XXXI. CHAPTER propriate money for the construction of post-roads, mili tary and other roads, and of canals, and for the improve1818. ment of water-courses ;" and they directed the SecretaApril 4. ries of War and the Treasury to report, at the next session, a list of the internal improvements in progress, and a plan for appropriations to aid them. Three other resolutions, (asserting the right of Congress to construct post and military roads; canals for military purposes; and roads and canals necessary for commerce between the states,) were lost; the first, 82 to 84; the second, 81 to 83; and the third, 71 to 95. The distinction was, that while the resolution adopted might be understood as merely asserting the right to aid in the construction of works undertaken by state authority, the others implied a right to originate such works by Federal authority alone. Pitkin, Most of the distinguished members of the House, among them Sergeant, Hopkinson, Baldwin, Bloomfield, Lowndes, Forsyth, Clay, Harrison, Spencer, and M'Lean, supported all four of the resolutions. Smith, of Maryland, voted for the first, but not for the others. and a considerable number of the New England Federalists, took the opposite side, as they had done when the idea was first suggested by Madison in 1796; less, probably from any constitutional scruples, than from a narrow-minded fear that this new policy might inure chiefly to the benefit of the Middle, Southern, and Western States. The argument of the opposition was the want of any specific authority in the Constitution. The first three resolutions, as might be judged from their phraseology, were chiefly supported under the power to provide for the general defense. A large portion of the expense of the late war had grown out of the price of transportation. The conveyance of every barrel of flour RELATIONS WITH SPAIN AND HER COLONIES. 633 XXXI. to Detroit had cost, it was calculated, not less than $60; CHAPTER that of every pound of cannon-ball and ammunition not less than fifty cents. Was it possible that Congress had 1818. the power to incur these enormous expenses, but no pow. er to provide the means necessary to reduce them? The course to be pursued toward Spain and her revolted colonies, furnished another leading topic of discussion. The announcement in the president's message that he had authorized expeditions against Amelia Island and Galveston produced remonstrances from two very opposite quarters: from Don Onis, the Spanish minister, who had previously remonstrated against M'Gregor's enlistments at Charleston and Savannah, and from one Vincente Pazos, the unrecognized agent at Washington of the Spanish American republics. Not succeeding to his wish with the cabinet, Pazos addressed a petition to Congress; but, though presented by the hand of Mr. Speaker Clay, the House, under Forsyth's lead, notwithstanding the arguments of Harrison, Johnson, and some others, refused to receive it, 124 to 28. That same day March 14. the president laid before Congress a voluminous corre spondence between Don Onis and the Secretary of State. It began with Onis's remonstrances against the violation of the Spanish territory by the expulsion of M'Gregor from Amelia Island, which Adams justified on the ground that Spain was too weak to protect the United States against the outrages of the vagabonds collected there. A full discussion had followed as to the boundaries of Florida and Louisiana, and as to the claims for Spanish spoliations on American commerce. Spain, it appeared, had offered to refer all the points in dispute to the arbitration of Great Britain; but this proposition had been declined. When the diplomatic appropriation bill came up, Clay March 24. objected to the insertion into it of $30,000 for the ex CHAPTER penses of commissioners lately sent to South America. XXXL If those commissioners were diplomatic agents, their nom1818. ination, so he contended, ought to be submitted to and confirmed by the Senate; an objection which Forsyth found so difficult to answer, that he proposed to transfer the appropriation to the head of incidental expenses. Clay then moved to insert an appropriation for a minister to the republic of La Plata. He urged, in an elaborate speech, that now was the time for pressing our controversy with Spain to a final settlement. If she refused us satisfaction, he would then take up and decide the solemn question of war or not. It was evident, however, that, since the late war with Great Britain, Clay's feelings and opinions had undergone a decided modification to ward the side of peace. Was it possible, indeed, to have pronounced a more pointed condemnation of the policy of that war than now fell from his lips? Though Spain had given us abundant cause for war, "yet it was not every cause for war that should lead to war. War was one of those dreadful scourges that so shakes the foundations of society, overturns or changes the character of governments, interrupts or destroys the pursuit of private happiness, brings, in short, misery and wretchedness in so many forms, and at last is, in its issue, so doubtful and hazardous, that nothing but dire necessity can justify an appeal to arms." He dwelt with eloquence on the duty of aiding, at least by our recognition, a people struggling for their freedom; the vast importance to us, in a commercial point of view, of the independence of Spanish America; and the little likelihood, supposing Spain to retort by a declaration of war, that she would receive any support from England, which alone could make her formidable. If we must have war with Spain, he would rather bring it on by so generous SLAVERY-FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 635 XXXI. and disinterested an act, than by a seizure of Florida CHAPTER under pretense of a Seminole war-allusion to Jackson's then pending campaign, of which an account will pres- 1818. ently be given. Forsyth maintained, in reply, that if we were to have war with Spain, it had better be in our own quarrel; and he plainly intimated that all this zeal for Spanish America was but an electioneering scheme on the part of certain "designing and aspiring members of the legislative body." The debate was continued with much energy, Clay making two more speeches, when the motion was lost, 45 to 115. Subsequently an act was passed April 20. giving greater efficacy to the law against the setting on foot of military expeditions, and the fitting out of vessels within the United States against nations with whom we were at peace. The subject of slavery again came before Congress in no less than three different shapes. A petition was early presented and referred, in both Houses, from the Baltimore Quaker yearly meeting, praying further provisions for the security of free persons of color, or those entitled to freedom on arriving at a certain age, against the increased danger of being kidnapped, growing out of the new domestic slave trade. This new slave trade having greatly increased the disposition of the border slaves to run away, Pindall, a member of the House from Virginia, had anticipated this memorial by obtaining a committee, which presently brought in a bill to give new stringency to the old act for recovering fugitives from labor. While this bill was pending in the House, Burrell of Rhode Island, moved, in the Senate, instructions to the committee on the Quaker memorial to inquire into the expe diency of additional provisions for the suppression of the CHAPTER foreign slave trade, and especially of concert with other nations for that purpose. XXXI. 1818. The bill of Pindall provided for assimilating the proceedings in the case of fugitives from labor to those in the case of fugitives from justice. The claimant, having made out a title before some judge of his own state, was then to be entitled to an executive demand on the governor of the state where the fugitive was, with the imposition of heavy penalties upon those who refused to aid in the arrest. Jan. 28. Strong, Fuller, and Whitman, of Massachusetts, Williams, of Connecticut, Livermore, of New Hampshire, and several Pennsylvania representatives, warmly opposed this bill, as going entirely beyond the constitutional provision on the subject of fugitives from labor. The old law, in their opinion, went quite far enough already. The personal rights of one class of citizens were not to be trampled upon to secure the rights of property of other citizens. The question of servitude ought to be tried in the state where the fugitive was. A motion was made by Sergeant to modify the bill in accordance with this idea; but it did not succeed. On the other hand, the bill was supported not only by Cobb, of Georgia, as a right of the slaveholders secured by the Constitution, and very zealously by Mr. Speaker Clay, but also by Baldwin, of Pennsylvania, who now took very different ground, (prompted possibly by anxiety for Southern support to his favorite scheme of an increased tariff,)from that which he afterward maintained when sitting as a judge in the case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania. The bill was also supported by Holmes, of Massachusetts, by Storrs, of New York, who thought that, for the sake of union and harmony, Northern men must learn to sacri fice their prejudices, and by Mason, the new Boston rep |