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

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СКАЧАТЬ To a people thus abased, and so lately arrived at the possession of their liberties, a supply of merchandise, upon the cheapest terms, is the least of the benefits to be derived from a commerce with the people of the United States. The consolidation of their republican institutions, the improvement of their moral and social condition, the restoration of their lost arts, and the development of their national resources, are among the grand results which philanthropy anticipates from such a commerce.

      "To the Indians themselves, the opening of a road through their country is an object of vital importance. It is connected with the preservation and improvement of their race. For two hundred years the problem of Indian civilization has been successively presented to each generation of the Americans, and solved by each in the same way. Schools have been set up, colleges founded, and missions established; a wonderful success has attended the commencement of every undertaking; and, after some time, the schools, the colleges, the missions, and the Indians, have all disappeared together. In the south alone have we seen an exception. There the nations have preserved themselves, and have made a cheering progress in the arts of civilization. Their advance is the work of twenty years. It dates its commencement from the opening of roads through their country. Roads induced separate families to settle at the crossing of rivers, to establish themselves at the best springs and tracts of land, and to begin to sell grain and provisions to the travellers, whom, a few years before, they would kill and plunder. This imparted the idea of exclusive property in the soil, and created an attachment for a fixed residence. Gradually, fields were opened, houses built, orchards planted, flocks and herds acquired, and slaves bought. The acquisition of these comforts, relieving the body from the torturing wants of cold and hunger, placed the mind in a condition to pursue its improvement. – This, Mr. President, is the true secret of the happy advance which the southern tribes have made in acquiring the arts of civilization; this has fitted them for the reception of schools and missions; and doubtless, the same cause will produce the same effects among the tribes beyond, which it has produced among the tribes on this side of the Mississippi.

      "The right of way is indispensable, and the committee have begun with directing a bill to be reported for that purpose. Happily, there are no constitutional objections to it. State rights are in no danger! The road which is contemplated will trespass upon the soil, or infringe upon the jurisdiction of no State whatsoever. It runs a course and a distance to avoid all that; for it begins upon the outside line of the outside State, and runs directly off towards the setting sun – far away from all the States. The Congress and the Indians are alone to be consulted, and the statute book is full of precedents. Protesting against the necessity of producing precedents for an act in itself pregnant with propriety, I will yet name a few in order to illustrate the policy of the government, and show its readiness to make roads through Indian countries to facilitate the intercourse of its citizens, and even upon foreign territory to promote commerce and national communications."

      Precedents were then shown. 1, A road from Nashville, Tennessee, through the Chicasaw and Choctaw tribes, to Natchez, 1806; 2, a road through the Creek nations, from Athens, in Georgia, to the 31st degree of north latitude, in the direction to New Orleans, 1806, and continued by act of 1807, with the consent of the Spanish government, through the then Spanish territory of West Florida to New Orleans; 3, three roads through the Cherokee nation, to open an intercourse between Georgia, Tennessee, and the lower Mississippi; and more than twenty others upon the territory of the United States. But the precedent chiefly relied upon was that from Athens through the Creek Indian territory and the Spanish dominions to New Orleans. It was up to the exigency of the occasion in every particular – being both upon Indian territory within our dominions, and upon foreign territory beyond them. The road I wanted fell within the terms of both these qualifications. It was to pass through tribes within our own territory, until it reached the Arkansas River: there it met the foreign boundary established by the treaty of 1819, which gave away, not only Texas, but half the Arkansas besides; and the bill which I brought in provided for continuing the road, with the assent of Mexico, from this boundary to Santa Fé, on the Upper del Norte. I deemed it fair to give additional emphasis to this precedent, by showing that I had it from Mr. Jefferson, and said:

      "For a knowledge of this precedent, I am indebted to a conversation with Mr. Jefferson himself. In a late excursion to Virginia, I availed myself of a broken day to call and pay my respects to that patriarchal statesman. The individual must manage badly, Mr. President, who can find himself in the presence of that great man, and retire from it without bringing off some fact, or some maxim, of eminent utility to the human race. I trust that I did not so manage. I trust that, in bringing off a fact which led to the discovery of the precedent, which is to remove the only serious objection to the road in question, I have done a service, if not to the human family, at least to the citizens of the two greatest Republics in the world. It was on the evening of Christmas day that I called upon Mr. Jefferson. The conversation, among other things, turned upon roads. He spoke of one from Georgia to New Orleans, made during the last term of his own administration. He said there was a manuscript map of it in the library of Congress (formerly his own), bound up in a certain volume of maps, which he described to me. On my return to Washington, I searched the statute book, and I found the acts which authorized the road to be made: they are the same which I have just read to the Senate. I searched the Congress Library, and I found the volume of maps which he had described; and here it is (presenting a huge folio), and there is the map of the road from Georgia to New Orleans, more than two hundred miles of which, marked in blue ink, is traced through the then dominions of the King of Spain!"

      The foreign part of the road was the difficulty and was not entirely covered by the precedent. That was a road to our own city, and no other direct territorial way from the Southern States than through the Spanish province of West Florida: this was a road to be, not only on foreign territory, but to go to a foreign country. Some Senators, favorable to the bill, were startled at it, and Mr. Lloyd, of Massachusetts, moved to strike out the part of the section which provided for this ex-territorial national highway; but not in a spirit of hostility to the bill itself providing for protection to a branch of commerce. Mr. Lowrie, of Pennsylvania, could not admit the force of the objection, and held it to be only a modification of what was now done for the protection of commerce – the substitution of land for water; and instanced the sums annually spent in maintaining a fleet in the Mediterranean Sea, and in the most remote oceans for the same purpose. Mr. Van Buren, thought the government was bound to extend the same protection to this branch of trade as to any other; and the road upon the foreign territory was only to be marked out, not made. Mr. Macon thought the question no great matter. Formerly Indian traders followed "traces" now they must have roads. He did not care for precedents: they are generally good or bad as they suit or cross our purposes. The case of the road made by Mr. Jefferson was different. That road was made among Indians comparatively civilized, and who had some notions of property. But the proposed road now to be marked out would pass through wild tribes who think of nothing but killing and robbing a white man the moment they see him, and would not be restrained by treaty obligations even if they entered into them. Col. Johnson, of Kentucky, had never hesitated to vote the money which was necessary to protect the lives or property of our sea-faring men, or for Atlantic fortifications, or to suppress piracies. We had, at this session voted $500,000 to suppress piracy in the West Indies. We build ships of war, erect light-houses, spend annual millions for the protection of ocean commerce; and he could not suppose that the sum proposed in this bill for the protection of an inland branch of trade so valuable to the West could be denied. Mr. Kelly, of Alabama, said the great object of the bill was to cherish and foster a branch of commerce already in existence. It is carried on by land through several Indian tribes. To be safe, a road must be had – a right of way – "a trace," if you please. To answer its purpose, this road, or "trace," must pass the boundary of the United States, and extend several hundred miles through the wilderness country, in the Mexican Republic to the settlements with which the traffic must be carried on. It may be well to remember that the Mexican government is in the germ of its existence, struggling with difficulties that we have long since surmounted, and may not feel it convenient to make the road, and that it is enough to permit us to mark it out upon her soil; which is all that this bill proposes to do within her limits. Mr. Smith, of Maryland, would vote for the bill. The only question with him was, whether commerce СКАЧАТЬ