The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1859-08-25

John Sherman, Shorter, Robert Smith, William
Smith, Stallworth, Stephens, Stevenson, Thayer,
Tompkina, Trigpe, vallandigham, Vance, Wat
tendyke, Augustus r. Wright, and Zolicof
fer-S7.
OF the sixty-four Southern members present
and voting, only eleven or only about one sixth,
voted to lay the motion to reconsider on the
table.
Of the seventy-one Republican members
present and voting, all except twelve voted to
lay the motion to reconsider on the table, and
this is the more noticeable, inasmuch as they
had party reason to disincline them to print
ing jobs, that patronage being in the hands of
their political opponents.
For laying Mr. Jones's motion TO reconsider
on the table
YRAs
From the free States 80
From the slave States IL
Nays.
From the free States 81
From the slave States So
OF the eleven slave-State votes in the affirm
alive, four were from Missouri, including Mr..
Blair, four were South Americans, and of the
remaining three only one, Mr.. Smith of Ten
nessee, belongs to the Southern disunion cabal.
Mr.. Smith was chairman of the Printing Com
mittee, and his kindly feeling for the public
printer seems, on this occasion, to have been
stronger than the attracting affinity of his poiti
cal associations.
The fact is thus certain, that there was some
common course of reasoning, or some common
instinct, operating upon the Southern members
of the House, to induce them to oppose as a
body proposition to diffuse information which
would tend to attract population to Oregon and
Washington. 1t was the same course of reason
inU or the aana instinct that which soon
afterwards, induced them to vote as body
against the Fort Benton and Walla- Walla road.
The signs of common intelligence are too nu-
merous and too marked, to permit the idea of
an accidental concurrence. And we shall find,
upon examination, that the basis of this COM
mon intelligence has relations with the course
of public affairs upon questions which, upon a
casual observation of them, seem to have no
connection with Oregon and Washington.
Without going back to the singular facility
with which Southern President, elected upon
a pledge to maintain our territorial rights on
the Pacific up to the parallel of ffty-four de-
grees and forty minutes, surrendered into the
never-relaxing grasp of Great Britain the fine
region stretching down to the forty ninth paral
lei, we shall find in more recent events abundant
evidence that Southern policy does not embrace
the idea of developing our, Western and North
western Pacific possessions, but is directing it.
self, and with constantly increasing intensity,
in another quarter.
As early certainly as the period which termi-
mated the controversy for the possession of
California between free and slave institutions,
Southern politicians began to look for new
dehouch upon the Pacific. The Gadsden
Treaty, long under incubation, was signed in
1853, and ratified in 1854. That treaty, which
was subjected to considerable curtailment in
order to reconcile the United States Senate to
its ratification, did not, as it was originally
framed, come up to the present ideas of the
Southern cabal-ideas which have been con-
stantly expanding, and which are even yet not
exactly defined. In the successive progress of
things, it has first ceased to be pretended, that
San Diego was the designed terminus of the
railroad to be constructed over the Gadsden
Purchase, Guaymas being admitted to be the
point aimed at; and now Guaymas is aban-
doned for Pacific port still further south, and
to be reached by more southern line of road.
That the acquisition of further territory from
Mexico has been the constant aim and effort of
the dynasty in power at Washington, is known
from the revelations of our Ministers to Mexico,
Gen. Gadsden and Mr.. Forsyth, and, aside from
those revelations, has been sufficiently notorious.
In May, 1858, treaty for such acquisition was
matured between Gen. Robes and Gen. Cass,
and its signature was only prevented by political
revolutions in Mexico. In December, 1858, Mr..
Buchanan had become so inpatient that he
actually proposed to Congress that he should
be permitted to take military possession of the
northern provinces of Mexico, under the shall
low pretext that such a measure was necessary
for the protection of a mail route through Ari-
zona which he had illegally established. That
absurd proposal having been treated by Con-
gress with the contempt which it merited, Mr..
Buchanan, in order to have a Mexican admin
istraton which will lend itself to his views, has
recognised the Juarez dynasty as the lawful one
in that country, although it has never had pos
session of the capital, and although its power
everywhere is as unstable as military fortune,
and can be at best bat the transitory ascend
ency of faction. This recognition of the
Juarez dynasty, dictated, as everybody knows,
by the desire for territorial treaty, has been
followed by constantly -recurring rumors that
such treaty has actually been agreed upon,
and if these rumors are not literally accurate,
they at least show what was expected to follow
the recognition, and what is under nanipula-
ton at Vera Cruz, which is the seat, if not the
limit, of the recognised dynasty. The latest
rumor, at this present writing, is, that a treaty
has been agreed upon, not ceding territory to
the United States, but giving to the United
States the right to protect certain projected
lines of railroad, and especially the line from
the Rio Grande to Mazatlan, upon which
Southern opinion is fast being concentrated
Protection would not long precede occupation,
and is itself one form of occupation. It is
occupation for the immediate purpose in view,
and in due time, and in no long time, would
ripen into occupation for all purposes.
The South want Mexico for many reasons.
1t is in their own latitude. 1t has now domes-
fin init md Of
to their own. Peonage is a form of slavery,
and in Mexico we see the same contrasts of
enormous wealth and miserable restitution,
characteristic of Cuba, of our own Southern
States, and of all slave countries. And while
peonage already exists, hopes not irrational are
entertained, that by the African Slave Trade,
| now reopened, our own more familiar form of
slavery may be spread over Mexico, already
prepared for it by the total absence of that mid
die class without which genuine liberty never
existed anywhere. Mexico offers to the South
debouch upon the Pacific, and although, with
their constitution of society, commercial pur-
suits are impossible, yet it is nevertheless true
that their commercial ambition is as vaulting
as it is irrational. And finally, Mexico presents
to Southern pride and political enterprise the
basis of power in the Union, and of power at
that time predicted and desired by too many of
them, when a Southern Confederacy shall sue
coed the Confederacy of the revolutionary ia
theirs.
Thus, then, it is because they desire that our
march of empire should be southwark and
southwestward upon Mexico, and because they
see no commercial or political advantages to
themselves from the direction of the expansive
energies of our people upon our present Pacific
possessions, that the Southern managers have
| opposed all measures to facilitate emigration
to any OF them. This is the solution Of their