tion of the laws and against the orders of the Government. They have gone upon that impulsion which, in all ages, has carried the heroic youth of all countries to seek renown in the perils and glories of distant war. Our foreign enlistment law is not repealed. Unlike England, in the civil war now raging in Spain, we have not licensed interference by repealing our penalties: we have not stimulated action by withdrawing obstacles. No member of our Congress, like General Evans in the British Parliament, has left his seat to levy troops in the streets of the metropolis, and to lead them to battle and to victory in the land torn by civil discord. Our statute against armaments to invade friendly Powers is in full force. Proclamations have attested our neutral dispositions. Prosecutions have been ordered against violators of law. A naval force in the gulf, and a land force on the Sabine, have been directed to enforce the policy of the Government; and so far as acts have gone, the advantage has been on the side of Mexico; for the Texian armed schooner the Invincible has been brought into an American port by an American ship of war. If parties and individuals still go to Texas to fight, the act is particular, not national, compromising none but the parties themselves, and may take place on one side as well as on the other. The conduct of the administration has been strictly neutral; and, as a friend to that administration, and from my own convictions, I have conformed to its policy, avoiding the language which would irritate, and opposing the acts that might interrupt pacific and commercial communications. Mexico is our nearest neighbor, dividing with us the continent of North America, and possessing the elements of a great Power. Our boundaries are co-terminous for more than two thousand miles. We have inland and maritime commerce. She has mines; we have ships. General considerations impose upon each Power the duties of reciprocal friendship; especial inducements invite us to uninterrupted commercial intercourse. As a western Senator, coming from the banks of the Mississippi, and from the State of Missouri, I cannot be blind to the consequences of interrupting that double line of inland and maritime commerce, which, stretching to the mines of Mexico, brings back the perennial supply of solid money which enriches the interior, and enables New Orleans to purchase the vast accumulation of agricultural produce of which she is the emporium. Wonderful are the workings of commerce, and more apt to find out its own proper channels by its own operations than to be guided into them by the hand of legislation. New Orleans now is what the Havana once was-the entrepot of the Mexican trade, and the recipient of its mineral wealth. The superficial reader of commercial statistics would say that Mexico but slightly encourages our domestic industry; that she takes nothing from our agriculture, and but little from our manufactures. On the contrary, the close observer would see a very different picture. He would see the products of our soil passing to all the countries of Europe, exchanging into fine fabrics, and these returning in the ships of many nations, our own predominant, to the city of New Orleans; and thence going off in small Mexican vessels to Metamoras, Tampico, Vera Cruz, and other Mexican ports. The return from these ports is in the precious metals, and, to confine myself to a single year, as a sample of the whole, it may be stated that, of the ten millions and three quarters of silver coin and bullion received in the United States, according to the custom-house returns during the last year, eight millions and one quarter of it came from Mexico alone, and the mass of it through the port of New Orleans. This amount of treasure is not received for nothing, nor, as it would seem on the commercial tables, for foreign fabrics unconnected with American industry, but, in reality, for domestic produc

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tions changed into foreign fabrics, and giving double employment to the navigation of the country. New Orleans has taken the place of the Havana; it has become the entrepot of this trade; and many circumstances, not directed by law, or even known to lawgivers, have combined to produce the result. First, the application of steam power to the propulsion of vessels, which, in the form of tow-boats, has given to a river city a prompt and facile communication with the sea; then the advantage of full and assorted cargoes, which brings the im porting vessel to a point where she delivers freight for two different empires; then the marked advantage of a return cargo, with cheap and abundant supplies, which are always found in the grand emporium of the great West; then the discriminating duties in Mexican ports in favor of Mexican vessels, which makes it advantageous to the importer to stop and tranship at New Orleans; finally, our enterprise, our police, and our free institu tions, our perfect security, under just laws, for life, liberty, person and property. These circumstances, undirected by Government, and without the knowledge of Government, have given to New Orleans the supreme advantage of being the entrepot of the Mexican trade; and have presented the unparalleled spectacle of the noblest valley in the world, and the richest mines in the world, sending their respective products to meet each other at the mouth of the noblest river in the world; and there to create, in lapse of time, the most wonderful city which any age or country has ever beheld. A look upon the map of the great West, and a tolerable capacity to calculate the aggregate of geographical advantages, must impress the beholder with a vast opinion of the future greatness of New Orleans; but he will only look upon one half of the picture unless he contemplates this new branch of trade which is making the emporium of the Mississippi the entrepot of Mexican commerce, and the recipient of the Mexican mines, and which, though now so great, is still in its infancy. Let not Government mar a consummation so auspicious in its aspect, and teeming with so many rich and precious results. Let no unnecessary collision with Mexico interrupt our commerce, turn back the streams of three hundred mines to the Havana, and give a wound to a noble city which must be felt to the head spring and source of every stream that pours its tribute into the King of Floods.

Thus far Mexico has no cause of complaint. The conduct of our Government has been that of rigorous neutrality. The present motion does not depart from that line of conduct; for the proposed recognition is not only contingent upon the de facto independence of Texas, but it follows in the train, and conforms to the spirit, of the actual arrangements of the President General, Santa Anna, for the complete separation of the two countries. We have authentic information that the President General has agreed to an armistice; that he has directed the evacuation of the country; that the Mexican army is in full retreat; that the Rio Grande, a limit far beyond the discovery and settlement of La Salle in 1684, is the provisional boundary; and that negotiations are impending for the establishment of peace on the basis of separation. Mexico has had the advantage of these arrangements, though made by a captive chief, in the unmolested retreat and happy extrication of her troops from their perilous position. Under these circumstances, it can be no infringement of neutrality for the Senate of the United States to adopt a resolution for the contingent and qualified acknowledgment of Texian independence. Even after the adoption of the resolution, it will remain inoperative upon the hands of the President until he shall have the satisfactory information which shall enable him to act without detriment to any interest, and without infraction of any law.

names, and embalm your memories. Inexorable history will sit in judgment upon all concerned, and will reject the plea of Government orders, even if those orders emanated from the Government, instead of being dictated to it. The French National Convention, in 1793, ordered all the English prisoners who should be taken in battle to be put to death. The French armies refused to execute the decree. They answered that French soldiers were the protectors, not the assassins of prisoners; and all France, all Europe, the whole civilized world, applauded the noble reply.

But let us not forget that there is some relief to this black and bloody picture--some alleviation to the horror of its appalling features. There was humanity, as well as cruelty, at Goliad--humanity to deplore what it could not prevent. The letter of Colonel Fernandez does honor to the human heart. Doubtless many other officers felt and mourned like him, and spent the day in unavailing regrets. The ladies, Losero and others, of Metamoras, saving the doomed victims in that city, from day to day, by their intercessions, appear like ministering angels. Several public journals, and many individuals, in Mexico, have given vent to feelings worthy of Christians, and of the civilization of the age; and the poor woman on the Guadaloupe, who succored and saved the young Georgian, (Hadaway,) how nobly she appears. He was one of the few that escaped the fate of the Georgia battalion sent to the Old Mission. Overpowered by famine and despair, without arms and without comrades, he entered a solitary house filled with Mexican soldiers hunting the fugitives of his party. His action amazed them; and, thinking it a snare, they stepped out to look for the armed body of which he was supposed to be the decoy. In that instant food was given him by the humane woman, and instant flight to the swamp was pointed out. He fled, receiving the fire of many guns as he went; and, escaping the perils of the way, the hazards of battle at San Jacinto, where he fought, and of Indian massacre in the Creek nation, when the two stages were taken and part of his travelling companions killed, he lives to publish in America that instance of devoted humanity in the poor woman of the Guadaloupe. Such acts as all these deserve to be commemorated. They relieve the revolting picture of military barbarity--soften the resentments of nations-and redeem a people from the offence of individuals.

Great is the mistake which has prevailed in Mexico, and in some parts of the United States, on the character of the population which has gone to Texas. It has been common to disparage and to stigmatize them. Nothing could be more unjust; and, speaking from knowledge, either personally or well acquired, (for it falls to my lot to know, either from actual aequaintance or good information, the mass of its inhabitants,) I can vindicate them from erroneous imputations, and place their conduct and character on the honorable ground which they deserve to occupy. The founder of the Texjan colony was Mr. Moses Austin, a respectable and enterprising native of Connecticut, and largely engaged in the lead Mines of Upper Louisiana when I went to the Territory of Missouri in 1815. The present head of the colony, his son, Mr. Stephen F. Austin, then a very young man, was a member of the Territorial Legislature, distinguished for his intelligence, business habits, and gentlemanly conduct. Among the grantees we distinguish the name of Robertson, son of the patriarchal founder and first settler of West Tennessee. Of the body of the emigrants, most of them are heads of families or enterprising young men, gone to better their condition by receiving grants of fine land in a fine climate, and to continue to live under the republican form of Government to which they had been accustomed. There sits one of them, (pointing to Mr. Carson, late

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member of Congress from North Carolina, and now Secretary of State for Texas.) We all know him; our greetings on his appearance in this chamber attest our respect; and such as we know him to be, so do I know the multitude of those to be who have gone to Texas. They have gone, not as intruders, but as grantees; and to become a barrier between the Mexicans and the ma| rauding Indians who infested their borders.

Heartless is the calumny invented and propagated, not from this floor, but elsewhere, on the cause of the Texian revolt. It is said to be a war for the extension of slavery. It had as well be said that our own Revolution was a war for the extension of slavery. So far from it, that no revolt, not even our own, ever had a more just and a more sacred origin. The settlers in Texas went to live under the form of Government which they had left behind in the United States--a Government which extends so many guarantees for life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, and which their American and English ancestors had vindicated for so many hundred years. A succession of violent changes in Government, and the rapid overthrow of rulers, annoyed and distressed them; but they remained tranquil under every violence which did not immediately bear on themselves. In 1822 the republic of 1821 was superseded by the imperial diadem of Iturbide. In 1823 he was deposed and banished, returned and was shot, and Victoria made President. Mentuno and Bravo disputed the presidency with Victoria, and found, in banishment, the mildest issue known to unsuccessful civil war. Pedraza was elected in 1828; Guerrero overthrew him the next year. Then Bustamente overthrew Guerrero; and, quickly, Santa Anna overthrew Bustamente, and, with him, all the forms of the constitution, and the whole frame of the federative Government. By his own will, and by force, Santa Anna dissolved the existing Congress, convened another, formed the two Houses into one, called it a convention, and made it the instrument for deposing, without trial, the constitutional Vice President, Gomez Farias, putting Barragan into his place, annihilating the State Governments, and establishing a consolidated Government, of which he was monarch under the retained republican title of President. Still the Texians did not take up arms: they did not acquiesce, but they did not revolt. They re tained their State Government in operation, and looked to the other States, older and more powerful than Texas, to vindicate the general cause, and to re-establish the federal constitution of 1824. In September, 1835, this was still her position. In that month a Mexican armed vessel appeared off the coast of Texas, and declared her ports blockaded. At the same time General Cos appeared in the west with an army of fifteen hundred men, with orders to arrest the State authorities, to disarm the inhabitants, leaving one gun to every five hundred souls, and to reduce the State to unconditional submission. Gonzales was the selected point for the commencement of the execution of these orders; and the first thing was the arms, those trusty rifles which the settlers had brought with them from the United States, which were their defence against savages, their resource for game, and the guard which converted their houses into castles stronger than those "which the King cannot enter." A detachment of General Cos's army appeared at the village of Gonzales on the 28th of September, and demanded the arms of the inhabitants; it was the same demand, and for the same purpose, which the British detachment under Major Pitcairn had made at Lexington, on the 19th of April, 1775. It was the same demand! and the same answer was given--resistance--battle--victory! for the Ameri can blood was at Gonzales as it had been at Lexington; and between using their arms and surrendering their

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arms, that blood can never hesitate. Then followed the rapid succession of brilliant events, which, in two months, left Texas without an armed enemy in her borders, and the strong forts of Goliad and the Alamo, with their garrisons and cannon, the almost bloodless prizes of a few hundred Texian rifles. This was the origin of the revolt; and a calumny more heartless can never be imagined than that which would convert this just and holy defence of life, liberty, and property, into an aggression for the extension of slavery.

Just in its origin, valiant and humane in its conduct, sacred in its object, the Texian revolt has illustrated the Anglo-Saxon character, and given it new titles to the respect and admiration of the world.

It shows that liberty, justice, valor--moral, physical, and intellectual power-discriminate that race wherever it goes. Let our America rejoice, let Old England rejoice, that the Brassos and Colorado, new and strange names-streams far beyond the western bank of the Father of Floods-have felt the impress and witnessed the exploits of a people sprung from their loins, and carrying their language, laws, and customs, their magna charta and its glorious privileges, into new regions and far distant climes. Of the individuals who have purchased lasting renown in this young war, it would be impossible, in this place, to speak in detail, and invidious to discriminate; but there is one among them whose position forms an exception, and whose early association with myself justifies and claims the tribute of a particular notice. I speak of him whose romantic victory has given to the Jacinto that immortality in grave and serious history which the diskos of Apollo had given to it in the fabulous pages of the heathen mythology. General Houston was born in the State of Virginia, County of Rockbridge; he was appointed an ensign in the army of the United States during the late war with Great Britain, and served in the Creek campaign under the banners of Jackson. I was the lieutenant colonel of the regiment to which he belonged, and the first field officer to whom he reported. I then marked in him the same soldierly and gentlemanly qualities which have since distinguished his eventful career: frank, generous, brave--ready to do, or to suffer, whatever the obligations of civil or military duty imposed; and always prompt to answer the call of honor, patriotism, and friendship. Sincerely do I rejoice in his victory. It is a victory without alloy, and without parallel, except at New Orleans. It is a victory which the civilization of the age, and the honor of the human race, required him to gain; for the nineteenth century is not the age in which a repetition of the Goliad matins could be endured. Nobly has he answered the requisition; fresh and luxuriant are the laurels which adorn his brow.

It is not within the scope of my present purpose to speak of military events, and to celebrate the exploits of that vanguard of the Anglo-Saxons who are now on the confines of the ancient empire of Montezuma; but that combat of the San Jacinto it must forever remain in the catalogue of military miracles. Seven hundred and fifty citizens, miscellaneously armed with rifles, muskets, belt pistols, and knives, under a leader who had never seen service, except as a subaltern, march to attack near double their numbers-march in open day across a clear prairie, to attack upwards of twelve hundred veterans, the elite of an invading army of seven thousand, posted in a wood, their flanks secured, front intrenched, and commanded by a general trained in civil wars, victorious in numberless battles, and chief of an empire of which no man becomes chief except as conqueror. In twenty minutes the position is forced. The combat becomes a carnage. The flowery prairie is

* Hyacinth; hyacinthus; huakinthos; water flower.

[JULY 1, 1836.

stained with blood; the hyacinth is no longer blue, but scarlet. Six hundred Mexicans are dead; six hundred more are prisoners, half wounded; the President General himself is a prisoner; the camp and baggage all ta ken; and the loss to the victors, six killed and twenty wounded. Such are the results, and which no European can believe, but those who saw Jackson at New Orleans. Houston is the pupil of Jackson; and he is the first self-made general, since the time of Mark Antony, and the King Antigonus, who has taken the general of the army and the head of the Government captive in battle. Different from Antony, he has spared the life of his captive, though forfeited by every law, human and divine.

I voted in 1821 to acknowledge the absolute independence of Mexico; I vote now to recognise the contingent and expected independence of Texas. In both cases the vote is given upon the same principle-upon the principle of disjunction where conjunction is impossible or disastrous. The union of Mexico and Spain had become impossible; that of Mexico and Texas is no longer desirable or possible. A more fatal present could not be made than that of the future incorporation of the Texas of La Salle with the ancient empire of Montezuma. They could not live together, and extermination is not the genius of the age; and, besides, is more easily talked of than done. Bloodshed only could be the fruit of their conjunction; and every drop of that blood would be the dragon's teeth sown upon the earth. No wise Mexican should wish to have this Trojan horse shut up within their walls.

The debate was further continued by Mr. PRESTON, who asked for the yeas and nays on the resolution; which were ordered, and the question being taken, was decided as follows:

YEAS-Messrs. Bayard, Benton, Black, Buchanan, Calhoun, Clay, Clayton, Cuthbert, Davis, Ewing of Illinois, Ewing of Ohio, Goldsborough, Grundy, Hendricks, Kent, King of Alabama, King of Georgia, Leigh, Linn, Mangum, Moore, Nicholas, Niles, Page, Porter, Preston, Rives, Robbins, Robinson, Ruggles, Southard, Swift, Tallmadge, Tomlinson, Walker, Wall, Webster, White, Wright-39.

So the resolution was unanimously adopted.

On motion of Mr. SWIFT, the Senate agreed to take a recess from 3 to 5 o'clock.

After taking up and going through with several bills, The Senate took a recess until 5 o'clock.

EVENING SESSION.

INDIAN APPROPRIATIONS.

Mr. WHITE, from the Committee on Indian Affairs, reported the bill from the House making appropriations for carrying into effect certain Indian treaties, with amendments.

The bill was taken up, and, after some discussion be tween Mr. WHITE and Mr. WEBSTER, the amendments were ordered to be engrossed.

FORTIFICATIONS.

The bill making appropriations for fortifications was received from the House, with a message concurring in one amendment, and non-concurring in the other.

On motion of Mr. WEBSTER, the Senate receded from the amendments which had not received the concurrence of the House.

DELAWARE BREAKWATER. The Senate took up the bill making additional appropriations for the Delaware breakwater, &c.

There was a discussion on this bill, in which Mr. DAVIS, Mr. MANGUM, Mr. BUCHANAN, Mr. WALKER, Mr. PRESTON, Mr. PORTER, Mr. LINN, Mr.