Life of Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President of the United StatesCrosby, Frank
History
Life of Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President of the United States
Crosby, Frank
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865
movements. Such minority was precisely the case of the Tories of
our own Revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old
lines, or old laws; but to break up both and make new ones. As to
the country now in question, we bought it of France in 1803, and
sold it to Spain in 1819, according to the President’s statement.
After this, all Mexico, including Texas, revolutionized against
Spain; and still later, Texas revolutionized against Mexico. In my
view, just so far as she carried her revolution, by obtaining the
_actual_, willing or unwilling submission of the people, so _far_
the country was hers, and no further.
“Now, sir, for the purpose of obtaining the very best evidence
as to whether Texas had actually carried her revolution to the
place where the hostilities of the present war commenced, let
the President answer the interrogatories I proposed, as before
mentioned, or some other similar ones. Let him answer fully, fairly
and candidly. Let him answer with _facts_, and not with arguments.
Let him remember he sits where Washington sat; and, so remembering,
let him answer as Washington would answer. As a nation _should_
not, and the Almighty _will_ not, be evaded, so let him attempt no
evasion, no equivocation. And if, so answering, he can show that
the soil was ours where the first blood of the war was shed--that
it was not within an inhabited country, or, if within such, that
the inhabitants had submitted themselves to the civil authority of
Texas, or of the United States, and that the same is true of the
site of Fort Brown--then I am with him for his justification. In
that case, I shall be most happy to reverse the vote I gave the
other day. I have a selfish motive for desiring that the President
may do this; I expect to give some votes, in connection with the
war, which, without his so doing, will be of doubtful propriety,
in my own judgment, but which will be free from the doubt if he
does so. But if he _can not or will not_ do this,--if, on any
pretence, or no pretence, he shall refuse or omit it,--then I shall
be fully convinced, of what I more than suspect already, that he
is deeply conscious of being in the wrong; that he feels the blood
of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to heaven against
him; that he ordered General Taylor into the midst of a peaceful
Mexican settlement, purposely to bring on a war; that originally
having some strong motive--what I will not stop now to give my
opinion concerning--to involve the two countries in a war, and
trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the
exceeding brightness of military glory--that attractive rainbow
that rises in showers of blood--that serpent’s eye that charms to
destroy--he plunged into it, and has swept _on_ and _on_, till,
disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which Mexico might
be subdued, he now finds himself he knows not where. How like the
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