PROCEEDINGS IN CONGRESS UPOS THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE STATUE OF LEWIS CASS THE STATE OF MICHIGAN i F MI ai i lYivi u ii ,;i ). i > Y-V! o i. l- u !"i- n ^- iS - S iV!i !i HH} So^W,wiw^*<fii | iw.i4<it B;8ii --- M :>: MU -AMXi, -.;:< .;-- ,r. ,;.; M l^ii fl Mife:M .(HM.HrtiXiMMM.UiU^V, ,,;,,, SVMtpyi-CK^M isww *-*^--^ryi^w>MRmiw iMMSi iMMm LIBRARY OK THI: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Received IC^VLU Accession No. Class No. v,v PROCEEDINGS IN CONGRESS UPON THE ACCEPTANCE OF PRESENTED BY "^ ** Of IM U1IV1RSIT7 WASHINGTON : GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 1889. Joint resolution to authorize the printing of the proceedings in Congress in ac cepting the statue of the late Lewis Cass, an illustrious citizen, presented by the State of Michigan, and the statues of the late Major-General John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg and Robert Fulton, illustrious citizens, presented by the State of Pennsylvania. Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That there be printed of the proceedings in Congress upon the acceptance of the statue of the late Lewis Cass, presented by the State of Michigan, twelve thousand five hundred copies, of which three thousand shall be for the use of the Senate and nine thousand five hundred copies for the use of the House of Representatives, and in a separate volume; that there be printed of the proceedings in Congress upon the acceptance of the statue? of the late John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg and Robert Fulton, presented by the State of Pennsylvania, twelve thousand five hundred copies, of which three thousand shall be for the use of the Senate and nine thousand five hundred for the use of the House of Representatives; and the Secretary of the Treasury is hereby directed to have printed engravings of said statues to accompany said proceedings ; and for engraving and printing said pictures the sum of one thousand five hundred dollars, or so much as may be necessary, is hereby appro priated out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated. Approved, March 2, 1889. 2 ACCEPTANCE OF THE STAfUE. ,OP LEWIS CASS. PROCEEDINGS IN THE SENATE. JANUARY 21, 1889. The PRESIDENT /ro tempore laid before the Senate the fol lowing communication ; vvhich was read : EXECUTIVE OFFICE, MICHIGAN, Lansing, Michigan, January 16, 1889. DEAR SIR : I have the pleasure at this time to inform you, and through you the Senate, that in acceptance of the invitation con tained in section 1814 of the Revised Statutes of the United States,, a statue in marble of LEWIS CASS has been made in pursuance of an act of the legislature of this State, passed at its biennial session in 1885, and which statue is the work of the celebrated American sculptor, Mr. D. C. French, of Concord, Massachusetts. The same has been placed in the old Hall of the House of Representatives at the Capitol of the United States in the custody of the Architect of such Capitol. This w r ork is now presented to the Congress of the United States as one of the statues contributed by the State of Michigan in pursu ance of the invitation aforesaid. I write you at this time that such further action may be taken in the matter by Congress as may be deemed expedient. Very respectfully, yours, CYRUS G. LUCE, Governor* Hon. JOHN J. INGALLS, President of Senate of United States, Washington, D. C, 3 4 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. Mr. PALMER. Mr. President, in response to the letter I will state that on the morning of February 18, at the close of the morning business, I shall present resolutions express ive of the sense of the Senate and make a few remarks thereupon. The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Meanwhile the letter will lie on the table. FEBRUARY 18, 1889. Mr. PALMER. In accordance with the notice that I gave January 21, I present the resolutions I send to the desk and ask for their immediate consideration^ The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The resolutions will be read. The Chief Clerk read as follows : Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring], That the thanks of Congress be tendered to the governor, and through him to the people of the State of Michigan, for the statue of LEWIS CASS, whose name is so conspicuously connected with the de velopment of the Northwest Territory and with eminent services to his State and country both at home and abroad. Resolved, That the strtue is accepted in the name of the nation and assigned a place in the old Hall of Representatives, and that a copy of these resolutions, signed by the President of the Senate and Speaker of the House of Representatives, be transmitted to the gov ernor of the State of Michigan. Mr. PALMER. I ask for the reading of the governor s letter. The PRESIDENT pro tempore. It will be read. Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 5 The Chief Clerk read as follows : EXECUTIVE OFFICE, MICHIGAN, Lansing, Michigan, January 16, 1889. DEAR SIR: I have the pleasure at this time to inform you, and through you the Senate, that in acceptance of the invitation con tained in section 1814 of the Revised Statutes of the United States, a statue in marble of LEWIS CASS has been made in pursuance of an act of the legislature of this State, passed at its biennial session in 1885, and which statue is the work of the celebrated American sculptor, Mr. D. C. French, of Concord, Massachusetts. The same has been placed in the old Hall of the House of Representatives at the Capitol of the United States in the custody of the Architect of such Capitol. This work is now presented to the Congress of the United States as one of the statues contributed by the State of Michigan in pursu ance of the invitation aforesaid. I write you at this time that such further action may be taken in the matter by Congress as may be deemed -expedient. Very respectfully, yours, CYRUS G. LUCE, Governor. Hon. JOHN J. INGALLS, President of Senate of United States, Washington, D. C. Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. ADDRESS OF MR, PALMER. Mr. President, in responding to the nation s invitation to the States, that each should place two statues of her illus trious men in Memorial Hall, there was a fitness that the first place should be given by a State to one, if such there be, who more than any other had been identified with her infancy, who had defended her in war, who had guided her youthful footsteps, who had laid down for her rules of con duct, who had brought order out of chaos, who, although separated from her by oceans, or called away by public duty, still clung to her as his home, and fondly looked to her soil as the dust with which his own was to at last commingle. To-day, Mr. President, we formally accept Michigan s first contribution to the Valhalla of the nation, and it is but seemly that the reasons for her action should be recited. LEWIS CASS was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, on the 9th day of October, 1782. He died in Detroit June 17, 1866. He was of Puritan descent, and the names of his ancestors, Cass and Gillman, are to be found creditably mentioned in early colonial history. His father, Jonathan Cass, a type of the young patriots of 1776, enlisted at the age of nineteen, on the day after the battle of Lexington, and shared the vicissitudes of the patriot army until its disbandment in 1783, attaining the rank of captain by gallantry and faithful service. He was subsequently recommended by the legislature of New Hampshire for appointment as the first marshal of that State under the Constitution, and was commissioned as cap- Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 1 tain in the regular Army upon its organization. He rose to the rank of major, and resigned in 1799, when he settled on the Muskingum River, a few miles above Zanesville, Ohio. There he died in 1830, high in the esteem of the commu nity in which he lived. Lewis was the eldest of five children. He was of robust constitution and of bright and eager mind. At ten years of age he entered Exeter Academy, then under the charge of that accomplished scholar and instructor, Dr. Abbott. He was noted for diligence and manly excellence. He re mained there seven years, and during a portion of that time had among his associates the afterward distinguished Buck ingham, Saltonstall, and Daniel Webster. In 1799 he taught school at Wilmington, Delaware, for a few months, preliminary to a foot and boat journey to the field of his future work. In October, 1800, he reached Ma rietta, the gateway through which Puritan blood and senti ment first poured its tide, destined to overspread and irri gate the great West. He entered the office of Governor Meigs and commenced the study of law, which he continued in the office of Matthew Baccus until licensed to practice in the courts of the Territory, in December, 1802. He re moved to Zanesville, Ohio, where he rapidly acquired the confidence and clientage of the pioneers, and in 1806 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Dr. Spencer, of Wood County, Virginia, formerly of Lansingburgh, New York, a lady of culture and refinement. In December of the same year he took his seat in the Ohio legislature, and at once was conceded a leadership unusual to so young a man. The treasonable expedition of Aaron Burr was the center of public interest at that time, and Gen- 8 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. eral CASS framed the law under which his boats were seized and men arrested. He drafted the official communication to President Jefferson, stating the views of the legislature on that subject. The ability displayed and zeal shown influenced the Pres ident to appoint him marshal of Ohio in 1807, which posi tion he held until he exchanged it for the colonelcy of the Third Regiment of Volunteers, with which he joined Gen eral Hull at the outbreak of hostilities in 1812. His services during that war form no mean part of its history, and mark him as a true patriot and capable soldier. He led the advance into Canada, drew up the proclamation addressed by General Hull to the inhabitants, and com manded the detachment that drove in the outposts at Aux Canards, where was shed the first blood of the war. When included in the surrender of Detroit and paroled, he was selected by his fellow-officers, who shared his indignation, to lay the facts before the President. He hastened to Washington and made the first report, September 12, 1812, on the inexplicable circumstances through which a fort, an army, and a Territory were surrendered without the firing of a gun. Immediately upon his exchange he was appointed colonel in the regular Army, and soon after was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general. He shared in the campaign of 1813, ending in the defeat of General Proctor at the battle of the Thames and the death of Tecumseh, and was left in command at Detroit in the fall. He was almost immedi ately appointed civil governor of the Territory of Michigan and ex officio superintendent of Indian affairs. , Mr. President, were the claim for the admission of his Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 9 statue to "the American Pantheon " based solely upon his conduct of that office for eighteen years, there surely had been none to gainsay the right. He assumed jurisdiction over a wilderness containing six thousand French and English speaking whites and forty thousand savages. No lands had been sold by the United States ; no surveys had been made ; no titles were*possible. The interior was without roads and the savages were jealous, restless, or openly hostile. His grasp of the Indian problem of that day was the com prehensive grasp of a statesman. He cast aside the methods and policies previously pursued by the French and English and treated the Indians as mere occupants and not owners of the lands. He proposed to purchase their possessory rights, limit their ranging, teach them mechanics and agri culture, and provide them with schools and churches. From the outset he impressed them with the power and benignity of our Government. In twenty-two treaties he secured the peaceable cession to the Government of the vast territory now occupied in part by four great States. He built roads, ordered and superin tended surveys, established and maintained military posts, built light-houses, organized counties and townships, estab lished courts, and provided all needed conveniences and machinery for civilized government and the protection of life and property. In 1820 he planned and personally conducted an explora tion of the Territory, in which he traveled over five thou sand miles, most of the way in birch canoes, treating and exchanging courtesies with the leading tribes of Indians. He settled finally the question of supremacy as to whom 10 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. their allegiance was due Great Britain or the United States with them at Sault Ste. Marie, overawing the in solent Chippewas by an act of personal heroism worthy of ancient song and story. He prospected the copper region, estimated and reported on the timber and mineral resources of the L,ake Superior country,* navigated the unknown rivers, ascended the Mis sissippi to its source, and ascertained the internal geogra phy of a vast wilderness, the speedy population of which was largely due to the reports of this expedition. As an indication of his economic management, it is well to recall that in proposing this journey to the Secretary of War he stated that no extra appropriation was needed for it, and only asked permission to assign a small part, say from one thousand to fifteen hundred dollars, of the sum appor tioned for Indian expenses. It was this expedition which gave Henry R. Schoolcraft his opportunity to make a last ing fame in connection with Indian legends and history. In July, 1831, General CASS resigned his office as gov ernor of Michigan to accept the War portfolio in the Cabi net of Andrew Jackson. He had been appointed governor six times under Presidents Madison, Monroe, and Adams without a protest from the people or a dissenting vote in the Senate. No treaty made by him was ever rejected by the Senate or complained of by the Indians, who as late as the last council in Detroit, of the Chippewas, Ottawas, and Pottawatomies, July 25, 1855, testified their respect for and confidence in him by abandoning their discussion, flocking about him, grasping his hand, and saluting him as an old and valued friend when he unexpectedly entered the coun cil room. Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 1 1 Hon. James V. Campbell, for over thirty years a justice of the supreme court of Michigan, a man of the Irghest re pute as a jurist and citizen and a critical scholar, writing in 1876 his Political History of Michigan, sums up his ac count of General CASS S service there as follows : His administration was eminently popular, and he desired and en deavored to secure to the people as soon as possible all the privileges of self-government. If he erred in this respect it was an error in the direction of the largest popular authority. His views were broad and sagacious, and he was very free from personal bitterness and ma lignity. The inevitable asperities of politics exposed him in later years to the attacks made on all public men, and his course in na tional affairs has been severely assailed and warmly defended; but no one now has any doubts about his sincere and unqualified patriot ism. He was a brave defender and a true lover of his country. As Secretary of War, General CASS held the confidence and friendship of President Jackson, although he joined Secretary McL,ane in opposing the proposed removal of the deposits. . The Black Hawk war occurred and was energet ically conducted. The executive measures called out by the nullification acts of South Carolina received his ap proval and co-operation. His report on what was known as "the Cherokee question" was an able and exhaustive state paper, and the plan outlined for the care of the Indians at that time has been substantially followed to this day. During his Secretaryship he presided at the first temper ance meeting ever held in Washington (February 24, 1833), and delivered the opening address upon the organization of the American Historical Society (October 12, 1835). Both of these addresses were delivered in the hall where his statue now stands, and so far as I can learn they were his only public appearances there. On April 7, 1836, General 12 Acceptance of the Stattie of Lewis Cass. CASS presented a report relative to the military and naval defenses of the country and the supervision of internal im provements by the Corps of Engineers, which was of great merit, and its leading features have become incorporated in our public policy. In August of that year, finding that his health was be coming impaired, he exchanged the Secretaiyship for the position of minister to France. Almost immediately upon his presentation at court he obtained the payment of inter est on our indemnity claims, thus terminating a vexatious dispute which at one time threatened to involve us in a war. His most important act as minister and as an American was in effecting the defeat of the ratification of the quintu ple treaty by the French Chamber of Deputies. England sought by diplomacy to secure the active consent of Aus tria, Russia, Prussia, and France to the enforcement of her long claimed and persistently contested right of visit and search, under cover of the general abhorrence of the African slave trade. The United States was not furnished a copy of the proposed treaty or asked to subscribe to it, although ours was the first nation to declare the slave trade unlawful, the first to declare it to be piracy and to take extreme meas ures for its suppression. General CASS not only filed a masterly and comprehen sive protest with the French Government, but with the con sent of M. Guizot, minister of foreign affairs, issued an address directly to the French people, which has served as a text-book of the American position until this day. His efforts secured the rejection of the treaty. The negotiation of the Ashburton treaty by Mr. Webster, without insisting upon the renunciation of England s claim Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 13 to the right of visit and search in set terms, led to the resig nation of General CASS, and a voluminous correspondence with the Secretary of State on the subject followed. If it had not been for the sensitiveness of the public mind of America on the subject of slavery, which was prepared to welcome any blow at that institution, although that blow might involve concessions which would return to plague us, this action of General CASS would have given him immedi ate, exceptional, and lasting fame. To the student of polit ical history the stand he took and the ability with which he defended, yea more, that he advanced it, together with the dexterity in adapting means to an end, stamp him not only as a statesman but a diplomat of the highest order. Isolated in opinion, cut off from instructions from home, w r ith an administration behind him whose views on the subject were unknown to him, surrounded by trained and adverse diplomats, to whom politics was the game of a life time, he threw himself wholly and positively into the conflict with a directness, an earnestness, and an alertness that must command our admiration. The wonder grows, as we ana lyze the situation, that this man, whose associations at the plastic time of his life had been on the frontier, who had been denied that conventional education which comes of mingling in old communities, whose training was neither of the court nor the forum, who had been forbidden access to well-filled libraries, should not only have circumvented the methods of men trained for diplomacy in the most refined and critical arena of Europe, but should have suc ceeded in holding a position that our commissioners had relinquished at Ghent, and for which blood and treasure had been poured out in the war of 1812. He not only did this, 14 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. but by his arguments, based on the law of nations and fortified by citations from learned jurists, he drew conclusions which availed us much in a dark period of our civil war and which now are recognized as a maritime rule of conduct through out Christendom. His return to the United States was marked by a succes sion of popular ovations which emphasized the public opinion of his services. In the national convention of 1844 he stood next to Van Buren in the balloting for the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, until a dead-lock under the two-thirds rule ter minated in a compromise on James K. Polk. In 1845, a t the earliest opportunity, he was elected to represent Mich igan on this floor. Here he at once assumed a leading position, being heard in January, 1846, in defense of the Monroe doctrine, and in March delivering a learned and forcible address on the Ore gon boundary question, which was afterward paraphrased as fifty-four forty or fight and used as a watch-word in the campaign of 1848. During this and the succeeding Congress the Wilmot proviso was the central question. When first proposed General CASS favored its incorporation, but subsequently yielded to the advice of Justice McLean and opposed it on the ground of its unconstitutionality, although instructed to vote for it by the legislature of Michigan. The instruction was, however, rescinded before the final vote was reached. In the Thirty-first Congress he was second to Mr. Clay on the committee which formulated the celebrated "compro mise measures" of that day, and was chosen second only be cause he himself urged the propriety and policy of placing the great Whig leader first. Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 15 He supported the measures reported by the committee with the exception of the " fugitive-slave law," for which he refused to vote, although in his seat at the time of its passage. In 1848 he was the nominee of his party for the Presi dency, receiving ten more than the necessary two-thirds of the votes on the fourth ballot, but was defeated through divisions on the slavery question in New York and Penn sylvania. He received the electoral vote of one-half the States, including the State of his birth, New Hampshire, Ohio, and the entire Northwest. He so bore himself in the struggle and after the defeat that in 1852, during forty-nine ballots, he led the poll for renomination, and in 1856 was solicited, through published correspondence, to again bear the standard, but declined to be considered. When he accepted the nomination in 1848 he resigned his Senatorship, but was re-elected upon the assembling of the legislature in 1849 to serve out his own unexpired term, and was continued in the Senate as long as his party retained supremacy in Michigan. During his service in the Senate he advocated a home stead law, and favored the peaceable purchase of Cuba, but opposed every measure looking to its forcible seizure. Abhorring slavery and deprecating its extension, he held with the men of his school that it was beyond the interfer ence of the General Government, excepting for protection in its constitutional status. Upon leaving the Senate, in 1857, he was called to the Cabinet of President Buchanan as Secretary of State. There he maintained the doctrines essential to our nationality, which had grown with his growth diirino- his extended serv- 16 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. ice as a builder and director of States and as his country s representative in European councils. During his care of our foreign relations "the Republic received no harm," and in 1858 he was gratified with the consummation of his efforts in the abandonment by Great Britain of her assumption of the right of visit and search. Amid the internal commotions preceding the outbreak of cmlwar he, as with Clay in 1850, advocated compromise between the discordant elements, but when the President refused to re-enforce and defend Fort Sumter, he resigned his seat in the Cabinet and retired to private life after fifty- six years of official service. On April 17, 1861, he addres:ed the first war meeting in Detroit. In company and in practical accord with Senator Zachariah Chandler, he appealed to his fellow-citizens to stand by the Union. His last public service was a letter of patriotic advice to Secretary Seward during the threatening complications with Great Britain, growing out of the seiz ure of Mason and Slidell. Mr. President, I know of no public man who has filled so many places in the economy of life teacher, explorer, negotiator of treaties, governor, pioneer, lawyer, legislator, marshal, soldier, diplomat, Secretary of War, Senator, and Secretary of State. In all he acquitted himself well, and in most surpassing well. His failings were the faults of his party ; his virtues were his own. In diplomacy, bold or placable as the occasion might demand ; in legislation, con siderate, logical, and never dramatic ; in administration, assiduous and conservative the purity of his motives can not be gainsaid and the integrity of his acts is above re proach. He was a man of fine presence, grave demeanor, Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 17 and cultivated manners. He took a great interest in young men, and many now living can attest his active and effect ive assistance. His house in Detroit, Washington, and Paris was always the seat of a refined and elegant hospi tality. General CASS S life spanned the experimental era of our history. To some the Constitution was a procrustean bed to which all things were to be made to conform ; to others it was an instrument elastic enough to meet every emergency. On the one hand it was regarded as a skin which would expand with every development of frame or muscle ; on the other a coat of mail, within which the organism might grow but beyond the scales of which growth was impossible. It was a very difficult thing to reconcile or compass con flicts apparent at the time of its adoption ; to foresee those which should arise in the future was beyond human pre science. To outside pressure we were strong ; as against internal discord we were weak. It was the old fable of the twigs together we could not be broken, apart we were easily rent and the problem was, could we hold together? The twigs took root; their pend ant branches drooping to the West, banyan-like, sought earth and water, and soon their giant boles sent back life and vigor to the composite parent stem. It was the West which made us a nation, and to General CASS more than any other man was the West indebted for that self-dependence, that positiveness, that development which, while it was in herent in the race, was promoted and stimulated by his efforts to impress upon it that the people were the source of power and that society with its statutes and forms of law should be a growth and not a creation. H. Mis. 145 2 18 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. Like most of the prominent men of his time, he believed that the Union could be preserved only by conciliation. He was a strict constructionist of the Constitution. He abhorred slavery, but he honestly believed that under the Constitution it could not be interfered with, and that the power of Congress was limited in legislating against it in the Territories. With Clay, Webster, and others, he tried by tentative methods to arrest the storm that was threatening all along the horizon. With them he tried to dam the stream that bade fair to overwhelm the nation in a common ruin and who shall say that. their efforts were not essential to the final glorious consummation? The stream rose higher than the crown of the dam and then battlement and plank and pier rushed headlong to the sea. It carried destruction in its way, but a destruction necessary to re-creation. The invisible forces, always the most potent, were the factors which solved the problem. The moral law recog nized in the Ordinance of 1787 wrought out the economic results of 1865 > Appomattox Court House was the corollary of Marietta; humanity was stronger than statutes, and parchments shriveled before the fires which warmed the children in a hundred thousand school-houses. Cadmus had planted the dragon s teeth, and, behold, armed men were brought forth. The knot which all the sages could not untie was cut by the sword. In that crucial time when parties were tossing in angry tumult, like ships in a tempest with no beacon to guide, General CASS was true to the flag. His influence, like that of Douglas, sustained the wavering, checked the disloyal, and inspired the patriot. The homes which he more than Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 1 9 any other had opened for the emigrant, the civilization which he more than any other had promoted and encour aged, then sent forth hundreds of thousands of men to die, if need be, for the Union. He saw the flag trailed in dishonor ; he lived to see it re stored in glory. He saw the staff stripped of the emblem of a united country before hostile cannon ; he lived to see it bend beneath the streaming folds, no star blotted out and no stripe discolored, when it was again hoisted amid the salvos of artillery. He found us bound together by a rope of sand ; he lived to see that bond transmuted in the fierce heat of battle and on the forge of conflict to hooks of triple steel that no man might put asunder. He entered the wilderness which Virginia released, and which the Ordi nance of 1787 consecrated eternally to freedom; he lived to see that wilderness transformed into populous States which hurled nearly a million of men to fight for national unity. . His first year in public life found him strenuous to cir cumvent the traitorous designs of an arch conspirator against his country. His last official act was to protest againt the vacillation which permitted a State to arm itself against the Federal authority unchallenged and un checked. Two years after he entered public life the Afro- American slave trade was abolished by statute; two years before he died domestic slavery was swept away by force of arms. His youthful ears heard the rejoicing on the adop tion of the Constitution ; his aged eyes saw that instrument relieved of all complicity with a system that the public con science had come to regard as a crime. He could say, All of this I saw and part of which I was. Whatever may be said of the sentiments he entertained in 20 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. matters of political economy concerning which able and honest men have differed, no one will ever assail his integ rity of administration, the comprehensiveness of his out look, and the entire devotion of thought and purpose to the aggrandizement of his country. He found her great in pos sibilities ; he left her great in development. Along that toilsome journey of eighty-four years he saw no encroachment on her rights that he did not strive to thwart ; he had no aspiration that was not consistent with her greatness. More than twenty years have passed since he died. The mists engendered by the heat, passion, and rancor of the crucial time of the nation s history have risen, and men are judged not only by their acts but by the results of their acts. It has been said that the highest place in history must be assigned to the founders of states. If this be so, certainly the next gradation must be assigned to him who builds the superstructure on foundations already laid. To such a place impartial biography must assign IvEWiS CASS. The State whose institutions he did so much to mold, and in whose soil his ashes repose, after a lapse of twenty-two years, a time sufficient for scrutiny of his acts and their consequences, has decreed through its representa tives assembled that he is worthy of a place beside the great men who stand serene and changeless beneath the dome of the Capitol. It remains for us, Mr. President, to formally accept his statue presented to the nation by the State of Michigan. She invokes for the life and character which it represents and recalls the calm judgment of the present and the future. She leaves it in that august tribunal where the nation has Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 21 gathered in part the counterfeit presentments of her heroic sons, with Williams the tolerant, Allen the vehement, Win- throp the devout, and the goodly array of worthies on whom History has set her seal. In that court of last resort, where every American must of necessity be his own accuser, defender, and judge, it were well that we should pause and, after calm delibera tion, let our consciences enter up the verdict whether or no our aspirations, our aims, and our acts have been and are consistent with the glory of the Republic. ADDRESS OF MR. MORRILL. Mr. President, General CASS, when I first came to Wash ington as a member of the House of Representatives, was a prominent member of the Senate, and in 1857 he was ap pointed Secretary of State by President Buchanan, where he served until December, 1860, and here resided for some time subsequently. He owned a large house here, befitting the generous hospitality of himself and family, where mem bers of Congress, irrespective of party affiliations, were in vited and made welcome. His early, long, and important State and national services could not fail to make it pecul iarly appropriate that a life-like representation of his im posing form and figure should be presented to the National Hall of Statuary, where the magic of many names of former days yet lingers, and a hall already reverently dedicated to some of our bravest and best, and, as we trust Immortal names That were not born to die. 22 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. In 1864, by act of Congress, all of the States were in vited To provide and furnish statues, in marble or bronze, not exceed ing two in number for each State, of deceased persons who have been citizens thereof, and illustrious for their historic renown or for distinguished civic or military services, such as each State may deem to be worthy of this national commemoration. For this purpose the old Hall of the House of Represent atives was set apart as a National Statuary Hall, and I may be pardoned for mentioning, as the measure was intro duced by me, that it was designed with the further object of preserving untouched the admirable features of perhaps the finest hall of our country, then in imminent danger of being appropriated and cut up for the humble use as docu 1 ment-rooms, with a long-drawn aisle or narrow passage way between the House and Senate through the center. Beyond the great beauty of the hall itself, its attractions are destined to be immensely augmented as each State adds its chosen representatives to the national muster-roll of em inent men who have decorated our history. Many States have already presented statues of those whose renown the American people will preserve with pride, and whose merits are here daily recognized by troops of visitors, but likely hereafter to be even more earnestly studied and appreciated whenever the statues appear to be inspired by the genius of our best artists. The statue now offered by the prosperous State of Michigan, I feel sure, will be received as in every respect a creditable addition to a creditable assembly repre senting celebrities of the past who rendered some service to the Republic. But there will be abundant room for many more, and we have much reason to expect the grand old hall will ere long Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 23 be adorned by such notable figures, possibly, as would be that of Benton, from Missouri, or those of Charles Carroll and William Wirt, from Maryland ; Lincoln and Douglas, from Illinois ; Grimes, from Iowa ; Morton and Hendricks, of Indiana ; Webster, from New Hampshire ; Macon, once styled "the last of the Romans," from North Carolina; Clay, from Kentucky ; Calhoun, from South Carolina ; Will iam H. Crawford and George M. Troup, from Georgia ; Austin and Sam Houston, from Texas ; and Madison and Patrick Henry, from Virginia, with a long illustrious list of others easily to be mentioned, sufficient to show that our materials to make the hall nationally attractive are in no danger of being exhausted, but in some States may prove embarrassing from their abundance. This truly representative hall, with its fraternal congress of the dead, who yet speak in marble and bronze, will tend to increase mutual respect, tend to knit us together as a homogeneous people, here united forever in a common tribute of high regard to Americans not unknown to fame, and designated and crowned by their respective States as worthy of national commemoration. When we notice how swiftly some of those with whom we have been associated here, and whom we have loved and admired, have passed away, and whose eloquence, wit, and learning are only brought to the recollection of the public on tare occasions, is it not a gratification to feel that there have been some of our countrymen in public service who have left their Footprints on the sands of time, and to find there are traditions and personal memories ex tant in each and every State of historic worthies that are to 24 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. have honored remembrance here through all the future ages of the Republic? LEWIS CASS belonged to the age of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, born in the same year with Webster, Calhoun, Van Buren, and Benton ; and though his forensic fame may have been eclipsed when contrasted with that of the foremost trio of our country, as was that of nearly all of their contemporaries, he was a strong, well-informed man, capable of lucid and cogent argument whenever he chose to prepare himself for debate, as he thought it only respect ful to the Senate to do, and throughout his long career he was a prominent participant in events that will be honora bly perpetuated in the annals of our country. The biographical details of the life of General CASS have been so learnedly and completely portrayed by the distin guished Senator from Michigan, whose services here we all regret are so soon to terminate, that I am reluctant to touch even briefly these details again, but feel that I must, because the succession of these related facts, covering more than half a century of his personal history, are more eloquent than any comments can be of mine, and because they seem to be necessary to give substance and support to the slight contribution which it is possible for me to offer relative to the life and leading traits of character of this favorite son of the State of Michigan. General CASS may be reckoned as one of the class often held to be somewhat characteristic of our American civili zation, or as born in one State, obtaining a profession in another, and finally achieving fame and fortune in still another an example of the restless and enterprising pioneers the East has sent and is still sending to the West. The son Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 25 of a captain in the Continental army, born in New Hamp shire, educated at its famous Exeter Academy, becoming a young school-master in Delaware; and the next year, at seventeen years of age, going across the Alleghanies on foot to Marietta, Ohio, where he studied law, and then started in his profession, in 1803, at Zanesville. Here he married and began his political career as a member of the Ohio legislature in 1806, wh ere he suddenly became famous as the author of an act to arrest the men believed to be en gaged in treasonable movements with Aaron Burr. For this timely service, very near to the heart of President Jef ferson, he was rewarded by an appointment as marshal of Ohio, an office he retained until 1813. At the beginning of the second war with England he joined the forces of General Hull as a colonel of the Ohio volunteers, and was too soon included in the capitulation known as Hull s disgraceful surrender. Having been pa roled, he hastened to Washington with an aching heart and made the first report of the sad affair, and, like a gallant and indignant young soldier, said in his communication to the Secretary of War: "Our duty and our interest was to fight." As the forces of the enemy were greatly inferior to ours under General Hull, this appears to have been the unvarnished truth. After being exchanged he was ap pointed to the Twenty-seventh Regiment of Infantry and was soon promoted to the rank of brigadier-general. He was in the battle of the Thames, and at the close of hostil ities what his prowess and military efficiency had been was clearly indicated by his being placed in command of the Territory of Michigan, and finally he was made governor of that Territory for many years, showing throughout the long service unimpeachable administrative ability. 26 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. In 1831 he was made Secretary of War by President Jack son, and largely sympathized in 1832 with the President in his resolute purpose to crush out nullification. In 1836 he was appointed minister to France, where his most important act was a vigorous argumentative protest against the quintuple treaty by which Great Britain sought by a joint proposal with other European powers for the sup pression of the slave trade to maintain the right of search on the high seas, but where only a small portion of the high contracting parties could give or were expected to give prac tical service or attention. It is enough to say that our minister s earnest protest dissuaded the French Govern ment from signing the treaty and therefore defeated it. Soon after our own Government made a treaty with Great Britain for a mutual effort to suppress the slave trade, which, while not authorizing a search of American by British ves sels, did not explicitly forbid it, as General CASS thought it should have done, and therefore, feeling himself indi rectly discredited, he asked to be recalled, which request was granted. His controversy on this subject with Lord Brougham, and also with the Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, attracted at the time considerable attention and occupied much space in the public prints. The omission of any declaration against the right of search was perhaps less conspicuous in 1842 than in our treaty of peace in 1815, when the exercise of that right was understood to have been the principal cause of the war of 1812, but Great Britain then found out and has known ever since that any practical re-assertion of the right would be re garded by us as a sufficient cause for war. Most certainly General CASS would not have concluded the treaty of 1815 117117 BE SIT Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 27 without an open and explicit provision against the right of search, but this probably would have been a humiliation to which Great Britain would not have submitted. After his return from France he was a candidate, in 1844, for the Presidency. Always acknowledging his allegiance to the principles of the Democratic party, he cordially ac cepted the measures for which the party then contended, and announced that he was against a national bank and in favor of the annexation of Texas. He was against the Wilmot proviso, and upon the question of whether new States should be admitted in the Union with or without slavery he held that it should be left to be determined by the people of the Territories, and this his opponents described as " squat ter sovereignty." He also, in relation to the tariff, de clared That in the imposition of duties necessary with the proceeds of the public lands to provide this revenue incidental protection should be afforded to such branches of American industry as may require it. This appears to me He said not only constitutional, but called for by the great interests of the country. In the Democratic convention, however, Martin Van Buren had the lead, and only lacked twenty votes of a two- thirds majority, but the friends of General CASS declined to supply the few votes so greatly needed, and Mr. Polk, of Tennessee, finally received the nomination. General CASS, in 1845, was elected to the Senate, and at once joined in the earnest assertion of our right to all of Oregon up to the Russian boundary. He would, as he de clared, " not surrender one inch of it to England," and it 28 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. may be doubted whether any of us would to-day be satisfied with less than all of Oregon were the question now an open one. At that time it might, it is true, have led to a third war with Great Britain. On the resolution of Senator Allen, of Ohio, against the interposition of the powers of Europe in the political affairs of America, he was for vigor ous action, for an American policy, and declared : We shall lose nothing at home or abroad, now or hereafter, by establishing and maintaining an American policy a policy decisive in its spirit, moderate in its tone, and just in its objects proclaimed and supported firmly but temperately. At the Baltimore Democratic convention in May, 1848, General CASS was once more a candidate for the Presidency, and after several ballots obtained the nomination by the re quired majority of two-thirds, his chief contestants being James Buchanan and Levi Woodbury. General CASS at once resigned his seat in the Senate and retired to his home in Michigan, quietly awaiting the result. In his letter of acceptance, as his predecessor, Mr. Polk had done, he an nounced his purpose, if elected, not to be a candidate for re-election. Later, the so-called Barn-burner friends of Mr. Van Buren, feeling that he had been neglected by his party, and not opportunely helped by General CASS in 1844, united on a free-soil ticket, nominating Mr. Van Buren for President and Charles Francis Adams for Vice-President. General CASS having been defeated and General Taylor elected, was re-elected to the Senate, where he took part in the impor tant debates of that important epoch, generally supporting the compromise measures of Mr. Clay and opposing both Southern rights dogmas and the Wilmot proviso; but Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 29 though present, he declined to vote on the question of the fugitive-slave law. In 1852 he was for the third time a prominent but un successful candidate for the nomination to the Presidency. His claims were widely conceded, but his party decided that a candidate who had never lost a race would be more avail able, and nominated and elected Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire. In 1857 he accepted the position of Secretary of State un der President Buchanan. The great crisis in our national affairs was rapidly approaching, and in 1860 President Bu chanan, in his message to Congress, denied the existence of the power in the Constitution by which the General Gov ernment can coerce a State. This was not openly disap proved by General CASS in the Cabinet meeting when the message was first read. Eight days afterward, however, he re-asserted the Jacksonian principles of i832- 33, that "the Union must be preserved," and when the President refused to re-enforce Major Anderson and reprovision Fort Sumter he resigned his place in the Cabinet. This last act in his .public career of fifty-six years shows that he was, like Abdiel, faithful found Among the faithless, an ardent lover of the Union, and did not lack the cour age of his convictions. The act greatly endeared him to all supporters of the Government, many of whom thronged to his house to listen to the sage and temperate counsel of a firm believer in the ultimate triumph of the Union with not a State blotted out. He was, as has been stated, for six or seven years marshal of Ohio, for several years in active military service, gov- 30 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. ernor of Michigan Territory for eighteen years, five years Secretary of War, minister to France for six years, eleven years in the United States Senate, and three and one-half years Secretary of State a most unexampled tenure and diversity of official services, all requiring comprehensive knowledge and ability, both in civil and military affairs, whether as an executive officer, diplomat, or statesman, and the general voice of his countrymen has been that in none of these high positions was he found deficient, but that he discharged every duty with absolute fidelity, with stainless purity in private life, and with honor to himself, his State, and the country for which he had early shown himself ready to stake his life. Let us welcome the statue of L,EWIS CASS as a felicitous contribution to our American Pantheon, where are clustered precious memories that will be for all future generations an inspiration to noble deeds and unselfish devotion to the in stitutions of a free, enlightened, and independent people. ADDRESS OF MR. CHA-NDLER. Mr. President, the present occasion naturally suggests an inquiry into the plan and purpose of Congress in establish ing the National Statuary Hall. The movement originated in the act of July 2, 1864, which authorized the President to invite each and all the States to provide and furnish statues, in marble of bronze, not exceeding two in number for each State, of deceased persons who have been citizens thereof, and illustrious for their historic, renown or for distinguished civic or military services, such as each State may deem to be worthy of this national com memoration ; and when so furnished the same shall be placed in the Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 31 old hall ot the House of Representatives, in the Capitol of the United States, which is hereby set apart, or so much thereof as may be necessary, as a national statuary hall, for the purposes herein indicated. Rhode Island was the first State to respond to this invi tation, and in January, 1870, the statue of Nathaniel Greene was received by Congress. This was followed in January, 1872, by the statue of Roger Williams. Connecticut, early in 1872. presented statues of Jonathan Trumbull and Roger Sherman. New York, in 1873 and 1874, placed in the hall statues of George Clinton and Robert R. Livingston. Vermont, in 1876, erected the statue of Ethan Allen, and in 1 88 1 that of Jacob Collamer. Massachusetts presented, in 1876, statues of John Win- throp and Samuel Adams. Pennsylvania, in 1883, presented the statue of Robert Fulton, and in 1884, that of Peter Muhlenberg. Maine, in 1878, placed in the hall the statue of William King. Ohio, in 1886, erected the statue of James A. Garfield, and in 1888 the statue of William Allen. New Jersey, in August, 1888, presented the statues of Philip Kearny and Richard Stockton. Michigan to-day tenders to the nation the statue of LEWIS CASS. A memorandum concerning the National Statuary Hall, further mentioning the statues received prior to and includ ing February 18, 1889, I will insert at the end of my re marks. New Hampshire has as yet taken no action in response to the national invitation. By universal consent in our State 32 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. the first place among New Hampshire s earlier citizens, illustrious for their historic renown or from distinguished civic or military services, will be assigned to John Stark, the gallant Indian ranger and fighter, the brave soldier of the Revolution, who fought at Bunker Hill, led the van at Trenton, was conspicuous at Princeton, and was the hero of the battle of Bennington, which was fought August 16, 1777, mainly by New Hampshire troops, who achieved the victory which cut off the retreat of Burgoyne and his army and made possible their capture at Saratoga. He was born in Londonderry August 28, 1728, became the last surviving general, except one, of the Revolution, and died at Man chester, May 8, 1822, at the great age of ninety-four, the most famous soldier of the Granite State. , The second selection by New Hampshire will be made from among several of her distinguished sons, all worthy and eminent, but pre-eminence among whom it will be difficult to determine. New Hampshire is, however, as well as Michigan, honored by the presence in the national gallery of the statue this day presented. LEWIS CASS was born at Bxeter, in New Hamp shire, October 9, 1782. He soon emigrated to Ohio, and thence to Michigan, but he was followed throughout his long career by feelings of pride justly entertained by the people of his native State. As a lawyer, member of the legislature of Ohio, marshal of that State, volunteer sol dier, colonel, and general in the war of 1812, governor of Michigan, Secretary of War, minister to France, United States Senator, Secretary of State, he proved himself at all times worthy of the respect and admiration not only of his native and of his adopted State but also of the people of the Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 33 whole country. As a representative of New Hampshire in this Chamber, I desire to thank the people of Michigan for the appropriate memorial which they this day place in the national Capitol to one of the most distinguished sons of New Hampshire, and one of the most eminent citizens of Michigan and of the Union, and which Congress now ac cepts in behalf of a grateful people. It does not fall within my province on this occasion, after the full narratives and eloquent eulogies of the Senator from Michigan and the Senator from Vermont, who have pre ceded me, to recite at any length the words or the deeds of General CASS. My brief contribution will be confined to an attempt to fix attention upon a few of the special circum stances of his life which seem to me to have materially aided in forming his strong and remarkable character, and to a consideration of his relations to the most important ques tions of his public life, the controversy over slavery. In the first place, the character of General CASS must have been largely influenced by his familiarity with the patriotic services of his father and uncle in the war of the Revolution. It appears that his father, Jonathan Cass, with his brother Daniel, enlisted in the Revolutionary army at the outbreak of hostilities, and fought side by side at Bunker Hill ; and his father was in the conflicts of Monmouth, Trenton, Princeton, Germantown, and Saratoga. About the close of the war LEWIS CASS was born, and he soon be gan to realize how momentous had been the recent Revolu tionary struggle, and with what devotion and patriotic ardor his father and his uncle had sacrificed the comforts of home and periled their lives in order to secure the independence of the colonies. Such ancestry and such surroundings in H. Mis. 145 3 34 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. his early and susceptible youth inevitably made a deep im pression upon the mind and heart of the boy, and doubt less largely contributed to the development in him of that energy, patriotism, and devotion to the Union of the States, which under all circumstances of hope and joy, or of doubt and gloom, were an inseparable part of his character and life. Highly beneficial to the subject of these remarks must also have been his school education and his own experience as a school-teacher. Exeter Academy was founded by John Phillips in 1781, and soon became a school of note; and young CASS, born in Exeter, was as fortunate in receiving the help of that academy as have been in later years other distinguished men in enjoying the advantages of a school which has become so justly celebrated. After leaving the academy he became a school-teacher, and was thus engaged at Wilmington, Delaware, when his father took his family thence to Ohio. Until recent years nearly every son of New England who has become prominent in professional or pub lic life has been able to recur to the fact that in his youth, when obtaining his education, he taught a village school. Such experiences in the capacity of teacher have been of quite as high a value to the teacher as to those who have been taught ; and it may safely be affirmed that to this early and fortunate connection with Exeter Academy and to his practice as a teacher of others General CASS mainly owed that intellectual discipline and literary culture and ability which he displayed when long years after, having in the mean time been a soldier and a frontier pioneer, he became an orator upon the floor of the United States Senate. To the military experiences of General CASS must also have been due much of the confidence and firmness which Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 35 he afterwards displayed. Enlisting in the war of 1812 he soon became a colonel and was captured at the fall of De troit under General Hull ; returning, indignant, to Ohio, he received a commission as brigadier-general, joined the army under General Harrisoh, and participated in the victories of this distinguished commander, by whom he was commended for his ability and bravery. The whole military career of General CASS was in the highest degree honorable ; and in searching for the causes of his distinguished success in after years great importance must be attached to the effect of his military experience in forming and strengthening the char acter which guided and energized the work of his life as a public man. Hardly less important than his military experience in the formation of his character must be placed his long service as Territorial governor of Michigan. Beginning in 1813 and not ending until 1831, these eighteen years of varied la bors and achievements, involving the settlement of trouble some Indian questions and all the difficulties incident at that day to the government of a Western Territory slowly growing toward statehood, must have been fruitful in events and experiences which tended to shape and develop those traits which were soon to find scope for their influence on the broadest national field. Coming now to consider the career of General CASS as a statesman and a publicist, it would be interesting, if time were afforded, to review the principal incidents of his event ful life during the thirty years from 1831 to 1861. There were many phases to his work as Secretary of War. He was compelled to continue to deal with Indian questions, for which he was so well fitted, particularly with the diffi- 36 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. culties with the Cherokees. As minister to France he showed himself an able diplomatist, and his persistency in resisting the right of search, notwithstanding the quintuple treaty was satisfactory to Mr. Webster and the national ad ministration, undoubtedly caused the defeat of that treaty through the non-concurrence of France, resulting from the vigorous protest of Mr. CASS. He was a many-sided man, and during his long public career, which can not be said to have ended until five years before his death, which occurred on the i yth of June, 1866, he dealt with many public ques tions, always with ability, zeal, and patriotic devotion to his country s interests. But his relations to the public con troversies over slavery were the most important of his life, and to considering those alone will the remainder of my re marks be directed. It is impossible to comprehend his pub lic life without such consideration ; it is needful while so engaged to speak with candor and fairness and with becom ing reserve. Concisely stated, General CASS S political action with ref erence to the slavery question, which was the overpowering national issue from his entry into the Senate, March 4, 1845, until he left the Cabinet of President Buchanan, December 14, 1860, was this : He advocated the Mexican war and he opposed the Wilmot proviso, notably in his famous Nichol son letter of December 24, 1847. In l8 4 8 lie was a candi date for President on a platform and with a letter of accept ance so much favoring slavery that Mr. Van Buren became a third-party candidate on an anti-slavery platform and caused the defeat of General CASS and the election of Gen eral Taylor. Later, in the Senate, he continued his opposi tion to the Wilmot proviso and was a leading advocate of Acceptance of the Statue of Lezuis Cass. 37 the compromise measures of 1850, and of the repeal of the Missouri compromise, in 1853. Entering the Cabinet of President Buchanan as Secretary of State, he supported the Kansas-Nebraska policy, and favored during the winter of 1860- 61 the Crittenden resolutions, designed to make the abolition of slavery in the States by national action impos sible without the consent of all the States. From this recital it appears that General CASS was one of those national Democrats who believed in maintaining in the broadest and fullest extent those compromises favoring slavery which entered into the framing of the national Con stitution, and that he was opposed to all those views hostile to slavery which finally found expression in the organiza tion in 1856 of the Republican party. The conflict between these two sets of opinions has now so far passed into history that it ought to be possible to discuss the question without partisanship and with some hope of reaching a just judgment. In looking back to 1852 and the previous years it must be admitted that anti-slavery condemnation of Mr. CASS and those Democrats who thought and acted with him must also be extended to all the leading members of the Whig party. Both parties in 1852 indorsed the compromises of 1850 and nominated their respective candidates General Pierce, the Democrat, and General Scott, the Whig upon the plat form of adherence to those compromise measures and of dis approbation of anti-slavery agitation. If both parties were wrong at that time it is necessary to maintain that out of the 3,144,201 voters in the Presidential election of 1852 who voted, 1,601,474 for Pierce, 1,386,578 for Scott, and 156,149 for Hale, only the latter number were correct in their posi tion on the slavery question ; and even if, in view of later 38 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. history, this assertion may be confidently made, yet it still remains impossible to charge upon the great mass of voters of this country unworthy motives or a lack of patriotism in assuming their positions upon this troublesome question. But how, it will naturally be asked, is it possible for those Americans who earnestly affirm that the compromise meas ures of 1850 were a mistake; that the repeal of the Missouri compromise was a grievous wrong, and that the many con cessions to slavery were fatal mistakes, also to admit that the motives of the advocates of such wrongful measures were as honest as their opponents and were patriotic statesmen whom the country justly honored while living, and to whose memc jies, now they are gathered to their fathers, the Ameri can people should pay such tributes of respect and affection as those which are now being offered to the memory of the favorite statesman of Michigan? Simply in this way, as I humbly conceive, by ascribing to General CASS and his political associates the lofty motive of a determination that nothing whatever should be allowed to endanger or destroy the Union of the States. To do them full justice we must go back to the early years of the century. At the pres ent time, after one hundred years under the Constitution and the Union, whose various parts have become firmly cemented together by the sad but helpful experiences of the great civil war, the Union seems to be and really is beyond danger of destruction for a long period, perhaps for centu ries to come; but this confidence was by no means felt in the days of those men whose lives we are now contem plating. The Union had hardly begun when the slavery question Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 39 threatened trouble, and there came many fears, naturally arising even if not well founded, that to tolerate controversy over slavery would bring about a dissolution of the Union. It seemed easy then for the anti-slavery men to say that those fears were groundless, but the recent events from 1 86 1 to 1865 have proved that they were based upon real dangers. At all events General CASS and his associates so believed and so acted. The Union was much to them. For independence some of them had fought. They were near to the days of the Revolution. They and theirs had made sacrifices for the Union, and it embodied for them their whole hope for a prosperous future for their posterity. Under these circumstances they maintained that it was only by what they considered a faithful observance of the Con stitution and by discouraging agitation on the subject of slavery that the inestimable blessings of the Union of these States could be made perpetual. I am not prepared myself to say that in taking this view of their political duties these men were absolutely unself ish or wholly sincere, or in every way patriotic, but such has been the opinion of some anti-slavery writers and speak ers when they have endeavored to dispassionately review the incidents of the great anti-slavery conflict before its cul mination in civil war. Mr. Webster, who had always leaned strongly toward the anti-slavery side, at last, in his speech on the yth of March, 1850, approved the compromise measures of that year, and thus brought bitter anti-slavery denunciations upon his head. But Mr. Elaine, in his Twenty Years of Congress, is inclined to attribute Mr. Webster s action at this crisis 40 -Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. to sincere sentiments of patriotism. He says of Mr. Web ster in this connection : He belonged -with those who could remember the first President, who personally knew much of the hardships and sorrows of the Rev olutionary period, who were born to poverty and reared in privation. To these the formation of the Federal Government had come as a gift from Heaven, and they had heard from the lips of the living Washington, in his farewell words, that " the Union is the edifice of our real independence, the support of our tranquillity at home, our peace abroad, our prosperity, our safety, and of the very liberty which we so highly prize, that for this Union we should cherish a cordial, habitual, immovable attachment, and should discountenance whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned." Mr. Webster had in his own life-time seen the thirteen colonies grow to thirty powerful States. He had seen three millions of people, enfeebled and impoverished by a long struggle, increased eightfold in number, surrounded by all the comforts, charms, and se curities of life. All this spoke to him of the Union and of its price less blessings. He now heard its advantages discussed, its perpetu ity doubted, its existence threatened. A convention of slaveholding States had been called to meet at Nashville for the purpose of considering the possible separation of the sections. Mr. Webster felt that a generation had been born who were undervaluing their inheritance, and who might, by temerity, destroy it. Under motives inspired by these surroundings, he spoke for the preservation of the Union. He believed it to be seriously endangered. His apprehensions were ridiculed by many who, ten years after Mr. Webster was in his grave, saw for the first time how real and how terrible were the perils upon which those apprehensions were founded. *#*###* The thoughtful reconsideration of his severest critics must allow that Mr. Webster saw before him a divided duty, and that he chose the part which in his patriotic judgment was demanded by the su preme danger of the hour. Whether or not the course of Mr. Webster can be thus justified and must be adjudged to be patriotic, opinions will Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 41 differ and every one must decide for himself. If Mr. Web ster was right, equally so was General CASS. For the Union to establish which his father had fought ; for the Union in the service of which he had himself risked his life in battle ; for the Union of those States which, so feeble at first, he saw beginning to move forward toward a won derful greatness, of which he, however, in his most hopeful visions had no adequate comprehension for this Union he was willing, and others like him were willing, to yield too much to slavery and to the South. But it certainly is our duty in this generation, when the black cloud of slavery has forever passed away, to endeavor to charitably and favora bly judge those whose sole controlling motive may have been devotion to the Union of the States which even then so much blood and treasure had been spent to accomplish. But however pure and patriotic may have been the mo tives of General CASS in his political course, it is sadly true that his sufferings were intense as the culmination ap proached of those dark events which preceded and opened up the war of the rebellion. Personal humiliation also tended to embitter his existence. The State of Michigan, which had been justly proud of her favorite and greatest son, and had always sustained him by her votes, ceased from her devotion, and, on January 10, 1857, Zachariah Chandler was elected as his successor in the Senate. The same writer from whom I have quoted, in an introduction to a biogra phy of Mr. Chandler, says : It is a noteworthy fact, not infrequently adverted to, that the political opinions of Michigan, both as Territory and State,fora period of sixty years, were represented and indeed, . in no small degree, formed by two men of New Hampshire birth. From 1819 to 1854 General CASS was the accepted political leader of Michigan, and 42 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. only once in all that long period of thirty-five years did her people fail to follow him. Notwithstanding the desertion by his State he continued to be a representative of the national Democracy, which came at once to his support. He passed immediately from the Senate into the Cabinet of President Buchanan and continued his efforts for the preservation of the Union by further yielding to the demands of the advocates of slavery. But as the evil and terrible days of civil war were approach ing even he began to feel that the policy of conciliation and concession might be carried too far. When President Buchanan decided not to re-enforce Fort Sumter General C ASS S indignation was aroused, and he resigned from the Cabinet and was succeeded by Jeremiah S. Black, and about the time of the inauguration of President Lincoln, in March, 1861, he returned to his home in Detroit full of fore bodings for his country. I have been told by more than one person who saw him at this time of the sadness and gloom which had settled down upon him on account of the dis tracted condition of the country he had served so long, and I also find his condition aptly described by General Garfield in his speech in the House of Representatives in commem oration of the life of Zachariah Chandler. He said : In the stormy spring of 1861, when the foundations of the Republic trembled under the tread of assembling armies, I made a pilgrimage to the home of the venerable LEWIS CASS, who had just laid down his great office as chief of the State Department, and for an hour I was a reverent listener to his words of wisdom. And in that con versation he gave me the thought which I wish to record. He said: " You remember, young man, that the Constitution did not take effect until nine States had ratified it. My native State was the ninth. It hung a long time in doubtful scale whether nine would agree ; but when at last New Hampshire ratified the Constitution it was a day Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 43 of great rejoicing. My mother held me, a little boy of six years, in her arms at a window and pointed me to a great man on horseback and to the bonfires that were blazing in the streets of Exeter, and told me that the horseman was General Washington and the people were celebrating the adoption of the Constitution. So," said the aged statesman, " I saw the Constitution born and I fear I may see it die." This occurrence was on Wednesday, November 4, 1789, while Washington as President was making his eastern tour, as he passed from Portsmouth, through Exeter to Haverhill, Massachusetts. General Garfield proceeded : He then traced briefly the singular story of his life. He said : " I crossed the Alleghany Mountains and settled in your State of Ohio one year before the beginning of this century. Fifty-four years ago now I sat in the general assembly of your State of Ohio. In 1807 I received from Thomas Jefferson a commission as United States marshal, which I still preserve, and am probably the only man living to-day who bears a commission from Jefferson s hand." And so, running over the great retrospect of his life and saddened by the bloody prospect that 1861 brought to his mind, he said, "I have loved the Union ever since the light of that bonfire and the sight of General Washington greeted my eyes. I have given fifty-five years of my life and my best efforts to its preservation. I fear I am doomed to see it perish." How solitary and sad indeed was the condition of this patriotic old statesman going home to Michigan to die. All his labors and sacrifices seemed to him to have been in vain. Although, as the world esteems achievements, he had at tained a high degree of success in life, yet he thought of his defeat as a candidate for President ; he realized that he had been forced from the Senate, and he now saw simultane ously with the defeat of his party which he loved, the country which he had served, going rapidly, as he believed, to inevitable dissolution and destruction. It is remarkable 44 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. that with such a depression of spirits, aged upwards of eighty years, General CASS continued much longer to survive. But Providence had kindly decreed that he should not pass away from earth in doubt whether his country was to live or die. Before his death in 1866 glad tidings reached this son of the Revolution, soldier of the war of 1812, and pioneer of the magnificent Commonwealth of Michigan ; to this grand statesman and true patriot came the welcome and glorious announcement that the country of his affection had indeed safely passed through the fiery furnace of civil war, to be in its new and freer life stronger and more enduring than he had ever dreamed it could become for the reason that the great source of all his fears during his long life-time of patriotic service had in the heat of the conflict disappeared forever and forever, and the Union of these States, saved by doing justly, at last stood a nation, exalted by righteousness; "redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the irresisti ble genius of universal emancipation. The PRESIDENT pro tempore. If there be no objection, the consideration of the unfinished business, which should be resumed at this hour, will be informally laid aside until de bate upon the pending resolution shall have been concluded. Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 45 \ G.Soa c> 1 r S) * m ir> ^" IH Jo eT- oo" r^ rn t OS d d d ^d d d d , a c i %%o *0~ -" ^ ^o - N rC 6- ^^ a ^ of % <i "3 [o "o . : t> ooooo > o "o o o o > > t/j 2 "a - JJ & K J -Sft S ^ s^ I^S u 3 j* P- O"C p. d d d dd & da & dd p. dp-d dd d ^ "S o ^ ON o "slf C 1 . . 10 (> H N * . . . & oo 00 w < >S> jo "o "o f - : o o h o o o o o o o o o o a u M o "* ^ "* ^ ^ ^^___ ^ a oo" def " tn c^ en >, X ::::>> >, : : >> : . : u , o VH C/3 p. S g o o S p. A 8 c u O - ^^>O O .2 ^dl i i o a u w ^ c s & tfl {ft ^ Q *"" N . .O o ^ 1- Q ... CJ s Sy K .28 OJ ^ $ & c a ^u : . c c M t! G "3 ifl W P j. M T3 0> c ^ o fc u c O *" 85 1 5? : i^ 1 J?l i i : 1 1 %-, oS cj bx a a 8 - -73 f 1 3"? : a "3 33 1^1 = ^ ; 5! o o S O O o ~ " S g; -5 . -r -%?o ~- J3~ jp?^^^R i-T a M ^ " B 1 ^ 5 ^ - u p;"^ S,o < i = g * To S ^"7 5 H S bfvc .(j ^ D<J ^" d E ~ ~ s j^ d do - S - cL^ o r^ n J^ c o ^ CJ * J t ^ 4> -, - T^ N r -" h - ^ *-< ._* "y" CO CO 3 o-g o "ci ** ^? " -, ^t _ M * "*"" 4-) t^ ^ 1_ u tn Q u *j o dg^ S 8 - S s ~ - o ^ g_^ ^.2 3.C C &-S H. P. a k o iS - oo e-Ji g 1 & 0-B " a J" ~, ^~ -s * r ^^3 " ^ o; c3 S 1 & ti o- m 6.0 d o d o y ? ; " ij^j"| ( ^|l ^|l^ a H BE. b fe ~ ^ tl "" ^>^ >> . o ^ o Ci n "S.oo S. : S-TO 0? ICO* a * 5* _Q oo oo CO OO CO CO oo oo co . oo c CJ * H M M H M H . . "o ^ s! 1 N g* cf f!?P : N M " O " o a ^ ^ a >>jS u ^3 _j ^ o a p- * 2 " Q : : ^5, < : fe c ft "> o S o. N S. S.co^. : : RS S :o? a .0 . "2 S S ^ : : S^ S : a u-c 2 8* e> oo ^? : S ^ N o i-i s . 5j 1 Q | a d u CO * 2AQ : . i 11 111 a u i ^^ S e o ^S "Ki *~* cj * ^s> S 5 c CO 3 3 C/3 iel Greene. . Williams in Trumbull Sherman : Clinton. . . | a! illli ? J2 <U 3 S : 2 c i .8 3 a "" > i> 5 "S.S ss Nathan IM b O P^ x S c o S bjto o <u OiO Robert 58J1| SAAcS!(S u 3-, := s a"ja S ^- C .- tj * C S ; -e-" u PnDiJ s statues ncluded a J= , H <u d c J <D *c2 : . : *> i v u O O _rt 3 _CJ J J 3 S i . " c ui u S >23 O ^o c ^ ^ : S. S in 0) o u c s E S G l| ? 1 ^*t c { s * s o & CJ * > rt fc so ^ ^ c 46 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. ADDRESS OF MR. MORGAN. Mr. President, in expressing my cordial approval of the resolution and my concurrence with the statements and sentiments expressed on this occasion by the Senator from Michigan [Mr. Palmer], I also desire to state that, as a Senator from Alabama, I am glad of the opportunity of uniting with them in doing honor to the memory and fame of LEWIS CASS. Alabama never for a moment forgot to hold LEWIS CASS in honored and affectionate remembrance as a patriot, a sol dier, a statesman, and a legislator. In December, 1860, he closed a continuous public service of more than a half century, in which every act was hon orable, by his resignation from the Cabinet of President Buchanan as Secretary of State. In that act was expressed a total dissent from the attitude held by the people of Ala bama on a subject that had begun to grow up into a sectional dispute when LEWIS CASS was born, and was ended by the sword in the last years of his life. The side of that question that had become so serious to the South, on account of the value of the property involved and its social bearings, had to him some very repulsive features. But he saw a people included in its toils who had not created the evil, but had found it among them as an inheritance. He found that the compact of union con- tained guaranties for its protection, and he was the sworn friend and supporter of that compact. Down to the hour when the sword became the arbiter of Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 47 these controversies he smothered his aversion to slavery that he might bear true allegiance to the Constitution, and he endeavored to interpose that shield for the protection of the South. We parted, at the close of the seventh decade of our Union, as men part when one man goes out to death and the other to assured life and prosperity; but being friends their part ing is equally sad to both. So CASS and the South parted. He had always been faithful to the Constitution and just to the South, and in parting with us to assume toward us the attitude of a public enemy he did not withdraw any declaration he had ever made as to the character of the South ern people or the motives that he recognized as being sin cere which led them to protect their rights, as they under stood them, under the Constitution of the United States. In 1855, when the great issue between the sections had taken definite shape and a terrible conflict was impending, he wrote this to the Detroit Free Press : I have never known the time when the Democratic party was called upon by higher considerations to adhere faithfully and zealously to their organization and their principles than they are at this day. Our confederation is passing through the most severe trial it has under gone. Unceasing efforts are making to excite hostile and sectional feelings, against which we were prophetically warned by the Father of his Country, and if these are successful the days of the Constitu tion are numbered. The continued assaults upon the South, upon its character, its con stitutional rights, and its institutions, and the systematic perseverance and bitter spirit with which these are pursued, while they warn the Democratic party of the danger, should also incite it to united and vigorous action. They warn it, too, that the time has come when all other differences which may have divided it should give way to the duty of defending the Constitution, and when that great party, 48 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. coeval with the Government, should be united as one man for the accomplishment of the work to which it is now called, and before it it is too late. When the struggle that he apprehended had passed the States still lived, and LEWIS CASS still lived to see that the principles of government he had so long and ably advocated were adequate, far beyond his hopes and expectations, to the restoration to the Union of these imperishable States. His belief was that the sovereign power and life of the States was the immortal part of the Union, as the spirit is the immortal part of man, and that nothing could destroy the Union while these living States should maintain its perpetuity. He saw that if the Southern States had perished nothing would have remained but the territory in which, and the people through whose powers, new States would have to be constructed if a new Union was to be formed. But the States survived, and with them the Union ; and General CASS lived to witness that, under this form of resto ration, upon the basis of the indestructibility of the States, and through their rights as States, the people were again brought within the enjoyment of the rights and liberties reserved to them and protected by the Constitution of the United States. He was rejoiced to find the fruits of his labors so abun dant and excellent. He belonged to the class of men whose honorable fame is recorded in the gratitude of succeeding generations, " for their works do follow them." The public life of General CASS was devoted to the prac tical affairs of the country connected with the great trust committed to him by the people. He applied to these af fairs the principles of government that he believed were cor- Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 49 rect, after mature consideration, and did not stagger under any responsibility, however great; neither did he diverge from his line of duty to conciliate opposing opinions. He had none of that mean spirit which sometimes makes cring ing demagogues of men who are honored with high places. Being indebted, as I believe, to the principles of American gov ernment in which he was profoundly instructed, and to the Constitution of the United States and its true and just con struction, in accordance with the views of men like LEWIS CASS for whatever of liberties we now enjoy, I am sure that I represent the people of Alabama in doing honor and rev erence to the memory of this great American. There* is a rivalry in the thoughts of this generation as to his most distinguishing characteristic, whether it is best described by his title of general, governor, jurist, diploma tist, or legislator. It is conceded by all the people that in either of these great offices he exhibited eminent abilities. It is not to the discredit of that capacity to direct public affairs with wisdom which has loaded a continent with evi dences of the greatness of American statesmanship that it has not been acquired in the schools, or that so many of our grandest characters have been developed and established, in their younger days, through the hardships of personal toil and, frequently, of privation. In the volunteer army, in the fields and workshops, in the teaching of primary schools, and under the necessity of labor for earning a support and education many of our great est men have spent their boyhood and early manhood. In these vocations they learned to know the people and to love them, and under this inspiration they consecrated their powers, with affection and self-denial, to the true purposes of our Government. H. Mis. 145 4 50 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. LEWIS CASS was trained under such influences. They gave him faith and strength- and enriched him, as he ear nestly and bravely followed the course of duty, with the grateful affections of the people, who always felt the prouder the higher he ascended in station and power. His name and fame are identified with Michigan in a w r ay that strongly resembles the historic relation between Thomas Jefferson and Virginia. We think of Michigan and CASS, when we think of the history of either, as being almost identical. It may be said of CASS and Michigan that they grew up together. He was made Territorial governor of Michigan in 1813 by James Madison and held that office for eighteen years. He was ex officio superintendent of Indian affairs in the Northwest during the greater part of his service as gov ernor. Through his wise and just administration he nego tiated more than twenty treaties with the Indians and laid the foundations of several of the great States of the North west, whose territory we thus freed from Indian occupancy. Michigan, in 1813, was almost at the western verge of the horizon of civilization, then called the far West. When CASS died Michigan was near the. center of population in the United States, and now it is thought of as a part of the far East. We boast continually, and why should we not, of the mi raculous growth of our country in every form of progress ive development and improvement. But we should never forget to honor the men who have so provided in laws and administration for the exercise of these tremendous forces, that every human being and every interest has had the free and full opportunity to grow and increase without molesta tion from the powers that conduct governments. A prin- Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 51 ciple is at the bottom and around the shores of this ocean of human activities that holds in restraint and tempers its ceaseless movements. In the history of the public life of LEWIS CASS, it is found that he relied upon the restraints of the Constitu tion, upon the legislative and executive powers, and their faithful and self-denying maintenance, as the earth with its rock-ribbed coasts is relied upon to keep the turbulent seas within due bounds. His influence was a positive power in government and his wisdom was accepted as a guide in every strait in which the country was placed. He was among the foremost men of his age in the useful employment of his great powers for great public advantage. The earnest ardor of his patriotism was the result of cir cumstances differing from those that now surround us. Now, we are a rich and powerful people, who have learned from each other, in the bloodiest of all wars, that the inhe rent power of our population is equal to any ambitious pur pose we could desire to accomplish, and the fear or dread of tire power of any other nation is a thought that is not entertained. There is now an element of aggressiveness in the ardor of our patriotism without which it is open to sus picion. LEWIS CASS entered upon public life before this Capitol was burned by the British, and he heard with dismay of the flight of our President from Washington. He did not then feel safe, nor did anybody feel secure of even the final inde pendence of our country. His ideas of patriotic duty in cluded personal sacrifice and privation as a debt to the coun try that was liable to be paid in blood at any day. When 52 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass, he was a lad his eyes were dripping with tears as he mourned with all civilized nations over the death of George Wash ington. It was in such a period of patriotic sentiment that his aspirations were guided and his ambition was chastened. This was a good time of preparation for a man who was destined to have an influential voice in the young Republic. He lived in an atmosphere that was purified and blest with the living presence of George Washington. As he grew older the great intellect of Thomas Jefferson was clearing the highway of American constitutional liberty of the im pediments of Federalism, kingcraft, and "the divine right to rule," which were so difficult to remove. In this plain road he laid his course and held it until he had marched with Michigan to the grand ascendency we now hold, yet to be greatly increased. He considered in his well-balanced and courageous mind the truth as it was stated and expounded by this wonder ful statesman. He welcomed the Jeffersonian exigesis of our Constitution and adopted with earnest conviction the plan and creed of government in which liberty has its* cita dels, and this made him always a thorough and conscien tious Democrat. He never departed from the faith, and was seldom embarrassed with serious doubts as to his line of duty. When he was called upon to exercise a doubtful power, he did not rush forward with a zeal that is born of egotism or of the lust of illicit authority and seize upon it. He thought it safest for the people that he should not too broadly construe in his own favor the limited powers dele gated to him as their representative in the Constitution. He was the cherished friend of Andrew Jackson, whose Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 53 unfailing judgment of men discovered in LEWIS CASS the highest elements of honor, power, and ability. He invited General CASS into his Cabinet as Secretary of War at a time when that place was conspicuous in onr history for its great responsibilities and delicate trusts. In this Depart ment he has had no superior for devotion to his country, for courage in the assertion of its rights, or for tact in dealing with its most complex and important interests. Thus from his boyhood to the full ripeness of his man hood he lived in the presence and company of the greatest men this country or the world has ever produced as their worthy associate. Such associations gave early maturity to his thoughts and convictions and added to the strength and impressiveness of his character. LEWIS CASS was a strong and self-sustaining man; a cen tral figure, conspicuous and pronounced in its individuality, around which national influences were grouped in powerful support of national honor, pride, and progress. Yet he was a plain, positive, and unpretentious citizen, who had and enjoyed the sincere love and confidence of the people, who knew him by intuition, trusted him without reserve, and silently accredited him as a protector of their rights and liberties. He appeared amongst his great co-workers in the councils of government in bold prominence, as Michigan appears on the map of the States, almost insular, strong in resources, and peculiarly endowed with the powers of aggres sion and defense. His name is linked with that of a State which is destined to a most important influence in the future of the Republic, and in history they will never be separated. It is a great reward of enlightened, faithful, and laborious service to the 54 Acceptance of the Statue of Leivis Cass. country to be thus identified with the history of an Ameri can State. The States are imperishable, and their imme diate care of the personal interests and happiness of the peo ple excites in the heart of every true man the deepest sense of grateful and proud affection. LEWIS CASS freely and fondly indulged in this filial regard for the State of Michigan. He foresaw its splendid future when he settled at Detroit and made Michigan his future home. Far retired from the sea-board Michigan is, in the com mercial and military sense, a maritime State. It has a coast-line longer than any State in the Union except Cali fornia. Its hill country abounds in iron and copper of the best quality. Its forests are a treasure of wealth, and its arable lands yield grain and grasses in ample supply. This great peninsula points to the Arctic circle across the waist of Canada like an outstretched arm. Around its coasts are commodious harbors that invite the trade and commerce of many States, comprising some of the most productive areas of the United States and Canada. Its com mercial and military command of the Great Lakes and their shores is absolute when it needs to be made absolute. On its eastern face the peninsula of Michigan is on the flank of the water-shed of the St. Lawrence River; and upon its western face it confronts the inlet from the Pacific through the western coasts of the British possessions, and holds in easy command the basins of Lake Winnipeg and Hudson s Bay. If the behests of the people of British descent on this continent shall ever require Canada and the United States to engage in war, or to seriously contemplate that cruel arbi- Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 55 ter as the power to decide questions provoked by ambitions rivalries, we would find in Michigan the true point of strategic advantage. General CASS lived to see the wonderful development of Michigan, and to listen to the undivided opinion of Ameri cans as to the future greatness and natural importance of this strong Commonwealth. CASS and Michigan grew rap idly and with solid growth. Michigan would have grown without the aid of his counsels, it is true, but who can deny that the firm statesmanship of LEWIS CASS gave to Michi gan and all the other States a high degree of security and peace in many dangerous emergencies? In political affairs CASS took position on the border and in the center of the border line, and looked out, like a true and faithful senti nel would, over the ways by which an enemy might ap proach. In his attitude towards his compeers he was insu- lated without being separated from them. He was united in fervent attachment with his countrymen of all classes, while he maintained his individuality with severe dignity. In his diplomatic career his resources were strong, useful, and abundant, and were employed with the highest advan tage to his country. In that service he was measured without disadvantage by comparison with the greatest men of his day. Michigan now comes by invitation of Congress and presents to the United States the statue of the man upon whom she bestows her first and highest honors in this Capitol. Let these States here assembled welcome her coining with proud congratulations. Should she return another such as LEWIS CASS to this Senate, who would not stand uncovered while he raised his 56 Acceptance of the Statue oj Lewis Cass. hand and bowed his heart to swear that he would support the Constitution of the United States? The whole country would feel that in the purity of that pledge the Constitution would find another powerful sup porter and defender, whose fealty to it would never relax under temptation nor yield to any human power. REMARKS OF MR. HOAR. Mr. President, the Senators representing Michigan and Alabama and New Hampshire, and our venerable and be loved colleague who has spoken of General CASS from his personal recollection, the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Mor- rill], have performed adequately all the duty which this occasion requires of Senators so far as is necessary to mark the public gratitude to the State of Michigan for the gift of this statue of her illustrious citizen. But I think one other observation ought to be made indicating the special cause we have of gratitude to that State for its great wisdom and discrimination in the selection of the artist who has contrib uted this interesting portraiture to the art treasures of the Capitol. I have seen the statue, and without claiming for myself any experience or taste which entitles me to pronounce a judgment more than all other men, I think I am not mis taken in affirming that this statue will be regarded always as one of the very finest, if not the very finest work of its kind, which has yet been contributed to our gallery under the joint resolution passed in 1864. It is a figure, manifestly Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 57 accurate in portraiture, and not only that, but it is a figure full of strength, spirit, and life. The young artist who is the author of this work, although not yet mature in his powers, has already made himself famous by The Minute Man at Concord, one of the very few American statues that are alive; by the beautiful statue of John Harvard, made for the University at Cambridge; by the ideal figures upon the Boston post-office, and by that most wonderful portrait bust which represents and pre serves in the memory of those who knew him the venerable features of our illustrious poet and sage, Ralph Waldo Em erson. The State of Michigan has been both wise and fortunate in the selection of the artist, and that also ought to be men tioned as one of the reasons for the public gratitude to the people of that State. Mr. STOCKBRIDGE. Mr. President, I second the motion for the adoption of the pending resolutions. The PRESIDENT pro tcmpore. The question is on agree ing to the resolutions offered by the Senator from Michigan [Mr. Palmer]. The resolutions were agreed to unanimously. PROCEEDINGS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRE SENTATIVES. FEBRUARY 20, 1889. The SPEAKER pro tempore laid before the House the fol lowing resolutions : Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That the thanks of Congress be tendered to the governor, and through him to the people of the State of Michigan, for the statue of LEWIS CASS, whose name is so conspicuously connected with the develop ment of the Northwest Territory and with eminent services to his State and country both at home and abroad. Resolved, That the statue is accepted in the name of the nation and assigned a place in the old Hall of Representatives, and that a copy of these resolutions, signed by the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, be transmitted to the governor of the State of Michigan. Mr. CHIPMAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask by unanimous consent that to-morrow at half past three o clock in the afternoon these resolutions be considered by the House. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection? Mr. O NEALL, of Indiana, and Mr. LYNCH objected. Mr. CHIPMAN. Mr. Speaker, no one rises to object. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Penn sylvania [Mr. Lynch] and the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. O Neall] have objected. Mr. CHIPMAN. Well, then, I will put. the hour at four o clock in the afternoon. 58 Acceptance of the Slaliii of Lewis Cass. 59 Mr. RANDALL. These resolutions can be considered by the House, and after they have been disposed of the House can then proceed to other business. Mr. CHIPMAN. I will say four o clock to-morrow after noon. Mr. LYNCH. I object. The SPEAKER pro temporc. If there be no objection, the resohitions will be referred to the Committee on the Library. There was no objection, and it was so ordered. Mr. ALLEN, of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, in view of the refusal to take up and consider the resolutions which have come from the Senate accepting the statue of LEWIS CASS, will the Speaker please tell us what we are to do with the statue if it is not accepted ? The SPEAKER pro tempore. That is hardly a parliament ary inquiry. A MEMBER. Take an evening session to the resolutions. FEBRUARY 21, 1889. Mr. CHIPMAN. The gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Blount] permits me to submit a proposition fixing an even ing session for the action of the House on the concurrent resolution accepting the statue of General CASS. The SPEAKER. The Clerk will read the resolution. The Clerk read as follows: Resolved, That the Committee on the Library are discharged from the consideration of the concurrent resolution to accept the statue of General LEWIS CASS, presented to the United States by the State of Michigan ; and that a recess be taken at five o clock this afternoon until half-past seven o clock this evening, at which time the House, shall be in session to consider said resolution and no other business ; and that the said session shall adjourn not later than ten o clock. 60 Acceptance of the Statue of Lezvis Cass. The SPEAKER. Is there objection to agreeing to this res olution? Mr. CRISP. I will not object if any other night than to-night be named, because it is the intention to have a caucus to-night. Mr. CHIPMAN. Then I suggest Saturday night. Mr. MILLS. What is this proposition ? The SPEAKER. The gentleman from Michigan desires unanimous consent for the adoption of a resolution fixing a session for Saturday night for the acceptance of the statue of General LEWIS CASS. The Chair will state that on Sat urday afternoon, by order of the House, the resolutions in relation to the death of the late Representative Burnes will be taken up by the House, and that in such cases it is usual to adjourn at the conclusion of the eulogies, instead of taking a recess. Mr. McMiLLiN. Then I suggest Monday night. Mr. RANDALL. Will that involve an adjournment at any particular hour on Monday night ? The SPEAKER. The proposition is for a recess at five o clock and an adjournment at ten. Mr. RANDALL. Well, I object to the provision for an ad journment at ten o clock. The SPEAKER. Objection being made, the resolution is not before the House. FEBRUARY 28, 1889. Mr. CHIPMAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Library be discharged from the further consideration of the Senate concurrent resolutions providing for the acceptance of the statue of LEWIS CASS, Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 61 presented by the State of Michigan to the United States, and put the same upon their passage. There was no objection. The concurrent resolutions were considered ; they are as follows. Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That the thanks of Congress be tendered to the governor, and through him to the people of the State of Michigan, for the statue of LEWIS CASS, whose name is so conspicuously connected with the develop ment of the Northwest Territory and with eminent services to his State and country both at home and abroad. Resolved, That the statue is accepted in the name of the nation and assigned a place in the old Hall of the House of Representa tives, and that a copy of these resolutions, signed by the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, be transmitted to the governor of the State of Michigan. ADDRESS OF MR. CHIPMAN. Mr. Speaker, the State of Michigan presents and asks the United States to accept a statue of General LEWIS CASS. A man ought to have exemplified the civic virtues nobly while he was living to deserve this tribute when he is dead. It is a solemn act to place a name on the nation s roll of honor. That roll is a message to posterity. It ought never to exploit the accident of divine right Fate s most cruel jest on men or be sullied by meretricious greatness. For tunate, indeed, is the country which has children worthy of this glory, and fortunate, thrice fortunate, is America in a goodly company of sages, patriots, statesmen, whose fame illuminates her history and deserves the reverence of her 0? TH1 [TJIIVBRSITY; 62 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. people. High in the ranks of this company stood General CASS. He was conspicuous even among them for his robust Americanism. He was fortunate in opportunities as a man of action and as a man of counsel. His career was varied and remarkable. As a soldier in the war of 1812, as gov ernor of the Territory of Michigan and pacificator of the Indian tribes, as Secretary of War and minister to France, as Senator in Congress and Secretary of State, in speech and in action, his patriotism shone pure and strong in the light of his great abilities. He loved his country. He be lieved in her institutions, in the capacity and the right of her people to govern themselves. He was not shamefaced in this faith. He was not a servile imitator of foreign man ners, but of simple American life, delighting in literature and art, and content with the ways of the folk among whom his lot was cast. The patriotism we honor here to-night was at one time the subject of ridicule, and attributed to unworthy motives. This was when he made his declaration of fifty-four forty or fight" on the northwestern boundary question. Per haps, sir, we of this generation will see how mean the pas sions of the hour made us to our political opponents and be ashamed that we vilify men who are worthy of statues erected by a grateful country. But, sir, General CASS S pa triotism was far-reaching. It was the love of .country which inspires a statesman with grand thoughts for her prosperity and independence. He knew our place among the nations. His opposition to the quintuple treaty, unless it was accom panied with a renunciation of the right of search as a prin ciple of international law, and his broad interpretation of Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 63 the Monroe doctrine, prove that he pierced the future with his prescience. Room, freedom for our commerce, are the great necessi ties if we would keep abreast or ahead of the nations. We see now with a clearer vision. The horizon of civilization has expanded. There are no longer dark continents, waste places, but the earth rounds before us like an open book, each page of which is radiant with the destiny of our com merce. This is the world in which General CASS desired his country to be pre-eminent. Sir, we know that he is worthy of this honor we do to his memory. Patriotism is the virtue of statesmen. It casts a glamour over their lives and throws their shadows boldly on the future. There is, sir, an aspect of General CASS S career which brings him very near to the hearts of the men of the West. The great States of Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota are all indebted to his facility in the man agement of the Indian tribes. To us of Michigan he was as a father, a benefactor. He reared the roof-trees of our homes and kindled the fires on our hearth-stones. So we, the children and grandchildren of the men who fought side by side with him against savage man and un tamed nature, do him this reverence. We ask the nation to rear his image in the national Pantheon, that our children s children may gaze on the " counterfeit presentment " of a virtue which adorned her history and blessed mankind. My fervent prayer is that that sacred shrine shall never be desecrated by honors showered on kings or oppressors of God s people, but that forever it shall chronicle the freedom, the greatness, the prosperity, and the happiness of our country. [Applause. ] 64 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. ADDRESS OF MR. RANDALL. I unite with the Representatives of the State of Michigan with all my heart in doing honor to the memory of LEWIS CASS. He was, as much as any one man could be, the founder and builder-tip of that prosperous Commonwealth which sits so proudly amid our northern inland seas. He foresaw with the instinct of a statesman the coming glory of his country, and at the beginning as at the close of his career he advocated the principles and supported the public policy upon which our liberties and independence as a nation depend for preservation. If I were to select one characteristic in his public life which dominated all his thoughts, words, and actions, it would be his intense love of country. No matter how dark and threat ening was the outlook, our enemies might be many and their hatred bitter, yet his heart never quailed; but with pen, voice, and sword he battled for the rights and honor of his country, for the general welfare, and for the melioration of the human race. . When Burr s mysterious conspiracy was hatching in the then wilderness of Ohio, Thomas Jefferson detected and ex posed the treason before it got beyond control, and LEWIS CASS, then a young lawyer and member of the Ohio legis lature, drafted legislation which had the effect to destroy the projected expedition and restore public tranquillity. When appointed superintendent of Indian affairs his un surpassed mental and physical energy was tested and strained to the utmost. Throughout Michigan Territory, of which Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 65 he was second Territorial governor, wandering bands of Indians were a constant menace to the peace and growth of the white settlements. They had in two wars been em ployed by the British against the Americans, and they were regular pensioners on British bounty." He made seven teen treaties, with the Wyandotte, Seneca, Delaware, Shaw- nee, Pottawatomie, Ottawa, and Chippewa tribes of Indians, won their respect and confidence by honest dealing and firm and resolute administration, and from a position of hostility made them our good and fast friends. He explored the whole country, and in his birch canoe traversed thousands of miles un visited before, save by the Jesuit fathers or the hunters who pursued the valuable fur- bearing animals of that region. He communicated to the North American Review at the time some of the ablest articles which have ever been written on the Indian lan guages, character, and history. He was amongst the first to appreciate them and improve their condition. He was a "man of sword, pen, and voice, and in all his varied career won renown in each and every position. At the breaking out of the war with Great Britain he served with distinction, as might have been expected of the son of Major Cass, who had fought in the Revolutionary army for seven bloody years to help win our independence. He after ward took part in the campaigns of Harrison, which ended in the destruction of the British army in western Canada, the killing of Tecumseh, and the flight and disgrace of Proc tor. Cooley, in his "Michigan: A History of Governments," sums up this part of CASS S public life as follows: There was some feeling of Territorial pride that Jackson had looked to this distant region for a member of his Cabinet, but the people of H. Mis. 145 .5 66 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. the Territory parted with the governor with great reluctance. He had not only managed the public affairs with ability and unques tioned integrity, but his example had been excellent and his influence of the best. Governing frontier settlements, where rough characters abounded and roystering habits prevailed, he was always in his own deportment courteous and complacent, always abstemious, always self-respecting; and as unexceptionable in his private character and in all his domestic and social relations as he was in his public capac ity and deportment. Permanent American settlement may be said to have begun with him; and it was a great and lasting boon to Michigan when it was given a governor at once so able, so patriotic, so attentive to his duties, and so worthy in his public and private life of respect and esteem. As Secretary of War in Andrew Jackson s Cabinet, he was pronounced, vigorous, and emphatic in his hostility to the doctrine of nullification of the laws, and long afterward, in his old age, when Secretary of State in Buchanan s ad ministration, in i86o- 6i, he spoke with no uncertain voice in favor of the maintenance of the Union at all hazards and at every cost. He lived to see the civil war brought to a successful close in behalf of the Union, and to see the coun try out of her evil days start upon a career of prosperity and greatness which is the marvel of the age and without par allel in ancient times. When Great Britain delayed, upon one pretext and an other, to turn over to the United States the fortifications within our lines, and harassed our border with threatened Indian forays, contrary to the stipulations of the treaty of peace, and when upon the high seas Great Britain assumed the right to visit and search our ships, as minister to France he drew up an impassioned appeal to that country, which had much to do in exposing the arrogance and injustice of the claim. Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 67 Whenever the way was to be cleared for the future which he saw so clearly opening up for his country he was among the first to set to work and was among the most able and successful leaders. He denied the doctrine of perpetual alle giance, assisted in making our flag respected on every sea, stoutly defended the Monroe doctrine in respect to the American continent, and, so far as one man could, pro moted the peace, happiness, and glory of his country. In 1850, when the slavery agitation pervaded the whole land, and the wisest and most fearless stood aghast at the threatened danger to the Government, in that hour of great peril LEWIS CASS S name was put second by a solemn re solve of the Senate second only to that of Henry Clay, the great pacificator in behalf of honorable adjustment. Noth ing could better display the confidence then reposed in his ability and sense of justice. While he was resolute and exacting for his country, he was in his private life retiring, unostentatious, frugal, sym pathetic, and considerate in his relations with those he came in contact with. Let me close by repeating two sentences from General CASS S writings, which give a good insight into his char acter. He said : For myself, I have no belief in that greatness which is too great to mingle with the details of life. In another place he said : He who occupies the loneliest cabin upon the very verge of civili zation has just as important a part to play in the fate of our country as the denizen of the proudest city in the land. These utterances I commend heartily both in spirit and letter, as a guide to all in public life. [Applause.] 68 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. ADDRESS OF MR. O DONNELL Mr. Speaker, in the year 1864 an invitation was extended to the different States of this Union by the national Con gress to present the statues of two of their deceased citizens, to be placed in Statuary Hall, in the nation s Capitol. The works in sculpture were to represent those illustrious for their heroic renown or distinguished by civil or military services." Nearly a quarter of a century has elapsed since this action of the Congress. The State of Michigan to-day makes its contribution in the statue of her illustrious pio neer, soldier, and statesman, General LEWIS CASS, who served the State and nation for more than half a century, always to the advantage of the people and promotion of the glory of the Republic. His fame was not built upon the fluctuating wave of popular party favor, but on service for his country and achievements for the welfare of the nation. Now, the people of the peninsular State who cherish his memory and the deeds of his life unite in presenting this memorial to the worth of the foremost man in their history, the man who aided so much in building up their Common wealth and making secure the great experiment of self-gov ernment on this continent. LEWIS CASS was the second governor of Michigan Terri tory. As its executive he governed wisely for seventeen years, taking office in 1813 and continuing until 1830. His sword had helped to win freedom to the great Northwest. He was the fifth citken chosen to represent the young State in the Senate of the nation, and in that high body he served Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 69 for twelve years. He was called to the Cabinet of President Jackson, and held the portfolio of War for four years, to be transferred to the French court as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary, which place he graced for six 5 ears. His wisdom and discretion averted trouble between the two countries and restored friendly relations. While at this post he prevented the ratification of the quintuple treaty and thereby prohibited the establishment of the right of search on the high seas, so strenuously as serted by England. As Secretary of State he served for nearly four years, resigning a few weeks prior to the close of the administration of President Buchanan. I have given a hasty review of the official life of lyEwiS CASS. It em braces a period of fifty-seven years of service, as legislator, soldier, executive, cabinet officer, and diplomate. I believe but one citizen exceeded that length of service John Quincy Adams. Michigan owes much to LEWIS CASS for its proud emi nence in the States of the Union. As its governor his great abilities were devoted to the development of its wonder ful resources. His management of affairs connected with the Indians was tempered with wisdom and justice, and his treatment of the original occupants of the soil was followed by friendly feeling between the races. His administration solved the Indian problem by its firmness and equity. His life began at the close of the last century. His years from early manhood were devoted to the advancement of civiliza tion, the glory of his country, and the progress of the peo ple. His service was so conspicuous that in 1848 he was rewarded by the great Democratic party by the nomination for the Presidency. 70 Acceptance of the Statue of Leivis Cass. In the election of that year LEWIS CASS received 127 elect oral votes to 163 for Zachary Taylor. The popular vote aggregated 2,871,908, divided as follows: CASS 1,220,544; Taylor, 1,360,101; Van Buren (Free-soil), 291,263, giving a plurality of 139,557 for Taylor, leaving him a minority President. In the light of the situation of parties political to-day, a study of that election is of interest. There were thirty States, and each of the leading candidates succeeded in fifteen, an equal division. General CASS was successful in eight Northern States and seven Southern, while General Taylor received a preponderance of votes in eight Southern States and seven Northern. In the North CASS had 810,460 and Taylor 925,472 votes, while in the South the vote stood 410,084 for CASS and 434,629 for Taylor. In this eight to seven contest the result was determined by a small majority in three States of the South. A change of 1,021 votes in each of the three States of Delaware, Georgia, and Louisiana would have given the victory to General CASS, and might have changed the history of the country. The pivotal States of the North were taken from General CASS by the letter to Nicholson, dated December 30, 1847. In that letter General CASS took strong grounds against the Wilmot proviso. He believed, to use his own words, its adoption would weaken, if not impair, the Union of States, and would sow the seeds of future discord, which would grow up and ripen into an abundant harvest of calamity." It would seem as if he was forecasting by his fears the horoscope of the future; to his prophetic eye the mists of coming years were lifted. In the same letter, while endeav oring to protect what he thought the constitutional rights of the South by opposition to this measure of the anti- Acceptance of the Statiie of Lewis Cass. 71 slavery sentiment, he failed to solidify that section by his utterance against the institution of slavery. He said : We may well regret the existence of slavery in Southern States and wish they had been saved from its introduction. In tlie great States of the North the waves of an adverse popular sentiment beat against him, provoked by his es pousal of what he thought the rights of the South, while that portion failed him at the last. Having hastily sketched the political life and public services of the statesman of the Northwest, I desire to speak of him as a patriot. He loved his country and her institu tions; his life was panoplied in honest and simple patriot ism. A reference to his services in the Army in the early days of the Republic attests his devotion to the Union. His words and votes in the Senate during the war with Mexico were always for the nation s glory and in aid of its soldiers and to promote their triumph. In the war for the Union he occupied grounds of exalted patriotism. He deplored the conflict, and fervently hoped the Union would be undisturbed, that the storm would pass. He quitted the Cabinet of President Buchanan, being unwill ing to share longer the councils of an administration where o o the Government was not strongly maintained. He was un able to discover the intentions of a Government that scarcely knew its own intentions, and withdrew from its deliberations. With the change of administration CASS still hoped for recon ciliation between his countrymen. He abhorred war, but believed in protecting the Government. In 1847 he wrote: All wars are to be deprecated as well by the statesman as by the philanthropist. They are great evils; but there are greater evils than these, and submission to injustice is among them. The nation which 72 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. should refuse to defend its rights and its honor when assailed would soon have neither to defend. He held that in times of peril There is one ark of safety for us, and that is an honest appeal to the fundamental principles of our Union, and a stern determination to abide their dictates. No one thought General CASS would hesitate when the hour of trial came. As he saw the country he realized that the quarrel was in its nature irreconcilable and eternal as the warfare between right and wrong. He found the peo ple of the North divided, their views being aptly defined as some holding to the wisdom that desired war that we might have perpetual peace, against the folly that clamored for peace that we might have perpetual war. At last the peo ple of the North learned the maxim of William of Orange, that war was preferable to a doubtful peace. LEWIS CASS spoke for the Government of his country in the hour when every breaker and billow of the political ocean was beating upon its shore. The flag of the nation was fired upon by those in revolt ; the forts of the Govern ment were seized by armed foes ; then there came the great uprising in the North. The avenging genius of the North men resented the attack on the nation and its flag. The State of Michigan became a giant in the fray. At the war meeting in Detroit, April 17., 1861, the venerable states man was present. He was aided to the platform, and there the old man spoke for his country. He said : I come to-day to do honor to the old flag that you have raised to the breeze, and which has maintained itself at home and abroad. I was born under it, and have lived under it, and I hope that the last hour that comes to all may come to me before its stars are dimin- Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 73 ished in number. Though I recognize the duty of every American citizen to stand by the Government, I hope that that Almighty Being who has so often and so wonderfully kept us may preserve us from civil war, and that He will keep us still. The utterances of the old man eloquent kindled the pat riotic fires. His words shone through the darkness of the political atmosphere like characters of light. It is a pleasing coincidence that the next speaker was CASS S old political antagonist and successor in the Senate, Zachariah Chandler, he of rugged words and patriotic heart, loving the Union and liberty. Then Michigan was the home of patriotism. As in an cient Rome, the cry "the Republic is in danger!" stilled all divisions, effaced all partisanship, and men became only patriots. Party lines were obliterated, and the Common wealth became the abode of patriotic fervor. In a few days the First Regiment of Michigan Volunteers was organized, and it was the first military organization from the West to defend the capital. This regiment was partly equipped by LEWIS CASS. May I be pardoned, sir, if I mention the fact that a private soldier in that command in these Halls to-day, with loving reverence, speaks of the great statesman? In a fortnight the people of the metropolis again assembled to take counsel and prepare for the conflict. The sage and patriot, LEWIS CASS, the warrior who broke his sword on that spot nearly fifty years before rather than surrender it to a foreign foe, presided over the concourse of patriots. His words kindled anew the patriotic fires which burned fiercely through the long contest, and before the end Michigan sent ninety-one thousand of her sons to defend the Union. At this gathering he spoke for his country and her institutions. He declared there was but one path 74 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. there was no neutral position ; all must sustain the Gov ernment. He solemnly averred that he who is not for his country is against her. His words were like beacons in the upward path of man kind. They were uttered in those moments in our history when they served to influence the course of events during a long future. They were potent in the period of the great war that made ambition virtue. He who nearly a third of a century before had issued the order which put down nullifica tion now called the people to aid in perpetuating the Gov ernment. Although he was approaching that age in life when shadows foretell the nearness of evening, his days were prolonged that he might see the flag for which he had given his early manhood triumphant, the Union he had loved so well re-established and again form one of the main bulwarks of our civilization. During all those terrible years of conflict the aged war rior watched with anxious solicitude the issue of the great est war of modern times a conflict which illustrated in crimson colors the grandeur, even sublimity, of American valor. He saw the Government restored the epoch of transition from the old to the new, where servitude should not have dominion in a country of liberty. Kre the great heart ceased to throb he saw the last furrow of war closed, the transforming and renewing hand of time laid upon the fortunes of his country, and its people and the nation enter upon a new and greater career of progress. -Peace came to the troubled land, and then the old man slept in the peace of the grave. The life of LEWIS CASS was one illustrative of the genius of our institutions. His youth was one of poverty, devoid Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 75 of advantages. His education was imperfect. When he at tained the age of seventeen years he left his native New Hampshire to join the pioneers of the West. Being with out means he made the journey through the mountain wilds from New England to Ohio on foot. In his new home the peo ple recognized the resources and courage of the young man, starting him on the road that led to highest places. Though of limited education, his writings exhibit native ability and high literary taste. In all positions he was conscientious, industrious, and faithful. All his life he was simple-minded, pure, and admirable, attaching friends and retaining them. He came from the people and never forgot them. He was devoid of the arts of the demagogue and ignorant of political charlatanry. To such a fame and such a life those to come can well look for encouragement and inspiration. Michigan presents this statue to the nation. It represents one who blazed the way in her struggles to greatness, whose life was a gracious emphasis to the loftiest patriotism, use fulness, pureness of life, and devotion to duty and country. More than two decades have passed since he entered into rest. His memory was destined to wait long for the reward and vintage of his toil. When our times have melted into haze others will recover from distance the unstained record of his illustrious career. We place him to-day in the American Pantheon, among the memorials of those of heroic renown who have long since passed to the solemn shades, with that other company of distinguished service who people the silent continent of eternity. In that assemblage he will stand a step to his left the murdered Executive, whose career began as his reached its zenith; to the right another warrior in the rug- 76 Acceptance of the Statue of Leivis Cass. ged leader of the Green Mountain boys, while to the front the eyes of stone forever gaze on the marble lineaments of the noblest of the noble, the Father of his Country. Just beyond, the author of the Magna Charta of our rights the declaration of a people s freedom silently watches the constellation. The mournful and care-worn features of the liberator, the martyr President, surrounded by warriors and statesmen, hold eternal vigil over the nation he lifted up into God s rays of freedom. Orators, commanders whose souls went up to heaven amid the clouds of battle, and those who suffered and died, or who toiled and wrought for the eleva tion of mankind, are there. It is a noble array of the Re public s best and good, a glorious company of Liberty s apostles. And now the circle of glory widens to admit LEWIS CASS to a well-earned place. He is welcome to the " silent senate of the dead" a congress of fame in perpetual session, whose members have received their high creden tials at the hands of History and whose terms of office will outlast the ages. The State of Michigan presents the statue of LEWIS CASS in lasting marble. It may perhaps in coming years crumble to dust, but his memory is indestructible by all-ravaging time. He will live in the sunlight of national gratitude and enduring fame. [Applause.] Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 77 ADDRESS OF MR, SEYMOUR. The marble statue which Michigan has placed in Statu ary Hall is that of a representative American. Born at Ex eter, amidst the rugged hills of New Hampshire, where he received an academic education, sprung from a sire of Rev olutionary fame, LEWIS CASS removed with his parents in 1799 to Wilmington, Delaware, where he became employed as teacher. Subsequently the family emigrated to Ohio and settled on a tract of land on the Muskingum River, near Zanesville, while LEWIS remained at Marietta and commenced the study of law in the office of Governor Meigs. He married Elizabeth Spencer, of Virginia, was elected a member of the legislature of Ohio, and attracted the atten tion of Jefferson by a communication to the President set ting forth the views of the legislature in relation to the alleged treasonable intentions of Aaron Burr. He was- appointed marshal of Ohio in 1807, which office he held until 1813. At the beginning of the second war with England he joined the forces of General Hull, was made colonel, and afterwards promoted to brigadier-general. He was stationed in command at Detroit and appointed governor of the Ter ritory of Michigan, and as a part of his labor negotiated twenty-two distinct Indian treaties, and conducted the ex pedition for the exploration of the Northwestern Territory, in which he traveled upwards of 4,000 miles. He was ap pointed Secretary of War by General Jackson in 1831, which position he resigned to accept that of minister to 78 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. France. Elected as United States Senator in 1845, he re signed when nominated for President in 1848, and after his defeat was re-elected to the Senate, and subsequently, in 1857, he was appointed Secretary of State by President Buchanan, but resigned th? position when the President refused to re-enforce Major Anderson and reprovision Fort Sumter. His resignation terminated a public career of fifty- six years. His varied experience as teacher, lawyer, sol dier, and statesman gave him that cosmopolitan character so pre-eminently American. Drifting from Eastern to front ier life, engaging in different avocations, he acquired those elements of self-reliance and self-confidence which qualified him for the positions of trust and responsibility offered him during his eventful life. His industrious habits fitted him for every sphere he was called upon to fill. Practice made him a speaker and eloquence waited on his toil. He was a thorough partisan and as consistent a practical Democrat as the constitutional mixture of personal and State rights would allow. He loved his race and his country. His inner feelings, and ofttimes his outward expressions, reached out to humanity and caused him to deplore, like Jefferson, his great teacher and idol, a condition which confronted his country, but which both were unable to mend. To keep in check two opposing forces continually seek ing opposite directions, and by the friction engendered continually requiring concessions, was the problem he al ways attempted to solve on the line of constitutional right and unity. He was formed in that stern mold in which New England climate and New England teachings im pressed and reared their hardy sons. The town meeting, that school and basis of New England politics, educated Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 79 him in strict construction of delegated or Federal powers, with a liberal belief in the large reservation of popular or State rights. The study of the law confirmed his mental leanings, and frontier life broadened out his views of pop ular and squatter rights in local and Territorial control. As a soldier, he was aggressive and confident. Indigna tion possessed his soul when he found himself and his army included, as he believed, in the unnecessary capitulation of Hull. His military ability found insufficient scope in the extent or range of his military experiences. The times were not ripe for its development. What success might have been his in a wider field with larger service the prophets or panegyrists of his time have not intimated. As a diplomate, he was tenacious and defiant. He roused the ire of the British public by his vigorous protest against the quintuple treaty, and strengthened the efforts of party friends by his persistent advocacy of the line of fifty-four forty" in the Oregon controversy. As a legislator, he dis tinguished the commencement of his official career in the Ohio legislature by the framing and passage of a law au thorizing the arrest of men and boats in a supposed treason able expedition down the river. Loyalty and love of country marked the beginnings of his public life. In fealty to party he had few superiors. He critically analyzed the measures presented on the line of constitutional power, and attempted to smooth obedience by concession to popular rights. On the passage of the fugitive-slave law he refrained from voting, though occu pying his seat in the Senate, because the amendment he offered was defeated allowing trial by jury if demanded in the State where the fugitive resided. He gave his adhesion 80 Acceptance oj the Statue of Lewis Cass. and support to the law after its passage. He regarded with disfavor the practical repeal of the compromise measures of 1820, but voted for the Kansas and Nebraska bill on the ground of squatter and constitutional right. He favored the election of James Buchanan, but repudiated his inaction towards Anderson and Sumter. As the Declaration of In dependence was the basis and groundwork of the Constitu tion, so was the nullification proclamation of Andrew Jack son the guide and basis of national action in the subsequent maintenance of the Union. To this creed of principles LEWIS CASS adhered, and left the Cabinet of Buchanan in support of a necessary construc tion of Federal power preservative of the nationality of his country. He brooked no action or theory in early or later life which aimed at the impairment of Federal unity. He was a Unionist with all the conditions of compromise and interpretation which seemed necessary to the maintenance and enforcement of the Constitution. That instrument was, in his view, an absolute necessity to the continuance of national unity, and its preservation the only guaranty of substantial protection to popular rights on this conti nent. He represented in his life a connecting link between the early development and later growth of our country, and left the impress of his character and statesmanship not only upon Michigan but the growing West. Industrious, tem perate, and economical in his habits, he lived neither in parsimony nor ostentation. Simplicity and frugality ever distinguished him. The purity of his life was unquestioned. Cultured, self- reliant, and determined, he was the embodiment of firm ness and courage. Some one wrote, He is now ill with Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 81 the ague, the only thing that can shake him." Conserva tism restrained his impulses. The key-note of his political career was the maintenance of the Union under the Consti tution. For this his sacrifices were made. When that Con stitution was assailed and the integrity of the Union threat ened he left an administration he could no longer indorse, returned to his people and gave the influence of his char acter and the wisdom of his counsel in declining years to his practical and only political creed. Covering himself with glory as with a garment by this crowning act of his official life, his name went down to history honored with the plaudits of his countrymen. As we review his charac ter so much the more shall we revere his memory. It was permitted him to see the Union preserved through the arbit rament of arms and catch a glimpse of its increasing strength when purged of the disturbing cause. The empty sleeve, the heavy thud of crutch and artificial limb upon the floor of this Capitol aje constant reminders of the cost and terrific character of the struggle where patri otism was equaled only by sectional devotion, and which left us a people of freemen and marked us a nation of braves. That something of the extent of the conflict, should it ever occur, was early realized by him is evidenced by the lan guage he uttered and the concessions he made ; yet when the day of trial came he voiced his position in no uncer tain sound. His body rests in the city and State of his adoption, and Michigan sends his statue to this Capitol as a memorial of his worth and a tribute to his official services and public virtues. The cold marble will look down with stern and relentless gaze upon the passing crowd, and men in turn will revere his character and honor his patriotism H. Mis. 145 6 82 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. and greatness as they appreciate his motives, and throw the mantle of charity on the times in which he acted. [Ap plause. ] ADDRESS OF MR, BURROWS. Mr. Speaker, when Michigan determined to avail herself of the invitation of the National Government to place in the old historic Hall of the House of Representatives statues of two of her most illustrious citizens, she had no difficulty in designating the first worthy of this national commemoration, and so chiseled in marble the form and features of LEWIS CASS. CASS and Michigan ! Names linked in indissoluble union. His life is interwoven with her own, and his ashes repose in her eternal embrace. No other ot her citizens was so long or more honorably connected with her history; none other reflected greater or more enduring glory upon her name. Identifying himself with her interests and going to her defense while yet a Territory, he followed her fortunes in war and peace through a life-time of more than half a century with unwavering fidelity and unflagging zeal. For a period of more than fifty years he was in her service and the nation s; and at the close of his official career he continued until the hour of his death her counselor and friend. Soldier, governor, Cabinet officer, diplomate, Senator, nom inee of his party for the Presidency, premier; there was no place within the gift of his party he could not command; there was no position to which he was called that he did not adorn. In the judgment of the State, therefore, he fills the full measure of the nation s invitation, for he was " dis tinguished" both in "civil and military life. " Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 83 I shall not attempt a detailed statement of his eventful career. As a soldier, in the wilds of Michigan resisting the aggression of a foreign foe, he gave enduring proof of his patriotism and courage. Assigned to the civil administra tion of that Territory in 1813, for eighteen years he devoted his energies to the advancement of her material interests, and laid the foundations broad and deep for her rapid devel opment and future prosperity. While yet in the discharge of the civil administration of the Territory he was sum moned by President Jackson to a seat in his Cabinet as Sec retary of War, the duties of which position, augmented by difficulties with Indian tribes and the graver conditions growing out of the spirit of nullification, he discharged with signal ability. The steady yet firm hand with which he held the United States military forces at Charleston, on the dividing lines between national supremacy and State sovereignty, main taining the supreme authority of the one without infring ing upon the integrity of the other ; his patriotic appeal to the State of Virginia to use her influence to dissuade South Carolina from a course fraught with such disastrous conse quences to the "integrity of the Union and the cause of free government," evinced the highest statesmanship and contributed in no small degree to the restoration of har monious relations and the recognition of the supremacy of the lawful authority of the National Government. Forced to resign the War portfolio in 1836 by reason of impaired health, he was appointed minister to France, in which position he rendered his Government most illustrious service. It was during his mission to this court that Eng land sought by a masterly stroke of diplomacy to secure 84 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. the right of search on the high seas, a right the American Government had persistently denied, under the pretext of suppressing the African slave-trade. It well-nigh succeeded in uniting the five great powers of Europe England, Aus tria, Russia, Prussia, and France in a declaration of this right and ingrafting it into the code of international law. It was a moment of supreme peril to the Republic. Eng land, Austria, and Prussia had already executed the treaty, and its consummation only required the approval of France. There was no time to communicate with and receive in structions from the home Government ; he must take the responsibility of prompt, decisive action or the alliance would be concluded. He therefore at once addressed a com munication to the French minister of foreign affairs protest ing in the most vigorous terms against the consummation of this conspiracy. In the course of that communication he said : But the subject assumes another aspect when the American people are told by one of the parties that their vessels are to be forcibly en tered and examined in order to carry into effect these stipulations. Certainly the American Government does not believe that the high powers, contracting parties to the treaty, have any wish to compel the United States by force to adapt their measures to its provisions or to adopt its stipulations. They have too much confidence in their sense of justice to force any such result, and they will see with pleasure the prompt disavowal made by yourself, sir, in the name of your country, at the tribune of the Chamber of Deputies, of any in tention of this nature. But were it otherwise, and were it possible they might be deceived in their confident expectations, that would not alter in one tittle their course of action. Their duty would be the same, and the same would be their determination to fulfill it. They would prepare themselves, with apprehension indeed, but with out dismay, with regret, but with firmness, for ene of those desper ate struggles which have sometimes occurred in the history of the Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 85 world, where a just cause and the favor of Providence have given strength to comparative weakness and enabled it to break down the pride of power. In closing his protest he said : % It is proper for me to add that this communication has been made without any instruction from the United States. I have considered this case as one in which an American representative to a foreign power should act without awaiting the orders of his Government. I have presumed, in the views I have submitted to you, that I ex press the feelings of the American Government and peoj)te. If in this I have deceived myself, the responsibility will be mine. As soon as I can receive dispatches from the United States, in answer to my communication, I shall be enabled to declare to you either that my conduct has been approved by the President or that my mission has terminated. He supplemented this protest by a pamphlet addressed to the French people, in which he laid bare the pretenses of the English Government, and exposed her real purpose in conceiving and consummating the alliance. It was a doc ument so forceful, so statesmanlike, so comprehensive, and so illustrative of the character and ability of the man that 1 can not refrain from quoting a few paragraphs therefrom : The right of maritime search now in discussion between the Brit ish and American Governments is a grave question interesting to all nations to whom freedom of the seas is dear. Its connection with the African slave-trade is but incidental, and can not affect the nat ure of the question. Great Britain proposes to push this point, in order to destroy the yet existing relics of that trade. Naval suprem acy she had acquired .and naval supremacy she seeks. It is impossible that the intelligent Government and people of Great Britain should shut their eyes to the effect of this claim of a right of search upon their interests, whatever motives of philanthropy may have led to its first suggestion. To their flag it will give the virtual supremacy of the seas. During twenty-five years the British 86 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. Government has urged the Government of the United States to con sent to this measure. The application has been steadily repelled, and now this principle of the right of search, in a time of profound peace, heretofore never claimed as a question of right, for the first time since the last general war in Europe is claimed by Great Britain to be a part of the law of nations which she has both the right and the will to carry into effect. Who made England the great prefect of police of the ocean, searching and seizing at pleasure? Once establish this right of search, and the scenes of violence which have checkered the ocean for twenty years will again be renewed. The nation which should tamely submit to such pretensions would merit, as surely it would receive, the contumely of the world. The American Government and people will never submit. With them it is a question of life and death. They went to war thirty years ago to oppose it, when comparatively young and weak, and now, after having advanced in the elements of power with a rapid ity unknown in human history, they will not be found wanting to their duties and honor in the day of trial. An American at home or in Europe may safely predict that the first man impressed from a ship of his country and detained with an avowal of the right by order of the British Government will be the signal of war. A war, too, which will be long, bitter, and accom panied, it may be, with many vicissitudes ; for no citizen of the United States can shut his eyes to the power of Great Britain nor to the gallantry of her fleet and armies. But twice the Republic has come out honorably from a similar contest, and with a just cause she would again hope for success. At any rate, she would try. Even if England were clearly right, as in our opinion she is clearly wrong, she might forbear much without any imputation upon her honor. She has won her way to distinction by a thousand feats in arms, and what is her better title to renown, by countless feats in peace, triumph of genius, of skill, of industry, and of enterprise which have gained her a name that the proudest may envy, and that few can hope to equal. She has given birth to an empire in the West, an empire whose extent and duration it passes human sagacity even to conjecture. There are planted her laws, her language, her man ners, her institutions. A thousand ties of interest unite these kin- Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 87 dred people. Let England cherish this as her most glorious work ; but let her recollect, too, that a spirit equal to her own animates the Republic, and though she may be crushed, she will not be dis honored. The result of this protest and appeal arrested the course of negotiation, secured the rejection of the treaty by France, thwarted the designs of the English Government, averted the catastrophe of war, and maintained the rights and honor of the American Republic. Returning home from his foreign mission, he was every where received with public honors and demonstrations of regard, and was prominently mentioned as the candidate of his party for the Presidency. Another, however, was chosen. In 1845 the State of Michigan elected him to the United States Senate, where he won fresh laurels in the arena of debate with such intellectual athletes as Webster, Calhoun, and their compeers. In the great debate on the Oregon question he gave utterance to sentiments which should be perpetuated in the hearts of the American people: It pains me, sir, to hear allusions to the destruction of this Gov ernment and the dissolution of this confederacy. It pains me, not because they inspire me with any fear, but because we ought to have one unpronounceable word, as the Jews had of old, and that word is "dissolution." We should reject the feeling from our hearts and its name from our tongues. He continued to represent the State of Michigan in the United States Senate until 1848, when he resigned to accept the nomination of his party for the Presidency ; but failing of election he was returned for the remainder of his unex- pired term, and at its close, in 1851, re-elected for the full term of six years. While a firm believer in the tenets of his party, his entire Senatorial career was marked with a 88 Acceptance of the Statue of Leiuis Cass. broad statesmanship and a conscientious discharge of duty as he saw it, from the performance of which no flattery could seduce and no power swerve. Retiring from the Senate on the 4th of March, 1857, he assumed the duties of Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President Buchanan, bringing to the discharge of its deli cate functions the same comprehensive statesmanship which had marked the long course of his official life. The events of 1860 and 1861 brought on a crisis in public affairs which forced General CASS to resign from the Cabi net of President Buchanan, which he did on the i2th of December, 1860. His letter of resignation and the Presi dent s reply will best serve to disclose the reason why he felt called upon to sever his connection with the adminis tration: DEPARTMENT OF STATE, December 12, 1860. SIR : The present alarming crisis in our national affairs has en gaged your serious consideration, and in your recent message you have expressed to Congress and through Congress to the country the views you have formed respecting the questions, fraught with the most momentous consequences, which are now presented to the American people for solution. With the general principles laid down in that message I fully concur, and I appreciate with warm sympathy its patriotic appeals and suggestions. What measures it is competent and proper for the Executive to adopt under existing circumstances is a subject which has received your most careful attention, and with the anxious hope, as I well know from having participated in the de liberations, that tranquillity and good feeling may be speedily restored to this agitated and divided confederacy. In some points which I deem of vital importance it has been my misfortune to difter from you. It has been my decided opinion, which for some time past I have urged at various meetings of the Cabinet, that additional troops should be sent to re-enforce the forts in the harbor of Charleston, with a view to their better defense, should they be attacked, and that an Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 89 armed vessel should likewise be ordered there to aid if necessary in the defense, and also, should it be required, in the collection of the revenue, and it is yet my opinion that these measures should be adopted without the least delay. I have likewise urged the expedi ency of immediately removing the custom-house at Charleston to one of the forts in the port and of making arrangements for the col lection of the duties there by having a collector and other officers ready to act when necessary, so that when the office may become vacant the proper authority may be there to collect the duties on the part of the United States. I continue to think that these arrangements should be immedi ately made. While the right and the responsibility of deciding be long to you, it is very desirable that at this perilous juncture there should be as far as possible unanimity in your councils with a view to safe and efficient action. I have, therefore, felt it my duty to tender you my resignation of the office of Secretary of State and to ask your permission to retire from that official association with your self and the members of your Cabinet which I have enjoyed during almost four years without the occurrence of a single incident to inter rupt the personal intercourse which has so happily existed. I can not close this letter without bearing my testimony to the zealous and earnest devotion to the best interests of the country with which during a term of unexampled trials and troubles you have sought to discharge the duties of your high station. Thanking you for the kindness and confidence you have not ceased to manifest toward me, and with the expression of my warmest regard both for yourself and the gentlemen of your Cabinet, I am, sir, with great respect, your obedient servant, LEW. CASS. To the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. WASHINGTON, December 15, 1860. SIR : I have received your resignation of the office of Secretary of State with surprise and regret. After we had passed through nearly the whole term of the administration with mutual and cordial friend ship and regard, I cherished the earnest hope that nothing might occur to disturb our official relations unt ;i its end. You have decided differently; and I have no right to r^mplain. 90 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Lass. I must express my gratification at your concurrence with the gen eral principles laid down in my last message, and your appreciation " with warm sympathy of its patriotic appeals and suggestions." This I value very highly ; and I rejoice that we concur in the opinion that Congress does not possess the power under the Constitution to coerce a State by force of arms to remain in the confederacy. The question on which we unfortunately differ is that of ordering a detachment of the Army and Navy to Charleston, and is correctly stated in your letter of resignation. I do not intend to argue this question. Suffice it to say that your remarks upon the subject were heard by myself and the Cabinet with all the respect due to your high position, your long experience, and your unblemished character; but they failed to convince us of the necessity and propriety, under ex isting circumstances, of adopting such a measure. The Secretaries of War and of the Navy, through whom the orders must have issued to re-enforce the forts, did not concur in your views; and whilst the whole responsibility for the refusal rested upon myself, they were the members of the Cabinet more directly interested. You may have judged correctly on this important question, and your opinion is entitled to grave consideration ; but under my con victions of duty, and believing as I do that no present necessity exists for a resort to force for the protection of the public property, it was impossible for me to have risked a collision of arms in the harbor of Charleston, and thereby have defeated the reasonable hopes which I cherish of the final triumph of the Constitution and the Union. I have only to add that you will take with you into retirement my heart-felt wishes that the evening of your days may be prosperous and happy. Very respectfully, yours, JAMES BUCHANAN. Hon. LEWIS CASS. Believing, as President Buchanan did, that Congress does not possess the power under the Constitution to coerce a State by force of arms to remain in the confederacy," it was perfectly natural that he should refuse to re-enforce the United States garrison at Charleston, fearing that such a step might provoke hostilities on the part of South Caro lina. Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 91 Under his view of the Constitution, the only way to pre serve the Union was to dissuade a State from secession. Once seceded, the Union was hopelessly destroyed. What ever may have been the views of General CASS upon this question, it is certain that he believed it to be the duty of the Executive of the National Government to execute its laws, hold its forts, and collect its revenues, and to employ whatever military or naval forces might be necessary to accomplish such end. Hence General CASS insisted that "without the least delay additional troops should be sent to re-enforce the forts in the harbor of Charleston, and that armed vessels should be ordered there to aid in their de fense and in the collection of the revenues. A disagreement with the Executive upon this point caused him to sever his connection with the administration. Returning to his home in Michigan, he passed the remain der of his days in the seclusion of private life, but giving the full weight of his counsel and influence to the national cause. In a speech delivered in Detroit on the 24th of April, 1861, he said, among other things : I feel it my duty, while I can do but little, to do all I can to mani fest the deep interest I feel in the restoration to peace and good order and submission to the law of every portion of this glorious Republic. Our war to-day is a domestic one, commenced by and bringing in its train acts which no right-feeling man can contem plate without most painful regret. In the mids! of prosperity, with out a single foe to assail us, without a single injury at home caused by the operations of the Government to affect us, this glorious Union, acquired by the blood and sacrifices of our fathers, has been dishon ored and rejected by a portion of the States composing it a union which has given us more blessings than any previous government ever conferred upon man. Here, thank God, its ensign floats proudly and safely, and no American can see its folds spread out to the breeze without feeling a thrill of pride in his heart and without re- 92 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. calling the splendid deeds it has witnessed in many a bloody contest from the day of Bunker Hill to our time. The loyal American people can defend it, and the deafening cheers which meet us to-day are a sure pledge that they will defend it. You need no one to tell you what are the dangers of your country, nor what are your duties, but meet and avert them. There is but one path for every true man to follow, and that is broad and plain. It will conduct us, not indeed without trials and sufferings, to peace and to the restoration of the Union. He who is not for his country is against her. There is no neutral position to be occupied. It is the duty of all zealously to support the Government in its efforts to bring this unhappy civil war to a speedy and satisfactory conclusion by the restoration in its integrity of that great charter of freedom bequeathed to us by Washington and his compatriots. In 1866, at the ripe age of eighty-four, after fifty-six years of public service, his connection with earthly affairs was finally severed. But the memory of his public and private virtues remains forever to be cherished by the State and em ulated by the people. With a just pride we place his statue in the nation s Capitol ; his fame we intrust to his country men. [Applause.] ADDRESS OF MR, WHITING, OF MICHIGAN. Mr. Speaker, Michigan, in placing in Statuary Hall, at the national capital, the statue of LEWIS CASS, becomingly does honor to the memory of the greatest man Michigan has yet given to history. He was distinguished as a soldier, explorer, statesman, savant, and diplomate. He loved his State and his country and he gave them fifty-five years of uninterrupted and devoted service. Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 93 He loved the old flag, and he served it well in his young manhood, in his prime, and in old age. He was one of the greatest and he was the last of our second generation of statesmen, sons of Revolutionary sires, who carried on the great Government their fathers founded. To LEWIS CASS, as to the other great statesmen of his time, the Constitution was sacred. He believed in the rights of the States as protected by the Constitution, but he believed also in the majesty of the Union. He was a strong arm of the Government in the great Northwest at the dawn of the century against the machina tions of Aaron Burr and the soldiery of Great Britain. He was Andrew Jackson s right hand in suppressing nul lification in South Carolina. As American minister to France he defeated the ratification of the quintuple treaty, involving Great Britain s right of search on the high seas, and in the last days of his long life he threw his great influ ence against secession. He was the last survivor of the great men who framed the Missouri compromise and averted war ; but when war came he was for the restoration of the Union. He resigned from James Buchanan s Cabinet because the President did not take that course with South Carolina that Andrew Jackson took a quarter of a century before. He gave expression to his ideas of the suppression of the rebellion when he sent word to Secretary Cameron : Do not defend Washington ; do not put batteries on Georgetown Heights ; but shove your troops directly into Virginia and quarter them there. LEWIS CASS participated actively in the thrilling events of half a century of national history. But Michigan cher- 94 Acceptance of tJie Statue of Lewis Cass. ishes his name most closely for the fostering care that he bestowed upon her during her years of infancy. He was governor of Michigan for twenty years. That venerable and noble Democrat, Alpheus Felch, who was contempora neous with CASS in public life, says of his administration : These years constitute an epoch in the history of Michigan. The executive powers of the Government have never been more assid uously or more successfully exercised in building up a new country, or in promoting the growth of agricultural, mechanical, or educa tional interests. * * * In the administration of Indian affairs General CASS was most fortunate. He early succeeded in securing the confidence and respect of the Indians. The justice and kindness of his deal ings did much to pacify and quiet them and dispel the fears of the settlers of hostile attacks. * * * His administration as gov ernor was one of decided success, and while it secured great results to the Territory, it bound him to the people by the strongest ties of respect and love. He well deserved the rewards due to a faithful, honest, and able public servant. The statue to be placed in the Cap itol is a just tribute to his memory. Michigan honors herself in hon oring her most illustrious statesman. . I may well conclude by adding to this review of LEWIS CASS S services to his State the distinguished Judge Ross Wilkins s epitome of his services to his country. Judge Wilkins said: Identified with the State since the war of 1812, Michigan claims him for her own, but the national record can not be accurate without the frequent recurrence of his name in the annals of the United States for more than sixty-five years from the treason of Burr to the insurrection of 1860. He, by timely action, exploded the one, and in his eightieth year aided in giving the death-blow to the other. [Applause.] Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 95 ADDRESS OF MR, CUTCHEON. Mr. Speaker, it is not my purpose at this late hour to in dulge in any extended remarks upon the life and character of LEWIS CASS. Michigan s first contribution to the Na tional Statuary Hall is made this day, and whoever may be the subject of the second there can be no doubt but that L-EwiS CASS should be the first contribution from that State. It is a remarkable fact, sir, that the two men who domi nated the politics of the State of Michigan for a period of nearly seventy years, from 1813 to 1880, were born in the same State of New Hampshire, and within a few miles of each other in adjoining counties. I refer to LEWIS CASS and Zachariah Chandler. Mr. Chandler was the junior of Mr. CASS by about thirty years, and followed him in his removal, at about the same age, from New Hampshire to the State of Michigan. I shall not attempt, Mr. Speaker, to draw any compari son between the characters of these two men. They were opposites in many respects. General CASS was a conserv ative among conservatives, while Chandler was a radical among radicals. CASS was a Democrat in politics, while Chandler was a Whig and a Republican. CASS entered pub lic life almost as soon as he reached manhood. Chandler remained a merchant until past middle life. But these two men, so different in their characters and in their lives, suc cessively were the master spirits of the political parties of the Peninsular State. 96 Acceptance of the Statue of Leivis Cass. I desire to speak, sir, for a moment, in regard to the statue itself which Michigan to-night tenders to the nation. And, first, in regard to it as a portrait. It was my for tune as a young man, in the last years of his life, frequently to see General CASS, as a young man sees and looks up to a man of a past generation. I can say, Mr. Speaker, that the likeness is a most excellent one. The countenance, the head, and pose of the body, everything in regard to the statue, presents before you a likeness of General LEWIS CASS as I saw him in his life-time. Of coiirse there is in it more of strength and vigor than he exhibited in those declining days, for he was already well past seventy years, the usual allotted span of life, before I saw him. Secondly, as a work of art. I do not profess to be a connoisseur of the art of the sculptor. I do not know what others may think of this portraiture of General CASS ; but as for myself, when I en ter Statuary Hall, there is no figure there that strikes me more impressively and as more worthy of a place in this Pantheon of the Republic than the statue of LEWIS CASS. It is the likeness of a man of force. It has a vigor which speaks of positive opinions and of strong convictions. It is the very embodiment of his famous alliteration, fifty-four forty or fight." It reminds one of the words of Tennyson: That tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew. In the few further moments allotted to me I shall not speak of him in political capacities as legislator, marshal, gov ernor, foreign minister, Senator, Secretary of State, or Pres idential candidate. Others have amplified upon these. I shall speak of him in the less conspicuous aspect of his many-sided character that of a soldier, or, I should say, a Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 97 military man. And here let me say that in the State which he served so well, so long, and so honorably he was always known as General CASS. He was Senator ; he was gov ernor ; he was Commissioner of Indian Affairs ; he was for eign minister, but we always spoke of him as General. General CASS was a volunteer soldier, and he was the son of a volunteer soldier. His father, Capt. Jonathan Cass, of Exeter, New Hampshire, enlisted as a private soldier in the army of the Revolution immediately after the first clash of arms ; and it perhaps may be that I have an added interest in him and in this ceremony from the fact that my grand father marched in the same battalion with Jonathan Cass under the command of Col. Andrew McCleary to the battle of Bunker Hill. He was reared as the son of a soldier. While yet a boy he engaged in the profession of teaching as so many of our great men have done in the State of Delaware. Following this he marched in the advance of empire to wards the great West, and found himself in that modern mother of Presidents, the State of Ohio, at Marietta. Here he engaged briefly in the practice of the law, was elected to the legislature of the State, and was appointed United States marshal, in which office he continued from 1806 until 1813. In 1812, anticipating war with Great Britain, the then ad ministration commenced the work of putting our Canadian frontier in a condition of defense. Several regiments of volunteers were raised in the State of Ohio for the protec tion of the line of the Detroit River. Among these marched young CASS, then thirty years of age, as colonel of the Third Ohio Volunteers. He joined the force of General H. Mis. 145 7 98 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. Hull at Dayton, Ohio, and marched through a nearly un broken wilderness to Detroit, which was reached on July 9, 1812, and which, unknown to him, was to be his future home and the place of his burial. General Hull being ordered to cross into Canada, Colonel CASS was the first of the American force to put foot upon Canadian soil. He was ordered by General Hull to make an advance with his regiment in the direction of Fort Mai den and feel the force of the enemy. He encountered them at the crossing of the Canards, or, as it is called, Aux Can ards," about five miles from Fort Maiden, and there the first blood of the war of 1812 was spilled under the command and in the presence of General CASS. I will not attempt at this hour to go into details. Instead of advancing and captur ing Fort Maiden, as CASS urged General Hull, the Detroit River was recrossed, apparently without reason, .and the British commander, General Brock, with a small force of about a thousand British soldiers and Indians, was permit ted to cross that broad and rapid stream in the face of the superior force of General Hull without opposition. Then followed the surrender of Detroit, which has always been considered, in Michigan at least, a pusillanimous affair and a blot upon her history. It is said, I know not how truly, that so indignant was young CASS at this disgrace that, rather than surrender his sword into the hands of the en emy, he broke it in two. He then hastened to Washing ton to lay before the administration the history of this first military disaster of the war of 1812. General Hull was tried and convicted of cowardice and sentenced to death, but the sentence was never executed, and he died in peace long years afterward in his New England home. The contro- Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 99 versy will never be settled whether he was a coward or a scapegoat. In the spring of 1813 Colonel CASS was ex changed and appointed colonel of the Twenty-seventh United States Infantry, and soon afterwards was made a brigadier-general. He rejoined the American forces under General W. H. Harrison at Senecaville, Ohio, and marched with him to Lake Erie. The way to Canada had but just been opened by Perry s victory, announced to the country in the laconic words, "We have met the enemy and they are ours." General Harrison debarked his forces at Sisters Island, near the mouth of the Detroit River, and moved upon Fort Mai den, only to find it abandoned and dismantled. General CASS participated in the battle of the Thames, where Gen eral Proctor was o vercome, his army routed, and a large proportion of them taken prisoners. In this action General CASS acted as volunteer aid to General Harrison, and dis tinguished himself for his intrepidity. General Harrison in his report of the battle of the Thames spoke of General CASS as "an officer of the highest promise." Upon the close of the war, or rather before the close of the war, in October, 1813, General CASS was appointed governor of Michigan, which had been, partly at least, through his efforts, redeemed from the domination of a hostile power. After serving as governor of the Territory of Michigan, then an empire in extent, from 1813 to 1831, during which time he acted as Commissioner of Indian Affairs, negotiat ing many treaties and visiting all parts of his domain, he was called into the Cabinet of General Jackson as Minister of War. It had been my purpose to speak somewhat at length in regard to his policy in that capacity as regards the defenses of the country. 100 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. In the year 1836 he submitted to Congress an elaborate and able report on the subject of national defenses, accom panied by a more exhaustive scheme of fortification by Colonel Totten, then Chief of Engineers. From the report of General CASS I make the following extracts. He says: And I would suggest that the works which are determined on be pushed with all reasonable vigor, that our whole coast may be p aced beyond the reach of injury and insult, as soon as a just regard to circumstances will permit. No objections can arise to this proced ure on the ground of expense, because whatever system may be ap proved by the legislature, nothing will be gained by delaying its completion beyond the time necessary to the proper execution of the work. In fact, the cost will be greater the longer we are employed in it, not only for obvious reasons, arising out of general superintend ence and other contingencies, but because accidents are liable to happen to unfinished work, and the business upon them is deranged by the winter, when they must be properly secured; and the season for resuming labor always finds some preparations necessary which would not have been required had no interruption happened. But the political considerations which urge forward this great ob ject are entitled to much more weight. When once completed we should feel secure. There is probably not a man in the country who did not look with some solicitude during the past season at our com paratively defenseless condition when the issue of our discussions with France was uncertain, and who did not regret that our prepara tions during the long interval of peace we have enjoyed had not kept pace with our growth and importance. We have now this les son to add to our other experience : Adequate security is not only due from the Government to the country, and the conviction of it is not only satisfactory, but the knowledge of its existence can not fail to produce an influence upon other nations as well iq the advent of war itself as in the mode of conducting it. If we are prepared to attack and resist, the chances of being compelled to embark in hostilities will be diminished much in proportion to our preparation. An unpro tected commerce, a defenseless coast, and a military marine wholly inadequate to the wants of our service would indeed hald out strong Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 101 inducements to other nations to convert trifling pretexts into serious causes of quarrel. Out of the past of more than half a century comes this voice of one of our greatest statesmen admonishing us of our dereliction, and I commend now these words to the American Congress and to the American people: "If we are prepared," says General CASS, "to attack and to resist, the chances of being compelled to embark in hostilities will be diminished much in proportion to our preparation." I also heartily commend to those who have charge of ap propriation and expenditure of money for the construction of public works the following from the same report. He says: Secondly. I think that when the plan of a work has been ap proved by Congress and its construction authorized the whole appro priation should be made at once, to be drawn from the Treasury in annual installments to be fixed by the law. This mode of appro priation would remedy much of the inconvenience which has been felt for years in this branch of the public service. The uncertainty respecting the appropriations annually deranges the business, and the delay .which biennially takes place in the passage of the neces sary law reduces the alternate season of operations to a compara tively short period. An exact inquiry into the effect which the pres ent system of making the appropriations has had upon the expense of the works would probably exhibit an amount far greater than is generally anticipated. But, Mr. Speaker, I must close. The last public act of General CASS was to resign from the Cabinet of James Buch anan because his administration refused to defend the flag upon Fort Sumter against incipient rebellion. That act won anew for General CASS the heart of Michigan, which had been in part alienated by the compromise measures of 1850- 54. Though almost eighty years of age, he still had 102 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. fire enough in his heart to cause him to resent that action on the part of his executive chief. I thank God, Mr. Speaker, that he lived long enough to see that flag restored upon Sumter and over every foot of American soil. The storm was past ; the sun again shone out unclouded ; the Union that he loved and for which he had fought was restored, and he saw her about to enter upon her second century redeemed, glorified, resplendent, secure. [Applause.] The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time assigned for these exercises expired some ten minutes ago, but the Chair sug gests that perhaps some arrangement can be made by which the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Allen], who is next on the list, can be heard. Mr. POSEY. I ask unanimous consent that the time for this evening s session be extended for ten minutes, and that the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Allen] be allowed to proceed now for that time. There was no objection, and it was so ordered. ADDRESS OF MR. ALLEN, OF MICHIGAN, Mr. Speaker, it is a striking commentary on the rapidity of the age in which we live that scarcely an hour can be given to the consideration of the character of the man whose impress for good upon this great country equals that of any other statesman of his day. But time moves rapidly, great interests press heavily, and CASS, who did so much to make this nation mighty, and whose life will always be an exam ple for the young men and the patriotic men of this conn- Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 103 try, can have only a brief hour for his virtues to be spoken of in this hall of the people. LEWIS CASS was governor of the Northwest Territory from 1813 to 1831 nearly twenty years. He never was elected to an office by the people. He held his office, of governor by appointment from the President of the United States. In 1831 he was called to the Cabinet of Andrew Jackson as Secretary of War. His first appearance in public in the city of Washington, fifty-six years ago this month, was to address a temperance meeting in the Hall of the House of Representatives, where his statue now stands. LEWIS CASS, who never drank a drop of intoxicating liquor in his life, at that early day, surrounded as he was by the great men of the nation, very few of whom were not ad- o * dieted to their cups, used this striking language : No man can indulge in this habit with impunity, and there is only one way by which all danger may be avoided, that is, by entire in terdiction. Those were brave words to be uttered at that time in this city, and they indicate the moral character and stamina of LEWIS CASS, which stood him in hand at all times and under all circumstances. He showed the same sterling loyalty to his convictions by always refusing to meet with the Senate 01: the Lord s day, believing it contrary to the divine com mand to "remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." His residence abroad for several years made him more intensely American. He believed that the people of this country were immeasurably superior in happiness to any nation upon the face of the globe, and he was not afraid to enunciate his belief. He had an American policy ; he be- 104 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. lieved in an American policy ; and he uttered it in words like these : This country could lose nothing at home or abroad by establish ing and maintaining an American policy a policy decided in its spirit, moderate in its tone, and just in its objects proclaimed and supported firmly. These are good words to speak now ; they are as true now as they were then, and they will always be true so long as this nation is worthy of its own respect or the respect of the nations of the world. General CASS was not only an American but he believed in the American Union. He never would harbor the thought of a dissolution of the Union ; and his voice was always raised upon the side of the Union in the Senate, upon the side of the Constitution ; and among other strong words in the debates in those days he used these: It pains me, sir, to hear allusions to the destruction of this Gov ernment and the dissolution of this confederacy. We ought to have one unpronounceable word, as the Jews of old had, and that word is " dissolution." We should reject the feeling from our hearts and its name from our tongues. Plots and insurrections have no place in this country. We have nothing to fear but ourselves. Mr. CASS was no friend to slavery, but he knew that slav ery was a constitutional institution, and he did not pro pose to disturb it except in a constitutional way. His two fold object was to preserve the nation and to see to it that * no institution which the Constitution sanctioned should be torn away by unconstitutional measures. And this consti tuted one of the strongest marks of his statesmanship and of his power. General CASS never believed that the Union could be law fully dissolved, and when the fiery ordeal came he was Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. 105 found upon the side of the Union. His quick military in tuition discovered the road to success, and in the first months of the war he did not hesitate to give his advice to the Government, although he was then a private citizen. Among other things he said to Secretary Cameron these words : Don t defend Washington; don t put batteries on Georgetown Heights ; but shove your troops directly into Virginia and. quarter them there. What CASS urged should be done in the first months of the war had to be done before the rebellion could be sub dued. Michigan is the home of two millions of people. There you will find upon every hill-top the school-house; you will find on almost every square mile a church. That great and mighty and intelligent Commonwealth has grown upon the sure foundation stones that LEWIS CASS, among the other early and few pioneers of the great Northwest, laid. He was a Democrat in the broad sense of that word. He believed, however, that Democracy could only flourish where it was founded upon intelligence. Consequently throughout all his long public life, under all circumstances, he advo cated the education of the people as the only safety for a republican form of government. Among the mighty men who have lived in this country LEWIS CASS is the peer of any one of them. He stands with Seward ; he stands with the best men and the best thinkers of this nation ; and it is with no small degree of pride that I to-night am permitted to recall to the present generation a few of the attributes of that noble man who belonged to the strong generation now passed away. He was so wise H. Mis. 145 8 106 Acceptance of the Statue of Lewis Cass. that, unlike scores and hundreds of statesmen in this coun try, he avoided the abyss that finally swamped their reputa tion and destroyed their influence, because he stood firmly for the union of the States. We in the sweet name of charity forgive all south of Ma son and Dixon s line who went with their section, but the time has never come, and never will, when a man who lived in the Northern States and proved himself disloyal to the flag can have forgiveness. LEWIS CASS stood for the Union; and I thank God that he in his last days was per mitted to see the flag again floating over a peaceful and powerful country; that his dying eyes beheld the banner of the Union that he loved floating over the reunited States, never again to be broken. [Applause.] Mr. CHIPMAN. I now ask a vote on the adoption of the resolutions. The resolutions were unanimously adopted. . E. * 5 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY