Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/439

Rh of the United States to belabor with shot and shell anybody who might attack Baez, even if it be that usurper's own subjects. The warships of the United States were virtually placed at the disposal of a foreign potentate. But could he order acts of war without the authority of Congress? Did he not know that the Constitution vests the war-making power in Congress? Perhaps he did not know; at any rate he did not care. He considered it his business. The Senate by a solemn vote rejected the treaty of annexation. The President in his message told the Senate that this was a great folly, and kept the warships of the United States at the disposal of Baez with instructions to shoot and slaughter as occasion might require. When it at last appeared that there was absolutely no hope for the project, its opponents being supported by the whole American people, he temporarily abandoned it—undoubtedly to take it up again if he should be reëlected. And now, the Constitution violated; a precedent set, which, if taken as a rule, will place the peace of the Republic at the mercy of one man's whims or ambition; the Presidential dignity dragged into the dust; the honor of the Nation sullied—for what? To further a personal scheme of the President, in which nobody took any but a negative interest—neither the Cabinet, nor Congress, nor the American people—nobody but the President, his aides-de-camp and a few speculators of dark reputation. What the President's motives were in so violently pushing this scheme, I do not know. Certainly the main reason with which he advocated it in his message—that the productions of San Domingo would pay the National debt—was so supremely childish as to make the very schoolboys laugh. But he wanted it, and neither the Constitution nor the dignity of his high office nor the honor of the Nation should stand in the way of a thing he wanted.