14 But, whether in peace or war, we maintain i without some measure of hazard to constitu al liberty. Happily, the Indian disturbs within our borders have been suppressed; if they had not been, the smallest rneasm gentleness and charity towards the deca tribes would more effectually secure the bless of peace, so far as they are concerned, thar employment of many legions. Happily, also dark cloud that seemed gathering over us . the East, when this ’ session commenced in cember last, has been dispersed, and we ) now a sure prospect of peace with all for nations for many years to come. The arm the United States is therefore immediately ful or necessary now only as a police, to exe municipal laws. If the founders of the Co: tution had been told, that within seventy j from the day on which they laid its solid fo’ ations, and raised its majestic columns, a st ing army would have been found necessary indispensable merely to execute municipal 1 they would have turned shuddering away : the massive despotism which they had erecte Sir, eleven days hence, Congress will adjo and it will come back again one hundred eight days after that time. No serious disa nor even any great public inconvenience, happen within that period. Congress Wil here in ample time to provide, if it shaf necessary, for the public safety, for expel Great Britain from Central America, for conq ing Cuba, and for bringing into subordina any insurrectionary Indian trjbes. Every! will know that every dollar we owe to conti ors, purveyors, merchants, makers of gunpoA or muskets, or founders of cannon, as wel every dollar we owe to soldiers or off! for’ pay or for rations, is guarantied by national faith, and on that faith money cai raised without any considerable discount. And, now, what other inconveniences ar result from a failure to pass the army bill? are told that law and order will be lost, anarchy will prevail in the Territory of Kar if the army be not employed there to 1 the peace, and execute the Territorial 1 Look, I pray you, through this report of the vestigating Committee, drawn out to the le: of twelve hundred pages, filled with detai invasions, robberies, mobs, murders, and co: grations, and tell me what anarchy could hap in the absence of martial law, worse than the archy which has marked its establishmen the Territory ? Bentatives. It is to the Holise of Representatives, therefore, that the people must look, and it is upon that House, and not upon the Senate, that the people must rely mainly for the rescue of public Liberty, if the time shall ever come when that Liberty shall be endangered, with design or otherwise, by the exercise of the Executive power. Thus far, Mr. President, I have treated this subject as one involving only the interests of the people of the Territory of Kansas. But you will see at once, without any amplification on my part, that you are establishing, by way of precedent, a system of government for not merely that Territory, but all the Territories, present and future, within the United States. It is Worth while to see what that system is. It is the system of popular sovereignty, founded on the abnegation of Congressional authority, attempted by the Kansas and Nebraska Act of 1854. But it is that system of popular sovereignty, with the principle of popular sovereignty left out, and that of Executive power, exercised with fraud and armed force, substituted in its place. Since we have entered upon a career of territorial aggrandizement, as Rome, and Britain, and Spain did, respectively, we can look forward to no period when what we call Territories, but what they called Provinces or Colonies, will not constitute a considerable part of our dominion, and be a theatre for the exercise of cupidity and the display of ambition. Let Congress now effectually resign the Territories to military control by the President, or by Generals appointed by him, and two more acts will bring this grand national drama of ours to its close. The first of those acts will be the subversion of Liberty in the remaining Territories; and then, the Rubicon easily passed, the second will be the establishment of, an Empire on the ruins of the whole Republic. But how is the Government to be arrested, even if this army bill should fail, through your persevering dissent from the House of Representatives ? Is the army of the United States, indeed and essentially, a civil institution—a necessary and indispensable institution, in our republican system 2 On the contrary, it is an exception, an anomaly, an antagonistic institution, tolerated, but wisely and justly regarded with jealousy and apprehension. We maintain a standing army in time of war, to suppress Indian insurrections, or to repel foreign invasions; and we maintain the Sfime standing army in time of peace, only because it is wise in peace to be prepared for war.
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