Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/117

100 a liberal view of the power, and even stretched it beyond reasonable shape to accord with Morris’s idea. "A new territory and new subjects," said he, "may undoubtedly be obtained by conquest and by purchase; but neither the conquest nor the purchase can incorporate them into the Union. They must remain in the condition of colonies, and be governed accordingly." This claim gave the central government despotic power over its new purchase; but it declared that a treaty which pledged the nation to admit the people of Louisiana into the Union must be invalid, because it assumed that "the President and Senate may admit at will any foreign nation into this copartnership without consent of the States,"—a power directly repugnant to the principles of the compact. In substance, Griswold maintained that either under the war power or under the treaty-making power the government could acquire territory, and as a matter of course could hold and govern that territory as it pleased,—despotically if necessary, or for selfish objects; but that the President and Senate could not admit a foreign people into the Union, as a State. Yet to this, the treaty bound them.

To meet this attack the Republican put forward their two best men,—Joseph H. Nicholson of Maryland, and Cæsar A. Rodney of Delaware. The task was difficult, and Nicholson showed his embarrassment at the outset. "Whether the United States," said he, "as a sovereign and independent empire,