I stand on this floor, not as an apologist to the President, nor as his accuser,
but to advocate that course which is best calculated to advance the prosperity
of our infant Republic.
I would ask those who are loudest in their denunciations, if our territory has
not been invaded by armed enemies? Have they not kidnapped and carried
into captivity a citizen of our Republic? Have they not sacked Refugio, and
robbed and murdered the inhabitants of that unprotected country? Still we
hear from the opposite side of this House the cry of peace! peace! when there
is no peace. Heaven defend us from such peace! Do they wish us to fold our
arms and remain in a state of inactivity until the enemy shall plant their
daggers in our hearts, and die ingloriously, without lifting an arm in our own
defence?
I regard the policy of keeping our navy in ordinary as the worst which we
could pursue with respect to it. . . .
Let us take a view of the relative positions of Texas and Mexico, when the
President issued the order for our navy to cooperate with that of Yucatán
against our common enemy. We had made every proposition which a just,
honorable and magnanimous nation should do, and had been treated with
contempt. When our Commissioner applied, during the last summer, to the
Mexican Government, through her Britannic Majesty's Minister, to make a
treaty of peace, and offered to assume the payment of one million of pounds
of sterling of the foreign debt of Mexico, what answer did he receive? He was
told that they would not consent to a dismemberment of the territory of the
Mexican Republic, and that they would never "bind themselves to an act
equivalent to the sanction and recognition of slavery." All hope of succeeding
by a pacific policy had vanished; news had reached this country that Mexico
was endeavoring to procure a navy which could drive that of Texas from the
Gulf, and that they designed blockading our ports. Yucatán had thrown off
the Government of central Mexico, and driven every hostile foot from her
soil. Mexico was preparing an expedition against Yucatán to reduce her to
subjection. Peraza, as Commissioner from Yucatán, applied to Texas for
assistance in order to prevent the contemplated invasion. He offered the
means necessary to prepare the navy for active operations against Mexico as a
common enemy. The proposition was accepted, not merely to assist Yucatán,
but to protect our commerce and maintain that ascendancy upon the Gulf of
Mexico which is essential to