Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/249

Rh Thus, sir, even upon the Secretary's own assumptions, the bottom drops out of his statement.

And, after all this, it seems to me that Captain Temple was not quite wrong when he cautioned Mr. Wade against coming into contact with revolutionists with whom the United States, by an act of their Executive, were at war, expressing the apprehension that the peaceable commissioner, turned into a spy of a belligerent Power, might all of a sudden be strung up to the limb of a tree. The captain had evidently a clearer perception of our international position than the Secretary.

But now I arrive at the richest part of the Secretary's letter. He says:

The duty——

To enforce such an inchoate right——

is plain, and in every case of valuable acquisition the execution of it will be expected and approved by the people.

Mark you, sir.

It was in the discharge of such duty that, in the early part of the present century, President Madison marched the armies of the United States into and actually took and held possession of the territory then known as West Florida (including what is now the State of Alabama), for which territory negotiations were then pending, afterward concluded and settled with Spain. This action was approved by Congress and the people, not as an exercise of war power, but as the protecting of an interest Constitutionally acquired, and which the Executive was bound to maintain intact while it remained in us.

Why, sir, the Secretary seems to be just as conversant with the history of this case as the Senator from Indiana yesterday showed himself to be with the Texas precedent. What did the Secretary mean to intimate to us by a