Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/255

Rh urgent considerations, have deemed it right and requisite that possession should be taken of the said territory in the name and behalf of the United States.—Ibid., page 1258.

Thus it appears that no new treaty had anything to do with it, that there was no question of an inchoate right, no question of any right that the President of the United States claimed to derive from any act of his own, but a right derived from an old treaty with France, which had been duly ratified, and which had become the supreme law of the land, and the possession being at the same time endangered by an adverse revolutionary movement. The Secretary of the Navy may possibly have been a little at sea with regard to his facts, geographical as well as historical. Did he perhaps confound the West Florida case with the East Florida case? In the latter indeed an “army” was moved into that territory, but not by the President of his own motion, at his own arbitrary pleasure upon the assumption of inchoate rights created by him, but in pursuance of an act of Congress, authorizing the President to “take possession of, and occupy all or any part of the territory lying east of the river Perdido and south of the State of Georgia and the Mississippi territory,” and, “in order to maintain therein the authority of the United States, employ any part of the Army and Navy of the United States which he may deem necessary.”

This act was approved January 15, 1811, and if the Secretary wishes to acquaint himself with the document he will find it in the third volume of the United States Statutes-at-Large, page 471. In pursuance of this act of Congress, General Matthews, with a military force, was sent into the territory, and in his orders, which I have here, that act was referred to as the legal basis of the whole enterprise. The Secretary of the Navy may there discover in what manner such business was transacted