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Remarks to the United States Senate

"ON THE EXPUNGING RESOLUTION"

Thomas Hart Benton

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Thomas Hart Benton's Remarks to the United States Senate

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Remarks to the United States Senate

"ON THE EXPUNGING RESOLUTION"

by Thomas Hart Benton

December, 1996 [Etext #741]

***Thomas Hart Benton's Remarks to the United States Senate***

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This Etext prepared by Anthony J. Adam

Thomas Hart Benton, "On the Expunging Resolution."

U.S. Senate, January 12, 1837

Mr. President:

It is now three years since the resolve was adopted by the Senate,

which it is my present motion to expunge from the journal. At the

moment that this resolve was adopted, I gave notice of my intention to

move to expunge it; and then expressed my confident belief that the

motion would eventually prevail. That expression of confidence was

not an ebullition of vanity, or a presumptuous calculation, intended to

accelerate the event it affected to foretell. It was not a vain boast, or

an idle assumption, but was the result of a deep conviction of the

injustice done President Jackson, and a thorough reliance upon the

justice of the American people. I felt that the President had been

wronged; and my heart told me that this wrong would be redressed!

The event proves that I was not mistaken. The question of expunging

this resolution has been carried to the people, and their decision has

been had upon it. They decide in favor of the expurgation; and their

decision has been both made and manifested, and communicated to us

in a great variety

of ways. A great number of States have expressly instructed their

Senators to vote for this expurgation. A very great majority of the

States have elected Senators and Representatives to Congress, upon

the express ground of favoring this expurgation. The Bank of the

United States, which took the initiative in the accusation against the

President, and furnished the material, and worked the machinery

which was used against him, and which was then so powerful on this

floor, has become more and more odious to the public mind, and

musters now but a slender phalanx of friends in the two Houses of

Congress. The late Presidential election furnishes additional

evidence of public sentiment. The candidate who was the friend of

President Jackson, the supporter of his administration, and the avowed

advocate for the expurgation, has received a large majority of the

suffrages of the whole Union, and that after an express declaration of

his sentiments on this precise point. The evidence of the public will,

exhibited in all these forms, is too manifest to be mistaken, too explicit

to require illustration, and too imperative to be disregarded. Omitting

details and specific enumeration of proofs, I refer to our own files for

the instructions to expunge--to the complexion of the two Houses for

the temper of the people--to the

denationalized condition of the Bank of the United States for the

fate of the imperious accuser--and to the issue of the Presidential

election for the answer of the Union.

All these are pregnant proofs of the public will, and the last

pre-eminently so: because, both the question of the expurgation, and

the form of the process, were directly put in issue upon it....

Assuming, then, that we have ascertained the will of the people on

this great question, the inquiry presents itself, how far the expression

of that will ought to be conclusive of our action here. I hold that it

ought to be binding and obligatory upon us; and that, not only upon

the principles of representative government, which require obedience

to the known will of the people, but also in conformity to the principles

upon which the proceeding against President Jackson was conducted

when the sentence against him was adopted. Then everything was

done with especial reference to the will of the people. Their impulsion

was assumed to be the sole motive to action; and to them the ultimate

verdict was expressly referred. The whole machinery of alarm and

pressure--every engine of political and moneyed power--was put in

motion, and worked for many months, to excite the people against the

President; and to stir up meetings, memorials, petitions, travelling

committees, and distress deputations against him; and each symptom

of popular

discontent was hailed as an evidence of public will, and quoted here

as proof that the people demanded the condemnation of the President.

Not only legislative assemblies, and memorials from large assemblies,

were then produced here as evidence of public opinion, but the

petitions of boys under age, the remonstrances of a few signers, and

the results of the most inconsiderable elections were ostentatiously

paraded and magnified, as the evidence of the sovereign will of our

constituents. Thus, sir, the public voice was everything, while that

voice, partially obtained through political and pecuniary machinations,

was adverse to the President. Then the popular will was the shrine at

which all worshipped. Now, when that will is regularly, soberly,

repeatedly, and almost universally expressed through the ballot-boxes,

at the various elections, and turns out to be in favor of the President,

certainly no one can disregard it, nor otherwise look at it than as the

solemn verdict of the competent and ultimate tribunal upon an issue

fairly made up, fully argued, and duly submitted for decision. As such

verdict, I receive it. As the deliberate verdict of the sovereign people,

I bow to it. I am content. I do not mean to reopen the case nor to

recommence the argument. I leave that work to others, if any others

choose to perform it. For myself, I am content; and, dispensing with

further argument, I shall call for judgment, and ask to have execution

done, upon that unhappy journal, which the verdict of millions of

freemen finds guilty of bearing on its face an untrue, illegal, and

unconstitutional sentence of condemnation against the

approved President of the Republic.

But, while declining to reopen the argument of this question, and

refusing to tread over again the ground already traversed, there is

another and a different task to perform; one which the approaching

termination of President Jackson's administration makes peculiarly

proper at this time, and which it is my privilege, and perhaps my duty,

to execute, as being the suitable conclusion to the arduous contest in

which we have been so long engaged. I allude to the general tenor of

his administration, and to its effect, for good or for evil, upon the

condition of his country. This is the proper time for such a view to be

taken. The political existence of this great man now draws to a close.

In little more than forty days he ceases to be an object of political hope

to any, and should cease to be an object of political hate, or envy, to

all. Whatever of motive the servile and time-serving might have found

in his exalted station for raising the altar of adulation, and burning the

incense of praise before him, that motive can no longer exist. The

dispenser of the patronage of an empire, the chief of this great

confederacy of States, is soon to be a private individual, stripped of all

power to reward, or to punish. His own thoughts, as he has shown us

in the concluding paragraph of that message which is to be the last of

its kind that we shall ever receive from him, are directed to that

beloved retirement from which he was drawn by the voice of millions

of freemen, and to which he now looks for that interval of repose

which age and infirmities require. Under these circumstances, he

ceases to be a subject for the ebullition of the passions, and passes into

a character for the contemplation of history. Historically, then, shall

I view him; and limiting this view to his civil administration, I

demand, where is there a Chief Magistrate of whom so much evil has

been predicted, and from whom so much good has come? Never has

any man entered upon the Chief Magistracy of a country under such

appalling predictions of ruin and woe! never has any one been so

pursued with direful prognostications! never has any one been so beset

and impeded by a powerful combination of political and moneyed

confederates! never has any one in any country where the

administration of justice has risen above the knife or the bowstring,

been so lawlessly and shamelessly tried and condemned by rivals and

enemies, without hearing, without defence, without the forms of law

and justice! History has been ransacked to find examples of tyrants

sufficiently odious to illustrate him by comparison.

Language has been tortured to find epithets sufficiently strong to paint

him in description. Imagination has been exhausted in her efforts to

deck him with revolting and inhuman attributes. Tyrant, despot,

usurper; destroyer of the liberties of his country; rash, ignorant,

imbecile; endangering the public peace with all foreign nations;

destroying domestic prosperity at home; ruining all industry, all

commerce, all manufactures; annihilating confidence between man

and man; delivering up the streets of populous cities to grass and

weeds, and the wharves of commercial towns to the encumbrance of

decaying vessels; depriving labor of all reward;

depriving industry of all employment; destroying the currency;

plunging an innocent and happy people from the summit of felicity

to the depths of misery, want, and despair. Such is the faint outline,

followed up by actual condemnation, of the appalling denunciations

daily uttered against this one MAN, from the moment he became an

object of political competition, down to the concluding moment of

his political existence.

The sacred voice of inspiration has told us that there is a time for

all things. There certainly has been a time for every evil that human

nature admits of to be vaticinated of President Jackson's

administration; equally certain the time has now come for all rational

and well-disposed people to compare the predictions with the facts,

and to ask themselves if these calamitous prognostications have been

verified by events? Have we peace, or war, with foreign nations?

Certainly, we have peace with all the world! peace with all its benign,

and felicitous, and beneficent influences! Are we respected, or

despised abroad? Certainly the American name never

was more honored throughout the four quarters of the globe than in

this very moment. Do we hear of indignity or outrage in any quarter?

of merchants robbed in foreign ports? of vessels searched on the high

seas? of American citizens impressed into foreign service? of the

national flag insulted anywhere? On the contrary, we see former

wrongs repaired; no new ones inflicted. France pays twenty-five

millions of francs for spoliations committed thirty years ago; Naples

pays two millions one hundred thousand ducats for wrongs of the

same date; Denmark pays six hundred and fifty thousand rix-dollars

for wrongs done a quarter of a century ago; Spain engages to pay

twelve millions of reals vellon for injuries of fifteen years' date; and

Portugal, the last in the list of former aggressors, admits her liability

and only waits the adjustment of details to close her account by

adequate indemnity. So far from war, insult, contempt, and spoliation

from abroad, this denounced administration has been the season of

peace and goodwill and the auspicious era of universal reparation. So

far from suffering injury at the hands of foreign powers, our merchants

have received indemnities for all former injuries. It has been the day

of accounting, of settlement, and of retribution. The total list of

arrearages, extending through four successive previous

administrations, has been closed and settled up. The wrongs done to

commerce for thirty years back, and under so many different

Presidents, and indemnities withheld from all, have been repaired and

paid over under the beneficent and glorious administration of President

Jackson. But one single instance of outrage has occurred, and that at

the extremities of the world, and by a piratical horde, amenable to no

law but the law of force. The Malays of Sumatra

committed a robbery and massacre upon an American vessel.

Wretches! they did not then know that JACKSON was President of the

United States! and that no distance, no time, no idle ceremonial of

treating with robbers and assassins, was to hold back the arm of

justice. Commodore Downes went out. His cannon and his bayonets

struck the outlaws in their den. They paid in terror and blood for the

outrage which was committed; and the great lesson was taught to

these distant pirates--to our antipodes themselves --that not even the

entire diameter of this globe could protect them, and that the name of

American citizen, like that of Roman citizen in

the great days of the Republic and of the empire, was to be the

inviolable passport of all that wore it throughout the whole extent of

the habitable world....

From President Jackson, the country has first learned the true

theory and practical intent of the Constitution, in giving to the

Executive a qualified negative on the legislative power of Congress.

Far from being an odious, dangerous, or kingly prerogative, this

power, as vested in the President, is nothing but a qualified copy of the

famous veto power vested in the tribunes of the people among the

Romans, and intended to suspend the passage of a law until the people

themselves should have time to consider it. The qualified veto of the

President destroys nothing; it only delays the passage of a law, and

refers it to the people for their consideration and decision. It is the

reference of a law, not to a committee of the House, or of the whole

House, but to the committee of the whole Union. It is a recommitment

of the bill to the people, for them to examine and consider; and if, upon

this examination, they are content to pass it, it will pass at the next

session. The delay of a few months is the only effect of a veto, in a

case where the people shall ultimately approve a law; where they do

not approve it, the interposition of the veto is the barrier which saves

them the adoption of a law, the repeal of which might afterward be

almost impossible. The qualified negative is, therefore, a beneficent

power, intended as General Hamilton expressly declares in the

"Federalist," to protect, first, the executive department from the

encroachments of the legislative department; and, secondly, to

preserve the people from hasty, dangerous or criminal legislation on

the part of their representatives. This is the design and intention of the

veto power; and the fear expressed by General Hamilton was, that

Presidents, so

far from exercising it too often, would not exercise it as often as the

safety of the people required; that they might lack the moral courage

to stake themselves in opposition to a favorite measure of the majority

of the two Houses of Congress; and thus deprive the people, in many

instances, of their right to pass upon a bill before it becomes a final

law. The cases in which President Jackson has exercised the veto

power have shown the soundness of these observations. No ordinary

President would have staked himself against the Bank of the United

States and the two Houses of Congress in 1832. It required President

Jackson to confront that power--to stem that torrent--to stay the

progress of that charter, and to refer it to the people for their decision.

His moral courage was equal to the crisis. He arrested the charter until

it could be got to the people, and they have arrested it forever. Had he

not done so, the charter would have become law, and its repeal almost

impossible. The people of the whole Union would now have been in

the condition of the people of Pennsylvania, bestrode by the monster,

in daily conflict with him, and maintaining a doubtful contest for

supremacy between the government of a State and the directory of a

moneyed corporation....

Sir, I think it right, in approaching the termination of this great

question, to present this faint and rapid sketch of the brilliant,

beneficent, and glorious administration of President Jackson. It is not

for me to attempt to do it justice; it is not for ordinary men to attempt

its history. His military life, resplendent with dazzling events, will

demand the pen of a nervous writer; his civil administration, replete

with scenes which have called into action so many and such various

passions of the human heart, and which has given to native sagacity

so many victories over practiced politicians, will require the profound,

luminous, and philosophical conceptions of a Livy, a Plutarch, or a

Sallust. This history is not to be written in our day. The

contemporaries of such events are not the hands to describe them.

Time must first do its office--must silence the passions, remove the

actors, develop consequences, and canonize all that is sacred to honor,

patriotism, and glory. In after ages the historic genius of our America

shall produce the writers which the subject demands--men far removed

from the contests of this day, who will know how to estimate this great

epoch, and how to acquire an immortality for their own names by

painting, with a master's hand, the immortal events of the patriot

President's life.

And now, sir, I finish the task which, three years ago, I imposed on

myself. Solitary and alone, and amid the jeers and taunts of my

opponents, I put this ball in motion. The people have taken it up, and

rolled it forward, and I am no longer anything but a unit in the vast

mass which now propels it. In the name of that mass I speak. I

demand the execution of the edict of the people; I demand the

expurgation of that sentence which the voice of a few Senators, and the

power of their confederate, the Bank of the United States, has caused

to be placed on the journal of the Senate; and which the voice of

millions of freemen has ordered to be expunged from it.

END OF PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT "ON THE EXPUNGING RESOLUTION"

by Thomas Hart Benton

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