But there are complaints from the so-called Democratic party that the President, and especially the Secretary of State, have surrendered the Monroe doctrine, and abandoned Mexico to her fate. There is no truth in this accusation. The President and the Secretary of State, _as regards the future_, are wholly uncommitted on this question, unless, indeed, it be for Mexico, by announcing that the people of the loyal States are unanimously in her favor. I say they are uncommitted for the future, and the real objection to their course is this: that they have not gratified the South and its Northern allies, by engaging, ere this, in a war with France, so as to bring her vast forces in aid of the Confederate government. Indeed, Mr. Seward is cursed everywhere by the Confederates and their allies throughout Europe for preventing a war, _at this time_, on the Mexican question, between France and the United States, 'There is a time for all things,' and, as I have said before, our only question _now_, is the salvation of the Union; and when that is secured, will be the proper period to consider other subordinate questions, foreign or domestic. No man can speak with more feeling on this question than myself, for it is a well-known fact that I earnestly opposed, as a member of the Cabinet of Mr. Polk, the Mexican treaty of 1848, among other reasons, upon the suggestion then made by me, that if we abandoned Mexico, it would subject us to the danger of European interference there (just as it has occurred) by force of arms. That treaty was carried by a constitutional majority of only three votes, mainly through the instrumentality of Mr. Calhoun, who was against the invasion of Mexico, and for 'masterly inactivity,' resting on the banks of the Rio Grande, because he knew (as declared in my Texas letter of January, 1844) 'Slavery never could cross the Rio Grande,' and that, as a consequence, all of Mexico which we would permanently hold, as we ought to have done, from Texas to Tehuantepec, would, Mexico having abolished Slavery, have become Free States. I believed also that the permanent occupation and annexation of Mexico would have forever settled all the dangers of the Slavery question, because it would have flanked the Slave States of the Southwest, by many powerful Free States adjacent on the Southwest, containing already seven millions of people, most of whom were of the colored race, and who would have fought to the last against the reestablishment of Slavery.