Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2). Benton Thomas Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ with the treaty, his readiness to remove, and received subsistence and supplies for himself and all his party. The most friendly relations seemed to be established; and the doomed and deceived agent, in giving his account of it to the government, says: "The result was that we closed with the utmost good feeling; and I have never seen Powell and the other chiefs so cheerful and in so fine a humor, at the close of a discussion upon the subject of removal."

      This is Powell (Osceola), for whom all our sympathies are so pathetically invoked! a treacherous assassin, not only of our people, but of his own – for he it was who waylaid, and shot in the back, in the most cowardly manner, the brave chief Charley Emarthla, whom he dared not face, and whom he thus assassinated because he refused to join him and his runaway negroes in murdering the white people. The collector of Indian curiosities and portraits, Mr. Catlin, may be permitted to manufacture a hero out of this assassin, and to make a poetical scene of his imprisonment on Sullivan's island; but it will not do for an American senator to take the same liberties with historical truth and our national character. Powell ought to have been hung for the assassination of General Thompson; and the only fault of our officers is, that they did not hang him the moment they caught him. The fate of Arbuthnot and Ambrister was due to him a thousand times over.

      I have now answered the accusation of the senator from New Jersey [Mr. Southard]. I have shown the origin of this war. I have shown that it originated in no fraud, no injustice, no violence, on the part of this government, but in the thirst for blood and rapine on the part of these Indians, and in their confident belief that their swamps would be their protection against the pursuit of the whites; and that, emerging from these fastnesses to commit robbery and murder, and retiring to them to enjoy the fruits of their marauding expeditions, they had before them a long perspective of impunity in the enjoyment of their favorite occupation. This I have shown to be the cause of the war; and having vindicated the administration and the country from the injustice of the imputation cast upon them, I proceed to answer some things said by a senator from South Carolina [Mr. Preston], which tended to disparage the troops generally which have been employed in Florida; to disparage a particular general officer, and also to accuse that general officer of a particular and specified offence. That senator has decried our troops in Florida for the general inefficiency of their operations; he has decried General Jesup for the general imbecility of his operations, and he has charged this General with the violation of a flag, and the commission of a perfidious act, in detaining and imprisoning the Indian Powell, who came into his camp.

      I think there is great error and great injustice in all these imputations, and that it is right for some senator on this floor to answer them. My position, as chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, would seem to assign that duty to me, and it may be the reason why others who have spoken have omitted all reply on these points. Be that as it may, I feel impelled to say something in behalf of those who are absent, and cannot speak for themselves – those who must always feel the wound of unmerited censure, and must feel it more keenly when the blow that inflicts the wound falls from the elevated floor of the American Senate. So far as the army, generally, is concerned in this censure, I might leave them where they have been placed by the senator from South Carolina [Mr. Preston], and others on that side of the House, if I could limit myself to acting a political part here. The army, as a body, is no friend of the political party to which I belong. Individuals among them are friendly to the administration; but, as a body, they go for the opposition, and would terminate our political existence, if they could, and put our opponents in our place, at the first general election that intervenes. Asa politician, then, I might abandon them to the care of their political friends; but, as an American, as a senator, and as having had some connection with the military profession, I feel myself called upon to dissent from the opinion which has been expressed, and to give my reasons for believing that the army has not suffered, and ought not to suffer, in character, by the events in Florida. True, our officers and soldiers have not performed the same feats there which they performed in Canada, and elsewhere. But why? Certainly because they have not got the same, or an equivalent, theatre to act upon, nor an enemy to cope with over whom brilliant victories can be obtained. The peninsula of Florida, where this war rages, is sprinkled all over with swamps, hammocks, and lagoons, believed for three hundred years to be impervious to the white man's tread. The theatre of war is of great extent, stretching over six parallels of latitude; all of it in the sultry region below thirty-one degrees of north latitude. The extremity of this peninsula approaches the tropic of Capricorn; and at this moment, while we speak here, the soldier under arms at mid-day there will cast no shadow: a vertical sun darts its fiery rays direct upon the crown of his head. Suffocating heat oppresses the frame; annoying insects sting the body; burning sands, a spongy morass, and the sharp cutting saw grass, receive the feet and legs; disease follows the summer's exertion; and a dense foliage covers the foe. Eight months in the year military exertions are impossible; during four months only can any thing be done. The Indians well understand this; and, during these four months, either give or receive an attack, as they please, or endeavor to consume the season in wily parleys. The possibility of splendid military exploits does not exist in such a country, and against such a foe: but there is room there, and ample room there, for the exhibition of the highest qualities of the soldier. There is room there for patience, and for fortitude, under every variety of suffering, and under every form of privation. There is room there for courage and discipline to exhibit itself against perils and trials which subject courage and discipline to the severest tests. And has there been any failure of patience, fortitude, courage, discipline, and subordination in all this war? Where is the instance in which the men have revolted against their officers, or in which the officer has deserted his men? Where is the instance of a flight in battle? Where the instance of orders disobeyed, ranks broken, or confusion of corps? On the contrary, we have constantly seen the steadiness, and the discipline, of the parade maintained under every danger, and in the presence of massacre itself. Officers and men have fought it out where they were told to fight; they have been killed in the tracks in which they were told to stand. None of those pitiable scenes of which all our Indian wars have shown some – those harrowing scenes in which the helpless prisoner, or the hapless fugitive, is massacred without pity, and without resistance: none of these have been seen. Many have perished; but it was the death of the combatant in arms, and not of the captive or the fugitive. In no one of our savage wars have our troops so stood together, and conquered together, and died together, as they have done in this one; and this standing together is the test of the soldier's character. Steadiness, subordination, courage, discipline, – these are the test of the soldier; and in no instance have our troops, or any troops, ever evinced the possession of these qualities in a higher degree than during the campaigns in Florida. While, then, brilliant victories may not have been seen, and, in fact, were impossible, yet the highest qualities of good soldiership have been eminently displayed throughout this war. Courage and discipline have shown themselves, throughout all its stages, in their noblest forms.

      From the general imputation of inefficiency in our operations in Florida, the senator from South Carolina [Mr. Preston] comes to a particular commander, and charges inefficiency specifically upon him. This commander is General Jesup. The senator from South Carolina has been lavish, and even profuse, in his denunciation of that general, and has gone so far as to talk about military courts of inquiry. Leaving the general open to all such inquiry, and thoroughly convinced that the senator from South Carolina has no idea of moving such inquiry, and intends to rest the effect of his denunciation upon its delivery here, I shall proceed to answer him here – giving speech for speech on this floor, and leaving the general himself to reply when it comes to that threatened inquiry, which I undertake to affirm will never be moved.

      General Jesup is charged with imbecility and inefficiency; the continuance of the war is imputed to his incapacity; and he is held up here, on the floor of the Senate, to public reprehension for these imputed delinquencies. This is the accusation; and now let us see with how much truth and justice it is made. Happily for General Jesup, this happens to be a case in which we have data to go upon, and in which there are authentic materials for comparing the operations of himself with those of other generals – his predecessors in the same field – with whose success the senator from South Carolina is entirely satisfied. Dates and figures furnish this data and these materials; and, after refreshing the memory of the Senate with a few dates, I will СКАЧАТЬ