facts, he falls far short of proving his justification; and that the President would have gone further with his proof, if it had not been for the small matter that the _truth_ would not permit him. Under the impression thus made I gave the vote before mentioned. I propose now to give, concisely, the process of the examination I made, and how I reached the conclusion I did. “The President, in his first message of May, 1846, declares that the soil was _ours_ on which hostilities were commenced by Mexico; and he repeats that declaration, almost in the same language, in each successive annual message--thus showing that he esteems that point a highly essential one. In the importance of that point I entirely agree with the President. To my judgment, it is the _very point_ upon which he should be justified or condemned. In his message of December, 1846, it seems to have occurred to him, as is certainly true, that title, ownership to soil, or any thing else, is not a simple fact, but is a conclusion following one or more simple facts; and that it was incumbent upon him to present the facts from which he concluded the soil was ours on which the first blood of the war was shed. “Accordingly, a little below the middle of page twelve, in the message last referred to, he enters upon that task; forming an issue and introducing testimony, extending the whole to a little below the middle of page fourteen. Now, I propose to try to show that the whole of this--issue and evidence--is, from beginning to end, the sheerest deception. The issue, as he presents it, is in these words: ‘But there are those who, conceding all this to be true, assume the ground that the true western boundary of Texas is the Nueces, instead of the Rio Grande; and that, therefore, in marching our army to the east bank of the latter river, we passed the Texan line, and invaded the territory of Mexico.’ Now, this issue is made up of two affirmatives and no negative. The main deception of it is, that it assumes as true that _one_ river or the _other_ is necessarily the boundary, and cheats the superficial thinker entirely out of the idea that _possibly_ the boundary is somewhere _between_ the two, and not actually at either. A further deception is, that it will let in _evidence_ which a true issue would exclude. A true issue made by the President would be about as follows: ‘I say the soil _was ours_ on which the first blood was shed; there are those who say it was not.’ “I now proceed to examine the President’s evidence, as applicable to such an issue. When that evidence is analyzed it is all included in the following propositions: “1. That the Rio Grande was the western boundary of Louisiana, as we purchased it of France in 1803. “2. That the Republic of Texas always _claimed_ the Rio Grande as her western boundary. “3. That, by various acts, she had claimed it _on paper_.