“The two lists made out in 1801 and 1812 of impressed Americans can be but a small part of the American case against us. From that fraction of their case we may, however, form some opinion on the extent to which freemen, who would be a scandal to their English ancestry, unless liberty was as dear as life, must have writhed under our practice of impressment. Prior to September, 1801, 1,132 native American sailors were set at liberty by the English Government, as having been wrongfully impressed. On the war with America in 1812, another division of 1,422 native Americans, every one of them having been so taken, were transferred out of our men-of-war into our prisons. This is proved from English documents. Here are nearly two thousand six hundred sufferers, victims of a greater outrage than one free nation ever assumed the privilege of inflicting on another,--an outrage which no nation deserving the name of a nation, and solemnly bound to protect its meanest members, can be expected patiently to endure.”[43] Such words by one of us might be treated as the exaltation of patriotic indignation. Here, it is history written by the other side. Even assuming, that, according to frequent British allegation, the persons taken were British subjects and not American citizens, which would make the act identical with that of Captain Wilkes, this only presents in stronger relief the precise point now in issue. Whether the victims were American citizens or British subjects, there was in each case the same forcible entry of our ships and taking from our decks. Protest, argument, negotiation, correspondence, and war itself--unhappily the last reason of republics, as of kings--were all employed by the United States in vain to procure renunciation of the intolerable pretension. The ablest papers in our diplomatic history are devoted to this purpose; and the only serious war in which we have been engaged, until summoned to subdue the Rebellion, was to overcome by arms this very tyranny, which would not yield to reason. Beginning in the last century, the correspondence is at length closed by the recent reply of Mr. Seward to Lord Lyons. The long continued occasion of conflict is now happily removed, and the pretension disappears forever,--to take its place among the barbaric curiosities of the past. But I do not content myself with asserting the persistent opposition of the American Government. It belongs to the argument that I should exhibit this opposition, and the precise ground on which it was placed,--being identical with that now adopted by Great Britain. Here the testimony is complete. If you will kindly follow me, you shall see it from the beginning in the public life of our country, and in the authentic records of the National Government.