Part 131

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States:

I communicate to Congress a letter from the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Great Britain to the Secretary of State, with the answer of the latter.

The continued evidence afforded in this correspondence, of the hostile policy of the British Government against our national rights, strengthens the considerations recommending and urging the preparation of adequate means for maintaining them.

JAMES MADISON.

WASHINGTON, January 16, 1812.

The Message and documents enclosed were read, and referred to the committee to whom was referred, on the 8th of November last, so much of the Message of the President of the United States as concerns the relations between the United States and France and Great Britain, to consider and report thereon; and five hundred copies thereof ordered to be printed for the use of the Senate.

FRIDAY, January 17.

Incorporation of a Mining Company in Upper Louisiana.

Mr. BRADLEY, from the committee appointed on the petition of Moses Austin and John R. Jones, reported a bill to incorporate Moses Austin, John Rice Jones, Henry Austin, and others, into a company, by the name of the Louisiana Lead Company; and the bill was read, and passed to the second reading.

WEDNESDAY, January 29.

The bill establishing a land office was read the second time.

Additional Military Force.

The Senate resumed, as in Committee of the Whole, the consideration of the bill, entitled "An act authorizing the President of the United States to accept and organize certain volunteer military corps," together with the amendments reported thereto by the select committee.

Mr. GILES rose and opposed at length the bill as it came from the House, reserving to himself the privilege of acting on the proposed amendment according to the result of further reflections. He believed the bill would be productive of no practical efficacy. It proposed a force which could not be raised; and if raised, from the short period of its service, in the event of serious hostilities, would be utterly incompetent to effect the objects of those hostilities. The bill would be inoperative, because, in the States of Massachusetts and Vermont, (and he presumed in other States,) no power or provision existed by which these volunteers could be commissioned, so as to perform the contemplated service; and if the Government were deprived of the volunteers in Massachusetts and Vermont, he did not know where they could obtain volunteers for the object which he believed all branches of the Government had in view. He presumed that the system of volunteers was the favorite system of the Government; and this he inferred from their having recommended to the other House the raising of ten thousand regulars only, and from the Message of the President, sent in after both Houses had passed the bill for raising twenty-five thousand regulars, and communicating the correspondence between Mr. Foster and Mr. Monroe, as a ground for urging Congress to persevere in the preparations they were engaged in making. The President must, therefore, have deemed a volunteer force essential for the contemplated service. And here he observed he thought, if his correspondence with the British Envoy, which afforded evidence of "continued hostility" towards us, furnished matter of sufficient importance to press upon Congress the utility of hastening their measures of preparation, that the other business of the Department of State might have been allowed to repose long enough for a reply to have been made to Mr. Foster, before nearly a month had elapsed after the date of his letter. He did not advert to this circumstance from any want of respect to this Government: he should always treat them with the highest respect. He should prefer the reduction of the number of the volunteers to twenty-five thousand, rather than the retention of the fifty thousand, because it would increase the momentum of actual force, and decrease the expenses, about which so much has been said. Surely, he said, he did not mean that it would not increase the momentum of force proposed by the other House, but that proposed by the Executive. The Executive had asked for ten thousand regulars, and fifty thousand volunteers--in all, sixty thousand men. The other House had agreed to give him eighty-five thousand. The proposed amendment would, therefore, bring the quantum of force down nearly to the Executive requisition. But the bill proposed a force which would be utterly inefficient, as all other volunteer bills had been. The returns under the thirty thousand volunteer law, passed two or three years ago, were so few, that the Secretary of War did not register them. He asked, how efficient could that species of force be, of which the Chief Magistrate did not think it worth while to have a record kept? It was only a formidable display of armies on paper--a tender of services--which only produced very handsome replies from the President. He did not censure the Secretary of War or the President; very far from it; the defect had been in the law. He begged gentlemen to look seriously at the subject. If a war should ensue, it must be a serious one. The responsibility attached to Congress of placing an adequate force in the hands of the President for the war. But if they passed a law which would give the President only a nominal force, totally incompetent to effect any desirable object, he, for one, should be unwilling to take any share of responsibility on himself.

THURSDAY, February 27.

Increase of the Navy.

The Senate resumed, as in Committee of the Whole, the consideration of the bill entitled "An act concerning the Naval Establishment," together with the amendments reported thereto by the select committee.

Mr. LLOYD.--Mr. President, the amendments proposed by the committee to whom this bill has been referred, having been gone through with, I now beg leave to offer a new one, by an additional section to the following effect:

"Be it further enacted, That the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, authorized to cause to be built as speedily as may be, on the most approved model, ---- frigates, not exceeding thirty-six guns each; and that a sum not exceeding ---- dollars be, and the same is hereby appropriated for building the said frigates, out of any moneys in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated."

It is my intention, sir, to move for twenty new frigates; but the number I have left blank in order, should the Senate be favorably disposed to an increase of the Navy, and disagree with me as to the degree of that increase, they might regulate the number at their pleasure.

Sir, I have been induced to offer this amendment from an impulse of duty towards my more immediate constituents, and also from a sense of the obligation imposed upon me, however feebly I may be able to respond to it, in the honorable station in which I am placed, to endeavor to the extent of my ability to support the dignity, protect the rights, and advance the best interests of the United States. Sir, I trust the amendment under consideration, if adopted, would have a relation, and a favorable relation, to all these objects.

If it be not the determination of the Government to engage in an open, actual, efficient war; to place the nation in such a complete state of preparation as to avert war, from our state of readiness to meet it; then the measures of the present session, those of filling up the existing Military Establishments, and thereby adding to it between six and seven thousand men, that of enlisting a standing army of twenty-five thousand men to serve for five years, unless sooner discharged--of providing for the employment of fifty thousand volunteers, and of holding in readiness one hundred thousand of the militia, would be not only inexcusable, but nearly treasonable; as they would in such case, without any adequate object, impose severe and heavy burdens upon the people of the United States, from which years of the highest degree of prosperity would not relieve them. But, sir, I am bound to believe, that unless redress be obtained, it is the determination of the Government of the United States to enter into an actual, vigorous, real war, or at any rate to put the nation into a perfect State of readiness to commence it, should it be necessary; and in either of these cases, an efficient naval force is as indispensable, nay much more indispensable, than a land force.

In the year 1793, when Great Britain depredated upon your commerce, you had a man at the head of your Government who fought no battles with paper resolutions, nor attempted to wage war with commercial restrictions, although they were then pressed upon him. He caused it to be distinctly and with firmness made known to Great Britain, that if she did not both cease to violate our rights, and make us reparation for the wrongs we had sustained--that young and feeble as we then were, just in the gristle, and stepping from the cradle of infancy, we would try the tug of war with her. What was the consequence? Her depredations were stopped--we made a treaty with her, under which we enjoyed a high degree of prosperity. Our claims were fairly heard, equitably adjudged, and the awards were honorably and punctually paid to the sufferers. In this instance you did something for commerce.

Next came the war with Tripoli--the Barbary States preyed upon our commerce--you determined to resist, and despatched a small squadron to the Mediterranean: this ought to have been considered as the germ of your future maritime greatness: the good conduct and bravery of that squadron, and the self-immolation of some of its officers, spread the renown of your naval prowess to all quarters of the civilized globe. What did you in this instance? At the moment when victory had perched upon your standard--when you might have exhibited the interesting spectacle of the infant Government of the United States holding in subjugation one of the Powers of Barbary, to whom all Europe had been subservient--at this moment when conquest was completely within your grasp--civil agency stepped in--the laurel was torn from the brow of as gallant a chieftain as ever graced the plains of Palestine, and we ignominiously consented to pay a tribute, where we might have imposed one.

After this you had the Berlin decree, the Orders in Council, the Milan decree, the Rambouillet decree, the depredations of Spain, the robberies even of the renegado black chief of St. Domingo, and the unprovoked and still continued plunder of Denmark, a nation of pirates from their origin. What cause of complaint has Denmark, or ever had Denmark, against us? Her most fond and speculative maritime pretensions we have willingly espoused, and yet she continues daily to capture and condemn our vessels and cargoes, and contemptuously tells us that the Government of the United States is too wise to go to war for a few merchant ships. And this we bear from a people as inferior to the United States in all the attributes of national power or greatness, as I am inferior to Hercules. Yes, sir, commerce has been abandoned, else why prohibit your merchants from bringing the property, to a large amount, which they have fairly purchased and paid for, into the ports of our country, else why, by this exclusion, perform the double operation of adding to the resources of the enemy you are going to war with and impoverishing your own citizens.

Yes, sir, commerce has been abandoned, "deserted in her utmost need by those her former bounty fed." Yes, sir, she has been abandoned. She has been left as a wreck upon a strand, or as a derelict upon the waters of the ocean, to be burnt, sunk, or plundered, by any great or puny assailant who could man an oar or load a swivel for her annoyance.

What was the leading object of the adoption of the Federal Constitution in the northern parts of the Union? Most emphatically, it was for the protection of commerce. What was the situation of some branches of our commerce then? And what is it now? Look at the statement which was laid upon our tables about a fortnight past, and taken from the returns of the Treasury. What effect has it had upon our fisheries, which were so nobly and successfully contended for by the American Commissioners who settled the Treaty of 1783; which for a time suspended that Treaty; and which, both the duplicity and intrigue of France and the interest of England strove to deprive us of--of our fisheries, which were then considered, and still ought to be considered, as a main sinew of our strength, and a nursery for our seamen?

MONDAY, March 2.