crime, it is not ours. no intention of wickedness. We act throughout as we profess. But you declare war and denounce it as infamous, but vote all supplies, and urge its vigorous prosecution. You preach that it is murder, and boast how many Whigs there are in it—how many friends, how many constituents you have in it, who volunteered to go.

Gentlemen claim it all. We have

"You charge that it is a crime, and complain that more Democrats than Whigs have been appointed to carry on the villainy, and speak of the chief man in the gang (General Taylor) for the Presidency. You vote monuments to the dead-trophies, thanks, emoluments, bounties to the living-to entice people to imbrue their hands in blood-in infamy.

"If this war is unjust, gentlemen are not absolved by the 6 cry of Mr. Polk's war.' They voted for it. Declamation against Mr. Polk will not screen them from their own denunciations of the horror, the sin, and crime, and murder, of unjust war. If crime and infamy, the record bears conviction of the actors upon its face, and there it will stand, indelible and imperishable, as the Republic itself. It will adhere, like the shirt of Nessus, to its authors. Like the garment Media wove for Jason, it will cleave and burn into the flesh until they perish. Enhancing the crime, they only invoke more fearful punishment upon themselves."

Rarely, indeed, has any deliberative body listened to sarcasm so withering, or invective so powerful and so just.

Still the leaders of the Whig party in Congress clung with fearless tenacity to a policy which, although immoral, they believed to be advantageous. They continued through the whole existence of the war to denounce it as unjust, wicked, and unconstitutional, but nevertheless evinced their patriotism, by voting the supplies required by the

President for ensuring a criminal triumph. It is, however, due to the party at large to acknowledge, that its submission, especially at the North, to this policy of its leaders, was partial and reluctant. The American Review, a very able journal devoted to the interests of the party, thus honorably confessed and condemned the motives which actuated the Whig members of Congress who voted for the war: The vote for fifty thousand volunteers and ten millions of dollars was all but unanimous. The resolution asking for these means were preceded by a lying preamble, which imputed the war to the act of Mexico. The resolution, preamble and all, was eagerly swallowed. So much more solicitous seemed even the Whigs about personal popularity, which might, be jeoparded by what would be represented as an abandonment of the cause of a gallant but beleaguered army, in refusing or delaying to vote for this bill, than for the cause of TRUTH and right.”

The Whig Legislature of Massachusetts emphatically rebuked the course pursued by some of the Whig representatives from that State in Congress, by adopting a resolution declaring: "That such a war of conquest, so hateful in its objects, so wanton, unjust, and unconstitutional in its origin and character, must be regarded as a war against freedom, against humanity, against justice, against the Union, and against the free States; and that a regard for the true interests and highest honor of the country, not less than the impulses of Christian duty, should arouse all good citizens to join in efforts to arrest this war, and in every just way aiding the country to retire from the position of aggression which it now occupies towards a weak, distracted neighbor and sister Republic."

That only sixteen members out of two hundred and forty should have voted against the war, while a very

large minority admitted its injustice, and the falsehood of the assertion that it had been commenced by Mexico, is a melancholy proof that moral courage and independence were not characteristics of the American Congress of 1846. And yet these qualities invariably attract confidence, esteem, and influence, even from those against whom they are exercised. "I admire," said one of the leaders of the war party, "I admire the sincerity, I reverence the consistency of the immortal FOURTEEN (in the House of Representatives) who voted against the declaration of war. Their judgment was convinced that the war was wrong, and they voted as their judgment dictated. They violated the laws neither of God nor of man. But he who denounces the war as unjust, and yet votes for it, violates God's holy law and every principle of ethics." Let the names of these honest, consistent men, who feared God more than man, and looked rather to the Day of Judgment than to the day of election, be borne upon the affectionate remembrance of the Christian community. They were:

It is due to justice to mention, that Mr. Corwin, a Senator from Ohio, afterwards publicly condemned and regretted the vote he had given for the war.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE WAR PROSECUTED FOR CONQUEST.

66

IN utter disregard of the multiplied proofs to the contrary, Mr. Polk thought it expedient, in his Message to Congress of the 8th December, 1846, to hazard the extraordinary assertion, "THE WAR HAS NOT BEEN WAGED WITH A VIEW TO CONQUEST"! He added, But having been commenced by Mexico, it has been carried into the enemy's country, and will be there vigorously prosecuted, with a view to obtain an honorable peace, and thereby secure ample indemnity for the expenses of the war, as well as to our much-injured citizens, who hold large pecuniary demands against Mexico." We have seen Mr. Polk's early and persevering efforts to secure California, and his official declaration, in the instructions to Stockton, that he could foresee no contingency in which the United States would ever surrender or relinquish that province. What abuse of language can be greater than to fight for territory with the declared intention of holding it for ever, and yet to pretend that we fight not for conquest but indemnity? But, independent of this most wretched quibbling about a word, let us pause for a moment to consider the avowal made by the President of the United States to a Christian people. It is no longer pretended that the war is one of defence. We are, it seems, to continue fighting till we are paid for our trouble in slaughtering. We killed Mexicans on the Rio Grande; but, receiving no pay, we bombarded Vera Cruz, and killed