever
they do it, instead OF commanding or eliciting
respect for the decision, they will only lessen
the hold which the tribunal making it has upon
the public confidence and the respect of the
community.
There is another matter. The President
says. --
1t was the resistance to rightful authority,
and the preserving attempts to establish rev.
dictionary Government under the Topeka Con-
stitution, which caused the people Of Kansas to
commit the grave error of refusing to vote for
delegates to the Convention to frame Consti-
tuition, under law not denied to be fair and
just in its provisions. This refusal to vote has
been the prolific source of all the evils which
have followed"
Now, sir, does not the President of the Uni
ted States know that the refusal to vote, on the
part of these people, was not what he says it
hint thax, bol
nifty if they did vote to have their votes fairly
counted? Does the President undertake to
say that the refusal of these men to vote was
resistance to rightful authority? Does he not
know that whenever there was anything APP
preaching fair opportunity for the people Of
that Territory to VOTE they did so? Why they
improved the first opportunity; and the result
of the first attempt of that people, when it could
be fairly exercised was q rebuke of him and
all his measures.
The President again, in his message, under
takes to reiterate what, | venture to say, if he
does not know is not true, everybody else does,
and that is, that the great question of the right
to introduce Slavery into the Territory was, as
he says, fairly submitted to that people; and
because those men refused to vote when it was
thus fairly submitted to them, they were guilty
OF the crime of treason, or of opposition to the
oONCIHiAcHt--tTtdSOI, L tulilh IL mas Dttu
called on many occasions
Now, sir, it is too late in the day to make
any such assertion, because the facts are too
palpable for anybody to contend before this
country that the people of Kansas ever had,
under the submission of the Lecompton Con-
stitution, the right to vote for or against Slavery
Everybody knows it. Upon the very face of
the Constitution, when the form of submits
sion was gone through with, it was so palpable
that it could not be commended. No man could
have gone and voted for or against that Consti-
tuition, In the manner in which it was submit
ted, without voting for the introduction and the
perpetuity of Slavery and the President, if he
does not, ought to know that fact
Sir, great many of us are constantly and
continually reproached with an attempt to agi-
tate and to introduce these agitating questions
into the discussions of the Senate and House of
Representatives. We are represented as men
who are continually standing in the way of
peace, and we are denounced continually as
agitators. Sir, what have we seen here at this
very session, at this very first meeting of Con-
gress today? The very first thing that was
asked to be taken up out of its ordinary course
was question relating to this very subject of
Slavery. 1t was not asked by an nti-Slavery
man; it was not asked by one of those whom
the TeSlueut WOulu uenOunce as enemies 10
the Constitution but it was asked that Con-
gress, at the very commencement of this ses-
sion, should take up bill which presents the
Slavery question in the most offensive form
that 1t has ever been presented to the American
Senate or to the American Congress. II
We have been asked, and we have agreed to
do 1t to-day, by vote, to pass by all the other
claims, public and private-the French spolia-
ton claims, which have been waiting for JUS
tice at your doors, held by your own citizens
for more than half a century, are postponed,
that you may take up out of its order bill
which proposes to pay men for slaves, as they
are called, whom the Supreme Court of your
own country have decided were not slaves but
were held against law and against right by the
hand OF force. They were liberated by the ac-
ton of the Executive under the decision Of the
Supreme Court of the United States and yet a
bill to pay persons for illegally and violently
holding these men is the only one that is deem
ed worthy of the action of the American Con
gress at its first sitting, so far as to take it up
out of its order. There is nothing of agitation,
| suppose, in all this.
As heard the Presidents message read,
thought some light flashed upon my mind in
regard to that motion; for the President, after
going on to recommend the acquisition of Cuba
for the very pions purpose of abolishing the
slave trade that is all he wants it for-comes
to the Amistad case, and says, if we pass that
bill, he thinks it will have favorable influence
on our negotiations With Spain; that is, we can
IL. l. IL a.